New Trailer For Upcoming Hitchhiker's Episodes

Cally writes "I just heard a new programme trailer on BBC Radio 4 for the the first time. Some familiar voices... it's Arthur! It's Ford! It's the new radio series of Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy! The first broadcast goes out on Tuesday 21st September at 6:30pm (UK summertime, which is an hour off UTC.) Douglas Adams wrote the books in parallel with the two original radio series, which are still regarded as the definitive manifestation of HH-erdom. Hearing Mark Wing-Davey and Simon Jones' voices speaking new words - albeit new words from 'Life, The Universe and Everything' - is a spooky feeling. I just hope the sad death of Peter Jones does not detract from the final result. Let's hope the Beeb's live streaming media setup can cope with the mother of all Slashdottings!"

Comments

Re:Douglas Adams Cameo

[irokitt]

Yes, Douglas Adams recorded the voice of Agrajag (Arthur's perennial whipping boy) before his death.

Re:Please, NPR...LICENSE THIS!!!

[TehHustler]

You will be able to stream it...

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Where's David Dixon?

[RealSurreal]

The radio series predates the TV series. Geoff McGivern played Ford in the original radio series and also this adaptation.

Re:Original Series

[RealSurreal]

Yes

Re:Original Series

[DownloadTHIS]

Yes. http://www.kcrw.org/show/hg

Re:Radio Recordings?

[sorrowfloats]

A quick search of the BBC Shop?

And there is a video too !

[snowtigger]

Not only is there a mp3 stream as mentioned, there is also a a 83 MB Quicktime video, which I'm just downloaded at 360 KB/s.

Come on slashdot, the server's still up, what are you waiting for ?

Re:mother of all /.ings

[mfg]

Looking at http://support.bbc.co.uk/support/network/
I don't think they've got too much to worry about

Re:UTC?

[pHDNgell]

Is that American for GMT?

I assume this is a joke, but for anyone actually interested in time standards (or for those of you who think GMT and UTC mean the same thing), there was a really good discussion in the gnu arch mailing list about this recently. It's a pretty long thread, but very insightful.

s/GMT/UTC/.

Short answer: UTC is based on an atomic clock while GMT is based on the speed of earth rotation (which apparently varies). UTC adds and omits leap seconds to stay within about 0.9 seconds of GMT.

No it's not -- it's several months old

[jesterzog]

Is this a new trailer or is this the one I listened to several months ago? (and i think it was from a previous slashdot article)

I've just listened to it now and it sounds exactly the same to me. It's essentially a collection of miscellaneous clips spliced together.

Obligatory George Lucas Bash

[IncredibleCrisis]

The BBC's website says, "As the original two series were dubbed the Primary and Secondary Phases by Douglas Adams, these new series form the Tertiary, Quadrenary and Quintessential Phases." No doubt had the cosmos not intervened, he would've re-released the originals with digital enhancements (imagine Zaphod not having stolen the Heart of Gold; it was, um, inherited or something), then gone on to uninspired apocryphal prequels.

Mirror

[rufus_the_stunt_bum]

Here's a mirror, if the main site goes down .. maybe it wont, but .. you never know l;) http://kcore.ath.cx/hitchhikers_trail.mp3

Re:Mirror

[Fred Or Alive]

We're talking about the BBC. They're not exactly a small organisation. Seeing as they run the most popular website in the UK (IIRC), I somehow think they can cope with a few thousand people downloading an MP3. :-)

Re:Stephen Fry

[handelaar]

No, it's William Franklin, the new voice of the Guide (but not a new voice to anyone 30-isg who grew up in the UK).

Re:mother of all /.ings

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly, don't worry about it.

Three things: 1. They're technical. BBC has a long history of technical expertise, including research and invention. They're rightly proud of this. 2. Even if you did manage to swamp them, they'd see that as justification for increasing resources. They're proud to serve demand; it justifies them. 3. They read /. for petesakes.

Re:UTC?

[mbone]

UTC stands for Universal Time Coordinated, and is the modern version of GMT. It has leap seconds to stay within 0.75 seconds of UT1, which is the (solar) time "kept" by the Earth. IAT (International Atomic Time) is the actual time kept by Atomic clocks. Since the Earth's rotation does indeed vary (because of weather changes and motions in the Earth's core, mostly), UT1 (and thus UTC) is slowly drifting off from IAT.

The politics of international time are dominated by the French, and they took advantage of the changes required by more accurate clocks and also more accurate means of measuring Earth rotation to get "Greenwich" out of the name. Technically, a time system implies a longitude system, and the zero point of longitude implied by IAT/UTC is about 100 meters to the East of the zero longitude strip at Greenwich.

Re:Great, but only streaming?

[robindmorris]

If you look at this page you'll see that it's broadcast twice (Tuesday at 6.30pm and Thursday at 11pm, both times local to England (GMT+1)), and is then available from a link on that page for a whole week afterwards. Plenty of time for you to listenn to it, or for someone to grab the stream and put it up on the web somewhere.

Re:42

[damian]

This wouldn't have been Tower 42 which includes a bar and a restaurant ?