6 ms·

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

32 points by jjp9999 15y ago

jeffool 15y ago
I upvote because it's interesting, but I have the sneaking suspicion that it's all wrong. Home video didn't disappear, it went to YouTube. Browsing still exists, as active who has looked through Netflix, Hulu, or any other service can attest to. Having that right image is sill an important conveyance of style. But yet, I still upvote. I can't help but feel this potential loss of so much film can be avoided. Maybe someone at Archive.org can work to verify rights holders who want to donate their work to the public domain and have their work soured there. So what if most of it's bad? We live in the first time in history where we actually can save everything. Why not do it?
- neuronotic 15y ago
  Because the laws of entropy show that's not quite right? The notion that we have the ability to save everything doesn't seem to account for the placement of such technology in a wider context. For example, take dimensions such as the political and economic - which are themselves subject to physical entropy such as fundamental communication and informational limitations manifested by the physical laws underpinning our 'reality'. It seems to me these are examples of some significant hard barriers to reaching such utopia’s of permanence. So we have a socio-political-economic system that gives rise to things like intellectual property, which in turn leads to allocation of social energy in endeavours such as prohibiting, rather than facilitating, the perpetuation of the content for posterity. Of course this is a gross simplification, but hopefully functionally illustrative. Down with IP!
InclinedPlane 15y ago
Officially. Yet many of them will live on in "pirated" digital form.
- tluyben2 15y ago
  And many of them don't.
  - vidarh 15y ago
    Case in point: Even the BBC has managed to "lose" a lot of the early Dr Who (they taped over a lot of it before someone started thinking about archival), and have resorted to recovering some of it from versions taped from broadcasts, but bits and pieces are still missing and will likely never be found. A large part of what has been recovered has only been recovered because of a lot of effort from both the BBC and volunteers. This is a series with massive cultural impact in the UK. Now consider all the less popular series that don't have scores of fans pushing to ensure as much as possible of it is restored and made available...
- etcet 15y ago
  I'm not too sure. The Pirate Bay gives 890 results for "VHS" but Karagarga (private tracker) gives 5776 films with VHS sources. I'm sure there are plenty of VHS's on YouTube but YouTube feels ephemeral with the possibility of a DMCA request at any time. So some of it is being archived by a very small subset of the pirate population. It would certainly be a lot easier if we didn't have to do it so far underground.
tluyben2 15y ago
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.
- Cushman 15y ago
  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.
  - tluyben2 15y ago
    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).
anonhacker 15y ago
I had a bunch of old VHS tape that i threw away. Although I would have liked to keep them, the biggest annoyance was the fungus/mold that grows on them if you live anywhere with some humidity. The point being: VHS tapes destroy themselves, its not necessarily always a choice to not convert them.
talmand 15y ago
For me, a huge justification for piracy: archives. If the content license holders won't do it then someone has to preserve this stuff before it disappears. I've never understood why a content creator would not digitize their archives and then offer it through streaming somehow. After a while it would seem the eventual revenue might offset the cost of the archiving. Free backup. Imagine if one of the older studios suddenly offered every bit of content they had in their vaults, that still could be digitized, on Netflix, Hulu or even their own site? In some cases that would be five decades of content. We're talking hundreds/thousands of movies and tv shows that the current generation doesn't even know exist. But no, the film sits in a salt mine somewhere slowing rotting away.
- gerggerg 15y ago
  For me, a huge justification for piracy: archives. Not just you, but also the US supreme court. If you already own a copy of that movie on any format it's legal to have 1 digital backup and you can acquire that backup by downloading it. Where most people get in trouble is by re-uploading it. If you do that, you're distributing something you have no right to distribute. And the most successful aspect of bittorrent is how efficiently it turns you into a distributer.
  - talmand 15y ago
    That's true, but not quite what I meant. It's conceivable that if everyone made a digital backup of content then it almost certainly be available in one form of another. I'm speaking more of the topic of the article. If the content holder has decided to no longer make content they control available to the masses then it is almost a moral obligation for someone to digitize that content for uploading to the Internet so that is not lost. How much content have we already lost that should be in the public domain but no one has the content any longer to digitize? But I'm not talking just movies and tv shows. This could easily cover other mundane topics of life such as sporting events, interviews, documentaries, newscasts and so on. This is the time that someone in the future, say 100 years, could have a near perfect record of what's going on today with the sheer amount of data we are producing on a daily basis. Not just video content but emails, texting, forums, Twitter, Facebook, etc. If only we could keep copies of content somewhere convenient so that people can get to them whenever they wish. Now, be clear, I'm not saying that this content should be freely available the moment it is completed. The creator should have the right to recoup their costs plus make profit. Especially since profit might be required for the creator to create more. But we should have saner copyright laws in place so that it doesn't take near 100 years for something to become public domain. That kind of nonsense guarantees that something we feel is not important today may be lost and missed later. The missing early episodes of Dr. Who that keeps getting mentioned is an excellent example.
cowmixtoo 15y ago
I have TONS of VHS tapes that I have been slowly digitizing over the pass 25 years. The issue I have ran up against is it is harder and harder to get VHS players. New models are almost non-existent so you have to troll Craigslist or eBay for used equipment. Also, the market for good digitizing hardware is drying up too. The moral, hurry up and digitize now before the equipment use for this purpose drys up.
- pasbesoin 15y ago
  I have a few dozen tapes to convert for a medical professional (treatment documentation -- with waivers signed where used in a public context). I'd also like to convert a few personal tapes, e.g. of my great aunts discussing times out on the old farmstead. Unfortunately, the tapes have some age/wear issues. And the fancy-schmancy Sony DVD/VHS combo recorder/player I was given promptly turns these -- which play well enough directly to the TV -- into extreme pixelation. So, any equipment/procedure recommendations would be greatly appreciated.
leej 15y ago
is there any public or industry group registry for those movies?
drinian 15y ago
Remarkably, I know of at least one early-1990s film -- Rockula -- that was never released on DVD, but is available on Netflix Instant streaming.

