Gamesmaster was a UK Channel 4 TV show that ran for 126 episodes over 7 series', from 1992 to 1998, dedicated to video games. I was a huge fan growing up and later searched for a number of years to find bootleg DVD versions of all 7 series, but to no avail. It has never officially been released on VHS or DVD to date. The main meeting point for fans of the show is the GamesmasterTV.net forums (formerly GamesmasterLive.co.uk).

Prior to my 2010 project, a small number of the 126 episodes were available on the internet, but were quite a hotchpotch; some had sections missing, most were fairly poor in quality and low resolution, in varying file formats, from a range of sources, and all had been around for some years. A number of fans in the past had attempted projects such as this, and met with varying success, but never had every episode been available in a high quality format. In mid February, I noticed a forum user called Joel/Xenepp had uploaded several new episodes, that while still not the best quality, had not been previously available before. on February the 16th, I contacted him inquiring about his source, and was told that the new encodes were being passed on to him to upload to the site, by another fan, who was transferring them from VHS himself. I made direct contact about the possibility of working with him on a Gamesmaster project allowing me to transfer them myself. He agreed to loan me his source tapes, which were sent in two consignments. Series 3 to 7 was spread over 13 tapes and arrived on the 19th of February, and a second batch of tapes was sent once I'd made some headway into the project; series 1 & 2 plus some miscellaneous episodes over 12 additional tapes arrived on the 13th of March. These tapes covered the vast majority of the shows, and the quality ranged from fair to outstanding.

Including all the episodes present on the VHS source tapes, as well as unitizing all the pre-existing DVD, internet AVI, FLV & MP4 files, 19 shows still had sections missing ranging from less than a second up to about 6 minutes. where footage was unavailable, I simply inserted 1 second of silent black so it was clear to viewers that something was missing, and cut to the next available piece of footage. As the original VHS recorder had clipped sections around the show start, advert pause & show ending points, I edited a complete generic set of opening, advert break, and closing credits for each series from the tapes, which I could seamlessly dip into wherever clipping had occurred. For series 1, 8½ out of the 10 episodes were present on the source VHS tapes, episode 3 (Annabel Croft) was completely missing, and episode 7 (Kendo Nagasaki) only had the first half, along with another 4 shows with little bits missing around the advert breaks. The highest quality alternate source material was direct-to-DVD recordings from the UK cable channel; Challenge TV, although a red Challenge TV logo was present in the top-right corner of the screen. Removal was attempted using a combination of overlay masking and a logo removal filter. While this worked flawlessly in some places, in others there were some strange warping effects in the logo area depending on the background, which is due to the filter stretching in the surrounding pixels to cover up the logo. For short sections, this could be tweaked shot by shot to produce much better results, but this was impractical for entire episodes. Short of precisely painting out the logo frame by frame, there is little else that could have been done about this.

Even though my VHS captures were not as high in quality as the the Challenge TV recordings, they had a number of advantages; it didn't have the logo, nor did it have a continuity announcer over talking over the end credits, but it did have the Gamesmaster club contact details after the credits which was omitted from the Challenge TV airings. I stuck with my VHS captures wherever possible, but went with the Challenge TV footage where there was no other alternative.

As a side note, in it's original 1992 airing, Series 1 episode 10's reviews section focused on 'adult' games. When this episode was repeated on Channel 4, then later on Challenge TV, this had been censored and replaced with a generic feature with an ELSPA countdown of the best selling console games since the series began. This was presumably because the 'adult' theme caused a few complaints! As my episode 10 was captured from VHS tapes of that original airing, the reviews section was uncensored and plays in full. I also included the repeat's censored reviews section separately as an extra. Another minor difference was in Series 1 episode 3. When this was originally aired on TV, Channel 4 blurred out a Reebok logo on contestants jumper in the last challenge, but this wasn't blurred in the Challenge TV showings.

In Series 2, from episode 14 onwards, virtually every end credits had the Gamesmaster fanclub details and each with an individual Dominik voice-over. Most of these were able to be saved where either the credits ran in full on the source tapes, or could be seamlessly edited together with other episodes to make them complete. Because a number simply cut off early on the source tapes, all had background music, different layouts, and changes in Dominik's voice tone, speed & pitch, some just couldn't be included without very jarring and obvious cuts, so were replaced with the generic end credits instead.

