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BBC, ITV, C4, C5 etc saving old programmes?
Bowdon:
I was thinking yesterday of how many old programmes are eventually brought out on DVD, or even on the netflix, amazon type services.
I'm a bit of a collector of older British comedies, mostly of the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s eras.
One problem I've noticed is when I've watched a comedy with a good actor in, I tend to look for other programmes they are in. But sometimes the programmes were either wiped by the TV channel or there are only 1 or 2 episodes i.e. its an incomplete series (similar thing happens with old radio series too).
So I was thinking really TV channels these days should be trying to archive in storage drives as many programmes as they can do for future generations.
But then it got me thinking how big the drives would have to be. I think the channels used to store them on tapes that kept getting wiped and over written. But storage drives will be able to hold a lot more data. But then we probably produce more programmes. I'm assuming they are storing programmes these days. But what do they use now they don't use tapes? How big would the drives have to be? How big is the biggest hard drive?
I wonder one day if all the programmes could be moved on to hard drives and maybe for an extra fee the achieve could be opened up and we could watch all programmes ever made :)
jelv:
I heard a trailer of a radio dramatisation of The Citadel this morning which reminded me of the absolutely excellent BBC production starring Ben Cross which was broadcast in 1983. It was broadcast as 10 50 minute episodes. Can you imagine anything to day being given that treatment? It would be cut back to around four episodes or two two hour episodes.
A bit before that in 1980 the BBC broadcast To Serve Them All My Days starring John Duttine, Frank Middlemas, Susan Jameson (James Bolan's wife - she was in New Tricks) and a very young Nicholas Lyndhurst. That was 13 50 minute episodes. Absolutely gripping to the end.
Both of those would easily stand reshowing.
jelv:
I've just looked and both are available on YouTube - but the quality is pretty poor!
Ronski:
Largest hard drive I know of is 16TB, but that article is over a year old.
https://hddmag.com/top-x-largest-hard-drives/
Actually six months ago they did a 30TB SSD, hate to think what the cost of that is.
https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/2/20/17031256/worlds-largest-ssd-drive-samsung-30-terabyte-pm1643
With the advent of H265 you can get a 2 hour Blu Ray down about 3GB + Audio, without affecting the quality, possibly smaller. With a couple of audio tracks that ends up around 8 to 10 GB
Old style TV programmes will take up hardly any space in comparison.
phi2008:
You can read about the BBC archive here -
--- Quote ---
BBC digital storage requirements (uncompressed):
• Preservation:
– 1500 video items / 800 hours/week = 80 TB per week
– For 16 years to digitise whole archive
– 65 PetaBytes
• New content:
– 300 hours/week = 30 TB per week
– moving to 120 TB/week with move to HD
– 100 PetaBytes (in 16 years time)
• Total storage needed in 2026:
– 165 PetaBytes (one copy only) (Data tape cost £5.8M)
– 330 PetaBytes (two copies) (£11.6M)
--- End quote ---
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