TopGear..........

S

Shipkiller

Lifer
I just dnloaded three episodes of TopGear and two of 5th Gear.

TopGear has to be the best car show I have seen.... Better than anything we have over here in the US.

5th Gear was ok, but TopGear was way better than anything I have seen in a long time....
 
I like 5th Gear more because 1) they're a bit more down-to-earth and 2) just about everyone on the show can serioulsly drive: Plato, Tiff, Butler. But I like both shows a lot. My favorite UK show would have to be "Never Mind the Buzzcocks" though...
 
Top Gear is by far the better, 5th Gear just copy them anyway.
True about the drivers on 5th Gear however if they can keep themselves out of hospital.

How do you download Top Gear? (in simple terms).
 
I use a torrent client called Utorrent. http://www.utorrent.com/

There are others of course...

It is a standalone program that does not need to be installed, so you can run it from a memory stick of you want... just copy the executable file to the directory of your choice and run the program. It will then make itself the default program for all torrent files you are trying to dnload.

Then I go to the TopGear site, click on the episode I want to see, which takes you to the MiniNova Torrent site, click on 'download torrent'. That will bring up a requester box asking you if you want to save the file (NO) or open it with UTorrent (YES). Then the dnload starts using the Utorrent client. The speed of the dnload is dependant on how many 'seeders' there are.

Seeders are persons that have their BitTorrent clients up and running 'seeding' the portions of the file that you need. The file will come from many different users... the more seeders the faster the dnload. I was dnloading the TopGear files in about 10 minutes...
 
Top Gear is by far the best auto show on TV, with Fifth Gear being a close runner up. A couple of years ago they showed TG briefly in the US on Discovery, but re-recorded the studio clips to better appeal to American tastes. It was not as good as the original episodes...thank goodness for BitTorrent.

I mentioned it in another thread that there is a great fan site for Top Gear/Fifth Gear which has a forum, news, and catalogs all the episodes with BitTorrent links so you can go find old episodes. It's called Final Gear http://www.finalgear.com

One of the absolute funniest episodes of Top Gear I've seen was when they came to America and drove from Miami to New Orleans. The goal was to see if they could buy a car cheaper than renting one for the journey. Absolutely priceless. It was season 9, episode 3 on 2/11/07. Here's a link to the torrent http://www.mininova.org/tor/581874

Also, for you mac (and linux) users. I really like Transmission as an easy to use BitTorrent client. Transmission can be found here http://transmission.m0k.org/
 
Shipkiller, You want to try and download the episode where they goto the states and buy cars for $1000. Funniest episode ever!
 
I am now downloading the last 15 episodes to watch... it will take about an hour.... I guess I have time to go clean the drains on the soft top...
 
I was also downloading.... For some reason my downloads are VERY slow even tough my connectiobn (& I tested it) is 2mbs....

Any suggestions at makeing it faster - I am using utorrent....

Thanks.
 
enfield,

To some extent that's the nature of BitTorrent, my downloads vary widely depending on how many people are sharing the same file I'm looking for. I've never achieved the same download rates that Shipkiller is reporting. On a good day, it takes me a little over an hour to download an episode. Last night the latest episode took about 4 hours.

One other complication you might be having is that it appears that all ISPs in Canada, except for DCCNET, limit the bandwidth for BT traffic. Here's a link to a wiki for Azureus which is another BT client that describes the situation. http://www.azureuswiki.com/index.php/IS ... bad_for_BT
 
Yep, alot of ISP's throttle the BT traffic.

My ISP, Cox does not.

in the two hours since my last post, I have dnloaded seven episodes. :evil: nah nah nah nah nah.....
 
I'm torn between 5th Gear & Top Gear. I like the fact that most of the drivers on 5G actually have racing experience (and quite disappointed about the TG yahoos who barely made it through their 24 hour race themselves). TG is a better composed show and has a more artistic presentation with better post editing, etc. 5G gives nice reports on regular cars too (although most of the "peasant" cars aren't available in the US). Both shows still have too much fluff in the middle (Celebrity visits), and I never watch those bits.

Regardless... Both shows are leaps and bounds compared to what they have on this side of the pond. I wish we had something similar here.
 
Just some background....

Top Gear has been around since the 70s, but started out as a public information broadcast type show. If you fancy a laugh, type '1991 Top Gear' into Youtube...a warning - its bloody awful.

In 2001 it was cancelled as ratings were low, and most of the Top Gear presenters (Vicky Butler Henderson, Tiff Needell, Quentin Wilson) moved to Channel Five to become Fifth Gear (as they were now unemployed). However, Top Gear was relaunched in its current format in 2001 by the BBC, extended fro 30 minutes to an hour and fronted by Clarkson with new relative unknow Richard Hammond and Jason Dawes (who was dropped for James May pretty quickly). Of course a rivally now grew between the old team and the new, which some times comes up in the show.

Fifth Gear was always Top Gears poorer brother, which itself became a household success even with people who do not like cars and is now one of the most successful shows on the BBC (5 times the viewers of 5th Gear) . The waiting list for tickets to be in the audience is two years. 5th Gear has never got even close in the ratings, it changed its format to copy TGs style but it comes across as pretty weak by comparison.

So the two shows have ties.
 
Top Gear - simply the best auto show like everyone else has mentioned.

5th Gear - they waste too much time featuring non-performance cars that car enthusiasts don't really care about while people who would actually buy those cars don't care enough to watch 5th Gear in the first place anyway. Tiff is the only segment worth watching; everyone else is a blah, especially the young tall skinny cocky kid.
 
Adam D said:
Did you guys watch the xmas special?
Click to expand...

Sure did. A classic episode. Aside the inevitable Bimmer Vs Merc and Audi where no suprise after much drifting and pissing around the M3 came out tops (just)

Putting 10 fold the electic power in a tiny city car making it RC and outdragging a 5ltr Mustang was neat

Great set of 'awards' - worst car, noise of the year, etc.

Just a great series where they move the boundaries of car programmes away from showing us the merit of the Ford Vs Vauxhall Vs Nissa, etc. and enter some sort of surreal world.

Roll on the next series :) :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Z
Topgear say new Z4 looks crap
2 3 4
Replies
77
Views
9K
DOOM
D
M
TopGear (Take3) starts tonight (05-03-17) BBC2 8pm
3 4 5
Replies
87
Views
6K
Marlon
M
M
New TopGear tonight 8pm BBC2
14 15 16
Replies
312
Views
21K
ga41
G
M
New TopGear team announced
2 3
Replies
52
Views
3K
Jaw
J
M
Possible names for new TopGear presenters?
Replies
18
Views
766
dans6490
D
Back
Top Bottom