30 to 40 Percent of VHS Films Will Never See Another Format

Re:30 to 40 Percent of VHS Films Will Never See Another Format by tluyben2 on Sunday February 05, 2012 @05:16AM (#3553772)

People who have VHS should digitize. There is a lot on Youtube but for how long... Old films/series are lost and will be lost forever that way. It's not even actually only VHS: some things never made VHS and is rotting on tapes in dark vaults under tv studios. Possible already damaged beyond repair. Stuff like 'secret valley' (AU tv series) is unfindable. Xenon (Flemisch scifi) is only in the BRT vaults; I mailed them about that and they responded that it would cost E49 per episode where you have to order per post PER episode (you cannot order multiple at the same time) and only for private use. I just would like to see an episode for nostalgia sake; if I could buy / view it online I would, but E49 per episode and all the hassle.

What does it matter to THEM to just have some students digitize EVERYTHING and put it online for free or a small fee? I imagine there are 100s of 1000s of these series and movies around the world going to waste. No matter if popular or not, what DOES IT MATTER to put them online, it's not as if it's expensive to do so esp if you charge some monthly or one-off fee to watch them.

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Re:30 to 40 Percent of VHS Films Will Never See Another Format by Cushman on Sunday February 05, 2012 @05:26AM (#3553786)

When I moved, a couple months ago, I packed up — not a series, not a tape — the box I have that can turn VHS into digital video thinking, "Maybe I should just throw this out." I hung onto it for purely sentimental reasons, I think. I can't really remember the last time I saw a VHS cassette, let alone used one.

And yet there must be hundreds of thousands of hours of human creation which will, without preservation, be utterly destroyed. There's definitely something tragic there.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the wretched work of copyright. This is the still-unfulfilled promise of the information age. Let's not forget that.

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Re:30 to 40 Percent of VHS Films Will Never See Another Format by tluyben2 on Sunday February 05, 2012 @05:42AM (#3553799)

Well, the studios themselves have the rights, so why they don't digitize it is strange to me. Well, the big ones I can see, obviously they don't see enough $ in it. But small, national ones like the BRT in BE or something, they have a duty to the tax payer (who pays to make these shows happen) even to do this in my eyes.

I would pay for 'series and movies' nobody wants to see and so would many others, so if not only for posterity, then do it for some profit. I wouldn't sign up for some modern subscription, but if these were included I would. It's just a matter of being complete.

But yes, you are right, the copyright issue sucks; no-one cares about these series/movies, so why not remove the (c).

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Re:30 to 40 Percent of VHS Films Will Never See Another Format by jlarocco on Sunday February 05, 2012 @10:08AM (#3554196)

It seems a bit of a stretch to blame copyright for this.

People upload content for which they don't own the copyright all the time.

In this case, the people with the videos just don't want to go through the effort of digitizing and uploading. Even if the studios said, "All of our old stuff is public domain," it wouldn't change anything.

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Re:30 to 40 Percent of VHS Films Will Never See Another Format by tluyben2 on Sunday February 05, 2012 @10:20AM (#3554230)

I think it would. If the studios would say that, they could have the local film academy students in to digitize; they like that and they can study stuff which hardly anyone saw before. They did that in the Film museum in Amsterdam and that worked fine. So yes that would work.

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Re:30 to 40 Percent of VHS Films Will Never See Another Format by ig1 on Sunday February 05, 2012 @06:36AM (#3553860)

They often don't have the rights to do that, actors contracts and the like often have clauses with regards to royalties from video sales and repeat showings, most of them don't have any structure to allow for online streaming (plus you have legal issues over music used, etc). The legal work involved would cost far more than the technical work required.

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Re:30 to 40 Percent of VHS Films Will Never See Another Format by tluyben2 on Sunday February 05, 2012 @09:48AM (#3554143)

Doesn't prevent them from digitizing and storing on something less volatile than old film reel.

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Re:30 to 40 Percent of VHS Films Will Never See Another Format by delinka on Sunday February 05, 2012 @09:54AM (#3554159)

But it does prevent exactly that. It costs money to do the conversion. Costs must be offset by revenue, and of course if revenue is involved in business, there must be enough revenue to generate profit. And if the legal agreements with the talent don't allow anything other than VHS sales and rentals, then it's not worth the effort to convert.

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Re:30 to 40 Percent of VHS Films Will Never See Another Format by tluyben2 on Sunday February 05, 2012 @10:04AM (#3554187)

Guess you have a point there. I'm thinking way too much from a 'good for the world' POV. So only thing we can do is start a 'closed off' site which connects people interested in this, so we can coordinate buying of DVDs for 'personal' use from studio's (as I said before, I tried that in NL, BE and FR and they are willing to accomodate for high prices) and then copy them for interested parties. Yes, i'm advocating copying here, but how else to force them to digitize them? What can be done?

On a slightly related topic; HN (and Reddit) is FULL with domain experts; where are the people who work at these studios and television makers? Do they actually ever come here? Why don't they chime in ever? I would love to have a discussion with people working in the industry. They seem to be so focused on money that they don't want to hear reason, so I would definitely like to know if all management thinks like that for instance.

And slightly related to that last part:

In the Netherlands we have this idiot who is the ceo of Brein which is the Dutch anti piracy organisation; he sometimes does some comments or interviews, but he just quits after he is torpedoed down as the guy knows nothing. (And probably cannot do anything either tbh.) But one of the things he can never answer is; 'people will pay for anything, if you make it easy; as long as BitTorrent is 100x faster/easier than going the legal route, people will download illegally'. Must be industry people who have some ideas about that.

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Re:30 to 40 Percent of VHS Films Will Never See Another Format by a_a_r_o_n on Sunday February 05, 2012 @11:30AM (#3554389)

They have to pay someone to do it, they have to pay someone to decide to do it, they have to pay someone to find the equipment to do it with, they have to pay someone to think about it, they have to pay lawyers to license it, and they have to pay lawyers to think about licensing.

I imagine in many cases the cost (and opportunity cost) of just thinking about it isn't worth what studios and other holders believe they'll make from the effort.

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Re:30 to 40 Percent of VHS Films Will Never See Another Format by panacea on Sunday February 05, 2012 @06:31AM (#3553850)

>Stuff like 'secret valley' (AU tv series) is unfindable.

This makes me really, really sad. Although I would likely find it juvenile and not as good as I remembered it, it was one of the best things on TV growing up and I'd love to share it with my future kids. Flour-bomb fight!

Edit: So it's listed on the AFSA website... does this mean the masters are still in the archive?

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Re:30 to 40 Percent of VHS Films Will Never See Another Format by tluyben2 on Sunday February 05, 2012 @09:46AM (#3554140)

They probably have the masters; I think they usually do, at least they think so. There are stories of leaks in the back of basements etc rendering 1000s of hours of series/movies useless. That's why they should take action NOW and not waste time. Even if they only keep it locally and not sell it, it needs to be preserved! Damn it!

Brendon Chase (UK, 80s) is another one.

And there was a series in the 80s I remember as being called 'Saturday' (UK I think, about children growing up in some village and (very young) puppy love, very innocent series which I liked so much I quit my swimming lessons for it as it was on the same night and we didn't have a VCR; it was aroudn the same time as the Tripods on TV me thinks) which, due to the title, I never found anything about :( I would love to find that back as well. Hmmm. Must... Go... To... TV... Forums...

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Re:30 to 40 Percent of VHS Films Will Never See Another Format by noonespecial on Sunday February 05, 2012 @05:18PM (#3555468)

Digitized old content competes with new content. For the entertainment industry, the less content there is in the world the better. They're not going to intentionally weaken their position by introducing more.

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