BBC Documentaries collection (updated)

BBC – Forever Young How Rock ‘n’ Roll Grew Up (2010)




BBC – Forever Young: How Rock ‘n’ Roll Grew Up (2010)
Xvid | 704×400 | 59mins | 745MB

Who could have predicted it? The Who in their sixties, singing ‘Hope I die before I get old’ to enthusiastic audiences spanning generations; Mick Jagger, with seven years already on his bus pass, snaking across the stage singing ‘Let’s spend the night together’; or a topless, leathery Iggy Pop growling ‘Last year I was 21', before climbing the speaker stacks for a bit of mock fornication. Scenes that is at once incredibly odd, but undeniably powerful and inspiring. Forever Young takes a closer look at how rock ‘n’ roll has had to deal with the unthinkable – namely growing old. From its roots in the Fifties as a music made by young people for young people, to the 21st-century phenomena of the ‘revival’ and the ‘comeback’, the programme investigates what happens when the music refuses to die and its performers refuse to leave the stage. What happens when rock’s youthful rebelliousness is delivered wrapped in wrinkles? Featuring contributions by Iggy Pop, Lemmy, Rick Wakeman, Suggs and Alison Moyet.



Pass:

BBC – Who Is Nelson Mandela?



BBC – Who Is Nelson Mandela?
Xvid | 640×352 | 57mins | 466.99MB

Lenora Crichlow goes in search of the politician behind the legend. It’s aimed at younger viewers, and Crichlow mostly manages to avoid the ponderous video diaries and

sentimentality that can make these celeb-driven docs so cringeworthy. Instead she interrogates human rights campaigners, fearful Afrikaners, their poverty-stricken

neighbours and Mandela’s grandson, delivering a thoughtful portrait of a complex nation.



Pass:

James May's Man Lab



Description: "James May's Man Lab is a British television series presented by James May. The three part series was first aired on BBC Two between 31 October and 14 November 2010.

The show explores traditional skills that are being lost by the modern man and how to stop them from being lost forever. Each episode has a variety of themed tasks, including construction, seduction and more, and a celebrity man task where a celebrity attempts to beat a personal best of a certain 'man task', such as changing a tire."

Allergy Planet





In Britain and America cases of asthma, eczema and hay fever have trebled in the last decades and food allergies have increased by over 500 percent. People have become allergic to everything from penicillin, rice, dust and hay fever to various forms of nuts. Before World War II, allergies barely registered, but today our bodies are reacting to everyday substances. This documentary asks if we are becoming allergic to the 21st century.

Documentary | UK | English

Matroska: 350 MiB, 48mn 27s
880 Kbps, 720*400 (16:9), at 25.000 fps, AVC ([email protected]) (CABAC / 11 Ref Frames)
128 Kbps, 44.1 KHz, 2 channels, MPEG Audio (MP3) (Version 1) (Layer 3)

BBC - Greek Myths: Tales of Travelling Heroes (2010)



Greek Myths: Tales of Travelling Heroes Eminent classical historian Robin Lane Fox embarks on a journey in search of the origins of the Greek myths. He firmly believes that these fantastical stories lie at the root of western culture, and yet little is known about where the myths of the Greek gods came from, and how they grew. Now, after 35 years of travelling, excavation and interpretation, he is confident he has uncovered answers. From the ancient lost city of Hattusas in modern Turkey to the smouldering summit of the Sicilian volcano Mount Etna, the documentary takes the viewer on a dazzling voyage through the Mediterranean world of the 8th century BC, as we follow in the slipstream of an intrepid and mysterious group of merchants and adventurers from the Greek island of Euboea. It’s in the experiences of these now forgotten people that Lane Fox is able to pinpoint the stories and encounters, the journeys and the landscapes that provided the source material for key Greek myths. And along the way, he brings to life these exuberant tales - of castration and baby eating, the birth of human sexual love, and the titanic battles with giants and monsters from which the gods of Greek myth were to emerge victorious.

Robin Lane Fox is an English historian, currently a Fellow of New College Oxford, and University of Oxford Reader in Ancient History. He is one of the pre-eminent historians of the Ancient World. His books and articles include major works on the relation between the pagan and early Christian religions of the Roman Empire, the definitive history of Alexander the Great, and 'The Classical World. A History.'

