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Post by Deleted on May 13, 2018 22:00:55 GMT
Perhaps of more substance than the 'Mississippi TEOTD Betamax recording' is this article by Ed Stradling from Doctor Who Magazine #510, entitled "Tape Heads". The article covers the history of home video recordings made of Doctor Who. It is stated that: "Rumours of Doctor Who recordings... have abounded for many years, and several black-and-white episodes are known to have been recorded, the earliest being The Evil of the Daleks repeat in 1968, which was recorded and later erased."So I am wondering, how did it come to the attention of Doctor Who fans that a home video recording was actually made of The Evil of the Daleks? Was it definitely wiped? 1968 was a long time before fandom was aware of the erasure of Doctor Who episodes (the awareness seems to begin around late-1976 with the preparation for The Lively Arts documentary). The individual who made the recording must have shared this information a considerable time later. Does anybody know any more details about this recording? Also, how good would the picture quality be, had these reel-to-reel video tapes (either Shibaden or Sony AV-5000) survived? Good enough to restore for a DVD release of the story? As good a picture quality as VHS or Betamax? (Please note: I would have added a mobile phone pic of the paragraph containing the above quote, but as we are 'supposed' to be in this great age of advancing technology this proboard cannot support files of more than 1MB . However, I do recommend seeking out the article as it makes for informed reading and mentions other early home video recordings too, and the various formats utilised).
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Post by Chris Wilkinson on May 14, 2018 1:18:20 GMT
I thought the earliest home recording was The Ice Warriors, recorded in 1967 by Tony Chamberlain's father? That was recorded and then erased later. I'd say that they've got their information wrong, but the fact that it specifically refers to the repeat broadcast is odd. It does also mention the word 'rumours', so it ought to be taken with a pinch of salt (or better still, road grit) anyway.
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Post by Deleted on May 14, 2018 2:06:35 GMT
I thought the earliest home recording was The Ice Warriors, recorded in 1967 by Tony Chamberlain's father? That was recorded and then erased later. I'd say that they've got their information wrong, but the fact that it specifically refers to the repeat broadcast is odd. It does also mention the word 'rumours', so it ought to be taken with a pinch of salt (or better still, road grit) anyway. This I thought too about The Ice Warriors being the earliest (Nov 67). This TEOTD home recording is information I hadn't come across before. In the sentence it doesn't come under rumours, rather known recordings ( Rumours of Doctor Who recordings... have abounded for many years, and several black-and-white episodes are known to have been recorded, the earliest being The Evil of the Daleks repeat). How this came to be known is what intrigues me.
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Post by Greg H on May 14, 2018 2:30:14 GMT
EOTD was, as I recall, recorded off air by the chap who was a prolific early home recorder. There is an article around here written, I think, by Paul V. The chap in question was the same one who still had an off air Troughton recording of Space pirates episode 2 amongst his reels. It is a truly great shame that he had recorded over EOTD. If this hadn't been recorded over, it is anyone's guess whether it would still play back or not. Some domestic recordings of this vintage give limited play back, like the pink floyd TOTP footage that was recovered. I think there have been some bits that play back very well and some which do not play at all, like the moon landing footage on a domestic format which if I recall correctly, the signal had faded to a point where it could not be read. If there was a way of realistically recovering some ghost of the recording of Evil of the Daleks from the domestic tape, i.e. if the erasing head was not doing a very good job or something, I have a suspicion that Paul V would have already been experimenting with it or getting someone with the equipment to do so. I can't recall what Evil was recorded over with off of the top of my head.
