Rage have played an upgraded version of That's Entertainment in the past few years. Picture is crystal clear and is in stereo

You are absolutely right about that, but the HD channel uses a much higher bitrate than the SD channel, and so upscaling SD to HD (which is done within the ABC transmission chain, so at that point the SD will be between 8 and 10 Mbps), then broadcasting it at an HD bitrate, then downscaling it after I have recorded it, should produce a slightly better result than recording SD where the bitrate has been lowered to 4.5 Mbps for broadcasting.

I record the DVB-T MPEG stream direct to computer hard disk and with no transcoding, which also makes a difference. If you are recording to optical disc then the MPEG stream is being transcoded before writing to disc, and DVDs cannot record HD, so I agree it would make no difference in that case.

Anyway, I'm doing a test right now, recording SD to my PC hard disk and HD on my Topfield hard disk. I'll compare them and see if there's any discernible difference.


No argument there!


Hmm... can't say that's happened to me. One episode a few weeks ago had some glitch issues, but that was the first time I can recall.


Interesting you mention that, because quite a few rage clips of that vintage (around 1976-1979) are rotoscoped copies of clips made on videotape, because videotape back then was too expensive to use to make copies to ship around the world, so 16mm film was used instead.

Some examples include Godley & Creme "An Englishman In New York", The Jam "That's Entertainment", Boomtown Rats "I Don't Like Mondays", Blondie "Union City Blue" and Bryan Ferry "Let's Stick Together". All those clips were made on videotape, but the rage rotoscoped copies are quite crappy, low resolution and film defects/hairs throughout.

I have copies of all those clips from the videotape masters, and the quality is incredible in comparison. So much so I'll probably send them to rage and tell them to upgrade their library copies.

I generally have to keep foxtel copies as well as dvd recordings every January as l get at least one glitch per episode, of Countdown which s h i t s me. Digital tv certainly is not what it is cracked up to be.

When i got my first DVD recorder in 2004, the sound coming through the analogue channels were nice and loud and almost in stereo, but through Foxtel and HD the audio was quieter. A bit like VHS tapes and DVDs. You have to turn the volume up to about 70 to listen to a DVD. Sound on VHS tapes was so much better, but **** picture.

My newer Panasonic DVD/blu-ray recorder is definitely louder/has better sound than I get from the Topfield. I too have the volume up to max. on it. My old Pioneer DVD recorder, which I use for recording rage, has a setting where you can increase (or decrease) the input audio by 3 or 6dB (6dB doubles the sound), so I always have it set to +6dB when recording rage.

I haven't tried any other make of set-top box. I haven't noticed that rage has quieter sound than a year ago, so it must just be your new set-top box is quieter.

Yes, I was recording the analogue signal on my DVD Recorder for the first few years, which had louder/better sound than the digital signal... and it always had the right aspect ratio for 4:3 and letterboxed 4:3 videos (esp. those that are not quite letterboxed 16:9). The only trouble was the picture wasn't as clear/was subject to interference.

Yeah, I still have the digital broadcasts of some previous years' Retro Rages and checking them now out of curiosity the audio levels are all the same, so I'm guessing any variation is just due to different equipment amplifying the audio by different amounts once it's converted into the analogue domain.
I'd speculate that different DVD recorders might also automatically adjust the audio levels upward to make more use of the full dynamic range, or downward to avoid saturation ... it really could come down to a number of things, all of which could be considered good features if they're implemented well, but could affect the final volume in different ways.

Going back to the original point made in this thread, the bit rate of the HD channel last night/this morning was pretty pathetic. It was actually barely above the SD broadcast of last weekend's Rage.

As a general rule it's true that even for SD content, it's better to record it from an HD channel if you can get it, not because of resolution but purely because the tv stations will allocated more bandwidth to their HD channel.
But in this case, I can confirm that users of SD-only gear haven't really missed out at all.

(Which is the inherent problem with free-to-air telecasts that go over the air. There is limited bandwidth for their content, and the more channels they have the more they have to split it up. I recorded Rage on Foxtel as well, and if it was high quality content then that's where I would do my video capturing from, but in the case of the old content of Rage Retro month I doubt there's much to be gained by doing that. For something like live HD sport ... completely different kettle of fish.)

Having old episodes in crisp full HD would not be a true replica of the Countdown viewing experience and therefore would only detract from their charm ;)

(seriously though ... I don't think I'm even going to bother with HD next weekend)

I recall when I had Foxtel 11 years ago, the audio was stronger compared to my first Sony set top box which is still going strong today and all the others that followed.