Reported TopGear to Ofcom

ghostwalker31

Just watched my recording from last night and he definitely says "cocking Nora", even the subtitle writer thought so.

tali

I doubt if James May knows any swear words
He did seem very rude to the kids though.

sillygoose

ghostwalker31 wrote: »

Just watched my recording from last night and he definitely says "cocking Nora", even the subtitle writer thought so.

You can't blame him picking the less controversial route...

Well I have tried a few blind test listeners and they all hear Ffff and it causes raised eyebrows without me saying anything other than listen to this..

Either phrase, its not particularly necessary and professional premier program makers should know better than leaving in something so close to the line.

Thanks for checking the recording by the way.

sillygoose

tali wrote: »

I doubt if James May knows any swear words
He did seem very rude to the kids though.

Hitting the VW Beetle was a commendable act though, one less on the road hopefully.

elainestev

im hearing cocking nora, both from ur file and iplayer

Nilrem

Azari wrote: »

Because high definition video always make the sound clearer.

IIRC the HD version of many programmes has better sound quality, for example many shows are recorded and mixed in 5.1
Which for normal SD transmission is downcoded to a stereo (2.0) mix.
I'm not sure, but I think HD broadcasts may also use a slightly higher bit rate for the sound even when it's only stereo (they've got a higher bit rate already, so increasing the sound quality doesn't eat into the bandwidth they can use for video as much*).

Now why that makes a difference is, in 5.1 mixes much of the speech comes from the centre speaker (it's one of it's main uses), whilst ambient/directional sound comes from the other speakers, often at similar volumes.
Which tends to make the speech quite hard to make out if the they haven't also done a specific mix for stereo.

It's one of the reasons a lot of DVD's used to have a stereo and surround mix - the stereo mix put greater emphasis on speech for the L&R channels (as they were the only ones available), rather than relying on you hearing it through the centre speaker.

this completely ignores two other important facts.
1: you tend to hear things better through earphones than speakers (less ambient noise).
2: The earphones are almost certainly much better quality for sound reproduction (even relatively cheap ones), than the speakers that are fitted to most TV's and have to make compromises between cost, space, how load they are, and the quality of the sound (often sound quality loses out to the cost/space/need to have them louder).



*On some SD channels the total bit rate is only 3-4mb/s, so even 128k (mid to low quality mp3 bit rates), is a fair chunk of that, whilst a HD transmission can double or triple the sound bitrate and still have it using far less as a percentage of the total bandwidth.

vikingtraveller

its still cocking nora, sillygoose, i suggest you stop being so protective of your son, you can't wrap him up in bubblewrap forever

UKVIP

Still everyone (and we're well into double figures) saying cocking rather than (text removed by MSE Forum Team), and only one saying still trying to defend their mistake.

Oh, and I haven't included the member of a international motoring forum, and members of Twitter, both of whom directed me to this thread by saying "look what this idiot has written", but I'm not counting them...

UKVIP

Azari wrote: »

Because high definition video always make the sound clearer.

You clearly have no idea how High Definition transmissions work.

Takeaway_Addict

sillygoose wrote: »

Yes I know he has heard worse, but the point is I have bought him up to understand that people that swear a lot are not very intelligent or educated with a limited vocabulary and there is no need to swear in normal life.

He looks up to the Top Gear crew as being cool so if they do it for what was a very minor situation (brushing a few branches with the bus) then that sends out the opposite message.

Is this actually true though that the intelligence of a person is denoted by the swear words they use?

Edit: just seen ur previous reply so no need to reply to this.

Edit 2; Its cocking not (text removed by MSE Forum Team)