Quote:
Originally Posted by Fazor
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I'd like to add, though it's not particularly relevant, that Hollywood film studios do lose their master copies...
They most certainly do. I've inadvertently lost originals before, and I consider myself reasonably well organized and careful.
...or have them altered or destroyed by improper storage techniques.
Or even in spite of proper ones. The fire at the Universal film vault is a modern example. Even a state-of-the-art facility is susceptible to loss and damage.
Film in any format is not necessarily the easiest thing to store...
Nor is magnetic tape. I had to throw out a bunch of 9-track 6250 BPI computer tapes last year because they had degraded to the point where the drive could no longer read them. They were 30 years old, but they were brand new when written, and had been read only 3-4 times. They were simply not up to being stored for that long. And because I have no more 6250 BPI tapes, the drive is now on the trash heap too.
There is no guarantee that the original SSTV tapes will be legible at all, even if a machine can be found that will attempt to read them.