October 20, 2024 09:00 Memo
Many TV programs broadcast in the past have lost their master tapes due to tape reuse due to limited budgets, making archiving difficult. James O’Malley, a British journalist who owns approximately 2,000 VHS tapes of subtitled television broadcasts distributed from the late 1990s to the early 2000s, is appealing to someone who can archive the contents.
I have 2000 old VHS tapes in my garage and I don’t know what to do with them
https://takes.jamesomalley.co.uk/p/my-vhs-nightmare
The British public broadcaster, the BBC, launched the world’s first teletext broadcast, C-Fax, in 1974. Teletext broadcasting was a subtitled broadcast aimed at the hearing impaired and speakers of minority languages, in which only text was displayed on the television screen.
Before the advent of the Internet, the main news media were newspapers, television, and radio. However, because newspapers were only published once or twice a day, they were not very breaking news, and TV and radio broadcasts followed predetermined programs, making it difficult to handle breaking news. However, since teletext broadcasting is updated many times a day, it seems to have become the most breaking news medium.
However, almost no data from these teletext broadcasts was saved. Even the BBC, which is a public broadcaster, only preserves the most popular news and representative programs, and it seems that most of them do not survive, which O’Malley calls “an act of cultural vandalism.” Masu.
In 2011, programmer Alistair Buxton discovered an old VHS tape in his attic. Normally, even if a recorded VHS tape was played back on a device compatible with teletext broadcasting, it was not possible to watch the teletext broadcasts that were distributed at the time.
However, it was discovered that teletext broadcasting signals were hidden in the data recorded on the VHS tape. Therefore, Mr. Buxton developed a program to extract teletext broadcast data from the recorded data compressed and saved on VHS tape, and succeeded in restoring the teletext broadcast. The source code of the program coded by Mr. Buxton is published on GitHub.
GitHub – ali1234/vhs-teletext: Software to recover teletext data from VHS recordings.
https://github.com/ali1234/vhs-teletext
Below is the screen of the teletext broadcast actually restored from Mr. Buxton’s tape. News from December 1998 that Mexico expelled the Cuban ambassador because Cuban President Fidel Castro said, “Mickey Mouse is probably more famous to children than Mexican historical figures.” is displayed at the top.
In addition, the teletext broadcasts included not only news, but also magazine-like contents such as a writing corner and game strategy information as shown below. “The Digitiser,” which was distributed by teletext broadcast, was content aimed at young people, and was gradually expanded by viewers at the time using a program developed by Mr. Buxton.archiveIt has been.
The 2,000 VHS tapes held by Mr. O’Malley were discovered by a friend of Mr. O’Malley, and are said to contain recordings of television programs broadcast from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s. The original owner apparently recorded it for a neighbor, and when he got older and wanted to dispose of the tape, a friend of Mr. O’Malley took it over.
When Mr. O’Malley heard from a friend that he had acquired a large collection of VHS tapes, he thought, “Here lies a teletext gold mine.” So, Mr. O’Malley seems to have taken over all the VHS tapes from his friend and stored them in his home garage.
Mr. O’Malley said that he salvaged recorded programs and teletext broadcasts for half a year, but he was able to process only 40 programs during that time. After that, he became so busy with work that he couldn’t do anything about it. “When I see the unprocessed tapes piling up in my office, I get sick to my stomach with anxiety.The reason I don’t do anything is… It’s disrespectful to the pioneers.”
There are apparently about 30 cardboard boxes of VHS tapes, and O’Malley said, “If someone would be willing to receive these tapes and preserve them, or someone who could do the work of preserving the teletext broadcast data and video recordings,” O’Malley said. If you know, please contact me.”
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