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Post by Jon Preddle on Nov 4, 2021 19:57:10 GMT
As best I recall, in the early 1990s the BBC released a VHS tape called 'The Cybermen: The Early Years', which had one episode sourced from a particularly poor film print. IIRC it was an episode from 'Wheel in Space'. I always suspected that it originated from a duplicate negative, because the picture quality was so poor. The contrast was extremely bad, and it looked shocking on even a small tv screen. The quality difference from the other two episodes on the tape was very noticable. So far as I'm aware, it's the only known occasion when an official release used what was, at the time, pretty widely assumed to be a recording that had survived through the making of a dupe negative. The print of 'Wheel' 3 that David Stead had was a positive, presumably dating back to the late 60s / early 70s. The BBC borrowed this in the mid-80s and made a new 'negative' for the archive. A positive taken from that was used for the VHS, which is why - as you say - it looks so poor.
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Post by Nicholas Fitzpatrick on Nov 4, 2021 23:53:36 GMT
You could use reversal film to make a direct positive copy, not sure how good the quality would be Though the Canadian copes were in fact Kinescopes (aka film recordings) of the Microwave Network feed made for a few remote stations - so the quality must have been pretty poor! Loads of info here broadwcast.org/index.php/Kinescope_Stations - though it doesn't say if the kinescopes used negatives or reversal film! Either way they were probably destroyed Good point about the creation of the positives. Given it was done daily, with printed in commercials, presumably they'd be aiming for efficiency. The main east-west microwave network for major cities, long-predates Doctor Who, being completed in 1959. It's the remote and northern communities that would have had bicycled prints (directly off of what was being broadcast, including commercials). To some extent, you can track which stations which weren't on microwave, by seeing which ones weren't airing it live (or on tape-delay). Jon Preddle has done some brilliant research and documented much of this, including airdates for Flin Flon, Prince George, Terrace BC, and Goose Bay NL (which is probably close to UK than Terrace BC!) - and possibly Halifax (though they may have simply had a one-week tape delay) at broadwcast.org/index.php/Kinescope_Stations This completely changed our understanding of how it was broadcast in Canada!
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Post by brianfretwell on Nov 6, 2021 9:49:29 GMT
I'm pretty sure there were (lower contrast than projection positive stock) reversal interpositive stocks made for the film industry so if that was used to make a copy from a positive it would be of good quality.
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