Hi there,

I'm new in this Froum, so I hope I'm using the right subforum. As I'm living in Germany I had so far only Season 1-4 on DVD, ordered from Amazon.co.uk ...every episode there has an approximate duration of 45 Minutes... now yesterday Season 5-7 arrived from the US and I managed to play them on my computer as well as on my DVD Player, even though they are Region 1 *yay* BUT i'm shocked: all episodes only seem to have a duration of 24-25 Minutes???? Why? what happend to the other 20 minutes of Mac Gyver per Episode I'm used too.... did they change something from Season 5 on or why are the episodes shorter now? I hope someone can explain...

regards from Germany

Johann

EDIT: mmh something strange is going on... I stoped the Intro with a normal watch.. got approx 70 seconds while my DVD Player was indicating me 40 seconds...
anybody else got those problems... ?? I'm confused now...

They are the same length - the duration tags on your player must be off. Did you just look at the length that it lists, or did you actually watch the episodes and have them cut off at that time?

Hi Johann, Welcome to the mac-house

It sounds like somethign is seriously wrong with the DVD's you have. Where did you buy them from?

as written in the edit, something seems to be wrong with my display on the player it indicates the intro is 40 seconds long, infact it's approx 70 long... well i just watched on the timedisplay of my player, not my watch...didn't realise how the time passed by
i think that proofs that i'm either a too big fan of the series or that it's really entertaining

Or both.

As long as your have the full length episodes.. thats the important thing

We're not sure that there's any such thing -- certainly not around here!

Welcome, JetTrader!

'Beth

Your computer is just off the map. They're all 45-46 minutes long and that's what matters.

Isn't it the case that the American format has lesser frames per second? I know there is a difference between Pal and NTSC, but am not sure if this is the way with DVDs also.

But maybe that's the reason for the time showing differently, since it can't read it properly?

well i don't know... my computer just thinks the length is still 24 minutes...however my DVD Player on the TV displays the correct time...but any doesn't really matter, i can play all episodes, even though i'm in another DVD Region =) i just haven't yet figured out what i'm gonna do when i'm done watching all episodes... i somehow got addicted...

Yep, the difference in PAL and NTSC is both frame per second and the actual size of the image itself.

But neither of these changes would make any difference to the time, because its still the same amount of seconds, only the number of frames within that second changes.

And the time on DVDs is regulated by time code anyway, not frames.

I would say theres somethign wrong with the DVD player if it's showing incorrect time stamps


NTSC: 720 x 480 - 30 frames/second
PAL: 720 x 576 - 25 frames/second

Thats simple.. you'll go back and start watching from the beginning again.

Thats simple.. you'll go back and start watching from the beginning again.

Or go back and watch them at random! So many possibilities.

Seriously -- like re-reading my favourite books, I find the show great to re-watch. Some episodes are better than others, of course, and everyone has favourites for different reasons. But that's one set of DVDs that aren't likely to need much dusting.

Yeah I've been doing that a lot lately.

I'll find myself feeling like watching a particular episode.. or alternatively a particular type of episode and go from there.

My taste of late has been for the more quiet "around home" type episodes. Lots of houseboat and just helping people out, kind of episodes.

And there are actually still episodes I haven't seen at all . . . I'm getting to the point of hoarding them for special occasions. They're a finite resource!

Like I did, starting all over again non stop. I did that for nearly three years. The quality of my videos became pretty bad over the years but now there's dvd. But there are indeed many possibilities of watching.

I used to make cards with each episode name on it, put them in a jar and pulled one out and wrote them down, than I watched them in that order. Like you got one of the very first, than one of the very last and than one from in the middle of the fourth season.

Well, I got addicted a long time ago, actually! Did you never watch it when it was on TV in one of the many re-runs? Last time I watched it on TV (and got addicted all over again after some years pause) they luckily started again with the pilot after the last episode had aired. But I was hit by the difference between the late and the early Mac, then, it came quite as a shock.


Greetings from Dresden to a fellow German, by the way!

Well, I got addicted a long time ago, actually! Did you never watch it when it was on TV in one of the many re-runs? Last time I watched it on TV (and got addicted all over again after some years pause) they luckily started again with the pilot after the last episode had aired. But I was hit by the difference between the late and the early Mac, then, it came quite as a shock.


Greetings from Dresden to a fellow German, by the way!

I did watch it on TV..but that was like around 10 years ago... never watched it since then, until i saw a MacGyver vid on youtube and well... now I got all season on DVD...
I must say (okay at the time I watched it on German Television i wasn't able to speak or understand much english) that the german dub is crap...

THat is a very interesting problem.