Some of y’all probably don’t know what I’m talking about, but Space Night is a program that is played during the wee hours on German television.
It consists mainly of color satellite views of the earth and contains no talk, but beautiful New-Age “Space music” from many popular new-age/jazz musicians: The Orb, Fresh Moods, Tosca, Brian Eno and The Sushi Club just to name a few.
I lament that this very fine and relaxing program isn’t available in the States and have written the producers an e-mail asking if it will one day become available here, but they answered back basically telling me not to hold my breath.
The show is available on DVD/VHS in Germany, but as y’all probably know, the formats are different and I’m afraid neither would reproduce on my DVD or VCR.
If you are ever in Germany, you might wanna give it a look. You will find it on Bayerischen Fernsehen after 2 am.
Meanwhile, if there are any Deutsch-Dopers reading this post and you have any ideas of how I can enjoy this very fine program here in the US, I’d love to hear from you.
I also enjoy Space Night - early in the morning, trying to muster the energy to go to bed. It’s available on cable in most of Germany, by antenna only in the vicinity of Bavaria. Interesting (with footage mainly from Shuttle orbits - you get to appreciate how comparatively low these are) and soothing.
The outlets selling the DVD mention that it’s PAL but don’t state a DVD region, which could mean region 2 or possibly 0 (no region). If your DVD player is one of those which can convert to NTSC output and its region can be changed you’d be set (e.g. my DVD player says it can convert US DVDs to PAL output - haven’t put it to the test yet. According to this DVD FAQ PAL to NTSC conversion is less supported by players than the opposite.)
Other than that, Bavarian TV has published 10 DVD albums of soundtrack, and the entertainment industry has not thought of something (yet) to make those incompatible.
I am also a Space Night fan, especially of Alpha Centauri, a show about astronomy and astrophysics that is shown during Space Night about twice a week.
You can legally download most (all?) of the episodes here: http://www.br-online.de/alpha/centauri/
Thanks, mkl12. I went to the site, but I haven’t had a lot of luck with RealPlayer lately (net congestion, mainly) and it seems that that is the only player offered by br.
Nice to meet some fellow Space Night fans, however.