32 points by jjp9999 15y ago

I upvote because it's interesting, but I have the sneaking suspicion that it's all wrong. Home video didn't disappear, it went to YouTube. Browsing still exists, as active who has looked through Netflix, Hulu, or any other service can attest to. Having that right image is sill an important conveyance of style. But yet, I still upvote. I can't help but feel this potential loss of so much film can be avoided. Maybe someone at Archive.org can work to verify rights holders who want to donate their work to the public domain and have their work soured there. So what if most of it's bad? We live in the first time in history where we actually can save everything. Why not do it?

neuronotic 15y ago
Because the laws of entropy show that's not quite right? The notion that we have the ability to save everything doesn't seem to account for the placement of such technology in a wider context. For example, take dimensions such as the political and economic - which are themselves subject to physical entropy such as fundamental communication and informational limitations manifested by the physical laws underpinning our 'reality'. It seems to me these are examples of some significant hard barriers to reaching such utopia’s of permanence. So we have a socio-political-economic system that gives rise to things like intellectual property, which in turn leads to allocation of social energy in endeavours such as prohibiting, rather than facilitating, the perpetuation of the content for posterity. Of course this is a gross simplification, but hopefully functionally illustrative. Down with IP!

InclinedPlane 15y ago

Officially. Yet many of them will live on in "pirated" digital form.

tluyben2 15y ago
And many of them don't.
- vidarh 15y ago
  Case in point: Even the BBC has managed to "lose" a lot of the early Dr Who (they taped over a lot of it before someone started thinking about archival), and have resorted to recovering some of it from versions taped from broadcasts, but bits and pieces are still missing and will likely never be found. A large part of what has been recovered has only been recovered because of a lot of effort from both the BBC and volunteers. This is a series with massive cultural impact in the UK. Now consider all the less popular series that don't have scores of fans pushing to ensure as much as possible of it is restored and made available...
etcet 15y ago
I'm not too sure. The Pirate Bay gives 890 results for "VHS" but Karagarga (private tracker) gives 5776 films with VHS sources. I'm sure there are plenty of VHS's on YouTube but YouTube feels ephemeral with the possibility of a DMCA request at any time. So some of it is being archived by a very small subset of the pirate population. It would certainly be a lot easier if we didn't have to do it so far underground.

tluyben2 15y ago

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.

