Survivor 3: Africa - The Complete Season

I have always thought Africa was the most underrated Survivor season. Its location was beautiful, unique and interesting. Not that islands are bad, but they all seem more or less the same. I'm disappointed that Mark Burnett has said and seems to be sticking to his vow that they would not return to Africa. While all the locations the show has filmed have been "dangerous" in their own way, the African savannah is one of the few environments on earth where you will literally and definitely die if you don't show respect for the land and wildlife. The casting wasn't as good as some of the other seasons, but it wasn't as bad as some people are saying. There was very much a "good vs evil" feel to the 2 tribes, which may have been intentional or maybe just coincidence. Either way it gave us somebody to cheer for. (or at least against) And of course Africa brought the debut of the tribe switch twist. Regarding the product itself I must say that I was very pleasantly surprised. After reading several reviews complaining of dirty, scratched, non-working discs, I wasn't expecting a lot but still wanted to have the show on DVD even if the quality wasn't perfect. While it isn't a "box set" in the sense that it doesn't come with a cardboard slipcover to hold the cases together, that really didn't matter to me. To be honest I find those covers to be more annoying than useful and often throw them away anyway. And yes, the cover art is the same on all 3 cases but that didn't bother me at all. I suppose some people just like to complain. The discs themselves are good quality and all work in both my Samsung blu-ray player and the DVD drive on my computer. None arrived dirty or scratched. I don't doubt the truthfulness of those complaints, but Amazon seems to have greatly improved their production techniques to the point that those complaints should not influence your purchasing decision. The discs are not like the DVD-Rs that you would buy at the store; they are laser printed with the Survivor Africa logo, disc number and episode names. They look like mass produced commercial DVDs. While I have not watched every episode yet, the picture and sound quality on those I have watched is perfectly acceptable. It is in SD so if you're used to watching stuff in HD you will definitely notice a difference and might find the picture quality disappointing but this season was shot in 2001, well before HD was widely adopted. Not a ton of extra features but it does include stuff like the full exit interview of each contestant after they got voted off as well as their Early Show interview. In all, the negative reviews here seem to be either nitpicking non-issues for the sake of complaining, or factually inaccurate. (or the problems cited have since been fixed) I definitely recommend this set to any fan of the show. On a side note, the on demand production process had no negative effect on shipping time. I ordered with 2 day free Prime shipping, and the product shipped within hours and arrived the next day.

I saw other reviews where people were complaining of packaging and picture quality??? I have to disagree with them because the picture quality was EXCELLENT and I love the slimmer packaging....5 discs in one case. That is so much better than the packaging of season 1 & 2 (each disc was in a separate case and kept together by a box/sleeve). I've enjoyed going back through the beginning seasons to see how this show all started. I never watched it back then, but I sure am enjoying watching it now. No commercials and can watch whenever I feel like it. I am able to watch one entire season in a week's time. Season 3 so far is my favorite season of all. I LOVED the views of Africa and of all the wild animals running around. I actually liked the contestants better too. At first Big Tom kind of rubbed me the wrong way, but as the show went on, I became a fan of him. After viewing each season, I find myself going online and searching the contestants to see how they are doing today and to see how they've aged, or have starred in any other shows since being on Survivor. I found out that Ethan Zohn was diagnosed with a rare form of lymphoma in 2009 and went through two stem-cell transplants. How awful. He was my favorite contestant on season 3. I really think you will enjoy this season and don't let the negative reviews scare you away about the packaging and the picture quality. I think that if you purchase it new on Amazon (like I did), that the packaging has been improved! They must have gotten the complaints about it.

Survivor: Marquesas was the best of the pre-All-Stars seasons, mostly because of personalities like Boston Rob Mariano, Vecepia Towery, Paschal English, and Neleh Dennis. Any fan of the show will really enjoy watching (or re-watching) this season -- even though the game was still pretty basic compared to now, the players were interesting and there was real intrigue in how the game played out. Marquesas is a brutal game location and the players really struggle with the insects, so much so that Jeff Probst has said he will never go back. And, you get to see the most absurd tiebreaker ever, so much so that CBS changed the rules afterward to avoid ever repeating it. No spoilers. The video quality is essentially perfect for its time -- the show is in standard definition, so you'll never get blu-ray quality out of the picture, but I didn't see any problems with it. There are great bonuses like the full exit interviews with each player and the next-day appearances on talk shows where the players discuss their experiences. There are some other extras too, more than you'll watch in a sitting. Mostly, I was pleasantly surprised with the quality of the package. I knew it would be DVDRs since it was "produced on demand," but the DVDRs came with full silkscreened disc art/labeling and a proper storage case configuration. Essentially there is nothing about these that isn't as good as a retail store silver DVD product would have been. I would definitely buy other Survivor seasons in this format, especially Thailand and Amazon, which are still not available anywhere (as of this writing).

Good fun to binge watch this series.