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Post by Richard Bignell on May 14, 2018 8:28:16 GMT
Perhaps of more substance than the 'Mississippi TEOTD Betamax recording' is this article by Ed Stradling from Doctor Who Magazine #510, entitled "Tape Heads". The article covers the history of home video recordings made of Doctor Who. It is stated that: "Rumours of Doctor Who recordings... have abounded for many years, and several black-and-white episodes are known to have been recorded, the earliest being The Evil of the Daleks repeat in 1968, which was recorded and later erased."So I am wondering, how did it come to the attention of Doctor Who fans that a home video recording was actually made of The Evil of the Daleks? Was it definitely wiped? 1968 was a long time before fandom was aware of the erasure of Doctor Who episodes (the awareness seems to begin around late-1976 with the preparation for The Lively Arts documentary). The individual who made the recording must have shared this information a considerable time later. Does anybody know any more details about this recording? Also, how good would the picture quality be, had these reel-to-reel video tapes (either Shibaden or Sony AV-5000) survived? Good enough to restore for a DVD release of the story? As good a picture quality as VHS or Betamax? This information has been kicking around for a long time. It relates to the 1998 visit to a gentleman in the south of England who had a number of early video recorders from the summer of 1967 onwards - a CV-2000, CV-2100 and a colour Shibaden machine. Unable to afford the commercial video tape reels, he made his down splitter to cut down reels of other magnetic tape that he could get hold of to the correct size. The man had recorded a number of Doctor Who episodes, and among the ones that survived were The Space Pirates 2, b/w episodes of Carnival of Monsters and colour off-air recording of Frontier in Space 5. Other boxes showed reels that were marked as Doctor Who with dates written on them that corresponded to the repeat dates for Evil of the Daleks. The tapes were viewed, but they had been recorded over with episodes of The Forsyte Saga from the 1968 repeat. As for the quality, Steve and Paul managed to play part of the Space Pirates episode, but the quality was said to be very poor. Steve wrote a brief piece about the visit here and further details were included in Richard Molesworth's 2010 book, Wiped!
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Post by richardwoods on May 14, 2018 18:50:34 GMT
Potentially the reel to reel 405 line video recorders gave good results. Look at the recordings of the missing Steptoe's, they are quite reasonable and good enough for commercial release. Unfortunately the tapes that the guy that Paul V went to see had made seem to have been in a poor state and I would imagine problematic enough to recover let alone attempting to recover, for sake of argument partially taped over programs.
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Post by Matthew Kurth on May 15, 2018 2:29:05 GMT
From PMF, an attendee at the Fantom Event with Phil Morris on 4/21 relays this:
I wonder whether Phil is chasing new leads here or is merely rehashing old ones.
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Post by Greg H on May 15, 2018 6:34:37 GMT
Potentially the reel to reel 405 line video recorders gave good results. Look at the recordings of the missing Steptoe's, they are quite reasonable and good enough for commercial release. Unfortunately the tapes that the guy that Paul V went to see had made seem to have been in a poor state and I would imagine problematic enough to recover let alone attempting to recover, for sake of argument partially taped over programs. Galton and Simpson's recordings of Steptoe were in great shape all considered! It could in part have been down to how they were stored. The EOTD guy, as I recall from the article, was using anything he could get his hands on to mod into the right width of magnetic tape, which would presumably add to any issues of the material on them remaining stable.
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Post by Jaspal Cheema on May 15, 2018 8:46:52 GMT
From PMF, an attendee at the Fantom Event with Phil Morris on 4/21 relays this: I wonder whether Phil is chasing new leads here or is merely rehashing old ones. Wow,that would be incredible if true!Almost seems supernatural and has me shaking with excitement.Fans recorded off-air audios at the time and those with the necessary funds video-recorded them???Incredible.
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Post by John Wall on May 15, 2018 9:56:08 GMT
From PMF, an attendee at the Fantom Event with Phil Morris on 4/21 relays this: I wonder whether Phil is chasing new leads here or is merely rehashing old ones. Wow,that would be incredible if true!Almost seems supernatural and has me shaking with excitement.Fans recorded off-air audios at the time and those with the necessary funds video-recorded them???Incredible. This sounds like another tall story I’m afraid:-( There are people within the RT, BFI, etc who have experience with trying to recover this sort of thing - why look for and buy old equipment when there are people who’ve already got it?
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Post by Chris Wilkinson on May 15, 2018 10:27:46 GMT
Wow,that would be incredible if true!Almost seems supernatural and has me shaking with excitement.Fans recorded off-air audios at the time and those with the necessary funds video-recorded them???Incredible. This sounds like another tall story I’m afraid:-( There are people within the RT, BFI, etc who have experience with trying to recover this sort of thing - why look for and buy old equipment when there are people who’ve already got it? Because TIEA operates solely between two parties; the customer and TIEA. Phil Morris has mentioned before that both parties enter non-disclosure and confidentiality agreements because of concerns regarding intellectual property rights. It's one way they've established they can be trusted not to land the film owners into legal trouble, and so carry out a successful operation transferring films to more modern formats. They'd have to buy the equipment in themselves in order to do this, and not use third parties such as RT or BFI in order to maintain secrecy. However, it is extremely unlikely that Evil is going to be recovered in its entirety - I'll believe it when I see it!