The Series five VHS source tapes were completely missing 4 of the 18 episodes; Episode 15 (Christmas Highlights Special), Episode 16 (Mr Motivator), Episode 17 (Stewart Lee & Richard Herring), and Episode 18 (Janick Gers), and Series 6 was missing 2 of the 18 episodes; episode 7 (Chris Armstrong) and episode 10 (Zoë Ball). All were replaced with earlier previously available DVD MPEGS. These MPEGS were marginally lower in quality than my captures, and my episodes' intro credits, advert break, and end credits all played in full without any continuity announcements, whereas the some on the DVD MPEGS were truncated in places. Additionally, all the sound on my captures (while still having that VHS 'hiss') was clearer & sharper. This is presumably because the DVD MPEGS' audio was processed via an equalizer to remove that same VHS hiss, which also reduced everything else in the treble range making the whole audio track sound somewhat 'dulled'.

To transfer the tapes, I used a JVC HR-S7600EK S-VHS PAL VCR, connected to a PC with an ATI All-In-Wonder 128 AGP card via an S-Video cable and Left & Right audio phono leads. The full tape was captured to an AVI file using VirtualDub 0.9.6 with the Huffyuv 2.1.1 video codec and uncompressed WAV audio. From that I used AVIsynth scripts to edit the video (leaving the hard interlace as it was originally captured) and frame-served it HC MPEG2 Encoder 0.23 for the MPEG2 M2V encode, and used Aften 0.0.8 to encode the AC3 audio. The M2V & AC3 files were then multiplexed together with ImagoMPEG-Muxer 1.1 giving the final MPEG2 files.

Given the inconsistent number per series, I varied the DVD bitrates, along with having 192k AC3 stereo audio. Series 1 was a two disc box-set (10 shows), series 2 & 3 were five disc box-sets (26 shows each, less the two missing episodes), series 4 was four discs (19 shows), series 5 & 6 were three disc box-sets (18 shows each), and series 7 was two discs (10 shows).

26 episode series (24m each approx = 624m or 10h 24m total running time)
5 x DVD+R DL discs = 6 & 2 shows each (144m or 2h 24m = 7516kbit/s Average bitrate)

18 episode series (24m each approx = 432m or 7h 12m total running time)
3 x DVD+R DL discs = 6 shows each (144m or 2h 24m = 7516kbit/s Average bitrate)

10 episode series (24m each approx = 240m or 4h 00m total running time)
2 x DVD+R DL discs = 5 shows each (120m or 2h 00m = 9057kbit/s Average bitrate)

All together this was 24 discs for the 7 series'. which equated to about 49½ hours watching from start to finish! Each series' disc had a DVD-ROM folder, which contained the DVD cover & disc artwork, as well as any additional related material I came across (or was kindly given) during the project, such as series' musical scores, photos and artwork. I also encoded AVI versions of each show, with Virtualdub as a 2-pass Xvid using Koepi's Xvid Codec 1.2.2 (07-06-2009) at 1585kb/s, with Donald Graft's Smart Deinterlacing Filter 2.8, as well as resizing the picture down from 720x576 to 640x480. The audio was encoded at 160kb/s stereo using the Fraunhofer Radium MP3 1.263 Pro Codec. Each of the 24 minute files came out around the 300mb mark. Over a number of weeks, all the files were eventually uploaded to the online filehosting service MegaUpload, and links posted on the GamesmasterTV.net forums so that other fans could freely download them.

I used GIMP 2.6.7 to design the artwork, beginning with each series' DVD cover (with sequential spines). Single to 4-way DVD cases with 14mm spines are readily available, but are normally wider with higher capacities, so I designed both 14mm spine versions of all the covers, along with 22mm spine versions for the 5-disc series 2 and 3, just in case needed. I then used the same elements to create the disc labels and menu screens. The artwork was designed to look as official as possible, with all the relevant logos & certificates, To all intents and purposes what I thought an official release would look like. As DVD cases The project was finally complete on the 8th of June 2010, a full 15 weeks after first recieving the first batch of tapes. A few weeks before this on the 28th of March 2010, I had posted details of my work on the GamesmasterTV.net forums, and asked users to register interest in buying a copy of the complete DVD set. My original aim was to get around 3-5 buyers, and charge a small mark-up over and above what the materials would cost to pay the £45 for an upgraded CPU for my old PC. This would have taken it from an AMD Athlon 2000+ to 3200+, which would have sped my PC up and enabled better VHS captures.

