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Fun Fact: I own porn I can't watch

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Re: Fun Fact: I own porn I can't watch

#121

Post by EvanAnderson »

delecti wrote: post #70
danbruc wrote: post #56

I have always wondered if it would be possible to build a generic reader for magnetic tapes that essentially just scans whatever tape you throw at it and then it is up to some software to decode the content. I know close to nothing about the details of magnetic recording on tape, so maybe this is just not possible with reasonable effort, i.e. you could but you would need SQUIDs to make it work or something like that.

You might be surprised at how the signals are actually recorded on tapes. For VHS tapes for example, it's actually a series of stacked "diagonal" lines of signal. Imagine a sequence of symbols like \\\\\\\\\\\, except at any given horizontal point along the tape there are about 5 stacked traces of signal. They're also diagonal on audio cassettes, but much less "slanted" relative to the tape's length. I don't remember…

I don't know about DAT as an audio format but DAT in its data storage format "Digital Data Storage"[0] is also helical scan.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Data_Storage

Re: Fun Fact: I own porn I can't watch

#122

Post by tbirdz »

danbruc wrote: post #56

I have always wondered if it would be possible to build a generic reader for magnetic tapes that essentially just scans whatever tape you throw at it and then it is up to some software to decode the content. I know close to nothing about the details of magnetic recording on tape, so maybe this is just not possible with reasonable effort, i.e. you could but you would need SQUIDs to make it work or something like that.

For VHS there's the VHS-Decode project that's trying to do something similar. I don't think they work by scanning the tape itself with some custom hardware, but rather by recording some kind of internal RF drum head signal inside the VCR itself. Then they have a software stack to decode the VHS signal into actual video. Looks pretty cool, but I've never used it.

https://github.com/oyvindln/vhs-decode

Re: Fun Fact: I own porn I can't watch

#123

Post by sophacles »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #120
danbruc wrote: post #56

I have always wondered if it would be possible to build a generic reader for magnetic tapes that essentially just scans whatever tape you throw at it and then it is up to some software to decode the content. I know close to nothing about the details of magnetic recording on tape, so maybe this is just not possible with reasonable effort, i.e. you could but you would need SQUIDs to make it work or something like that.

This seems quite possible in principle, despite the different helical scanning, tape widths, speeds and whatnot. A device at the British Library archival research did similar for wax cylinders and old disc records, scanning the physical surface with a small wavelength laser interferometer. AFAIK it generated an obscene amount of point cloud data. My thought is that, if you could develop a sensor capable of sampling m…

This idea sounds similar to "software defined radio"... but for tape reading. Interesting.

Re: Fun Fact: I own porn I can't watch

#124

Post by pessimizer »

ly3xqhl8g9 wrote: post #95
NotYourLawyer wrote: post #2

> So DuArt Media Services got to work trying to rescue the tape . . . . DuArt then made a documentary about this, called “Lost and Found: The ’73 Knicks Championship Tape”. It won an Emmy. The punchline? That documentary seems to be lost. I'm just speechless.

ABC Britain made this probably amazing anthology series in 1962 called Out of This World [1]. I say probably because out of the 14 episodes made the only one left today is episode 3, Little Lost Robot [2], the first adaptation of Isaac Asimov's I, Robot . The reason we don't have the other episodes? Apparently ABC had this practice of wiping the tapes after the episodes aired. What could they have been possibly think…

The loss of the DuMont archives adds to our extremely distorted idea of the entire celebrity environment of the past. Some of the biggest entertainers have had their entire careers lost, notably Ernie Kovacs: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/dumont-network-gleason...

> In the early 70's the DuMont network was being bought by another company and the lawyers were in heavy negotiation as to who ould be responsible for the library of DuMont shows currently being stored in the facility - who would bear the expense of storing them in a temperature controlled facility, take care of copyright renewal, etc..

> One of the lawyers said he would "take care of it in a fair manner..." He took care of it all right...

> At 2am the next morning he had 3 huge semis back up to the loding dock at ABC, filled them with all the stored kinescopes and 2" videotape, drove them to a waiting barge in n New Jersey, took them out on the water, made a right at the Statue of Liberty and dumped them in Upper New York Bay. Very neat... no problem!

- Edie Adams, comedian, entertainer, and wife of Ernie Kovacs.

https://web.archive.org/web/20081208112200/http://www.loc.go...

Edie Adams’ son explains why her late husband Ernie Kovacs is seemingly forgotten in Hollywood

https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/edie-adams-ernie-kovac...

Re: Fun Fact: I own porn I can't watch

#125

Post by EamonnMR »

delecti wrote: post #70
danbruc wrote: post #56

I have always wondered if it would be possible to build a generic reader for magnetic tapes that essentially just scans whatever tape you throw at it and then it is up to some software to decode the content. I know close to nothing about the details of magnetic recording on tape, so maybe this is just not possible with reasonable effort, i.e. you could but you would need SQUIDs to make it work or something like that.

You might be surprised at how the signals are actually recorded on tapes. For VHS tapes for example, it's actually a series of stacked "diagonal" lines of signal. Imagine a sequence of symbols like \\\\\\\\\\\, except at any given horizontal point along the tape there are about 5 stacked traces of signal. They're also diagonal on audio cassettes, but much less "slanted" relative to the tape's length. I don't remember…

That sounds like a similar problem to reading unknown floppy formats. I'll bet you that actually scanning the flux (I think that's the term) image of the tape without shredding it is a more difficult mechanical problem.

