About 200 VHS tapes of stuff recorded off the TV between late 80s - early 2000s

[Bhazor]

Yes, I'm one of them. No, I'm not saying which one.

Are you the one who looks like a total nobbo? Bet you are mate.

[Alberon]

Are you the one who looks like a total nobbo? Bet you are mate.

Yes, that's the one.

I'm the gimboid in the white long sleeve shirt and jeans on the central bit that girl walks past (story of my life). I wasn't actually looking for a comic, I was just trying to act natural as I saw the camera panning around the shop. I just want to be on TV.

[Alberon]

Re-upload of an old compilation of UK Gold adverts circa 1993, which you may be fascinated to learn took place between an omnibus showing of the Dr Who serial "Colony In Space".

Part 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xK8VVjsgFkg

Part 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=933CwnzW_Cc

That 'Topsy Tail' in the second one is phenomenal! It's got everything, trying to sell you a loop on a handle for over £20, some truly appalling hairstyles - that woman with shoulder length hair should sue for emotional distress over being forced to have that 'style' - the husband 'noticing' his wife's topsy tail and the British voiceover tacked on the end from whatever moron bought the licence to sell it over here.

Pure gold.

[mothman]

Still working my way through the second part, but there are several in there I remember. Whereas the first part, nope, no bells rung at all.

[non capisco]

Part 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=933CwnzW_Cc

Despite watching TV incessantly in 1993 as a depressed acne-stricken adolescent with no social life I can't remember ever seeing an advert for a balloon toy named after a nineteenth century French novelist, presumably just so they could get away with it sounding like they're saying "ball sac".

[Replies From View]

Despite watching TV incessantly in 1993 as a depressed acne-stricken adolescent with no social life I can't remember ever seeing an advert for a balloon toy named after a nineteenth century French novelist, presumably just so they could get away with it sounding like they're saying "ball sac".

I actually had a Balzac, though I didn't twig at the time that it sounded like "ball sack".  I'm not sure if I remember that exact advert, but the concerted effort of a child trying to burst it by sitting on it and straining does ring a bell.

My recollection about Balzac is that it was too light and floaty to be a satisfying ball.  The 1990s patterns on the fabric bring back some nice memories of the era though.

[Alberon]

Here's a 90 minute fantasy TV film called Angels broadcast on ITV back in 1992. I've not seen it up anywhere else or on sale anywhere.

It was probably made as a pilot, but no series resulted. The film has some names who would later go on to greater success, such as James Purfoy and Alfred Molina, but it stars Tom Bell, Cathy Tyson and Eric Mallett (the last of which certainly acts like he's the brother of Timmy, but I've no idea if he is) as the three angels.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djhLlz_RbTY

[Phil_A]

Some more recently captured odds and sods:

A BBC2 Junction from 1994 - the end of Newsnight going into a repeat of Newman & Baddiel In Pieces.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yy_4mKWjNc

A closedown from a few years later (1997 possibly?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5Fr7A2H-tY

More ads and continuity from a Thursday night on Channel 4 in 1997. Including a trail for TFI Friday and another for a documentary profile of Tricky, pretty much as late nineties as you can get.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-DiF88aky4

[Delete Delete Delete]

I'd forgotten That Spice Girls did an exclusive track for Pepsi.

[mothman]

Funny thing, I was probably recording that episode of Babylon 5 too... but pausing for the commercials, to make more room on the tape...

[Bhazor]

I'd forgotten That Spice Girls did an exclusive track for Pepsi.

They've gone up in the world, nowadays they'd do it for a hot meal.

[Alberon]

I found the whole Omnibus documentary of that clip I uploaded a few days ago. So here from 1990 is Omnibus: The Return of the Green Man

https://youtu.be/K7kR-_iTRUw

[Alberon]

William Gibson on some BBC 2 arts show from probably 1991. They mention his new book 'The Difference Engine' that was released that year. Also appearing in this segment is the book's co-author Bruce Sterling, Timothy Leary and some laughable fashion designer with the name Angel Biotech.

https://youtu.be/sMo_j3OVQYo

[Alberon]

Got back to uploading some old bits and pieces. Here's a half hour Channel 4 documentary from 1988 about SF writer Anne McCaffrey which was part of a series called Women Writers.

