← Back to context

Comment by throwawaymobule

21 hours ago

It's strange for formerly lost media to get a whole news story about it. This should, but still strange.

Hope more are found sooner than another 13 years from now.

I think there's LOTS of media out there, but there doesn't seem to be easy ways to convert it.

There was probably a renaissance period when conversion equipment was being actively developed and available, but that time is probably gone. For example I think a good film scanner would be the Nikon Super Coolscan 8000 ED, but current state of the art falls far short. For film, vcr tapes and more we should be doing so much better.

I have old family super-8 films that are kind of convertible, but not the magnetic sound strip.

  • If you have something precious on home movie film, this lab in Burbank, CA that does a lot of the movies will have sometimes deals on film transfers for holidays, or you can call them for a quote. No relationship, but I did have some done and they were very good. https://www.pro8mm.com/

  • Wait, what's wrong with Cintel? I've not used it myself but got a really good impression back when I worked at BMD a few years back.

There are several "holy grails" in British TV history.

Lost Doctor Who episodes are one of them. Dad's Army also has lost black and white episodes (the colour ones have been repeated ad nauseam all my lifetime).

I can think of a few others. Scotch on the Rocks was a political hit piece written by Douglas Hurd showing an armed Scottish uprising along the lines of Northern Ireland. It was supposed to frighten people away from Scottish nationalism, but ended up causing copycat incidents. It vanished shortly after being broadcast probably because of its unintended effects.

The ultimate would be some of the pre-WW2 television broadcasts. Most of these were broadcast in the London area and practically nowhere else. Almost no one had recording equipment back then and they were often broadcast live.

  • I just wanted to mention at this opportunity that some British TV series from the late 70s, early 80s are absolutely brilliant and some of the best stuff I have ever watched. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Smiley's People, Danger UXB, Sandbaggers and Sherlock Holmes are some of my favorites.

    • One of my favorite Youtube channels I've come across in the last year is BBC Archive. Not fiction, but a mix of documentaries, interviews, human interest stories, and educational content from the 50's to the 80's and a little bit of 90's. This 1970 short film on a Scottish boy's last carefree days before starting school is probably my favorite that I've seen so far.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kv6PJd6ZvHY

      2 replies →

    • I grew up with Jeremy Brett's Sherlock Holmes, by far, in my opinion, the most accurate representation of the stories.

      Only in my adult life did I read the stories, finding large chunks of the dialog in the TV show being word for word taken from the stories. And when not word for word, the tone and feel of the scenes so well portrayed on screen.

      5 replies →

    • I was just thinking about Danger UXB recently and remember watching it on PBS with my Mom. Another show of that era that I remember loving was the miniseries of the Barchester Chronicles (adapting the first two of Trollope’s Barsetshire novels). During the DVD-by-mail era of Netflix, I revisited that one and it still held up, although I did not at the time realize just how star-studded the cast was.

      2 replies →

    • Sherlock Holmes is great. Tinker Tailor was repeated through my childhood, so I saw it a few too many times. I watched it again recently and found it slow... However the cast of it and Smiley's People are great. Karla is a notable early appearance of Patrick Stewart.

      There were some great period dramas at the time, if a little set bound (like I, Claudius)

  • > the pre-WW2 television broadcasts. Most of these were broadcast in the London area and practically nowhere else. Almost no one had recording equipment back then and they were often broadcast live.

    The "Phonovision" recordings made by Baird (which were unplayable at the time) have been recovered:

    http://www.tvdawn.com/earliest-tv/

>The collector did recognise what he had, but how he acquired them has been lost to time.

It sounds more like it was unavailable to the average person than lost.