BBC Horizon – Cloning The First Human (2001)


BBC Horizon – Cloning The First Human (2001)
DX50 AVI | Video: 672x400 16:9 | 25 fps 1848 kbps | Audio: English AC3 128kb/s 48000 Hz | Time: 49:00 | 700MB
Genre: Documentary

Doctors Panayiotis Zavos and Severino Antinori claim they are ready to embark on the greatest human experiment of our age. They say they will attempt to clone a human being before the year is out. Most people think the objections to this are ethical – human cloning would create many moral dilemmas.

There is another question that few ever ask: is the science actually ready yet for cloning healthy humans? Horizon follows the latest research, which has led many scientists to believe that Zavos and Antinori’s plans to clone the first human could end in tragedy. The programme also meets couples like Matthew and Desirée Racquer who think cloning offers them the only way to raise a child who is truly their own.

For decades, cloning remained within the realms of science fiction. The idea that instead of combining a sperm and an egg, a new human could be made from a single cell taken from an adult, seemed completely absurd. But that all changed in February 1997, when the Roslin Institute introduced the world to Dolly the sheep – the first animal cloned from an adult. Ever since Dolly, scientists have been continuing to experiment with cloning animals. So far, they have succeeded in cloning sheep, cattle, pigs, goats and mice, fuelling the belief that humans could be next.

BBC Horizon – Freak Wave (2002)




BBC Horizon – Freak Wave (2002)
DX50 AVI | Video: 688x512 16:9 | 25 fps 1893 kbps | Audio: English AC3 128kb/s 48000 Hz | Time: 48:07 | 746MB
Genre: Documentary

The world’s oceans claim on average one ship a week, often in mysterious circumstances. With little evidence to go on, investigators usually point at human error or poor maintenance but an alarming series of disappearances and near-sinkings, including world-class vessels with unblemished track records, has prompted the search for a more sinister cause and renewed belief in a maritime myth: the wall of water. Waves the height of an office block. Waves twice as large as any that ships are designed to ride over.

These are not tsunamis or tidal waves, but huge breaking walls of water that come out of the blue. Suspicions these were fact not fiction were roused in 1978, by the cargo ship München. She was a state-of-the-art cargo ship. The December storms predicted when she set out to cross the Atlantic did not concern her German crew. The voyage was perfectly routine until at 3am on 12 December she sent out a garbled mayday message from the mid-Atlantic. Rescue attempts began immediately with over a hundred ships combing the ocean.

BBC - Building the Great Pyramid


BBC - Building the Great Pyramid
XviD AVI | Video: 656x368 16:9 | 25 fps 1607 kbps | Audio: English AC3 192kb/s 48000 Hz | Time: 57:40 | 747MB
Genre: Documentary

For four thousand years men have marvelled at the Great Pyramid of Giza and asked two questions: how was it built and why? To answer those questions we will travel back in time. By combining the latest archaeological research with the most up-to-date visual technology we can for the first time see the Pyramid through the eyes of the men who built it.

Not quite documentary, not quite drama, this reenactment of a fictional conscript’s life building the Great Pyramid of Giza is best described as docudrama. Omar Sharif voices the thoughts of the aged Nakht remembering the moment Egyptian soldiers drafted him into the king’s service.

The 57-minute film re-creates the boat trip up the Nile and his ascent through the ranks, from delivering water to helping haul 2.5-ton blocks up ramps for the king’s tomb. Interspersed are narrator Michael Pennington’s historical assertions, along with contrasting footage of what the pyramid looks like today.

BBC - Cleopatra - Portrait of a Killer (2009)

BBC - Treasures of the Anglo Saxons (2010)



Rls Date: 10 August 2010 Air Date:10 August 2010
Format: PDTV Resolution: 640 X 352
Audio: 128 ish VBR MP3 Size: 39 Files 550MB
Genre: Documentary
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Description:
Art historian Dr Nina Ramirez shines a light on some
extraordinary jewellery, manuscripts and poetry from the
so-called Dark Ages. On location and with detailed
examinations of treasures, she interprets the evidence of
how the Angles and Saxons were transformed from
invading, pagan warriors to proto-English Christians.
Ramirez's flair for story-telling keeps this moving smartly
along

BBC - At The Edge of Space (2009)



Postby kuroudo » 30 Aug 2010, 21:46
Zoom in (real dimensions: 800 x 450)Image

Information
James May always wanted to be an astronaut. Now, 40 years after the first Apollo landings, he gets a chance to fly to the edge of space in a U2 spy plane. But first he has to undergo three gruelling days of training with the US Air Force and learn to use a space suit to stay alive in air so thin it can kill in an instant. He discovers that during the flight there are only two people higher than him, and they are both real astronauts on the International Space Station.