If that doesn't interest you there's a few adverts and some C4 continuity before hand.

https://youtu.be/3nccCT0WJT4

[Mobbd]

Whatever happened to your 400 black spines, @Replies From View ?

Did you continue to digitise them? And if you did, did you smash up the old tapes and chuck 'em or did you just end up with two copies of everything - a tape copy and a digi copy?

Or did @Mr_Simnock ever drive to Bath and take them all away?

# Necromancers want the answers. #

[Replies From View]

Hi; I was thinking about this recently.

The answer is that I had ambitions to digitise them all myself, but have found it quite arduous because I couldn't just leave them transferring and then return to watch the digitised delights - I would discover that the audio would be inexplicably tinny and need to do it multiple times until one of the playbacks felt worth archiving.  I don't know why this should have been the case; maybe the VCR itself is just knackered.

It all became a lot less exciting a process than I was hoping, involving endless opening up of the VCR, repeatedly cleaning the tape heads, just to try to keep the process as clean as possible.  Plus needing to take batches of tapes back and forth between London and Bath when I visited my parents, using rucksacks etc, it was just a pain in the end and I haven't digitised any tapes at all I think in a couple of years.

But I still have the tapes, and wonder if anyone would like to take them and make sure the job is done (this is why I was thinking of reviving this thread).  It may as well be done from scratch so it's kind of irrelevant what I have already digitised.

@Mr_Simnock if you'd still be up for this please let me know.  I can't promise that there is anything incredibly interesting on them, but it feels very wrong to just throw them away (which may nevertheless be what needs to happen one day, if truth be told, as my parents won't live forever, and as someone doomed to rent forever I can't store 400 tapes indefinitely.  But if it had only been up to my dad and everyone else in my family, they would have been chucked years ago).

[Mobbd]

Hi; I was thinking about this recently.

The answer is that I had ambitions to digitise them all myself, but have found it quite arduous because I couldn't just leave them transferring and then return to watch the digitised delights - I would discover that the audio would be inexplicably tinny and need to do it multiple times until one of the playbacks felt worth archiving.  I don't know why this should have been the case; maybe the VCR itself is just knackered.

It all became a lot less exciting a process than I was hoping, involving endless opening up of the VCR, repeatedly cleaning the tape heads, just to try to keep the process as clean as possible.  Plus needing to take batches of tapes back and forth between London and Bath when I visited my parents, using rucksacks etc, it was just a pain in the end and I haven't digitised any tapes at all I think in a couple of years.

But I still have the tapes, and wonder if anyone would like to take them and make sure the job is done (this is why I was thinking of reviving this thread).  It may as well be done from scratch so it's kind of irrelevant what I have already digitised.

@Mr_Simnock if you'd still be up for this please let me know.  I can't promise that there is anything incredibly interesting on them, but it feels very wrong to just throw them away (which may nevertheless be what needs to happen one day, if truth be told, as my parents won't live forever, and as someone doomed to rent forever I can't store 400 tapes indefinitely.  But if it had only been up to my dad and everyone else in my family, they would have been chucked years ago).

Your original idea of trying to find someone with the time/resources/expertise to do it was the best approach. It's a real shame that you never found anyone.

Come on CaB, there must be some professional or hobby VHS archivists among you?!

Or does anyone have some solid recommendations of YouTubers currently doing this sort of work?

[touchingcloth]

I haven't read the full thread (unless I have and made this exact same comment five years ago, boring senile fuck that I am), but have you thought about contacting the archivists at BBC Bristol? They might be interested in taking the tapes off you, but would keep them stashed away privately rather than making the digitisations public.

[Spudgun]

Come on CaB, there must be some professional or hobby VHS archivists among you?!

<Raises hand sheepishly> I started capturing my own VHS tapes during lockdown, which then grew into my parents' and other friends' and family members' old tapes as well, and now I'm about 300 tapes in with another 50-odd to go. It's painful to read this thread because I feel exactly the same about preserving recordings, especially anything potentially unique, and I just wish I had the time and resources to do the project justice.

@Replies From View - Have you thought about splitting the job? i.e. If the handful of us on CaB with the capabilities took 10-20 tapes here and there, maybe the job would get done quicker and properly, rather than one individual receiving an overwhelmingly massive pile of tapes and not knowing where to start. I might be up for that.

