Customer Reviews
Shockingly poor and trite - By: GeeJayBee, 26 May 2008 
The meaningful content of this 2 DVD set could have condensed into one 20min segment. The repetition in this set is astonishing. Take away the mind-numbing repeated intros, adverts for VW, Microsoft etc & constant revisions of what was said just minutes ago & you are left with a vacuous, boring & childish presentation of one of the most interesting aspects of science & life.
Given the other reviews I was actuallly shocked at how poor this is.
Fantastic - By: manou, 11 Dec 2007 
This is one of the best DVDs I have ever purchased. Even my mother who never ever studied physics could understand something as complicated as String theory & Brian Greene did a fantastic job & trust me this is the least I can say.
A very good documentary! - By: , 10 Jan 2005 A great production of NOVA based on the best-seller book of Brian Greene. This is a very ingenious documentary of physics with an excellent animation made of great special effects that helps you to visualize the physical ideas, like for example, the fabric of space-time. With the help of great interviews with many important physicists like Steven Weinberg, John Schwarz, Michael Green, Ed Witten, Jim Gates,..., Brian Greene explains to the public the basic ideas of general relativity & quantum mechanics, then the conflict between them & finallly the string theory itself, the promising ultimate theory of Cosmos. The part I of this three-part show is in my opinion the best one because it presents a very good historical introduction of the development of physics & explains the main ideas of newtonian gravitation, general relativity, electromagnetism & quantum mechanics in a very simple way. As a physicist I obviously didn't learn nothing new but I enjoy very much to watch this three-part show & I recommend it to everyone.
A very good documentary in physics! - By: , 09 Jan 2005 A great production of NOVA based on the best-seller book of Brian Greene. This is a very ingenious documentary of physics with an excellent animation made of great special effects that help you to visualize the physical ideas, like for example, the fabric of space-time. With the help of great interviews with many important physicists like Steven Weinberg, John Schwarz, Michael Green, Ed Witten, Jim Gates... Brian Greene explains to the public the basic ideas of general relativity & quantum mechanics, then the conflict between them & finallly the string theory itself, the promising ultimate theory of Cosmos. The part I of this three-part show is in my opinion the best one because it presents a very good historical introduction of the development of physics & explains the main ideas of newtonian gravitation, general relativity, electromagnetism & quantum mechanics in a very simple way. As a physicist I obviously didn't learn anything new but I enjoy very much to watch this three-part show & I recommend it to everyone.
Concepts for the conceptualess - By: B. Chandler, 04 Nov 2004 
Depending where you are coming from & where you are going to, there is something for everyone. There are people that keep up with the latest information on the universe; for those people this is a great program to show where the public is. It also is nice to have what you already know restated so you can look at it from a different angle. For people that slept through school or attended in the Stone Age this is may be a shocker for the last time you looked. Then there are people that see this as a wakeup calll for the first time.
The program is designed to give you basic information about the latest theories on how the universe works & goes beyond Einstein to attempt to tie alll the theories up into a single elegant bundle (Superstrings.)
The visuals help & having a different media alllows one to retain information better. However the format leaves something to be desired. The redundancy goes beyond reinforcing to boredom. The sound byte format of leaping from one person to another, when it is just as possible to stay with one person for a completed thought, is like watching a used car commercial. Any one concept could be a whole program in it's self (and probably is.) They show a formula & say "here it is"; then two seconds later it is gone & they are off on another subject.
In any event you will not look at the universe in the same old way.