Technical Specs
Video Codec: x264 CABAC
Video Bitrate: 1872 Kbps
Video Resolution: 960x540
Video Aspect Ratio: 1.777:1
Audio Codec: AAC
Audio Bitrate: 128 Kbps ABR 48KHz
Audio Channels: 2
Run-Time: 29 mins
Framerate: 25FPS
Number of Parts: 1
Part Size: 415 MB
Ripped by JungleBoy
Subtitles: merged and SRT
Source: DVB-T

BBC - The Secret Life of Chaos




Professor Jim Al-Khalili shows how chaos theory can answer a question that mankind has asked for millennia - how does a universe that starts off as dust end up with intelligent life? It's a mindbending, counterintuitive and for many people a troubling idea. But Professor Al-Khalili reveals the science behind much of beauty and structure in the natural world and discovers that far from it being magic or an act of God, it is in fact an intrinsic part of the laws of physics.

Video Codec: x264 CAVLC
Video Bitrate: 1850 Kb/s
Video Aspect Ratio: 1:777
Video Resolution: 1024 x 576
Audio Codec: (Dolby AC3)
Audio Bitrate: 192 kb/s 48000Hz
Run-Time: 59mins
Framerate: 25FPS
Number of Parts: 1
Part Size: 865MB
Ripped by JungleBoy
Subtitles: merged
Source: DVB-T

BBC Horizon - Most of our universe is missing

We know what 4% of the Universe is made of. But what about the rest?


There was a time, not so long ago, when science seemed to understand how the universe worked. Everything - us, the Earth, the stars and even exotic-sounding supernovae - was made of atoms which were all created at time-zero: the Big Bang. In between the atoms was nothing, a void: quite literally, 'space'.

But recently things have started to unravel. There is, it seems, a lot more to the universe than meets the eye. According to the best estimates, we only really know what about 4% of it is made of. But if only 4% is made of atoms, what about the rest? The rest is made of mysterious entities about which very little is understood, with equally mysterious names: dark matter and dark energy.

Horizon - Don't Grow Old

For centuries scientists have been attempting to come up with an elixir of youth. Now remarkable discoveries are suggesting that ageing is something flexible that can ultimately be manipulated. Horizon meets the scientists who are attempting to piece together why we age and more vitally for all of us, what we can do to prevent it. But which theory will prevail? Does the 95-year-old woman who smokes two packets of cigarettes a day hold the clue? Do blueberries really delay signs of ageing or is it more a question of attitude? Does the real key to controlling how we age lie with a five-year-old boy with an extraordinary ageing disease or with a self-experimenting Harvard professor? Could one of these breakthroughs really see our lives extend past 120 years?

BBC - The Last Nazis

Episode 1: The Hunt for Dr. Death

The generation of Nazis who fought during World War 2 is almost gone, their lives, their actions, and their crimes soon to be consigned to history forever.

This sense of urgency, and of time running out, underpins The Last Nazis - a landmark documentary series about surviving war criminals living in the 21st century.

It's the last chance to tell these stories, to speak to these men; to enter their worlds; and uncover the impact their existence has had on others. Through intimate and unique access, this trilogy of documentary films tells three compelling stories.



In the autumn of 1941, a young Austrian doctor called Aribert Heim was assigned to the Mauthausen Concentration Camp. In just six weeks, he murdered hundreds of inmates by carrying out horrific and needless experiments.

His 'procedures' included injecting poison directly into the hearts of his patients, often timing them to see how long it took them to die. He would amputate limbs without reason, and without anesthetic, and would even keep mementos of his victims, using skin as a lamp shade, and a skull as a paperweight.

He evaded capture and has never answered for his crimes - but now 60 years on and with Heim well into his 90s, fresh evidence has emerged suggesting that he might still be alive.

This film follows Dr Efraim Zuroff in his international manhunt for one of the world's most wanted Nazi war criminals.

With Heim's horrific crimes soon to be consigned to history forever, this Nazi hunt will be the last of its kind and the clock is ticking for Zuroff to bring his target to justice.