Re: Dr Who reloaded - watching Dr.Who via Usenet [review]


"if" <nomail@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:Xns97D8B012B98FEvtqj3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Having missed this week's broadcast, I decided to take a look at
alt.binaries.drwho to see what was available by way of downloadable
versions. This is an incredibly high volume group (compared to the
multimedia groups I usually frequent), and I found an amazing choice of
differently sized videos of "Impossible Planet" to suit all tastes. I
decided to sample the first rar file of each to decide which one to get,
and having done that I thought I may as well post a review of what's on
offer, based on watching the first minute or so of each. Review equipment
was 22" trinitron monitor for pictures and genuine British hi-fi setup for
audio.

Usually I would expect an episode of a 25 min tv programme to require an
XviD/DivX filesize of around 200MB for good quality. So for Dr Who, I
expected about 400MB.

The first thing I came across was a whole DVD version entitled
"178A - The Impossible Planet - DVD with Extras". 4GB for one TV episode?
Surely the original MPEG2 broadcast stream for the programme would only be
around 1.5GB! I can only assume there must be a lot of 'extras'....
I skipped this one on size alone (it would have taken me nearly two days
to
download anyhow).

these WhoFan dvds usually have the episode, the confidential, any interviews
or media appearences the week running up to the episode, the Tardisode
(which is not a handicapped episode as some may think) it also usually has
the commentary (released on the official website after the episode airs)
embeded in an optional audio track and some other stuff...


At the other end of the spectrum was an 80MB podcast type AVI: 368x208
image with 45Kbps mp3 sound, entitled "dw.2x08.dfd" A brave attempt at a
bite sized video and doubtless fine for the intended audience (PDA users)
but too blurred and blocky for watching fullscreen on my computer except
as
a last resort.

there are 80Mb versions posted by users, I'm guessing dating back to the
dial up age but still a desire for them from some...

In between we have AVIs of approx 200, 400 and 700MB, entitled "IPL",
"dr_who_28x08_the_impossible_planet_xvid_{exterminate}", and
"HQDivx521 - Dr Who - 28x08 - The Impossible Planet (with optional
commentary)" respectively.

The 200MB IPL one (also entitled "The Impossible Planet Lite") is 432x240
DivX with 96kbps mp3 audio. Although the image is not much bigger than the
podcast, the higher bitrate makes a world of difference. Full screen it
looks soft of course but the picture is remarkably good and blockiness
though present is acceptable. I might have stopped looking at
this point and just downloaded this one were it not for the somewhat
metallic sounding audio - 96kbps is just too low: IME 128kbps is needed
for
most TV programmes, or 160-192kbps for ones with more complex audio.
Moreover, the audio levels were also on the low side, which probably
compounded the bitrate problem.

lite versions are posted of everything just shortly after dvd releases and
episodes air....

The 400MB one (ok 372MB if you want to be precise), labelled
"{exterminate}", is 640x368 and is bang on what I would expect in terms of
crisp video and bitrate.

these are the ones I download ever week (I work saturday nights and
downloading saves setting the video...and my PC monitor is 20inc high def
flat screen and my TV is 14inch portable) This weeks volume was a little
low but I havn't noticed this before....i did try watching it on my TV with
a stand alone player and i didn't have to turn my TV volume up any more than
normal so I guess my divx player automatically normalised or something....

This left the 700MB "HQ" one which actually has dual audio. Dual audio
AVIs
are a kludge and really it's better to use a container like matroska
(.mkv)
which is designed to hold multiple streams, however I know some people
have
difficulty with matroska files too. Anyhow if you only want the regular
audio it won't matter if you can't access the 2nd audio track.
But anyway, this video is, as you would expect, the best of the lot with
720x416 video and 192kbps audio, which moreover is recorded at the correct
level. The picture is great (though the 400MB exterminate one is almost as
good). If I were to nitpick I would note that Rose's hair looks rather
mushy in the closeup shots, but I can well believe that it was like this
in
the original broadcast, stingy BBC bitrates being what they are. Or
perhaps
she just hadn't washed her hair since last week. JPEG-type ringing
artefacts are occasionally evident around high contrast edges, but again
these could well be in the original broadcast too.

havn't downloaded this one before, assumed the large file size meant it was
an HD ACC version which my stand alone player wont play.




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