Hi GuruBob,

this is my first post.

I have been collecting and recording Countdowns since Rage started playing them. In the 90s. I had a friend of Molly who worded me up that they would drop every January. First ones i recorded were to SVHS (JVC-7600 Gold - possibly the best Super VHS VCR ever made) and then in the early 2000s i captured them digitally to my PC. Sometimes i ran out of hard drive space back then tho half way, and the **** thing also liked corrupting files and i also lost some episodes by burning them to DVD-Rs that now have erased themselves (what a terrible format).

at any rate, your list is waaayyyy off.

I have cross-referenced your list to the episodes i have on my HDs that were played by Rage at some point. For 2 of them, i only have half of the episode due to corruption problems. Also several of them you have the date wrong by a few days.

This is what i have from your list that HAS been replayed on Rage (because i have them!) ...you will need to adjust your list:

231 March 16 1980 Steve Gilpin (Mi-Sex)
239 May 11 1980 Bob Geldof (Boomtown Rats)
267 November 23 1980 Ross Wilson (Mondo Rock)

283 May 3 1981 Greedy Smith (Mental As Anything)
298 August 23 1981 Paul Northam (MEO 245)
307 October 25 1981 Sharon O’Neill

336 July 11 1982 James Reyne (Australian Crawl)
341 August 15 (ACTUALLY 17th!!!) 1982 Greedy and Peter (Mental As Anything) (I HAVE HALF ONLY)
343 August 29 1982 Annalise Morrow (The Numbers)

366 April 10 1983 Mark (aka comedian Bob Downe) and Wendy (Globos) (I HAVE HALF ONLY)
390 October 2 1983 Marc Hunter (Dragon)

404 February 19 1984 David Sterry and Richard Zatorski (Real Life)

474 August 11 1985 Howard Jones
489 November 24 (ACTUALLY 23rd!!) 1985 Brian Canham (Pseudo Echo)

497 February 23 1986 Mark Knopfler (Dire Straits)
499 March 9 (ACTUALLY 8th!!) 1986 Molly (interviews Stevie Nicks)
504 April 13 1986 Spencer and Billy (The Johnnys)
536 November 23 1986 Molly (Australian Made Tour)

550 April 19 1987 Molly (from Underground disco)
560 June 28 1987 Dave Dobbyn

i am yet to transfer any of my SVHS tapes, so there is probably more. But i figure whats the point in transferring them when they are likely to come around again on Rage again soon to capture digitally.

Hope this update helps.

Cheers,
Eightys Boy.

Edit - Due to Rage broadcasting the wrong episode :

1982 52 episodes made (summer shows pre-recorded in 1981), 36 shown with 16 still to air. Also at least 3 episodes - No. 10, 19 and 20 - of Countdown Friday (clip show hosted by John Peters) exist

- January 3 1982 Molly (Summer Special #3 New Zealand Invasion)
- January 10 1982 Molly (Summer Special #4 Export bands)
316 February 21 1982 Alex Smith (Moving Pictures)
323 April 11 1982 Ross O’Donovan & Jo Kennedy (Starstruck)
327 May 9 1982 Martha Davis (The Motels)
330 May 30 1982 Ray and Dennis (Dr Hook)
336 July 11 1982 James Reyne (Australian Crawl)
341 August 15 1982 Greedy and Peter (Mental As Anything)
343 August 29 1982 Annalise Morrow (The Numbers)
344 September 5 1982 Billy Miller (The Great Blokes/ex Ferrets)
345 September 12 1982 John Farnham and Derek Pellicci (Little River Band)
346 September 19 1982 Globos
351 October 31 1982 no host (Advance Australia theme - songs introduced by live acts)
355 November 28 1982 Tim Finn
356 December 5 1982 Wendy Stapleton (Wendy & The Rocketts)
358 December 19 1982 Mental As Anything

And the 7" single version (also featured on 1982 With A Bullet) is far better than the slower version on the Rio LP don't you think?

Well I’m impressed, even if no-one else is.

When did you get your first digital TV tuner to record direct to computer disk (not DVD)? For me it was in 2006. But I was an early adopter in 2002 buying a digital set top box - HD capable too - which cost me a huge sum. But I still recorded that signal to VHS. Better than analog, but nothing like a pure digital recording workflow.

Oh - and did you record Rock Arenas as well or just the Countdowns?

I was impressed too!

heya Clip!

first captures were analog to hard drive with a TV tuner board that cost me a packet. It used to crash a lot. Then I had a Canopus ADVC100 and took SVHS feeds from my JVC recorder's tuner into the Canopus and then firewire into the PC around 2002 or so which was a lot more stable.

Yes i grabbed the Rock arenas as well that looked interesting. A lot of them were crap tho and i struggled in the early days with limited hard drive space for the huge video files (not these days!!) so i didnt keep them all. ive got 6 complete episodes.

i lost around 10 dvds each with 2 countdowns per DVD due to dvd "fade"...burnt to bad media. The media started throwing errors 2 years after the burn and now are all completely corrupt. I managed to extract a few of them after a lot of research using some special dvd readers, but you only had 1 crack at extracting, once the laser read the track it self destructed and the data was gone you had to extract once and it was your only chance! And i lost another 6 or 7 with a buggy copy of Roxio that i used back then to free up my hard drive, which would burn the files and everything look ok but now that ive gone back to the dvds, the files are listed in the dvd fine but they are all 00000000000 empty. I cried when i went back to those dvds :(

nowadays all my countdowns sit in a QNAP server with backup RAID running, along with a second QNAP that is unplugged and i turn on once every 6 months to back up the main QNAP (so a virus cannot corrupt it) and then i got hard drives sitting in my parents house under the stairs in case my place burns down. Im not taking any chances these days!!

Ha ha, I have got off-site back-ups of my music video external hard drives just in case they get stolen, burnt, or corrupted, too.

Hi Jason

Not sure if the site is updated however, I have a video tape copy of this show i recorded from the day it was broadcaat (I appeared in it -ahaha)

Ep 432 Thriller Dance competition episode only known to exist in an off air recording, it may not be in the ABC archives.

I have this one on tape too - 425 July 15 1984 State Heats Beatstreet competition

Regards

John

They're two good episodes to have kept.

The Thriller Dance competition episode doesn't appear to be in the ABC archives although it probably is there somewhere but hasn't been correctly labelled. About 6-7 years ago I traded with you for a copy of this episode, which was in NTSC format for some reason, of which I passed on a copy to the ABC just in case they didn't have it. It is not broadcast quality however it is a fantastic episode to have.

Brilliant that you also have ep 425 as that one hasn't aired yet. The Beatstreet final (ep 427) was shown in 2001 but they have never aired the State Heats episode 425.

Howdy there,

Sorry for the 2 year late reply. So 43 episodes of 1970's Countdown have been aired. I only have 22 of them. So if anyone wants to head over to the Countdown Digital File Sharing thread and share some of the others I would appreciate it. My list of C/D shows is there for all to see. I will willingly share copies to everyone who wants it.

cheers,

kiersey...
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