As described

I haven't seen the Africa season since it first aired in 2001 and am surprised now to find that it was really one of the better seasons of Survivor. The cast was great; in age, they ranged from early 20s to mid-50s with a wide mix of personalities and backgrounds, and the tribes seemed to be put together with some thought as to how conflict might arise naturally (for example, putting ultra-conservative Frank and openly gay Brandon together on the Samburu tribe) but without the gimmicky men vs. women or old vs. young divisions of later seasons. The setting was gorgeous. Set in Kenya's Shaba National Reserve, the animals living in the reserve were an integral part of the season. The tribes had to take precautions to guard against animals coming into their living area and there were often encounters with elephants, cape buffalo, and lions; in addition, there's a lot of footage of giraffes, zebras, baboons, and other animals living within the reserve. Immediately after the season ended, Mark Burnett said that they would no longer be doing Survivor in an non-beach environment since the audience hated it, although that's hard to understand given how really interesting and pretty the setting was here. (Also, it turned out to be untrue since just three seasons later they were in the Amazon and have since done several seasons in a jungle setting.) For the most part, this is old school Survivor. Two tribes of eight people each, competing each week for reward and immunity. No hidden idols, no exile island, no redemption island, no returning previous players. The one twist introduced this season was the shuffling of tribe members before the merge, and the scrambling and subsequent ousters that resulted from that were hilarious and well-deserved. A brief immunity run at the end led to an unexpected final two, a jury that was only bitter enough to be entertaining but not hateful, and a reasonably deserving winner. All in all, a good season. Other reviewers have mentioned the quality of this DVD set since it's manufactured-on-demand, but I can say that I had no problems playing the disks on either a 7-year-old DVD player or a new player purchased this year. One person mentioned that his disks were dirty and scratched; mine were not dirty although some of them had odd scuff marks on the playable side and a small shallow horizontal scratch, which must have resulted from the production process since the scratch was identical on three or four of the disks. None of that affected playability, however. All the disks played without skipping or freezing. The picture and sound quality are both very good. A few minor complaints: there are no subtitles, which would be nice to have since the players often talk in whispers (and really any season with Big Tom is going to makes subtitles a necessity even when he's speaking at full volume). The chapter marks are not set at scene breaks, instead, they're just set at every ten minutes, which makes navigating kind of a pain if you're looking for something specific. And although it's great to have as extras the Early Show interviews of the most recently booted contestant, the way the interviews are labelled means you'll be spoiled for the second episode on each disk (which is really only an issue the first time you watch). Also, a box to hold the disk cases together (there are nine disks in three separate disk cases) would be nice. Minor complaints aside, I'm really glad to have more seasons out on DVD and I won't hesitate to purchase the manufactured-on-demand sets in the future.

This product far exceeded my expectations. After reading some of the other reviews I became a bit skeptical, because of the lack of case, the quality issues people had talked about, the fact that they looked pirated, etc. After receiving my Survivor: Africa DVD, I can say that not one of those complaints rang true. The three DVDs are packaged individually, which I agree that I would definitely prefer them to come in a box set like the others, but that is far from a deal breaker for me. The DVDs are packaged with artwork on each case, every disc itself has the Survivor DVD logo on it, the quality is superb, there are tons of bonus features, literally no different from the retail box sets such as Australia, Borneo, All-Stars, or Pearl Islands. The only other complaint I would have is that I wish there were more than two episodes per disc, simply because I tend to have Survivor marathons and watch several episodes at once, and it can be a pain having to change the disc out after every other episode, but that is one small and trivial problem compared to all of the great things this DVD has to offer. I would tell anyone who is considering buying this item to not listen to any of the negativity and buy it, you certainly will not be disappointed.

Being a longtime Survivor fan, I was resigned to the fact that it was likely we wouldn't be getting anymore Survivor DVD releases after Vanuatu. My memories of the great classics Africa, Marquesas and Amazon would have to do. As soon as I heard about this release and confirmed that the news wasn't fake, there was no question in my mind that I was pre-ordering both this and Africa. The day they arrived was a great day for this Survivor fan. I must say for a Createspace DVD set (something I hadn't heard of before), they've exceeded my expectations. The packaging is excellent and the footage is of as high a quality as the previous sets. Unfortunately, there's no commentaries from the contestants like on past releases, but the extras more than make up for that. Besides, Marquesas is a fantastic season which can stand on its own and still be a worthy release. I advise all Survivor fans out there to get this season, as you won't be disappointed. Good job Amazon and Createspace! Thank you for finally filling a gap in my DVD collection! May the Survivor releases keep on coming! Thailand and Amazon next please?

Brought great memories

Fantastic series and no damage through the postage handling - great work Amazon UK ! A BIG thumbs up !!

Product as advertised

First season I saw of Survivor, memorable scenery, a worthy winner & overall a great season.

Came much quicker than stated, well impressed