111–120 of 324 posts
Maybe I'm wrong, but I would assume that in the 1990s to 2000s studios were better about archiving production data, and there aren't likely to be "lost episodes" in this stash?
It can become a compulsion to record and collect media. Seems like a male thing, normally it's blokes who create these archives. I met a bloke once in the 90's who made recordings on to C-90 tapes of anything interesting that was on BBC Radio 4 and 3, and he found most things interesting. He was surrounded by piles, thousands of tapes everywhere and he was desperately trying to catalog everything. As I spoke to him h…
Probably an age-old theme, but as a guy now in my 40s, it's humbling and a little sad to see how many things that were so vital, alive, and relevant in my childhood (and past eras) that are now dead and almost gone from the collective memory. As the Buddha said, all is impermanent.
Right there with you. But hey, it's not all bad. We might be the last generation in living memory, for a while at least, who could ever say "you had to be there" and mean it. And for all it pangs our hearts to see our ephemera tend to dust, we also I think are, of any human generation to date, probably best able to hope that the things we really love from our time will be preserved. (I hope that's a distinction we do…
Can you explain what causes you to say that we will be the last generation to say this? Not rhetorical, although this caused me to question it because I think that this is probably a constant wrt generations passing onto the next and unlikely to change.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I would assume that in the 1990s to 2000s studios were better about archiving production data, and there aren't likely to be "lost episodes" in this stash?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right there with you. But hey, it's not all bad. We might be the last generation in living memory, for a while at least, who could ever say "you had to be there" and mean it. And for all it pangs our hearts to see our ephemera tend to dust, we also I think are, of any human generation to date, probably best able to hope that the things we really love from our time will be preserved. (I hope that's a distinction we do…
> We might be the last generation in living memory, for a while at least, who could ever say "you had to be there" and mean it. Can you explain what causes you to say that we will be the last generation to say this? Not rhetorical, although this caused me to question it because I think that this is probably a constant wrt generations passing onto the next and unlikely to change.
We now face a kind of reverse problem though where we're drowning in so much content that some interesting things can be missed or lost.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This was so charming. I wish my parents had more recorded content of us, but it was a rare day that someone would get out the camcorder, and even rarer that the files would get transposed anywhere. But I do think there are some really old hard drives (anywhere from 10G to 40G) sitting somewhere in a garage, full of JPEGs of us.
It is something that is funny to me. By the time VHS camcorders came out, 8mm film cameras were much smaller. Almost point-n-shoot sizes. Then VHS came out with the shoulder mount bricks. It took forever for VHS-C palmcorders to make them much more portable.
> Then VHS came out with the shoulder mount bricks. It took forever for VHS-C palmcorders to make them much more portable.
The first VHS camcorder (a combined camera and recorder unit) was VHS-C. The JVC GR-C1, released 1984, made famous in Back to the Future.
Full size (VHS) shoulder units actually came a bit later as a lower cost option, and they sold more readily into the 90s. Likely in part because if you were portability and not cost conscious you opted for 8mm (video tape) at that time, 150 minutes and superior audio, slightly better PQ (color).
Prior to that if you wanted to record VHS on location you carried a 10 kg “portable” VTR on your hip with a shoulder strap and a cable to the camera that was another 5 kg. But in those days (late 70s-80s) 1/2” Betamax and 3/4” U-matic(!) were more common for portable use (didn’t help that the early VHS portables were bulkier and heavier than the competition).
Maybe I'm wrong, but I would assume that in the 1990s to 2000s studios were better about archiving production data, and there aren't likely to be "lost episodes" in this stash?
If they're empty or a random collection of this-and-that programs, then they might sell them at low prices to people who still have VHS machines and need the tape. (I'd imagine new tapes are scarce and expensive.)