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Post by John Wall on May 15, 2018 10:38:54 GMT
This sounds like another tall story I’m afraid:-( There are people within the RT, BFI, etc who have experience with trying to recover this sort of thing - why look for and buy old equipment when there are people who’ve already got it? Because TIEA operates solely between two parties; the customer and TIEA. Phil Morris has mentioned before that both parties enter non-disclosure and confidentiality agreements because of concerns regarding intellectual property rights. It's one way they've established they can be trusted not to land the film owners into legal trouble, and so carry out a successful operation transferring films to more modern formats. They'd have to buy the equipment in themselves in order to do this, and not use third parties such as RT or BFI in order to maintain secrecy. However, it is extremely unlikely that Evil is going to be recovered in its entirety - I'll believe it when I see it!
There is absolutely no point in TIEA doing this as they can get NO return. The only people who could benefit is the copyright holder, the BBC. This is just nonsense.
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Post by Chris Wilkinson on May 15, 2018 11:25:56 GMT
Because TIEA operates solely between two parties; the customer and TIEA. Phil Morris has mentioned before that both parties enter non-disclosure and confidentiality agreements because of concerns regarding intellectual property rights. It's one way they've established they can be trusted not to land the film owners into legal trouble, and so carry out a successful operation transferring films to more modern formats. They'd have to buy the equipment in themselves in order to do this, and not use third parties such as RT or BFI in order to maintain secrecy. However, it is extremely unlikely that Evil is going to be recovered in its entirety - I'll believe it when I see it!
There is absolutely no point in TIEA doing this as they can get NO return. The only people who could benefit is the copyright holder, the BBC. This is just nonsense. Yes they do, because they charge for the service. Who knows whether they save copies of the things that are missing. How do the BBC benefit from a private service that doesn't concern them? It works in the same way many VHS to DVD companies operate. This is the official line taken by Phil Morris - see his 'Starburst' interview for more details.
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Post by John Wall on May 15, 2018 11:34:06 GMT
There is absolutely no point in TIEA doing this as they can get NO return. The only people who could benefit is the copyright holder, the BBC. This is just nonsense. Yes they do, because they charge for the service. Who knows whether they save copies of the things that are missing. How do the BBC benefit from a private service that doesn't concern them? It works in the same way many VHS to DVD companies operate. This is the official line taken by Phil Morris - see his 'Starburst' interview for more details. This is little more than desperation. Why pay TIEA to do something they’ve not done before when there is already knowledge and experience available? I read about the work that was done rebuilding old machines to try and recover material. I think that PM is spinning a yarn.
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Post by Chris Wilkinson on May 15, 2018 12:03:09 GMT
Yes they do, because they charge for the service. Who knows whether they save copies of the things that are missing. How do the BBC benefit from a private service that doesn't concern them? It works in the same way many VHS to DVD companies operate. This is the official line taken by Phil Morris - see his 'Starburst' interview for more details. This is little more than desperation. Why pay TIEA to do something they’ve not done before when there is already knowledge and experience available? I read about the work that was done rebuilding old machines to try and recover material. I think that PM is spinning a yarn. Because TIEA operates in other countries, particularly in Africa, where British organisations (who may very well be more experienced and equipped, such as the BFI) cannot easily access solely for the purpose of film transfers. Phil Morris can travel the world in person to conduct his business, the BFI cannot (or simply do not).
TIEA is ostensibly just like media transfer companies in the UK. The only two differences being that firstly the formats being picked up are U-matic tapes and film prints instead of more contemporary VHS and Betamax (and so special equipment needs to be acquired to make transfers), and secondly, that it isn't localised to the UK but to all parts of the world. The fact that they mention they need the old equipment simply indicates the age of the material being sent to them, and from that, there is only a minor possibility that the material is currently regarded as missing. A minor possibility, but still a possibility nonetheless - that's the aim of the TIEA game.
He may be spinning a yarn, but if it ends up becoming a woolly jumper, then we'll all be pleased!
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