Malcolm in the Middle HD Episodes?

tjpeople

Site Administrator
Staff member
live4mitm, we all want all the episodes in HD but just asking enough times doesn't make it happen. This is what would need to happen for us to get all the episode in HD.


  1. A massive MITM fan, who loves the show enough to put the time & money into do this
  2. Able to receive MITM in HD (few channels air it in HD)
  3. Has the money to pay to get the HD channel ($100/month probs)
  4. Has the equipment to receive it (Around $150)
  5. Has the equipment to record it (over $100+)
  6. Has the equipment and knowledge to decrypt the broadcast (can be very tricky)
  7. Has the PC power to encode the raw files to x264 (or similar) ($1500 at least and many hours per episode)
  8. Then has to wait till every episode has aired, this could take months maybe a year
  9. Has highspeed internet upload, we are talking 0.5-1GB per episode thats 75-150GB for all episodes. At most people's internet upload speed that would take a month or more of constant upload.
So the main factors are time, money and skill.

I have the skill to pull this off, also the commitment and probs the time. However I nowhere near have enough money.

The costs depends how you record, for me to do it:

You need SKY HD - £50 for BOX and £30ish/month to get the channel.
A spare PC, which I have but probs not high spec ennough, so maybe £400 for a new one.
Technotrend S2-3200 PCI card w/ CI addon (Special PCI card to take Satalitle cable in) £120
T-Rex v4.6 CAM module (for decrpting signal) £100
I already have an 8core Mac Pro so encoding isn't an extra cost.

Total costs (est): £650 + on going £30/month. Say I can get all episodes in 6 months. Thats £180, so total = £830

However I think SKY would have to be a minimum 12 months contract so even more like £1000 total.

Now if people are willing to donate to cover my costs then I'd do it. But thats never going to happen.

Another (possibly) cheaper option is to find (one of the few) people who is already setup. Then pay them to do it. No idea what they would expect, but still its a lot of time.

Who knows, somebody may come along one day and have done it already if so contact me and we can work something out. Or if you can help us out also contact me.

If people are seriously interested in donating to get this done, say how much your willing to pledge and we can see if it will work.
 
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live4mitm

New member
Hey, thanks tjpeople for the answer, I knew that it needs a lot of equipment and money. Maybe there will no normal person record it, but i thought of a warez release group. For example there is a german warez website where you can download complete shows in HD for example Lost or King of Queens they even do 1080p releases. So for them it wouldn't be a big thing to do that, but I don't know how to contact people from the warez scene or where to request it.

Off Topic: I really like that you have a Mac Pro :D I have a MacBook Pro
 
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tjpeople

Site Administrator
Staff member
There is a major difference between MITM and the likes of Lost or King of Queens.

With lots of TV shows there are Blue-Ray discs available. So all you have to do is buy them and rip them. For anything thats aired in the last 2ish years are recorded in HD when they air for the FIRST time. Only season 6 and 7 where broadcast in HD when they first aired and at the time (nearly) nobody was recording in HD.

If new MITM was airing today, we would have HD episodes no problem.

Since then other seasons have aired in HD, but this is re-runs. Scene (Warez) groups arn't really interested in re-runs. They have more than enough to keep themselves busy with NEW airings.

You have to remeber MITM finished in 2006, most people assume its on DVD so don't think "oh lets record MITM off the TV".
 

Lparsons7981

New member
I'm not really sure of how it works, but seasons 1-5 can never be in HD I thought because they weren't actually filmed using HD cameras?

I was dissapointed to not be able to find the season 1 DVDs at my local Best Buy today, they are usually good with T.V DVDs. God knows they had quite a few copies of "Commander in Chief":rolleyes:

Guess it's Amazon.com for me.
 

tjpeople

Site Administrator
Staff member
When you buy it on amazon help the site out by using this link to amazon. Or via our amazon store! http://malcolminthemiddle.co.uk/store

I'm pretty sure all season will have been filmed on film. Film is in itself HD. So all episodes if they want could be HD, I'm not exactly sure how many seasons they actually broadcast in HD. But they could do them all.
 

live4mitm

New member
Yes, all seasons were filmed on Film with Panavision Cameras, so they could broadcast all in HD. So I think we have to wait like you just said, until somebody does the work for us and then we contact each other here.
 

MITM_Fan

Member
i think i can answer 1 question season 4 - 7 are in HD

That's not really true, I explain why.

Those HDTV (which LOL released) aren't High Defition, they have 600x352 or sort of and simplifying it's the standard defition.

Only the real HDTV-720P (1280x720) round up to 500MB-1GB (depends on the bitrate) size not 175MB.
 

live4mitm

New member
That's not really true, I explain why.

