Posted by Bernie on 01/01/06 14:22

If they're a paying customer, then they are of course right.

For anyone else, it rather depends on what it is and what use they plan
to put it to. If it's meant to be historical, it really doesn't
matter what format it is, as long as someone still has the means to
play it back. If it's meant to be current some time in the future,
they are probably wasting time and money, because it won't be. In any
case, the HD format of 2006 (Happy New Year) won't be the one of 2012,
and you'll still be looking for a way to play it back, whatever it is.

At the time of the first Gulf War I was ordered by my BBC bosses to
make some "long filler" material for use in the case of our boys being
all wiped out by Saddam's biological or nuclear bombs. Something
sombre to go in the big gap while we all wondered what to transmit next
(in the days before endless rolling news). I was told to make up some
stuff using the BBCs incredibly huge library of stock material. It
took about an hour in the library to discover that most of that stuff
was on formats that marked the material out to any viewer as old and
unusable . So I went to a stormy cove in Devon and filmed waves and
stuff on BetaSP, then the current field format. Luckily we didn't use
any of it, and as it ended up on 1" for transmission, it too is out of
date now.

Bernie

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