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>storing over 50TB of data I thought this would be like the backups I've heard broadcasters have of every broadcast they've ever had (I've heard of people bein

>storing over 50TB of data I thought this would be like the backups I've heard broadcasters have of every broadcast they've ever had (I've heard of people being able to request 20 year old news clips before). But just 50TB of data? Duplicating that would have been cheap and trivial.

thekid314 2mo ago
Yeah, we are talking about 3 20TB drives in a closet here. I'm an independent photographer and I have my 20TB drives behind my monitor, backing up to backblaze with an offsite synology. Keeping this archive up does take time and money, but PBS should have the budget and IT deparment for this.
WalterGR 2mo ago
> broadcasters have of every broadcast they've ever had It depends - especially if you go back further than 20 years. The Wikipedia article for "Lost television broadcast" goes into detail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_television_broadcast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_television_broadcast
berkeleyjunk 2mo ago
I think for most of broadcasting history video was fairly low quality (according to today’s standards). So I am not totally surprised that this number is low.
- slfnflctd 2mo ago
  Yep. 1998 was when the first HD broadcasts started in the US, and it took a few years before everyone switched over. Before then, everything was 720 × 480 at 30 fps, and before the mid-80s (and for many shows for a long while after) the sound was mono, not even stereo. Data requirements for this would be far, far lower than what is considered standard now.
wolrah 2mo ago
> But just 50TB of data? Duplicating that would have been cheap and trivial. Seriously. I'm just a random nerd and I have a home server with 96TB of raw disk space divided in to two RAIDZ1 pools which cost me around $2500 to build five years ago and has required basically zero maintenance since then. Hard drive prices are absolutely bonkers right now but even with that in mind if I were to build a modern version of this same machine I could do it for under $10k using brand new hardware and it'd have double the storage
dylan604 2mo ago
Most broadcasters would consider their ultimate back up as the tape library/vault of their broadcast video tapes. Older stations will have a large collection of analog tapes. Most will only be digitized if someone requests it as capturing their entire library just to have digital files few people will ever want is an expense a station just isn't going to do for the lulz.

thekid314 2mo ago

Yeah, we are talking about 3 20TB drives in a closet here. I'm an independent photographer and I have my 20TB drives behind my monitor, backing up to backblaze with an offsite synology. Keeping this archive up does take time and money, but PBS should have the budget and IT deparment for this.

WalterGR 2mo ago

> broadcasters have of every broadcast they've ever had It depends - especially if you go back further than 20 years. The Wikipedia article for "Lost television broadcast" goes into detail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_television_broadcast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_television_broadcast

berkeleyjunk 2mo ago

I think for most of broadcasting history video was fairly low quality (according to today’s standards). So I am not totally surprised that this number is low.

slfnflctd 2mo ago
Yep. 1998 was when the first HD broadcasts started in the US, and it took a few years before everyone switched over. Before then, everything was 720 × 480 at 30 fps, and before the mid-80s (and for many shows for a long while after) the sound was mono, not even stereo. Data requirements for this would be far, far lower than what is considered standard now.

wolrah 2mo ago

> But just 50TB of data? Duplicating that would have been cheap and trivial. Seriously. I'm just a random nerd and I have a home server with 96TB of raw disk space divided in to two RAIDZ1 pools which cost me around $2500 to build five years ago and has required basically zero maintenance since then. Hard drive prices are absolutely bonkers right now but even with that in mind if I were to build a modern version of this same machine I could do it for under $10k using brand new hardware and it'd have double the storage

dylan604 2mo ago

Most broadcasters would consider their ultimate back up as the tape library/vault of their broadcast video tapes. Older stations will have a large collection of analog tapes. Most will only be digitized if someone requests it as capturing their entire library just to have digital files few people will ever want is an expense a station just isn't going to do for the lulz.