New Terrahawks site

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Martyn
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New Terrahawks site

Post by Martyn »

Wow! Been a while... Glad to see people are still around Anyway I completed a major redesign of http://www.terrahawks.org.uk for those who are interested! Nothing much new in terms of content but it's all HTML5 now which took some work.If you want to help me update it with more info feel free to get in touch, I'm compiling information at the moment and trying not to use the Internet to do it! Well... Aside from buying books and toys on eBay but that doesn't count! ;)Cheers!~Martyn
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Crash
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New Terrahawks site

Post by Crash »

I love the design.It's very faithful to the look of all the hardware in the show.I was thinking, the vehicles section can always be expanded with the Battletank (both types), yellow space Laser Tank, the huge Lunar Tank derived from the Overlander, the Overlander itself, Hawklet assault shuttle (or whatever it was called) and perhaps the various alien ships that appear in the show.There are also a number of concept vehicles that never made it to the show before it was canned such as the giant 'revolver' ship and the Battlehawk Mk.2.When I watched the show through, a while ago, I noticed that Treehawk definitely does have a 360' turret on its back that fires white tracer in one episode.If you'd like me to assemble some info on the above, I'd be delighted to try but I'm a little tied-up with things at the moment.
Dream big and bold and daring.
Martyn
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Joined: Fri Jan 17, 2003 8:12 am

New Terrahawks site

Post by Martyn »

Great thanks!I started adding in the three vehicles I meant to add 10 years ago! Pages for Battletank, the Overlander and Hudson are now there including some basic screen captures for the Overlander.It's a lot harder finding time for things like this now but it's still something I love so I'll get it finished this time! ;)Cheers!
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Crash
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New Terrahawks site

Post by Crash »

and Hudson! I'd completely forgotten.I know exactly how you feel - time and energy are very vital commodities.
Dream big and bold and daring.
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Crash
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Post by Crash »

Persuant to what we were saying before:Space Samurai is one of the episodes where Treehawk uses its gun turret to shoot down pursuers. I think there may be one other one later in the series.Can anyone remember which episode Battletank either gets destroyed or flipped over and damaged? On another subject: I have copies of the first three DVDs. Since I'm getting rid of all my disc clutter, I've been ripping their episodes into MKV format;20RF quality, DXVA compatible.The quality of the DVDs is just terrible. It's like watching a bootleg VHS.In fact, the series looks to have been recorded on video originally, rather than film.Stingray's DVDs look better than this.It's very grainy, there are many marks and blotches, the colours are bleary, there is huge digital compression artifacting on some frames.One thing I managed to fix is the interlacing; so the picture is a little smoother.On one attempt, I put a strong despeckle on it, which looked a little better but lost a fair bit of detail in some frames. So, I left that off.If anyone is interested in the first dozen episodes, I'll upload them to a torrent or to my server and you can help yourself.They're certainly a great deal better than the bleary 200 MB AVI rips available on IsoHunt.These are in a better format and range from 400-700 MB.
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Crash
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Post by Crash »

Persuant to my last message, it occurred to me that if people did indeed have interest in the files mentioned above; they might not want to advertise the fact openly.Check out http://www.xbomber.co.uk/terrahawks/ for the files that I've put up so far and spme quality comparison screenshots (with the rips on the left and originals on the right).
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Mark42
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Joined: Mon Mar 09, 2009 8:54 pm

New Terrahawks site

Post by Mark42 »

I believe that Battletank is only ever clearly destroyed in the episode 'Terratomb'. Although I seem to remember one appearing to be blown up in 'A Christmas Miracle', when the second tank (with special gun-turret) makes its one-off appearance.As for visual quality, Terrahawks marked a change in Gerry Anderson productions as being the first to be filmed on 16mm film, hence the more grainy washed-out look. All previous shows had been shot using feature film 35mm cameras, so the quality can be the highest available especially when the more recent DVDs have been remastered from the original film negetives.Unfortunately Terrahawks isn't under the Carlton/Granada ownership and therefore does not appear to have been looked after, or remastered, to any high degree - if indeed at all. In fact there is talk that the original films were not available, or even found, and that the DVDs were made from previous video recordings! Which if true seems to explain the dreadful quality.
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Crash
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Post by Crash »

Thanks Mark, that is a very informative reply.Terratomb must be what I'm thinking of. The Christmas Miracle one was an interesting episode but it wasn't a 'real' one. It was more like a dream episode?The tank in that episode with the orange gun on it was what I meant when I said 'both types of battletank' before.These DVDs are from ISO files that I downloaded from isoHunt. They generate a pure reflection of the DVDs that you can play in the normal way with menus and extras etc.The content and quality is exactly the same as the production DVD. The only difference is that they're burned onto DVD-R rather than onto a 'pre-recorded' disc.So, it could well be that the box set that you can buy presently from Amazon is better quality and what I have is from an earlier release, but I doubt it.I can well believe that these DVDs were recorded from tape.  No attempt has been made to clear anything up. It's peppered with black marks.At least the rips are less jaggy than the DVDs. Handbrake did a good job there.I think the series does however score massive points in the following areas:- The music- Design of the vehicles- Comedy value- Setup of the series and storylinesIs it just me or does anyone else absolutely *hate* Ninestein? But then Zero wouldn't be as great a character without him either.



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Mark42
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Joined: Mon Mar 09, 2009 8:54 pm

New Terrahawks site

Post by Mark42 »

Yes, just checked and two are actually blown up in 'A Christmas Miracle', but as you say it is a dream episode so I guess it does not really count. It's slightly confusing because you just see two tanks together, then two get blown up during the battle, yet there are two left at the end? I think they should have cut the footage differently to clearly indicate that there were supposed to be more than two to begin with. Also Martyn needs to amend his 'Codes page' as Ninestein (I like him) uses code 10:99 in this episode - which apparantly means 'Full Mobilization of all Terrahawk personel & equipment'.Yes I agree on the music, designs and comedy, they work well.
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