Slashdot Mirror
Videotapes Are Becoming Unwatchable As Archivists Work To Save Them (npr.org)
Most videotapes were recorded in the 1980s and '90s, when video cameras first became widely available to Americans. Most of those VHS cassettes have become unwatchable, and others are quickly dying, too. Research suggests that tapes like this aren't going to live beyond 15 to 20 years. NPR has a story about a group of archivists and preservationists who are increasingly scrambling through racks of tape decks, oscilloscopes, vector scopes and wave-form monitors to ensure a quality transfer from analog to digital. From the article: Here's how magnetic tapes work: Sounds and images are magnetized onto strips of tape, using the same principle as when you rub a piece of metal with a magnet and it retains that magnetism. But when you take the magnet away, the piece of metal slowly loses its magnetism -- and in the same way, the tape slowly loses its magnetic properties. "Once that magnetic field that's been imprinted into that tape has kind of faded too much, you won't be able to recover it back off the tape after a long period of time," says Howard Lukk, director of standards at the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. Lukk estimates there are billions of tapes sitting around. There are plenty of services out there to digitize tapes -- local stores, online services, even public libraries and universities. Some services are free; some cost a lot of money. The thing is, many people don't realize their tapes are degrading. And some who do know -- even members of the XFR Collective (the aforementioned group), like Mary Kidd -- haven't even gotten around to their own tapes. Digitizing also takes a lot of troubleshooting. Each transfer the Collective does requires them to play the entire tape through while they sit there and watch it.
Most movies from the 80's and 90's were unwatchable to begin with.
Just a scare to get you to spend money on something you don't need. I just watched some VHS tapes I recorded (EP Mode) in the summer of 1994, and they're fine, I've got audio cassettes recorded a decade earlier that sound the same as the day I recorded them (and in at least one case, better than the digital download of the same radio show via iTunes).
It's the same as going back to a cathode ray television after having watched something on a 1080p flat screen.
Many years ago, when I bought my first flatscreen TV, I gave my old (but very high end and not so old) Sony CR TV set to a friend. About four months later, I went over his house to watch a game and I was like, "Dude, what did you do to my old TV? The picture looks like crap."
That's how it's always looked.
I just sat there stunned. And, it really opened my eyes to the improvement between low-def and high-def. We're definitely spoiled today.
They were always unwatchable, we just didn't have other options.
I find a lot of new movies especially in the horror genre to be unwatchable compared to vhs. I know you know the type I'm talking about where it's supposedly a record of cell phone camera, security cameras, and camcorders cut together.
Will be lost, in time. Like tears in the rain...
Let it die. We are terrified of letting the archive filter itself out, but really it is ok to let a billion VHS tapes go.
I think one of the real dangers of the digital age is that we are so worried about losing memories, we are afraid to make them.
Painstakingly archiving every detail of life really makes for a shitty life.
I know I sound like a curmudgeon, but there it is.
Honestly I've been mostly disappointed in the quality of large flat panel displays. Large LCDs are great because because they are thin but CRTs have a certain quality to them that is unparalleled in any other display tech right now. CRTs are both soft and sharp at the same time because the phosphor element density on a CRT screen can be insanely dense and independent of the input or output resolution for the display. Now, when considering the electronics in aging CRTs, especially cheap television varieties, yeah, just like any other cheap crap, they look like cheap crap. But the higher end CRT units found in computer monitors, are still mostly unsurpassed in numerous aspects of image quality and it makes me a bit sad that the technology was pretty much entirely abandoned. Basically like going from well cut vinyl records to often poorly processed cassette tapes, maybe more convenient but generally inferior.
Does this mean that Weekend at Bernie's gets to die forever
You can always watch the remake aka Hillary Clinton's election campaign.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Off the cuff, I'd imagine that a great deal of news footage from the era in question was recorded to tape (rather than film) that is subject to the stresses of time and the elements. Materials such as these beholden to the limitations of the medium under discussion aren't just about "that feel good feeling of archiving something obscure".
Somewhat counter-intuitively, I've noticed that my OLDEST (mid/late-80s) VHS tapes are in MUCH better shape than the tapes I made between 1995 and 2004. My theory: in the 80s, a VCR & its tapes were expensive, well-made precision hardware. By the late 90s, they were just cheap shit -- recorders AND tapes. I think my early-80s tapes weigh as much as 3 or 4 late-90s tapes.
Here's how magnetic tapes work ...
I can tell we're in a strange new world when someone has to explain to a technical audience how magnetic recording works. I grew up playing with my dads's tape recorder. I ended up in the disc drive biz and spent 30+ years watching domains get smaller and closer together. Everyone just knew how it worked. I wonder how many tech-savvy slashdotters have seen a 3 1/2 floppy drive or a cassette tape outside of a museum.
Run along kids. The old man is starting to mumble and drool on himself.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
I'm keeping an old high-end 4:3-format 28" SD CRT around for retro gaming. It is a bit silly, since it's like 90 lbs and takes up an unreasonable amount of space, but it makes old-school games look So. Fucking. Good.
It's a B&O BeoVision MX 8000, with one of the best CRT's Philips ever made (none of that flat-front nonsense), two full-RGB SCART inputs and all the picture adjustments directly available from a menu, instead of having to take off the back and fiddly around with a screwdriver. And of course the motorized stand, which is silly, but neat.
Eat the rich.