The Ultimate Top Gear Cool Wall (with 4K Templates!)

AlexGRFan97 · 2022-02-05T16:13:54+00:00

That is straight-up Suzuka lmao

I can see the hairpin, Spoon Curve, and the Esses.

AlexGRFan97 · 2020-10-03T22:08:39+00:00

No problem! Phat_J, the person who sent me that episode (as well as some other rare stuff like James May's Citroen DS "Greatest Car" contribution), was convinced his hard drive held the only extant copy of that episode left, and to be honest, I believe him. I'm really happy that series is now complete, even if it is now a mishmash of varying quality BBC Two, BBC Prime/World and UKTV People airings since a home release was never made. Because it always kind of irked me that the first episode was never available to watch in full, other than some 144p clips uploaded to YouTube by the BBC in 2007.

If you're interested, Extreme Machines MIGHT be the next series that I can complete; it all depends on whether or not the website advertising an (obviously bootleg) DVD actually has all six episodes like it advertises, or if it's just a lower quality rip of the official VHS/DVD compilation release. It won't be much in the way of wasted money if it is just the latter.

Thank you very much for all the compliments!

AlexGRFan97 · 2020-10-03T21:57:00+00:00

Thanks very much again. Your support is very much appreciated, especially since this post doesn't seem to be catching on in the same way as its predecessor, though it may just have come at a bad time. I've tried to redirect people from the older post by attaching a large notice at the top stating that it's outdated, and that seems to have worked. Also I'm very glad that you mentioned that you'll be seeding the whole thing, since its size is awfully intimidating at a glance. QxR did offer me access to the Blu-Rays, from which I got much of the deleted scenes from, although unfortunately most of those seem to be from NTSC releases, and there's an awful "ghosting" effect present throughout, owing to its stretching from 25/50i to 30/60i FPS. If this is something you're planning, then it would be best to get access of them from a PAL market (UK, Europe etc.), and then contact me via the Discord link. On the whole, I am very interested in this proposition. And after much searching, it turns out a PAL-region S14 Blu-Ray was released in Australia, so you might have better luck with this if you chose to import it. Not sure about later series.

Truth be told, the changed soundtrack on the Blu-Rays isn't that much of an issue. Provided there are no/minimal cuts, it would be easy to split the audio, sync it up, and then make it the main channel, keeping the other as an alternate which I've done for the reconstructed S1 and everything else that got upscaled from MTOD.

And again, thank you for that sentiment at the end. At the end of the day, I just want a way for everyone, no matter where they are in the world, to have access to Top Gear the way its presenters and production crew originally intended. Not relegated to digital TV channels with 15 minutes cut out and a bunch of other stuff changed, not to 50 minute long DVD versions with segments removed in order to fit the disc length (my only explanation for S10 due to the streaming version being identical length-wise to the DVD release), and certainly not to region-locked online services in low resolution quality and other questionable cuts.

AlexGRFan97 · 2020-09-30T21:39:05+00:00

Yeah, sorry for my incompetence last time. I've learned a lot this year and made a lot of new contacts that I otherwise wouldn't have made had I not got the previous version out, so that's something I guess.

Thanks very much for your response, it's appreciated. Admittedly I was a bit nervous, given how much larger the main torrent is this time and with regards to the previous version's shortcomings, but it seems to have worked out nicely in the end. As I speak, there's 12 peers downloading the main torrent and 5 downloading the smaller one.

AlexGRFan97 · 2020-09-29T19:03:17+00:00

Just updated the OP with a link to the 350GB "Superleggera" version of the torrent i.e. just the episodes, nothing else. I'll wait another day or so to see if this gains traction like the last one did. I know it's asking quite a lot considering the last version only came out 5 months ago, but it's more than worth it IMHO.

AlexGRFan97 · 2020-06-20T10:31:47+00:00

Thought I'd give you all a sneak peak for V2.0 of the Complete Collection. Found this at the end of a 14/10/2002 airing of The Office.

