Frozen Planet, which premieres this Sunday on the Discovery Channel, is the kind of program that television was made for — and, even more certainly, the kind that modern TV was made for. This series not only takes us, quite literally, to the coldest, most remote places on Earth, but captures images of so much majesty, artistry, and clarity, it's almost ridiculous. On a large-screen, high-definition TV, watching Frozen Planet is like having your own personal IMAX theater.

The newest technology affects not only how we see these images, but how they're photographed. Even since Planet Earth was made a handful of years ago, advances in video technology have allowed camera crews, armed with the latest equipment, to capture action in unprecedented ways. There's even time-lapse photography so precise, and so carefully planned out, that it pans and zooms while telescoping weeks and months into less than a minute. The result is a glacier that advances like a slow-motion bulldozer, crushing and moving everything in its path.

The images are fantastic... (More here at NPR)