h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

In honour of the first-ever Douglas Adams Memorial Lecture given by Professor Richard Dawkins on 11 March, 2003, h2g2 presents the lecture in full for you to watch and listen to at your leisure at: A1023256.

sorry, I am very intrested, but I do not want look at images as big as stamp in the mist. I am sad and shocked that BBC does not have better quality control on the net.

this the second time BBC is failing to see importance of maintaining their quality. first time was the end of nornal service of Ceefax to European viewers.

Is THAT what happened to it? I tried to look up something on it yeterday and I got some babble about sky remotes.

Hi Pheloxi,

We actually got the footage from the Save the Rhino Fund (not the BBC) and we just put it up here ourselves at h2g2. We also had to compromise on the quality (size) because the lecture is long and a higher resolution file would take forever to stream. I know it's not perfect, but it's a start. We're also working on getting an audio file of the lecture uploaded onto the page as well.

Sam.

Thaks for this, guy's.

I wasn't in London that day, otherwise I would have been there in person...That's what I get for booking holiday so far in advance

I'm really going to enjoy it...once everyone else has left the office that is!

Zantic

If part 1 is representative of the lecture as a whole, an audio file might be useful; even at full volume Dawkins is practically inaudible.

An audio file would be great

I managed to get the video but the soundtrack was missing (and the sight of a suit miming is less than engaging)

Am I the only one without the soundtrack?

Ahh, that answers *that* question, Peet

sorry, but BBC does it too. I was watching BBC3 Celebdaq on the net.

may be they should have recorded sound only, because now the both are so poor quality that I am not starting to watch. if any pictures were used in the lecture they could have been put on the net., because you can not see them on realplayer.

Sam, did you get the *footage* from the Save the Rhino Fund and encode it yourselves, or did you get the *files* from them? If you still have the footage on tape, get in touch with me - I've got some spiffy video-grabbing equipment, and I'd be prepared to have a go at turning it into something that's both streamable and watchable...

I take your point - although the thing about teletext is not really comparable. I can't see Dutch TV for free, for example, much as I'd like to.

Still, it might not be the highest quality, but as this is something of interest to a lot of our Researchers, we thought it was better than nothing. Evidently, nothing would have been a better option for some of you.

Hmm... depriving the rest of the h2g2 Community of the chance to see this - smacks of censorship to me. Where do I start a protest about this...?

missing daily dose of ceefax - the best news service there was!


if you want NOS teletekst you download special browser
http://www.omroep.nl/nos/tt/tb/download.html
"Het programma kunt u hier downloaden."
press the word "hier" on the page.

or you for commercial tv station go to
http://www.rtl.nl/videotext/

glad to be of service!

Thanks very much indeed for the offer Peet! I think we'll leave it as it for now, though. We've got to plough on with other stuff. But thanks again.

I had an ulterior motive; it would have allowed me to watch the original tapes...

But, that stream is pretty bad. Whoever encoded it should have "normalised" the sound, possibly adding some audio compression at the same time to make low-level speech easier to understand. Minimal noise reduction and a 5% to 10% increase in contrast would have made the image a little more "punchy" too.

So.... will there be other lectures.... will we get prior notice?



Bassman

To be honest with you Peet, it doesn't look too bad at all here in-house. It's not perfect but it's perfectly watchable. And you can hear it too - it's just a bit quiet. I don't at all doubt the truth of what you're saying, but please bear in mind this was not a BBC film production - it was somebody's hand-held video! I think we've done the best with the footage we were given.

Thanks a lot! This great for all of us who would have loved to have been there but couldn't. Thanks again

I haven't looked at the files, yet, but I want to say thank you for making the effort to make this available to the h2g2 community as a whole.

Is it possible to get a transcript of the lecture?

Don't know whether anyone else wants that, I just thought I'd ask.


Geggs

Geggs - was that you volunteering for typing duty?