Francis Ford Coppola and Michael Herr should demand credit. More than 30 years after they defined how the Vietnam War would look and feel in the American memory — in Mr. Herr’s book “Dispatches” and Mr. Coppola’s film “Apocalypse Now” — they should still be getting a special thanks in every Vietnam movie and television program.

This notion is strongly reinforced by the six-hour mini-series “Vietnam in HD,” playing Tuesday through Thursday nights on the History Channel. (The first two hours, covering the war through 1967, were available for screening.)

The production “scoured the globe for rare and never-seen film,” according to the publicity materials, much of it shot by soldiers in the field. And yet almost all of it feels familiar. Mr. Coppola may not get a credit, but one of the servicemen interviewed for the series acknowledges that his trip to the rear for some R&R looked pretty much like “Apocalypse Now” — the cue for home-movie footage of go-go dancers and Vietnamese prostitutes.