[Rich Uncle Skeleton]

yeah i'm up for taking a few off your hands some time as long as I'm not going to be digitising an old episode of Dalziel and Pascoe and it suddenly cuts to your parents fucking in the living room.

[Mobbd]

yeah i'm up for taking a few off your hands some time as long as I'm not going to be digitising an old episode of Dalziel and Pascoe and it suddenly cuts to your parents fucking in the living room.

That's the fun of a blackspine!

[pk1yen]

I'd probably be up for taking some too.

I actually bought a box of cheap unmarked tapes from eBay during lockdown as a fun project. (First one had a lovely grainy episode of Bump the Elephant, and another had an episode of WWF with a slightly grim Chris Benoit match.) And then found myself with a box of a hundred or so from someone else who was chucking them out. And then found some more at my wife's gran's house the other week.

Also dug around in my parents loft and found my old primary school play tapes, which I've digitised safely (to far less applause from people from primary school I still have on Facebook than I was expecting, to be honest).

I'm really far behind with digitising the ones I've got, but this thread has inspired me to get back to it. So once I've got the VHS player back up, yeah I'd probably take some at some point.

[touchingcloth]

I'd probably be up for taking some too.

I bet you fucking would.

[Replies From View]

Thanks everyone.  This could be the way forward.  If you are genuinely interested in taking some tapes, could you send me messages please?

Ideally, I would be able to give you tapes while I am visiting my parents in Bath, or I could bring some tapes to London in batches if that's a better place.  Let me know if either of those locations is within good enough reach.  Potentially I could leave some tapes with my older brother who lives in Swindon, if that suits you better, but it would require more coordination and his involvement which I would rather not need to call upon.

[Replies From View]

Again, I stress that the treasure trove nature of this may be minimal, as my Dad had a nasty habit in the early 2000s of wiping over stuff that I had recorded, using tapes bought with my own money, with stuff he wanted to watch like episodes of Grand Designs.

So for example I had a job interview on the day of September 11th 2001, and when I came back a friend phoned me up and asked if I was watching the news.  When I saw what was going on I shoved a new 4 hour tape in and recorded the news solidly until the tape ran out.

I never labelled the tape (I didn't think I'd need to as it was MY TAPE) so there's a high probability my dad wiped over it with Ground Force or Changing Rooms because he could never give less of a fuck about these tapes that were MY TAPES.

However it's possible it's still there somewhere.

On the other hand, who's to say that stuff recorded by my Dad in the early 2000s isn't now interesting by itself?  It's 20 years ago now.

[Replies From View]

If I am honest, I am still aggrieved that Victoria Wood reading Matilda, complete with Andy Crane's CBBC intros, was wiped over with Steel Magnolias.  It might not exist anywhere else.

I remember finding it and watching it again before it was too late, and thinking I should pull off the record tab thing so Dad would think twice about using the tape, but I never did.

Months later my little brother discovered it within the cupboard as what it was labelled as:  Superman III.  He watched Superman III and then typically for him, because he's not obsessive and neurodiverse in the ways I am, he didn't put the tape away in the cupboard, leaving it out for my Dad to discover and use.

"I found Superman III by the way," he reported gleefully that week, as if it wasn't a tape I knew about and had secretly been keeping tucked away to digitise one day.

I should have removed the tab thing!

[Replies From View]

Also if anyone has some thoughts about where the files could be stored please let me know.  I'm mindful that copyright issues could make video streaming sites problematic.

[Famous Mortimer]

Myspleen (torrent site) has lots of people sharing this sort of thing, so you could share them there.

[Mobbd]

Also if anyone has some thoughts about where the files could be stored please let me know.  I'm mindful that copyright issues could make video streaming sites problematic.

Does anyone know if the YouTube sentinels seize your goods if they're unlisted?

[Replies From View]

Myspleen (torrent site) has lots of people sharing this sort of thing, so you could share them there.

I'd love them to sit reliably in a single recognised location if it can work that way.  Maybe all of the black spines we've all managed to accrue over time could sit in the same place.  Whereas torrents - a) have never worked well with me and b) always feel a bit ephemeral and things seem to disappear from them all the time, with people unable to rediscover files that they once obtained via torrents.