Posted by David McCall on 11/23/05 15:44

"Richard Crowley" <rcrowley@xpr7t.net> wrote in message
news:11o80apmb14jr29@corp.supernews.com...
> "bmcswain" wrote ...
>> Steve,
>> I generally agree with you. Many of the points you are making are part
>> of my conversations with the client.
>>
>> However on one point, I think you are wrong and for a unique reason.
>>>> 4) Popular media recording formats don't disappear in a hurry.
>>
>> To your point, I still have playable 45's 78's and 33 1/3". I still
>> have reel to reel audio tapes that sorta work. 8MM film is still
>> viewable on my projector.
>>
>> However, when it comes to TV I think we may have a different scenario
>> brewing.
>
> Can you give us some examples of commercially viable formats
> from history that are no longer readable?
>
> You might want to hold off answering that until you do a
> Google search.
If the media is still in good shape, and you have a
player (or projector) that are in good shape, then
there should be no problem. Unfortunately both
are pretty iffy.

Over the years I have become extremely disappointed
in the longevity of rubber components as used in this
kind of hardware. Rubber belts become very brittle
and often fail as soon as you turn on an old piece of
equipment. Rubber pressure rollers get "flat spots"
and become very hard which is not desirable. I've
also seen rubber fail and become a sticky mess
that is even difficult to remove. Capacitors often start
to fail in as little a 20 years. Unless you go to a place
that specializes in recovering media, you may have
problems playing the material, or worse, the machine
may well eat the tape or film. They don't all fail all of
the time, but it happens often enough that it makes
me nervous.

The media can be an issue too. Phonograph records
hold up pretty well, but I have reel to reel audio tapes
that break into little pieces when you try to play them
or even rewind them by hand. I've heard audio tape
that has so much print through that they are unusable.

A few weeks ago someone brought me 3 3/4" tapes
to dub to DVD. They didn't play great, and the 3rd one
couldn't play for long before clogging the heads. After
running the tape several times, and much head cleaning,
I eventually made a dub for him. This was on a fairly
well maintained BVU 800.

1/2" reel to reel video is becoming harder to get dubbed,
and even some 2" quad tapes are beginning to be an
issue. You have to find a well maintained machine. You
can't just drag an old machine out of the back room and
play this stuff anymore.

People have complained of CDs, DVDs, and laserdisc
that have had "laser rot" where the reflective coating has
separated from the disc and made the material unusable,
or at least bad quality.

So, it isn't trivial. Analog formats can usually be recovered
at some level, even if they are noisy. Digital formats have
some error correction, but there is a fairly low threshold
where they just don't work at all. All you can do is keep
multiple copies in different places and under good
conditions, and make new dubs periodically, or just
accept that the media may fail before you get back to it.

David

[Back to original message]