Where in the World is Planet Earth II?

Planet Earth II premieres tomorrow night in Australia and can be bought on 4K-UHD Blu-ray from next month but there’s still no word on when it will land on Prime.

You would have thought Sir David Attenborough’s visit here coinciding with Prime rolling out its new season would have been the cue to launch the wildlife sensation.

Instead, Prime opted for the two-part Attenborough’s Zoo Quest in Colour, an HD restoration of the naturalist’s pioneering 1950s series which barely registered in the ratings: Sunday’s finale averaged 0.8% of the channel’s 25-54 audience and the premiere, 0.6%.

Presumably Prime wants to hold back Planet Earth II for peak autumn/winter viewing.

But delaying it much longer risks jeopardising its potential, given it’s been for sale on DVD and Blu-ray since December in the UK and reportedly has been illegally downloaded “en masse” in Australia.

Or as the Daily Mail Australia vividly declared in November:

Australians driven to illegally download BBC hit Planet Earth II because it won’t be shown legally in this country until NEXT YEAR 

• Planet Earth II is the most viewed TV series on British television this year
• Audiences around the world have been captivated by footage of snakes hunting in packs, ibex leaping from cliffs, and snow leopards mating
• But Australians will be forced to wait until next year to view it legally
• Delaying release dates drives people to illegally download shows instead.

But at least the Aussies are way ahead of us, with JB Hi-Fi advertising the 4K-UHD BD of the series going on sale on March 29, just days after its release in the US and the UK.

According to What Hi-Fi,  “It conforms to the official UHD Premium specification, which is not only defined by 4K and HDR, but also support for 10-bit colour depth and BT.2020 colour space representation.

“The show is the BBC’s first to be shot in Ultra HD and Hybrid Log-Gamma (HLG – BBC’s proprietary form of HDR), but the disc has been re-encoded to HDR 10 – the HDR format more typically associated with Ultra HD Blu-ray – by Sony, which already has over 20 Ultra HD Blu-ray titles available.”

In this market, Roadshow Entertainment eventually will distribute Planet Earth II on DVD, Blu-ray and 4K-UHD BD.