Re: Fun Fact: I own porn I can't watch

#126

Post by jcranmer »

ly3xqhl8g9 wrote: post #95
NotYourLawyer wrote: post #2

> So DuArt Media Services got to work trying to rescue the tape . . . . DuArt then made a documentary about this, called “Lost and Found: The ’73 Knicks Championship Tape”. It won an Emmy. The punchline? That documentary seems to be lost. I'm just speechless.

ABC Britain made this probably amazing anthology series in 1962 called Out of This World [1]. I say probably because out of the 14 episodes made the only one left today is episode 3, Little Lost Robot [2], the first adaptation of Isaac Asimov's I, Robot . The reason we don't have the other episodes? Apparently ABC had this practice of wiping the tapes after the episodes aired. What could they have been possibly think…

> Apparently ABC had this practice of wiping the tapes after the episodes aired. What could they have been possibly thinking.

Maintaining archives of material is actually a pretty complex and expensive process, especially when we're talking about physical analog media (that is sometimes literally a ticking time bomb, as is the case with old cellulose film stock). Also, such media is expensive to acquire, so reusing them wherever possible is useful to keep costs down.

Combine this with the fact that the value of such preservation is often not apparent. Reruns of old material don't provide a lot of value--especially in an era where there are very few available channels--and there's no practical means for making copies of them to even interested buyers, at least in any sort of economical way (see above about cost of media). It's not until around 1980 or so that the home video market is a viable way to make money on old productions, and it's around that time that the wiping of old broadcasts was stopped as a regular practice.

Re: Fun Fact: I own porn I can't watch

#127

Post by Pxtl »

This reminds me of Jay Bauman's rant about how VHS is a shit format when his Youtube team (RedLetterMedia) obliterated every VHS copy of Nukie they could find in a wood-chipper.

https://twitter.com/JayBauman1/status/1613910812632186881

Basically, old magnetic video tape is such a bad format that the only sane approach of "preservation" is to destroy it and digitize it.

Re: Fun Fact: I own porn I can't watch

#128

Post by Pxtl »

patapong wrote: post #73

Fascinating. These red tapes feel like a ridiculous and cumbersome idea. Thinking about it, their concept won in the end though, in terms of media consumption and ownership... Our current streaming services feel much more akin to these tapes, where you rely on a centralized entity to decide what you can watch and how, rather than infinitely repayable and transferable video tapes.

Somebody recently said the best phrase on the modern internet is "iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts" because podcasts are probably the most recent media-consumption technology where open standards won out and it's just a bunch of standardized data and metadata you can use as you like.

Re: Fun Fact: I own porn I can't watch

#129

Post by ly3xqhl8g9 »

jcranmer wrote: post #126
ly3xqhl8g9 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ABC Britain made this probably amazing anthology series in 1962 called Out of This World [1]. I say probably because out of the 14 episodes made the only one left today is episode 3, Little Lost Robot [2], the first adaptation of Isaac Asimov's I, Robot . The reason we don't have the other episodes? Apparently ABC had this practice of wiping the tapes after the episodes aired. What could they have been possibly think…

> Apparently ABC had this practice of wiping the tapes after the episodes aired. What could they have been possibly thinking. Maintaining archives of material is actually a pretty complex and expensive process, especially when we're talking about physical analog media (that is sometimes literally a ticking time bomb, as is the case with old cellulose film stock). Also, such media is expensive to acquire, so reusing t…

"Maintaining archives of material is actually a pretty complex"

Sure, but the tapes had Boris Karloff himself as host, you can't just wipe a tape with Karloff in the 60s [1] and think "eh, probably no one will ever want to watch this again".

It's just a point how awfully relative everything is. What if Max Brod actually listened to Franz Kafka and burned all his texts. How much we miss because Nikolai Gogol did actually burn the second volume to his Dead Souls.

[1] "Boris Karloff was awarded two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on 8 February 1960", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Karloff

Re: Fun Fact: I own porn I can't watch

#130

Post by acdha »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #120
danbruc wrote: post #56

I have always wondered if it would be possible to build a generic reader for magnetic tapes that essentially just scans whatever tape you throw at it and then it is up to some software to decode the content. I know close to nothing about the details of magnetic recording on tape, so maybe this is just not possible with reasonable effort, i.e. you could but you would need SQUIDs to make it work or something like that.

This seems quite possible in principle, despite the different helical scanning, tape widths, speeds and whatnot. A device at the British Library archival research did similar for wax cylinders and old disc records, scanning the physical surface with a small wavelength laser interferometer. AFAIK it generated an obscene amount of point cloud data. My thought is that, if you could develop a sensor capable of sampling m…

This system is similar for old analog audio recordings:

https://irene.lbl.gov/

https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2012/03/unlocking-sounds-of-the-pa...

I remember one of the curators mentioning that they had a ton of WWII records for things like daily newscasts which due to wartime supply issues were made from less durable materials, and since they weren’t commercially valuable the owners hadn’t spent time transferring many of them to newer media.

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