I torrented a few episodes from 1337x, but they are quite compressed/low-quality. Is this the best there is or is there a higher quality version hidden somewhere? It wasn’t originally filmed it at such a low quality, right?
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Mr. Bean only exists at 576p DVD quality. It probably wasn’t shot in high quality film, so no HD releases have been released.
Looks better than I expected
I downloaded the whole lot as an AI upscale from the usual public trackers.
Yes, that is the quality of the original presentation. If anything it looks worse because it has been converted from film to a digital signal, as well as being stretched to be a bit larger than normal. Lmk if you young whippersnappers have any questions about this, I grew up watching this on VHS back in the dark times 👴
Some was 16mm but probably mostly shot straight to vhs:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096657/technical/?ref_=tt_spec_sm
And the bbc was notoriously bad at not losing archival footage of tv shows
I remember the VHS we watched was presented as a compilation of episodes with a new introduction and interludes so my guess is there was some kind of professional reproduction of the episodes themselves
Yeah I’m not saying they didn’t edit it, but rather the master footage they were editing was on vhs or similar. I guess it’s probably quite likely they would’ve had some sort of better quality magnetic tape rather than vhs come to think of it though ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I’m sorry, I meant to respond about the lack of BBC archival footage, as it had to be archived to be able to compile it. You’re right that it was probably shot straight to VHS.
Tbh that’s actually pretty good for what is probably a VHS rip. They might not even be all that compressed compared to the original.
It was made for British TV in the late 80s maybe.
It wasn’t going to be done on 35mm with movie making kit. What you see there is probably the best it’s going to be.
It probably was broadcast at piss-poor quality, usually 520p
*576i
I don’t know much about the series, but I found season 1 of it in 1080p on The RARBG - 17.6GB. That’s all I could find in 1080p aside from some specials and the animated series. Possibly AI upscaled, if that matters (can’t confirm either way tho)
Edit: Theres a bigger collection on Bitsearch, supposedly the complete series in 1080p. Looks to be about 28 episodes, but the total size is only 5.98GB. Again, not sure if AI upscaled, possibly worse quality than the first one, but more episodes?
Yes, both are upscaled p2p releases
