PlanetEarth2
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Netflix and Amazon leave the BAFTA TV awards empty-handed
What should have been a night to remember became one to forget for Netflix yesterday. The company started the BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) TV awards with six nominations — five for The Crown and one for Stranger Things — but walked away with nothing. Amazon and Transparent had a similarly poor evening, losing to The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story in the international category.
Nature documentary 'Planet Earth II' is coming to Snapchat
Planet Earth II was probably the BBC's best piece of TV programming last year. The documentary series captured and, more importantly, explained the natural world with nuanced narration and breathtaking cinematography. Now, the show is coming to Snapchat. A deal between Snap Inc and the British broadcaster will see a modified version released through the social network. It'll have six episodes and, of course, be optimized for vertical viewing. Snap says the series will also use "binaural recording," a dual-microphone setup that's meant to imitate 3D stereo sound. It's not clear exactly how long each episode will be, however.
BBC tests 4K iPlayer with 'Planet Earth II'
For four glorious minutes, Brits will be able to watch Planet Earth II in 4K. The broadcaster is releasing some "experimental footage" in the ultra HD resolution today, which viewers can watch until "early next year" on a small number of Panasonic TVs. It's a short clip, featuring a frog in a luscious jungle and a jaguar stalking its prey. The new footage also uses Hybrid Log-Gamma (HLG), a form of High Dynamic Range (HDR) which promises sharper and more colourful images. The BBC says the test clip is an "early but important step" towards offering 4K full-time on iPlayer.
Nature documentary 'Planet Earth II' looks absolutely stunning
For people who love showing off their high-end A/V gear, documentaries from BBC Earth are about as good as it gets for infinitely rewatchable reference material. But the clock ticks ever forward and some of those older releases don't look quite as good anymore thanks to screen sizes getting dramatically bigger and pixel counts higher. But now we have our first glimpse at the shot-in-4K Planet Earth II by way of a trailer from BBC One.
