Have the Likely Lads been digitized (or whatever the correct terms is)?

[Guest]

Last night the lady wife and I watched an episode of the DVD of the 1980 BBC adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities. The interiors were extremely murky, with a very narrow spectrum of colour that made the while thing look even gloomier than the prospects of some of the characters. The exteriors were rather better - filmed rather than 'taped'? - but the overall quality not at all satisfactory.
We then switched to BBC4 to watch the first episode of Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? (a very welcome repeat of the 1972 series!), and the pin-sharp definition and brilliance of the colours of the picture led me to wonder whether this series had benefited from a 'digital makeover' from which the Dickens could clearly have benefited.

[Dave2002]

Last night the lady wife and I watched an episode of the DVD of the 1980 BBC adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities. The interiors were extremely murky, with a very narrow spectrum of colour that made the while thing look even gloomier than the prospects of some of the characters. The exteriors were rather better - filmed rather than 'taped'? - but the overall quality not at all satisfactory.
We then switched to BBC4 to watch the first episode of Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? (a very welcome repeat of the 1972 series!), and the pin-sharp definition and brilliance of the colours of the picture led me to wonder whether this series had benefited from a 'digital makeover' from which the Dickens could clearly have benefited.

I don't know enough about this, and I certainly can't say anything about the particular programmes. I have found some DVDs of TV series from yesteryear to have been really rather poor, and I find it hard to believe that they were really so bad. Possibly some were digitised from analogue tapes, and then subject to further processing. I recently watched a DVD of Hitchcock's "Rear Window" and the quality wasn't great, but the extras on the DVD did explain that the original films were degrading, and had to be "rescued" and then enhanced. Maybe that happened to a lot of film, as I think quite a lot of films from the 1950s onwards were really good at the time. It is known, however, that film degrades.

What the situation is for TV programmes I'm not sure. Probably the technology wasn't that good, there may not be many suitable playback machines now whichi will work with the original material (or copies thereof), and also at the time the programmes were produced there was no intention to keep them for posterity.

Not so long ago we watched a DVD of "The Far Pavilions" which dates from the 1980s, and the quality was really bad. I find it hard to believe that was acceptable at the time.

[Bryn]

I don't feel the digitized 'improvements' to the early series of Red Dwarf did them any great favours. I was glad to find VHS versions of the originals in a charity shop some years ago.

[Stillhomewardbound]

We'll probably see a re-run of the situation that came about when the CD arrived and record companies re-issued their back catalogues.

Some took advantage of the new technology to extract all the information that was available on the master tapes, sometimes also working to improve on the balance. A lot of the time though recordings were just being run off the master tapes through a digital desk while the engineer had a cuppa.

That was a very bed show given that a whole new income stream was coming their way based on recordings long since payed for and for the most modest of outlays.

I suspect it will be just the same with digitization of old tv shows. Some great transfers, some terrible.

Recently, I did actually see a digitized version of an old b/w Avengers episode that my dad was in (Death at Bargain Prices, 1965) and the quality was amazing. There was a detail and clarity that would have never been seen before.

Back to that opening episode of 'Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads' ... Wonderful stuff!

[Ian]

I think the Avengers was shot on 35 mm film. A lot of 80's video isn't anywhere near as good as 60s/70s film - which would explain the discrepancy in quality between WHTTLL and ATOTC.

[Ferretfancy]

I think the Avengers was shot on 35 mm film. A lot of 80's video isn't anywhere near as good as 60s/70s film - which would explain the discrepancy in quality between WHTTLL and ATOTC.

During the 70s and 80s, studio based programmes were recorded on 2" Ampex videotape. At the time video was very difficult to edit, and this was nearly always copy editing from one machine to another. As this was all analogue material there was inevitably some loss of quality.At that time nobody knew what the shelf life of the material would be, and it soon became apparent that tapes suffered in storage.

By the end of the 1980s better 3/4" tape formats were introduced, and of course digital technology followed. Some 2' material was copied on to new formats, but a good deal was not archived. I remember being told that there was only one surviving Ampex channel at TV Centre, and this was used for copying, but there would have been lots of stuff which was junked. The BBC were surprisingly cavalier about what was saved for future repeats.

There have been instances where a programme was needed and the only surviving copy was on domestic videotape, maybe A Tale of Two Cities was one such. Of course, even with digital archives it simply isn't possible to retain everything, and we have become accustomed to very high quality. I'm offered appalled when i see the 16mm film quality on earlier programmes that I worked on when they get repeated on channels like Yesterday, The Onedin Line was a recent example.

