After going back and forth over what type of 1080 rip to release for last Sunday’s Top Gear, we finally decided to just release the 1080i transport stream we had rather than re-encoding it or deinterlacing it. This is a raw rip of the broadcast by the BBC, as if you were watching it live.

Note that unless you have a very large HDTV or are an advanced user who specifically wants this rip, I would suggest sticking to the 720p rip. On a computer or small HDTV, it will look better than the 1080i rip and it’s only a 1/3 of the filesize.

If you need help on how to play back this file (or the 720p rip), check out this thread on our forums. Enjoy!

If we do end up releasing a 1080p rip of Top Gear, it may be a few more days (we’re still sorting out if we can get a quality improvement or not), so just snag the 720p rip. It looks beautiful, even when upscaled (to a point).

Alright, it looks like the SD torrent is decently enough seeded now, so here’s the 720p rip. If you need help with playback, check out this new forum thread. 1080p (or maybe 1080i, I’m not sure) will be released later.

And yes, I’m working on better integrating HD rips into the site (including perhaps a HD rip RSS feed).

Wondering what’s going to be in the next episodes of Top Gear? Andy Wilman has a great post up now on the Top Gear Transmission blog.

Mmm, Top Gear, what would we do without it? You can find today’s Top Gear episode right here. We’re using a HDTV-sourced rip, so it should be a little better quality than previous seasons while still being 700MB. Stay tuned for high definitions rips — we’ll post them as soon this torrent cools down a bit and has decent speeds.

Besides talking about this weekend’s SIARPC and how the filming went, the latest post on the Top Gear Transmission blog also tells the story of how The Mole (the secretive person who manages the blog) saw James May driving home from the studio:

Sitting at a roundabout behind a Mercedes E500 and a Porsche 911 Carrera S – powerful cars both – it was hard to ignore a black Fiat Panda containing none other than TV’s James May which had drawn alongside them.

The roundabout cleared and Captain Slow made an uncharacteristically brisk leap away from the line, straight onto the knuckle whiteningly tight slip road that feeds into the A3.

The Porsche tried to pull out to get around a dithering Volkswagen ahead, the Mercedes clinging to its tail, but before either could make a move James had seized the advantage, taking the OUTSIDE LINE around all three cars and disappearing into the distance.

There can be only one conclusion. There is a keen and remarkably fast driver with a black Fiat Panda in the Guildford area and he looks a lot like James May.

So maybe Captain Slow isn’t really as slow as he sometimes makes out to be…

Remember the fake Volkswagen ad from the most recent episode of Top Gear where the guy shoots himself in the head? According to a BBC News article, Ofcom has ruled that it was too graphic for a show airing that early at night.

It doesn’t look like anything will come of this (or even that it’s that big of a deal), but it’s yet another controversy surrounding Top Gear.

Thanks to Martin and Carl for the tips!

Top Gear has posted a video to YouTube of Jeremy, Richard, and James doing a promo for Top Gear Live. It’s pretty funny and in classic Top Gear style.

The 15th cannot come soon enough…

Credit goes to hamsterhammond on YouTube for the video.

Top Gear executive producer Andy Wilman has a new blog post up. In it he explains why this season of Top Gear will air an hour later than previous seasons have:

I’ll be doing a rundown of stuff that’s coming in another blog, but first we must take care of some very important housekeeping, because for this series only, we’re moving to 9pm on November 15. We had no choice really: X Factor on at the same time with the Results Show, Cowell on storming form, the whole nation glued – we know when to bravely bugger off and wait until the storm passes.

I’ve updated the counter to reflect the new air time.

EDIT: Counter fixed for DST as well.