Those HDTV (which LOL released) aren't High Defition, they have 600x352 or sort of and simplifying it's the standard defition.

Only the real HDTV-720P (1280x720) round up to 500MB-1GB (depends on the bitrate) size not 175MB.

We knew that the episodes that you can download on the internet aren't HD, we were talking about if they are airing in HD on TV so someone could record them.
 

Batch

New member
tjpeople said:
Technotrend S2-3200 PCI card w/ CI addon (Special PCI card to take Satalitle cable in) £120
T-Rex v4.6 CAM module (for decrpting signal) £100

Unfortunately this approach is no longer an option as in the past month or so Sky have issued new viewing cards and changed all encryption setting which the CAM module can't deal with.

As i've said before I've got the time, with a 3 month Uni holiday starting in 2 weeks.
My parents have already got a SkyHD box and subscription(£46 per month!) and my PC is capable of encoding to X264.
I've also got 3.5tb of hard drive space and access to 100mb broadband:

424971530.png


However, i'd still need donations to cover the £350 ($550) cost of the capture and decryption devices. Any offers, lol.
 
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live4mitm

New member
Maybe we should make an donate announcement on the news page, then I think there will be a lot of people donating you, PayPal would be the best thing I think.
 

tjpeople

Site Administrator
Staff member
Thanks for the offer Batch, your definitely the best option we have.

I'm hesitant to start asking for donations, when money gets evolved things get complicated. However I'm seriously considering it.

I'd like peoples feedback. Questions...

Should people who donate "get" something? Maybe only the people who donate can get access to the episodes? If so there would need to be a minimum donation value.

What if we raise £300 but can't get the last £50? WHat happens to peoples money?

I guess the easiest option is to be completely simple.

"We need money to do this, the more people donate the better a chance we can do it"

And make it very clear that this is a donation and we guarantee nothing nor can we give money back.

We could go down the "pledge" option. Get people to say how much they are willing to pay, then if we get enough pledges, ask for the real money?
 

live4mitm

New member
I think asking for pledges is a good idea and yes only the people who paid should get access to the downloads, because otherwise they wait until the other users paid enough and then download it for free. And we really have to trust the person who gets the money, £300 is a lot and we have no adress or something :D
 

Batch

New member
I'd agree that only those donating should be able to access the episodes, and I would think that if they did donate, they would be less inclined to freely distribute them around the web.

What if we raise £300 but can't get the last £50? What happens to peoples money?

Technology prices are only going to fall, so I would think that if a decent figure were to be raised, the money be kept until the equipment is affordable. Only problem here would be if it stppped airing.
 

live4mitm

New member
I think we should make this as soon as we can, the main things were discussed so the donation request should be placed on the news site, and Batch really wants to do it? When he only has 3 months of freetime than this isn't enough for all the episodes.
 

tjpeople

Site Administrator
Staff member
This is a long term project it wont happen overnight.

My main issue is the possible perception of the exchange of money for episodes. I support the sharing of episodes, however when money gets involved things get very illegal.

Now obviously this isn't what we are doing. We would be "investing" in Batch. With the return being episodes. Not buying them from him.

Batch, you seen quite up on what you would need to do it, can you put together a list? with links to the items, be specific. So people would know what happens to their money.

What we can do is if we can't get enough money is either return the money (however I think people will not get the full figure back as paypal will take a cut) or give it to http://clothesoffourbacks.org (Jane's charity).
 

Lparsons7981

New member
This is a long term project it wont happen overnight.

My main issue is the possible perception of the exchange of money for episodes. I support the sharing of episodes, however when money gets involved things get very illegal.

Now obviously this isn't what we are doing. We would be "investing" in Batch. With the return being episodes. Not buying them from him.

Batch, you seen quite up on what you would need to do it, can you put together a list? with links to the items, be specific. So people would know what happens to their money.

What we can do is if we can't get enough money is either return the money (however I think people will not get the full figure back as paypal will take a cut) or give it to http://clothesoffourbacks.org (Jane's charity).


The charity thing is a great idea.
 

Batch

New member
I think we should make this as soon as we can, the main things were discussed so the donation request should be placed on the news site, and Batch really wants to do it? When he only has 3 months of freetime than this isn't enough for all the episodes.

I'd need to check exactly which seasons Sky is airing in HD. If seasons 4-7, that's 88 episodes so almost exactly 3 months. Seasons 5-7 would take less time.

At the moment it would require:

HDMI Splitter (£35)
0.5m HDMI cable (£7)
HD FURY 2 (£144)
Hauppauge HD PVR (£160)
 
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