TG on discovery channel

[Tobias]

TV Guide says it's going to be one-hour.

[Svenne]

Info: http://dsc.discovery.com/schedule/ep...=0&channel=DSC

[chilicoke]

I will definitely encode it in Divx5 and set up a torrent, however my TV card is nothing special, so sorry, no ultra high-fi
this is the picture quality you can expect after divx encoding:


I will also cut out the commericals, I should have it ready on torrent at around 9:20-9:45pm Pacific Time before the schedule 10:00pm if everything goes well with Dr. Divx (sometimes the audio goes out of sync, if that happens it'll take longer for me to solve the problem)

I actually saw a short pre-view of tonight's Top Gear on Discovery channel about 30 mintues ago when watching "We Built This City - New York", however it was soo short I barely noticed it (around 1-2.5 seconds )

[Prez808]

What rates will you be using to record? I'm not yet sure for myself, but it will prob be DVD quality, then compressed to XviD. Which card are you using?

[chilicoke]

Prez808, I will be recording with my Media Center with recording quality set at "highest" rate is unknown, file will be in .DVR-MS which I will convert to .mpg with GraphEdit with no quality loss (as far as I understand there's no re-encoding), then cut out commericals and re-save to .mpg (again, no re-encoding involved) and finally encode to Divx5 with Dr. Divx at 900kbps for video and either 96kbps or 112kbps for audio. Resolution will be slightly sized down to keep the file size down (usually 512x384, around 290MB for one-hour show).

again, my TV capture card isnt anything fancy, it's a Sony MPEG card that came with my VAIO, overall quality is pretty good but no match compare to other capture cards. For TV recording I feel it gets the job done pretty well.

My plan is to keep the size down as much as possible without losing too much quality, to make sharing easier/faster. If you are planning to keep a high-quality copy, you might be slightly disappointed

[subzero2785]

i am currently watching it right now. yep this an original BBC Top Gear episode. Mind you according to Discovery Channel a "world preimere episode"...a couple of years ago

as a matter of fact its the top gear episode with the lotus exige as the first car shown and jeremy sort of introducing himself in the beginning. hopefully they start showing the newer episodes in the near future, but its something.

[patrick10]

yea im tivoing it if anyone wants it. i have really no idea how to get it to my comp but its just a rerun so im not even bothering watching it...

[borchenc]

It's all the same segments that we've seen, but the studio format is different. They definitely rerecorded a lot of this as they explain the field, the Stig, and a "brand new" lap board with only the Exige on it. I wonder if they used the same time. I'll look that up in a bit.

[C53A_4G63T]

I hope this is not what i should be expecting all season.... I just does'nt feel right to me. After watching this show back when i live in England 11 years ago, this is crap in my opinion, but better than nothing. I will still download the english episodes.

[borchenc]

They translated the poundage! Haha. That was great. "70,000 pounds is about $135,000" I'm curious if they've been recording these little mini-segments for a while. Perhaps it'd be interesting to see if the audience looks like one of a specific segment. I just wouldn't know why they would go to so much trouble to bring back the cars into the studio and such if they didn't. Otherwise it's just good planning.

[Dr_EluSivE]

Yeah, im 22 mins in and im not impressed, just doesnt have the energy and style of the Original Uk version. I will watch the us version, but i will still download the Uk version whenever possible, Its much better.

Dr.

[phobiarg]

Come on folks its the pilot episode. Give it a few weeks to take off.

[Vegas SRT]

While I will agree its not up to par I think the commericals really mess it up as well. Since top gear was never ment to have commericals it just seems like they cut it in odd spots. I also agree about it missing energy something else just isnt there yet.

[borchenc]

We've gotta keep in mind we've seen these before too. But there is no energy in it. I doubt there will be news segments and all the great transitions and such. Plus the Cool Wall and such... that won't happen... nor the "Best Driving Song" like now. Just too much to rerecord and reconduct. The Cool Wall will have to start over? I doubt they'll do that.

Next week is supposed to be something that we've all seen about a year ago. The DB9 race which was one of my faves so I want to see what they'll do with that. The commercials take away the flow. A lot of what was said before in other episodes, is being repeated as well. "The Power Joker" from Richard that he just said was used

[subzero2785]

i dont know if its just me, but im 30 min into the episode and now it looks like they are mixing episodes from that season into one. they jumped in to exige and on to the koenigsegg and jeremy just said "im after the zonda record." correct me if im wrong.

[borchenc]

Yeah, they're mixing series. The Quattroporte is series four, the Kooennoennioeggoennnisssoeuggooueeng is series 2, Exige is series 3 (with the DB9 and Fay Ripley), and I can't remember the which episode and series the airplane engine is from, and the Wales beach BMW 6 with Porche 911 and Jaguar XJR series is also series 4. Just a lot of this is going to be out of date which bugs me. Some "Americans" will be confused as well with some of the allusions in the segments I assume. For example, the Zonda record which could be taken for the top speed, or the lap time.

Did they also skip a lot of the 645 and 911 review from James and Richard respectively?

[chilicoke]

ya, the description was wrong, this is the mix of different segments.

First is the Lotus Exige takes on Apache from [04x01], then it's James May with a Maserati Quattroporte from [04x08], Bowler Wildcat rally car from [05x02] (!), Kooennoennioeggoennnisssoeuggooueeng from [02x07], and finally BMW 645Ci from [04x05]

interestingly, there's a feel of strange silence, like the soul is missing.. oh well... hopefully they improve over time.
I'll start cutting the commericals as soon as it ends.

[Tobias]

Hey, I'm just glad I don't have to screw around with torrents anymore. Yay for Top Gear U.S.!

[chilicoke]

well...the quality definitily is nowhere close to UK version, if I have never seen the originals before I'll say that was pretty boring, all the funny sections were cut out and they tried to cramp wayy too many clips into one series when the air time is 15 minutes shorter because of commericals.

[edit] forgot to say that I believe some sections of the films the music was also changed to more "American" music, not bad, but they juse don't go well with the clips as well as what they had before

[davpants]

I dropped a thank you to Discovery at the following address for airing Top Gear:

http://extweb.discovery.com/viewerrelations

It probably wouldn't hurt for them to hear from us.

Dave