Until rather late on, the BBC used 16mm for location filming, because they were not selling the product to overseas networks. Commercial companies like Granada shot series on 35mm and did well on the proceeds of their sales abroad. The BBC's charter restrictions stifled quite a lot of enterprise in this respect.

[mercia]

the DVD of the 1980 BBC adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities

have been looking for this online and can only find Dutch imports - was yours an import ? Not that that has anything to do with the quality I suppose. I have a Dutch import of a BBC Pickwick Papers from 1985 with Nigel Stock - the interiors, very obviously in a studio, are not very well lit but the exteriors are fine.

[Northender]

My copy is part of the 12-disc Charles Dickens Collection (BBC DVD 1745) which also comprises The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, Martin Chuzzlewit, David Copperfield, Great Expectations and Our Mutual Friend.
NB: The 2nd and 3rd items on Amazon co.uk. comprise the same adaptations. I paid £30+ at the beginning of 2012 for the set (new) that now costs £65 (new)
Our local charity shops occasionally have Dutch imports of Inspector Dalgliesh.

[Gordon]

I'd endorse what Ferret has said about this problem. Those days used technology that was sometimes flaky - AMPEX quaduplex machines were beasts [they had a vacuum pump attached used to form the tape around the spinning heads!] and did not have good colour rendition - de-saturated - and 16 mm film was readily distinguishable from tape. As Ferret says the editing was tricky and in the early days [1960s] one cut the tape and joined it, just like audio, but sometimes the joins would break - ON air!! Remember EdiView? a compound painted on the tape surface to enable one to see the recorded tracks on it and then slit it with a razor blade!! 35 mm film would be expensive. These machines were superseded by 1" C format which were much better and editing was easier being fully electronic. These were in use from about the late 70s but were themselves superseded by 3/4" Beta machines and digi-Beta during the 80s. Digital video recording was introduced once the standards were set in the early 1980s.

There is also what sources these reissues came from - I would not rule out VHS or Betamax!! Electronic restoration is possible but hard to do because of the expense but could be done for the right material.

BTW one later famous audio character was a member of the AMPEX quadruplex VTR design team in the late 50s - Ray Dolby!!

[Stillhomewardbound]

I believe the Ampex machines were nearly the size of cars and they were located in the basement of TV Centre. That was why the fountain at TVC was never on. It kept leaking into the basement and damaging the machines.

I remembered sitting in the control room for the recording of a drama my dad was working on (with the lovely Julia Foster!) and communication with the Tape Room seemed very clunky. Literally, telephone call by the PA ... Hello TVC3 here. We're ready for the take ... Yes, you're rolling ... [then to the director] ...Rolling ... Director: Action ... [followed by 'Cut']. PA to tape room ok ... Ok, stop recording.

Ian - Yes, you're right about the 35mm. This began in 1965, I see, when US tv bought into the series and they had much bigger budgets to work with. The particular episode I'm referring is based in department set and the sets are virtually to scale, occupying much of a sound stage at Pinewood, I think.

[Gordon]

Yes the quadruplex beasts were large and very heavy, just like a telecine!!

Re 35mm film, one reason other than better quality for its use was that it was a universal standard format needing no standards conversion as electronic TV did. All sorts of strange methods were used for electronic conversion until a digital solution was introduced around 1970. Commercial TV was an early sponsor of the R&D work on bi-directional digital conversion between PAL/SECAM and NTSC.

[Boilk]

Have the Likely Lads been digitized (or whatever the correct terms is)?

The correct term is Has The Likely Lads been digitised? We're presumably talking about the TV series, not the individuals.

I'm watching I, Claudius at the moment and it looks super sharp to me, and was filmed in 1976.

[Stillhomewardbound]

The correct term is Has The Likely Lads been digitis

I'm watching I, Claudius at the moment and it looks super sharp to me, and was filmed in 1976.

Has you lost leave of your senses?! 'I Clavdivs' as we knew it in our family was VIDEOD in 1976, surely.

Anyway, it's still blooming marvellous!

[Ferretfancy]

Has you lost leave of your senses?! 'I Clavdivs' as we knew it in our family was VIDEOD in 1976, surely.

Anyway, it's still blooming marvellous!

I usually watched it in the company of a botanist friend who used to enjoy spotting all the anachronisms supplied by Rent-a -Shrub, along with the impossible foodstuffs on the menu.Good though it was, it would have benefited by a few location film sequences to open it out, but perhaps the claustrophobic feel was intentional.