After some careful projections & calculations, on the 21st of June I announced the price as £49.84 (plus £2.07 if paying via Paypal, to cover the transfer fees), which covered everything; 21 dual layer DVD+Rs, 2 single layer DVD+Rs, and 1 CD-R, all printable Verbatim discs with labels, printed DVD covers & proper DVD cases (1 per series), a box, packing materials & UK royal mail delivery, the material costs were calculated to be £24.84, leaving £25.00 of each purchase as profit. Including all the unforeseen expenses, and some over & under estimation, in the end the final materials cost came out at £25.15, so the initial margin projections were more or less correct.

Once I started assembling the final list of confirmed buyers, I realized that I had far more money to play with, and could start from scratch building an entirely new PC, rather than just limiting myself to upgrades of my existing machine, but with this came additional problems, producing more than a couple of sets using just one DVD burner simply wasn't feasible, so designed a system with four DVD drives, so (along with Nero Burning Rom 9) it could burn four identical CD/DVD discs simultaneously, which allowed me to duplicate each disc in the Gamesmaster set in a quarter of the time it would have taken with a single drive. I ordered the parts and assembled it all myself, entirely funded with the DVD project. The total for everything came to exactly £714.66 (but postage charges spread across the various orders would bump that up to an even £750). You can see all the specifications & components to the new PC in full below, but just to explain some of the highlights here in more detail. My old PC used an ATI All-In-Wonder 128 AGP combination graphics & capture card (which was used to capture all the Gamesmaster footage), but after some careful reading up online, I went for separate graphics & capture cards this time; an ATI Sapphire HD 5450 which is a decent enough mid-range GPU although I don't really play PC games much, and a TV tuner card; an Asus My Cinema ES2-750, which uses the ATI Theater HD 750 chipset and has all round higher capture specs than my old AIW 128 (12-bit ADC, 2D comb filter with 5 line scanning + 3D Motion Adaptive comb filter, Noise Reduction, Auto Gain Control with multistage and Multispeed, Auto Color Control, Edge Enhancement). The system also has a huge 1TB secondary hard drive, which would roughly allow capture of up to 30 hours of loss-less 720x576 video VHS footage using the Huffyuv 2.1.1 AVI codec.

Because the ATX case was so full, along with having four DVD±RW and two hard drives working, I did have initial problems with airflow & heat build-up. The CPU was running at 53.5°C (even with an Arctic Cooling Freezer 64-LP and decent thermal paste), and the GPU at 59°C. Not the end of the world, but the cooler a system runs the happier and more stable it is. I decided to open up the case by cutting a large 12" by 15" section out of the left-side panel, and replacing it with course wire mesh, to which I could fit two 92mm fans. With a fan directly over the CPU (now running at 27°C), another over the GPU (now 36°C), this greatly increased the airflow and reduced the overall system temperature by around half, although the down side is increased noise level & dust build-up. Having done this I used the opportunity to also add a Blue Dual Cold Cathode Internal Case Lighting Kit as well. I only wanted to sell this as a complete series 1-7 set, not each set individually, nor reduced rates for cheaper branded discs or no artwork. I had spent months of hard work carefully planning & assembling the whole package together and it came as it came. Because copying one 24 disc set was a fair task, I decided to collect a list of buyers and do all the copies in one go as a big production run, rather than in dribs and drabs as people became aware of it. I was surprised by the response I got from the forums. I closed registration for the first run of copies on the 30th of June with 21 buyers, with a second run closing the 18th of July with 9 buyers, and a third closing on the 30th of August with 5 buyers, making a total of 35 buyers over the three runs, generating a total gross income of £1744.40, and added up to around 850 individual discs written! I had some excellent feedback, and not a single complaint. On the 15th of August, 2011, I was contacted by a new GamesmasterLive forum user Adam/MisterToYou. An offer of filling in the two missing Series 2 episodes, which lead on to the loan of 39 of his VHS tapes. Between the 24th of August to the 2nd of November, I borrowed and transferred every episode available. During the same period, on the 8th of September 2011 I was contacted by forum user Marcus. He loaned me a further 13 tapes over the next three weeks, which allowed the upgrading of further episodes. On the 14th of September I got a huge bargain on Ebay.com, picking up the Adobe Software Suite 1.5 for $97.88 (£61.68), containing authenic & unregistered versions of; Adobe Photoshop CS, Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5.1, Adobe After Effects 6.5 Pro, Adobe Encore DVD 1.5.1, Adobe Audition 1.5, with all the manuals, and it was even still shrinkwrapped in it's original box! I recieved this on the 21st of September and began using it straight away to create the DVDs. This was a big step up from the various freeware software I had been using up to that point, and allowed me to make a better job in ever aspect. In all, 62 of the total 126 episodes were upgraded from the originals, which meant re-authoring 20 out of the 24 discs in the original set.

