Free, Legal: 1st episode of Battlestar Galactica

Babel-17

Veteran
I posted this over at slackercentral, here's a paste.

Free, Legal: 1st episode of Battlestar Galactica
http://www.scifi.com/battlestar/

Link should be up top.

Mozilla might be iffy, I used IE for this one.

Small size but excellent quality.

The whole episode. (Episode one, "33")

"Uncut and commercial free"

Uses the real player plug-in.

Four deleted scenes available.

I can't post a direct link as the site use javascripting to open a new window. Well, I could but it might freeze your browser.

http://www.scifi.com/battlestar/33_...sode/index.html

is the page if you're feeling frisky.

I installed the updated Real Player Alternative codecs and mozilla now works fine.


I posted quite a bit of info about Real Player Alternative in the slackercentral thread.

http://boards.slackercentral.com/showthread.php?t=66299
 
Yup, and that's an interesting announcement all things considered. ;)

To say more might be considered spoiling the end of season one for those who haven't see it.

I'm glad the show is coming back.

Considering the large number of geeks who are fans of the show I'm tempted to speculate that there is an important implication to the free download we are seeing.

I'm wondering if we might see the show in some form being offered as a streaming download.

I wouldn't mind having commercials inserted in exchange for getting a digital episode of high quality.

I do get the sci-fi channel but it's an analog signal.

I see implications in their choosing the Real Player format, it doesn't cache itself. Now, there are ways around that for storing and distributing the file but I think people with broadband would prefer to just the view thing in unmodified form with the commercials.

Distributing the show like that has many implications. I'm interested in seeing if my hypothesis turns out to have any merit.
 
Babel-17 said:
Yup, and that's an interesting announcement all things considered. ;)

To say more might be considered spoiling the end of season one for those who haven't see it.

Ahhh. I see what you mean. Good point. ;)

First series was very good. Seemed to be well received over here in the UK as well. Glad they're making a second series.
 
Babel-17 said:
Distributing the show like that has many implications. I'm interested in seeing if my hypothesis turns out to have any merit.

It's just advertising. BG is a SF show, but it does have the potential to go mainstream. I even saw it reviewed a couple of months back as something to watch "especially if you don't like sci-fi", so this is a way of helping get the word out.

The mini-series did well enough to get a short series 1 commissioned, but I think they were surprised at how well the series did in the UK and now in the US, so they are capitalizing on the fact they now have a hit on their hands.

I'm also glad there's going to be a series 2, as there are a load of unanswered questions and some major cliffhangers at the end of series 1. Let's hope they can keep up the high quality of writing, acting and visuals they've been showing in series 1.
 
BG is the best sci-fi show I've seen since B5.

and yes, I've seen the entire season 1, even though I'm in the US. having to wait for new ones makes me sad.
 
The usenet has/had them.

Everything from high definition transport streams of the NBC broadcasts (edited to provide room for commercials) down to VCD encodes of the satellite broadcasts (Skyone).

In between are the "homemade" DVD's of the satellite broadcasts as well as slighly lower quality DivX/XviD mp4's.

It's not hard to do with the amazing software available.

Legal for one's own home use I imagine if you are paying for the feed but I doubt there aren't legal questions as to uploading them.

Though I pay for the sci-fi channel and a hi-def cable box I find it hard to fault people who simply can't get the show where they live.



I guess "buy the DVD when it comes out" would be the rejoinder.

Call me "switzerland" on the issue. :)
 
RussSchultz said:
Where'd you see the episodes?

Sky funded a lot of it, and showed them pretty much as they came off the production line. If like me you are in the UK, you would have seen the whole of series 1 in the UK on cable/satellite before the Sci-Fi Channel in the US could fit the show into their schedule.

Sky has a new director and is taking the channel upmarket by buying a lot of the quality shows from the US, as well as the new step of funding a lot of high quality stuff themselves. For instance, Sky has shown Farscape's Peacekeeper wars over a year before it will go onto terrestrial, and shows programs like Enterprise, Stargate-SG1 and Atlantis before anyone else.

Due to scheduling differences, we get some things before anywhere else in the world. For instance, we just got the last two episodes of Stargate-SG1 series 8 before anyone else in the world, even though Sky started showing the series here after it began to air in the US.
 
Ahhh, right.

OK.

I keep watching it weekly on my front projector in crappy analog/SD and was going to kick myself if it was being shown in HD somewhere.
 
I hear you Russ, I'm not at all thrilled at the quality of the sci-fi channel as provided by my cable company. Even for SD it's sub par.

I won't bore you with my rant on having to endure SD episodes of Enterprise.

I live in an apartment building and can't mount an antenna to grab the HD OTA broadcast.

My cable provider evidently can't use the broadcast either.

Lol, I guess I did rant a little.
 
Even a fan like me found the following hilarious.

They are recaps of the two part mini-series done "Television Without Pity" style. :D

http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/story.cgi?show=145&story=5945&limit=&sort=

http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/story.cgi?show=145&story=5953&limit=&sort=


A very small portion follows.



