Quality of RTE Video Archives? (Den TV late 80s)

Butch Cassidy

What's the story with some of RTE's archive material from the 80s/early 90s. I was watching the documentary thing on Dustin the Turkey at the weekend there and the footage of the Dempsey's Den/Den TV from the late 80s/early 90s which looked like 2nd or 3rd generation VHS quality.

Did RTE not preserve them shows in a master format or something?

JDxtra

I remember hearing something about this before. From what I recall, studio based recordings were not retained by RTE at the time. So, only home user VHS copies of The Den are available.

Mike 1972

I can understand them deciding it wasnt necessery to keep a copy of every single episode but surely two or three wouldnt have taken up that much space in the archives ?

kollegeknight

yep, RTE had a policy of recording over tapes to save money. when they were making zig n zag documentary. they put out call for videos as they had little or no footage.
Sounds insane, thats RTE for ya

Koloman

kollegeknight wrote: »

yep, RTE had a policy of recording over tapes to save money. when they were making zig n zag documentary. they put out call for videos as they had little or no footage.
Sounds insane, thats RTE for ya

That's short termism for you. I remember that RTE had little or no footage of old Late Late Show clips from the 60's and 70's but the Den was on in the 90's!

Butch Cassidy

BBC were doing this in the 60s I think. They put out similar calls for original Doctor Who episodes. Pretty pathetic that Ireland copied this! Is it technically a breach of copyright to be recording programs? Have TV stations/production companies ever had anything to say about it since the introductionn of VCRs?

mike65

I saw that programme and wondered about the quaility, the RTE "wipe 'em" policy also cropped up on the Soccer forum for those who don't have acesss here is the article that prompted the thread

http://www.rte.ie/sport/soccer/mns/features/conmurphy/

Mike 1972

Given RTE (rightly or wrongly) regarded the Late Late as their flagship show and that it was full of interviews/performances with obvious potential future historical interest the policy was/is madness. As for other programmes It might have been understandable to a degree in the 1960's but hardly in the 1990's when video tape was dirt cheap.

Butch Cassidy wrote: »

Is it technically a breach of copyright to be recording programs?

It is (where this leaves PVR's like Sky plus is anyones guess)

The UK has some 28 day rule (even that is totally unenforcable) but AFaIK there is no such provision in Irish legislation.

cml387

I know that VTR was expensive,but there must be a huge film archive?

Butch Cassidy

Butch Cassidy wrote: »

BBC were doing this in the 60s I think. They put out similar calls for original Doctor Who episodes.

Correct, some Doctor Who episodes only exist in either 525 NTSC colour or 405 black and white as a result.

BrianD

I believe that RTE had to do some major restoration work on the recordings of the Popes visit in '79. Whatever tape (1 inch?) they were using had started to "decompose" (yes very technical) in that the layers were separating.

SPDUB

Mike 1972 wrote: »

Given RTE (rightly or wrongly) regarded the Late Late as their flagship show and that it was full of interviews/performances with obvious potential future historical interest the policy was/is madness. As for other programmes It might have been understandable to a degree in the 1960's but hardly in the 1990's when video tape was dirt cheap..

The same attitude to childrens programmes though still existed in the BBC in the 1990's .

Amazing in 1993 a large selection of programmes like Rentaghost and Jackanory were wiped .The Rentaghost programmes were recovered from copies sent to UK Gold etc but the Jackanory's wasn't so fortunate .

Swap Shop had a fairly full archive until the late 80's when many of the tapes were sold off for reuse in Australia .

More information at this forum
http://www.mausoleumclubforum.org.uk/xmb/viewthread.php?tid=13855&page=1

Digifriendly

Butch Cassidy wrote: »

BBC were doing this in the 60s I think. They put out similar calls for original Doctor Who episodes. Pretty pathetic that Ireland copied this! Is it technically a breach of copyright to be recording programs? Have TV stations/production companies ever had anything to say about it since the introductionn of VCRs?

Are you sure about this? I thought VCRs only came into vogue in the 1970's?

Holybejaysus

Are members of the public allowed to access the RTE archives? How would one go about doing so?

Mike 1972

I doubt it.

Even if they did how many people have a video capable of playing 1 inch open reel tape

BrianD

I think you gain access for academic purposes. You can also request and buy materials from the archive that RTE own the copyright for.

More info here: http://www.rte.ie/laweb/

Elmo

Mid-late-1980s and early-1990s stuff is hard to come by but I think they have some of it on the Back Den DVD. Of course RTÉ just recently got rid of a strong brand, I hear that Viacom are re-branding Nick as Viacom Jr. (Branding what you going ta do???).

It would be interesting to see some of the old stuff, some of the interviews etc.

As for PVRs they have pretty much rapped up Rights issue and yet we didn't even notice. We used to record on VHS and some on DVD (give them to friends). But look what PVR does, it retains the info on top of your TV, and when you run out of space you have to delete something. Unlike the 100 or so VHS tapes that I still don't know what to do with????