Cushman 15y ago
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.
- tluyben2 15y ago
  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).

anonhacker 15y ago

I had a bunch of old VHS tape that i threw away. Although I would have liked to keep them, the biggest annoyance was the fungus/mold that grows on them if you live anywhere with some humidity. The point being: VHS tapes destroy themselves, its not necessarily always a choice to not convert them.

talmand 15y ago

For me, a huge justification for piracy: archives. If the content license holders won't do it then someone has to preserve this stuff before it disappears. I've never understood why a content creator would not digitize their archives and then offer it through streaming somehow. After a while it would seem the eventual revenue might offset the cost of the archiving. Free backup. Imagine if one of the older studios suddenly offered every bit of content they had in their vaults, that still could be digitized, on Netflix, Hulu or even their own site? In some cases that would be five decades of content. We're talking hundreds/thousands of movies and tv shows that the current generation doesn't even know exist. But no, the film sits in a salt mine somewhere slowing rotting away.

gerggerg 15y ago
For me, a huge justification for piracy: archives. Not just you, but also the US supreme court. If you already own a copy of that movie on any format it's legal to have 1 digital backup and you can acquire that backup by downloading it. Where most people get in trouble is by re-uploading it. If you do that, you're distributing something you have no right to distribute. And the most successful aspect of bittorrent is how efficiently it turns you into a distributer.
- talmand 15y ago
  That's true, but not quite what I meant. It's conceivable that if everyone made a digital backup of content then it almost certainly be available in one form of another. I'm speaking more of the topic of the article. If the content holder has decided to no longer make content they control available to the masses then it is almost a moral obligation for someone to digitize that content for uploading to the Internet so that is not lost. How much content have we already lost that should be in the public domain but no one has the content any longer to digitize? But I'm not talking just movies and tv shows. This could easily cover other mundane topics of life such as sporting events, interviews, documentaries, newscasts and so on. This is the time that someone in the future, say 100 years, could have a near perfect record of what's going on today with the sheer amount of data we are producing on a daily basis. Not just video content but emails, texting, forums, Twitter, Facebook, etc. If only we could keep copies of content somewhere convenient so that people can get to them whenever they wish. Now, be clear, I'm not saying that this content should be freely available the moment it is completed. The creator should have the right to recoup their costs plus make profit. Especially since profit might be required for the creator to create more. But we should have saner copyright laws in place so that it doesn't take near 100 years for something to become public domain. That kind of nonsense guarantees that something we feel is not important today may be lost and missed later. The missing early episodes of Dr. Who that keeps getting mentioned is an excellent example.

cowmixtoo 15y ago

I have TONS of VHS tapes that I have been slowly digitizing over the pass 25 years. The issue I have ran up against is it is harder and harder to get VHS players. New models are almost non-existent so you have to troll Craigslist or eBay for used equipment. Also, the market for good digitizing hardware is drying up too. The moral, hurry up and digitize now before the equipment use for this purpose drys up.

pasbesoin 15y ago
I have a few dozen tapes to convert for a medical professional (treatment documentation -- with waivers signed where used in a public context). I'd also like to convert a few personal tapes, e.g. of my great aunts discussing times out on the old farmstead. Unfortunately, the tapes have some age/wear issues. And the fancy-schmancy Sony DVD/VHS combo recorder/player I was given promptly turns these -- which play well enough directly to the TV -- into extreme pixelation. So, any equipment/procedure recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

leej 15y ago

is there any public or industry group registry for those movies?

drinian 15y ago

Remarkably, I know of at least one early-1990s film -- Rockula -- that was never released on DVD, but is available on Netflix Instant streaming.