To add to the nostalgia factor, each of the 26 episodes in Series 2 was given a Channel 4 ident intro, and 54 early 90s TV adverts, 13 Channel 4 promos were spread inbetween each episode across the five discs. These came from a range of sources, most were transferred from the various VHS tapes in the course of making this set, but some of the rarer pieces of note come from sources such as YouTube and the wider internet. The completed upgraded sets also now came with a free pair of red/green 3D glasses for use with the 3D sections in Series 2 Episodes 18 (Ulrika Jonsson) & 19 (Vic Reeves). You can read a more detailed information on the status of each episode in the set on this listings page; On the 24th of September 2011, the website GamesMasterLive went offline. Although I did contact the webmaster Al regarding the prospect of taking over the site, I never heard back. Fortunately I was able to reconnect with all the original DVD box-set buyers via their email addresses, although this wiped out the prospect of any new buyers I wasn't already in contact with. By the 27th of September I decided to open up my own forum; a carbon copy of the old GamesMasterLive forums, and gave it a GamesMasterLiveForum.com domain name. This provided a meeting place for all the old forum members, and allowed me to put my DVD box-set back out there to new buyers once again. I also uploaded MP4 encodes of each episode (H.264 640x480 750kbps ~ AAC 96k 48kHz Stereo @ roughly 300mb each) so everyone could freely download them. As of May 2016 it had a total of 77 members, with posts 813 over 133 threads. Given the greatly reduced interest since everyone either had their DVD box-sets or MP4 downloads, and the forums being all but dead, I dropped the GamesMasterLiveForum.com and simply hosted the forums on my BookOfTheDead.ws webspace. In 2021, I switched to a new webhosting provider. This new cheaper hosting only allowed for two forums (or rather two MySQL databases). This forum was a third, and could not run on my webhosting. The last period of busy posting was a good few years years ago, making it more of an archive site. The only reason people seemed to visit, was to be able to download the disc images & MP4 encodes. I was going to find & post this information to the main GamesMaster Facebook group, but there didn't seem to be any whatsoever? Anyway, I have an offline backup of the forum as of the move in May 2021, along with a copy of the MySQL database, so it's very simple if someone else has their own webspace and wants to resurrect it. All the posts are saved.

As of May 2016, I have sent out close to 100 box-sets, or upgraded disc orders. It was always a really arduous never-ending task, and no sooner was I done and there were more people on the waiting list. I wanted to move on, so I posted on GamesMasterLive forums that I wouldn't be doing any more Gamesmaster sets unless someone came forward with new or upgraded footage. The GamesMasterLive forums along with the Gamesmaster MP4 files still remain online so people can still download those, just not buy DVD sets. The Gamesmaster DVD ISO files come to around 170GB, the Bad Influence ISOs another 50GB, so if someone REALLY wants them, then the only thing I can offer is for someone to post me a hard drive (internal or external) onto which I can copy all the ISO files/artwork, then mail it back to them, and they can write the discs themselves, I can even include the right sized DVD cases, I have plenty of spares of those.

That said This box-set need not be the final version, and I have a standing offer that if anyone out there has either more complete, or better quality source material, I would be happy to re-visit the project. All the artwork & DVD menus are all saved so I can easily re-visit any of the discs in the project if I get new source footage, and all the disc art & DVD covers were made to be fairly generic so revised discs can just be swapped it out for the old ones in existing sets. If you're interested in any of my fanmade projects, you can contact me via email at , or through the Rob's Nostalgia Projects Facebook page. Check out & 'like' that Facebook page to see the latest in-progress updates to any current projects, and check out my Wants List to see if you can assist me with any future projects or upgrades.