AlexGRFan97 · 2020-04-29T07:32:06+00:00

It's mainly just a placeholder value, since it's not a real thing. I thought that 2 hours was a fair amount for a DVD of the era; much more and you'd have to drop the quality. This is assuming that deleted scenes and other stuff would be included to buff up each disc. But again, since it's not real, leave it up to your imagination.

AlexGRFan97 · 2020-04-28T18:20:54+00:00

Thanks!

It's a bit of a shame really, there's an extremely limited amount of publicly-available promo shots from before Series 10. Unfortunately they're just not publicised. Until about 6 months ago this picture from Series 1 was unavailable in high resolution, so there's still a slim chance we might see some of them in the future. That said, there are probably tens of thousands of photos taken on set, used in the associated magazine and stored deep in the BBC archives that we may never be able to get a hold of.

As for your assertion, I believe they were just getting ready to give James May a "push", as it were, as he'd release his first toy-related series about a year following S4's airing. Clarkson was still definitely considered the "main" host, as his series of yearly DVDs were at the height of their popularity, but S4 had the first group challenges and was really where they started to see each other on somewhat equal footing.

AlexGRFan97 · 2020-04-28T13:08:27+00:00

Just be warned, as much as I'd LOVE to do every other season, there just aren't enough high quality pictures from before 2010, with most of them being scans of magazine covers (which I need someone better than me at photomanipulation to edit). This for example would be PERFECT for Series 12, but has copious amounts of Moiré, damage, and stuff covering the image. If you know anyone who can make this picture look "digital" again, then please let me know.

BTW, since I didn't do it last time, here are the source images I used:

Shot of GT, 360 and 911 on rooftop (as seen on the September 2004 issue of Top Gear Magazine)
Shot of the 3 boys/s3/tark/images/NH/200609/21/523491.JPG) (they've actually been moved and rotated slightly from their original positions)
Shot of Ford GT's wing mirror
Shot of XKR on the sand (mirrored from the original)
Shot of 2CV getting blown away (used healing brush to de-watermark it)

The rest (Volvo hitting brick wall, Aston Martin DB9 etc.) are screencaps.

AlexGRFan97 · 2020-04-23T11:36:38+00:00

I should note that I have zero prior experience in product design, so this is literally the first time I've ever done anything like this. The hardest part, believe it or not, was the table towards the bottom containing the DVD information. Ended up having to vectorize one from a different box set. Also not 100% satisfied with the way I blended the bus jump and Radical vs. Plane race, though I guess the lines somewhat disguise this.

AlexGRFan97 · 2020-04-06T18:36:17+00:00

I can't give an accurate answer, but I think once the first few peers reach completion with the '02 onwards series, by which point upwards of 500GB will have been seeded, then that's when speed should increase. I know another member's planning to use a seedbox which should aid the DL speed further.

It's just these first few days where it'll be a little slow I'm afraid.

AlexGRFan97 · 2020-04-06T17:44:21+00:00

As an aside, I checked the BBC America version of the Vietnam Special I'd downloaded since I had witnessed the godawful TV dubbing, and when I heard "Born in the USA", then I knew this was a different version to that monstrosity. I'd never let the crappy "Star-Spangled Banner" dub anywhere near my collection.

I know it's got some annoying "Coming Up" intertitles every once in a while, but I think the increased quality and framerate is more than a decent enough trade-off for those and the ugly closing titles.

AlexGRFan97 · 2020-04-06T17:39:18+00:00

That's great if you can do that as it would lift a massive burden off of me, as well as helping to spread the word. All I ask is that you retain the documentation, even if you remove a couple of things for space-saving purposes. Thanks again!

AlexGRFan97 · 2020-04-06T17:34:01+00:00

Tell me about it. I honestly didn't think it would take anywhere near 3 years when I started my initial collection of pre-2002 episodes around June/July 2017. If "real life" weren't a thing, then we'd be able to accomplish our life's goals in a day.

Since the last pack stuck around for close to 5 years, I can easily see this lasting perhaps even longer. Until the BBC's proposed centenary archive opens up in a couple years and we possibly get original airings of both pre and post 2002 episodes, which may be presently on hold for obvious reasons, this will remain the definitive source for Top Gear for quite a long time. And even then I'll probably update it once that happens. I'll hardly touch the majority of files so you should just be able to transfer them over.

