MT comes to CTS (w/ revised listings)

[dbarrie]

I've been monitoring the Canada.com TV listings, and the 22 episodes of Muppets Tonight will start airing on CTS (Cable 9 in Toronto) on Feb. 16. Yesterday I posted what I thought would be the listings for the first week, but they turned out to be inaccurate. CTS appears to be showing the eps. by production order. I clued into that after reading the guide posted by Henson.com.

Here are the MT listings for the first week (all subject to change):

Feb. 16 - Michelle Pfeiffer
17 - Martin Short
18 - Paula Abdul
19 - Billy Crystal (w/ Larry King)
20 - Garth Brooks (w/ Leonard Nimoy)

MT airs Monday to Friday @ 7 PM ET.

OI MuppetFan

 

[Smy Guiley]

Is this going to be replacing the Muppet Show? If so, it can't run for very long, as there aren't many episodes of MT at all! That's fine, though, as these are much harder to find, and I'm sure they'll go back to TMS after a break. Any info?

eric

 

[dbarrie]

TMS will probably return once all the MT eps. are shown. CTS still lists the show as TMS in its 7 PM timeslot block. If this is the case, then TMS should return March 17 following the broadcast of the last MT ep. (probably the "best-of" ep.). I can continue to update everybody here each week like I did with the TMS eps.

OI MuppetFan

 

[Phillip]

Have they been showing any of the UK bits? For example, have you seen Polly & Clueless or Swift Wits so far?

 

[dbarrie]

The MT eps. haven't aired yet. I doubt if all the UK skits will get shown, just like many of the UK skits from TMS were cut and replaced with commercials. I do know some of the ones you related to because I saw them a few years ago on another channel, w/o commerical interruptions. The Todmans were also UK skits, weren't they? I also recall some of the Elvis skits being treated as extras.

OI MuppetFan

 

[Smy Guiley]

I just bought 6 decent blank VHS so I can get them all. That is, if nobody steals the tape when I'm not at work! You see, I have the timer set on the satellite receiver at work to change over every night at 7, and a floor model VCR contains my blank, also with the timer set. So, as long as I'm not busted by my boss, or someone doesn't walk by and notice there's a tape in one of the VCR's, I'm set. My wife and I are moving at the end of March, so I won't be converting them to disc until we move, but when I do, I've chosen SVCD (sort of....I have a way of rendering the show as 480x480 SVCD MPEG-2, but burning it on a regular VCD so anyone can watch it even if their DVD player doesn't play SVCD's! It still plays at the higher resolution and bitrate, but has a regular VCD header in the file. This renders it useless on a computer, but most people watch these discs in DVD players, anyway!) This way, I can put 2 episodes on a CD at reasonably high quality. And, since there aren't many of them, I don't have to worry about having a huge stack of discs when I'm done. If I'm right, there should only be 11 discs when I'm done, right?

Anyway, this means that when I'm done, the tapes are fair game for trade, as well as the special discs I'm making up! Of course, the tapes won't be edited at all, commercials and all, but the discs will be slick. No breaks or commercials. I can't wait. Everything should be done mid-spring!

eric

 

[pollick529]

I can probably use 2 VHS tapes to get them all. This time I'll keep the commercials in. I don't know if CTS will ever show the UK skits, but I'll e-mail them and come back with the answer once I get a reply.

 

[Smy Guiley]

You could fit them all on a couple of tapes but I want to record them on SP to preserve some quality. If I had my way I'd import them directly into the computer from the satellite receiver, but there's no way for me to do that, so I bought good quality tapes and I'm doing it this way. I've had bad luck rendering shows that were recorded in EP mode. They just don't look very good on the discs.

eric

 

[dbarrie]

Gee, Eric, this comes as distressing news to me, because one of my long-term projects is to get all the TMS and MT eps. transferred to DVD. Up to now I had been taping the TMS eps. on six 10-hour tapes in EP mode (20 eps. per tape). I was going to tape the MT eps. on two six-hour tapes in EP mode as well (11 eps. per tape). I'm not aiming for perfection, just a reasonably decent picture and sound quality that make for a satisfying experience.

Can you please describe to me the kinds of problems you had experienced in attempting to get them onto DVD? I presume you were working with DVD-Rs as opposed to VCDs? Transfers to DVD-Rs apparently are of a better quality than analog on VCDs.

I presently don't have the capability to undertake such a project, and I'm wondering what hardware or programs you've used? I was thinking of getting the HP DVD Movie Writer that had been advertised a while ago. I heard that it was ideal for novices who wanted to get their home videos transferred to DVD. Editing software is included in the package.

You are welcome to post these details here, or to my address, don.barrie@sympatico.ca. Maybe others could benefit if you were to post them here in the forum.

Don (aka OI MuppetFan)

 

[Smy Guiley]

Well, mostly, my problems have arisen on VCD's. These include dropped frames and sync problems, usually caused by dropped frames. The higher quality the tape I'm getting the program from, the less trouble I face when transferring. This shouldn't be a problem on DVD-R, at least if you use an outboard DVD recorder deck, since most of them now have correction for lower quality input such as cable and VHS programs. However, if importing into a computer you might face the same problems. I'm not saying that everyone is going to have these problems, I just wanted to start off with the highest quality source possible, since I can't import directly from the satellite receiver. I'm also thinking long-term, here, since I want a large screen in the future, and VHS is just barely watchable on a big screen TV, so I want the signal to be clean. I find that modern (last 2 or 3 years) VCRs give such lousy pictures that I want the tapes to be clean.

To answer your other question, I have a Mac, and might not be the one to suggest software, since I really know very little about PC software at all!

I actually have been putting the Muppet Show episodes on regular VCD, so the quality of those isn't going to be much better than VHS at all, but since Muppets Tonight is harder to come by these days, and it looks better to start with, I thought I'd give it a little special treatment on SVCD. I've been getting great results using this format! Of course, it takes a bit longer, but I can just put it on to render before I go to bed, and when I wake up there's a finished disc waiting for me! Not bad.

later
eric