Battlestar Galactica: Part One
By Aaron

In space, no one can hear you revising back-story.

"The Cylons were created by man," announces the opening crawl. "They were created to make life easier on the twelve colonies. They were also created because it's 2003 now, and these days you just can't have bad guys without motives that are directly attributable to the hubris of the good guys." From there we fade up on a small space tug rotating along on its Y-axis to dock with a larger space station. Uh huh. Once secured, the SS Stanley Kubrip disgorges an elderly white guy whose pasty-white skin tone, wispy gray comb-over, and unfortunate tendency towards uniform selections involving mock turtlenecks and shiny epaulets have all combined to earn him the obvious nickname of "Grand Moff Snarkin." Snarkin soon finds himself in a giant metal room that contains nothing but a desk and a ridiculously over-complicated lighting scheme that's so ineffective that I actually started to wonder if Ron Moore might have poached some of the lighting crew from Oz while he was hanging out on the HBO lot last year. Snarkin slowly settles down behind the desk, and sets up an oh-so-cute collection of family photographs to make his giant metal box feel a little homier. And also because the little boy in the one picture is actually Boxey, even though we won't meet the kid for another hour and a half and we'll have completely forgotten this scene by then.

In any event, the crawl continues: "And then the day came when the Cylons decided to kill their masters. After a long and bloody struggle, an armistice was declared. The Cylons left for another world to call their own. A remote space station was built where Cylon and Human [and Centauri and Narn, presumably] could meet and maintain diplomatic relations. Every year the Colonials send an officer. The Cylons send no one." Snarkin, meanwhile, has taken a moment to review a folder labeled "Cylon specs," affording us all a nice little laugh at the quaint, pre-CGI "space-toaster" look of the old-school bad guys. What I'm wondering here, however, is why he's got eight-by-ten glossies of his entire family tree hanging everywhere if this is supposed to be a diplomatic station. You don't see Kofi Annan putting up pictures of his grandkids in the Security Council chamber, now do you?

Suddenly, the doors to the room slide open, and two new-model Cylons step inside. They've still got the flashing red eye, and the new, retractable claws are kind of cool, but all in all they still sort of have an unfortunate metal-plated Jar-Jar feel to them. On the other hand, we never actually see them again, so I guess it's not that big of a deal. And then, just to prove that this is not your father's (or your older brother's, or even your misspent youth's) Battlestar Galactica, a sexy blonde lady strides in behind them, and the Foley team goes nuts dubbing in the clanging of her stiletto heels on the metal floor. This, of course, is Number Six, only we don't know that yet. For now you can just assume that somebody cloned Natasha Henstridge from Species and put her in a red velour mini-skirt. Six stands directly above Snarkin, and then slowly leans down to sniff him a few times. You know, because inappropriate sniffing as foreplay is one of those bizarre little incestuous activities that seems to show up in every show I recap. "Are you alive?" she asks, apropos of absolutely nothing. A clearly discombobulated Snarkin has to think for almost a full minute before he can summon the wherewithal to whisper, "Yes." Oy. Worst. Ambassador. Ever. How the hell did this guy get promoted to Grand Moff, anyway? Number Six challenges him to prove that he is, in fact, alive, and then does the job herself by planting a big wet kiss right on his lips. Hmm. Most people prefer to just hold up a mirror, but I kind of like her way better. The Grand Moff gets a little tongue-y here, incidentally. If that's the sort of thing you're interested in knowing.
 
I sadly broke down and torrented the last 2 episodes (I justified it because the power went out Friday night).

I was only going to watch ep 12 and keep 13 around in case I missed it this Friday...but I couldnt' help myself.

And now....sigh. How long till season 2?

*sob*

edit: p.s. how did Starbuck know so and so was a cylon? Was it revealed to her in an exposition from lingerie lady? Or was that a bit of a plot hole?
 
RussSchultz said:
edit: p.s. how did Starbuck know so and so was a cylon? Was it revealed to her in an exposition from lingerie lady? Or was that a bit of a plot hole?

Starbuck had left the "original" back on the Galactica when she went AWOL on the president's mission, so the one she found back on Caprica with Helo *must* have been a Cylon copy, which shows they *both* are Cylons.

As for the new series, here are the details.
 
Bouncing Zabaglione Bros. said:
Starbuck had left the "original" back on the Galactica when she went AWOL on the president's mission, so the one she found back on Caprica with Helo *must* have been a Cylon copy, which shows they *both* are Cylons.
Aaaah, right. Duh! I was so used to seeing both I forgot about that.
 
^bump^

I have just finished watched S1 and it was facemeltingly awesome. Definitely check it out, it's a quality show.

Love the "shaky-cam" fight sequences.
 
RussSchultz said:
Where'd you see the episodes?

Torrents?

I really dig the show...

yap, i think you can find it there...at least i did....
around here if you wanna watch SF shows, torretns are only option....

Andromeda was on for just one sesion and i dont see BSG anywhere close...not to mention that looking into torrents i saw shows i never heard of and they have like 3,4 or more sesions....


EDIT :: :oops: didnt read whole topic before answering...dumb.... :?
 
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