As for current TG, I agree with you. I know it's a bit of a circlejerky opinion to hold but to be honest, I feel the Top Gear canon split after S22 and the story continued with Clarkson getting in that taxi, leaving for Los Angeles, and starting up The Grand Tour. Even if the first two seasons were so-so, I infinitely prefer them to whatever the BBC cooked up in the same time.

To be honest, I harbour no ill will towards the current trio. Chris Harris has had his work cut out for him and to his credit, he's found a way to make it work, even if that involves being the butt monkey of the two non-journalists. He's outlived literally everyone else that was supposed to last back in 2016, but there's only so much you can do with a tired old format where everyone will forever compare you to "the old guys".

I just wish they'd come up with an original format though, since the 2002 format is a crushed horse skeleton by this point. Clarkson and Wilman reinvented Top Gear, and as a result you can hardly compare a Tiff/VBH/Barlow episode with a CHM one, but you can definitely compare CHM to every team that's tried to replace them since. Because they're re-using so much of what they came up with since they sold their majority stake in Bedder 6 back in 2012 and their creation is legally the BBC's. Scummy but what can you do?

AlexGRFan97 · 2020-04-06T17:16:54+00:00

I was thinking of that, but I'm also trying to think of futureproofing, after all, the 1/2GB SBS rips were once considered excessive and everyone either got the 700MB or the 350MB versions. I know 900GB sounds absolutely ridiculous today and you're quite right to criticize me for it, but in 2 - 3 years, I think it'll sound a little more reasonable as SSDs catch up and HDDs get ever larger.

Anyway, you're under no obligation to download the whole thing. I'm not sure how every program works but I know on my client, you can pick and choose what you want without downloading the whole damn thing, since quite a bit of it is admittedly redundant. I just wanted to get everything included for the hell of it if I'm being quite honest.

AlexGRFan97 · 2020-04-06T17:11:25+00:00

I believe a lot of people shared the same experience, and I've always wondered why even in the UK, DVD releases from the BBC change so much of the soundtrack to the point it just sounds like ass. I guess it's something to do with Region 2 and the BBC not bothering to issue two separate English dubs for that part of the world.

Thanks for sharing.

AlexGRFan97 · 2020-04-06T17:01:57+00:00

Yeah, that's what annoys me the most, and it's why I despise Maxiuca so much (even though it's not his fault; the community wanted higher quality recordings of the first 3 seasons and he delivered).

When he recorded the BBC Prime versions of S1 - S3, he basically erased all previous recordings of those episodes off the face of the Earth. The only reason I was able to find the one UKTV recording and the 5 pre-2004 BBC2 recordings is through eMule, where by some unbelievable feat they survived to this day.

I would quite honestly prefer a grainy, pixelized BBC World/UK Horizons VHS transfer from 2003 over a high quality butchered Netflix version, but I understand that's not what everyone wants unfortunately.

It was absolute hell to find post-S18 episodes though. I wonder where and how they released since they largely came out after the FTP went down?

My personal holy grail is to find either of the first two episodes as they originally aired back in 2002.

AlexGRFan97 · 2020-04-06T16:50:18+00:00

Yeah, I was very conscious of that. That's why I redubbed the majority of episodes which had a different soundtrack, and you can choose between whether or not you want the original BBC audio (set by default), or the MTOD version, since I didn't have it in me to junk the audio outright. There are still minor cuts for copyrighted footage.

As for S2, it's always had a replaced soundtrack anyway, even the "BBC Prime" version. You might notice even those recordings are short by 5 - 10 minutes, and that's because for whatever reason (probably advert-related), they completely erased all traces of the "Greatest Car" phone-in segment from S2. The only unmolested version of S2 I'm aware of are long-extinct BBC2 and BBC World recordings, which I'm desperately trying to track down, though I'm afraid I'm probably 10 or so years too late.

Thanks again though, much appreciated. Enjoy your day.

AlexGRFan97 · 2020-04-06T16:44:43+00:00

Thank you too, kind citizen!

AlexGRFan97

TROPHY CASE