At Greatbear we have many, many machines. A small selection of our analogue video players, CRT monitors, cameras, cables and tapes recently found work as props (both functional and decorative) in the BBC documentary “Kill Your TV: Jim Moir’s Weird World of Video Art”, on BBC iPlayer here. From the BBC website: “Jim Moir, aka Vic… Continue reading Video Art & Machine Obsolescence
Tag: machine obsolescence
VHS – more obsolescence threats
We couldn’t let the news that ‘Japan’s Funai Electric has announced it will end production of home videocassette recorders in July’ go by unnoticed.
VHS – Re-appraising Obsolescence
VHS was a hugely successful video format from the late 1970s to early 2000s. It was adopted widely in domestic and professional contexts. Due to its familiarity and apparent ubiquity you might imagine it is easy to preserve VHS. Well, think again. VHS is generally considered to be a low preservation risk because playback equipment… Continue reading VHS – Re-appraising Obsolescence
SONY’s U-matic video cassette
U-matic made video cassette a core part of many industries. Flexible and functional, its popularity endured until the 1990s.
At Greatbear, we have a significant suite of working NTSC/ PAL/ SECAM U-matic machines and spare parts.
1″ Type A Video Tape – The Old Grey Whistle Test
Sometimes genuine rarities turn up at the Greatbear studio. Our recent acquisition of four reels of ‘missing, believed wiped’ test recordings of cult BBC TV show The Old Grey Whistle Test is one such example. It is not only the content of these recordings that are interesting, but their form too, because they were made… Continue reading 1″ Type A Video Tape – The Old Grey Whistle Test
1/2″ EIAJ video tape – aesthetic glitches
The screening of Julien Temple‘s new film The Clash: New Year’s Day 1977 at New Year put the spotlight on a video format dear to our hearts. Parts of the film were taken from footage shot on EIAJ 1/2″ video tape while Temple was at film school. EIAJ, whose hey day was the late 1960s to late 1970s, was the… Continue reading 1/2″ EIAJ video tape – aesthetic glitches
Future tape archaeology: speculations on the emulation of analogue environments
At the recent Keeping Tracks symposium held at the British Library, AV scoping analyst Adam Tovell stated that ‘there is consensus internationally that we as archivists have a 10-20 year window of opportunity in which to migrate the content of our physical sound collections to stable digital files. After the end of this 10-20 year… Continue reading Future tape archaeology: speculations on the emulation of analogue environments
Repairing obsolete media – remembering how to fix things
A recent news report on the BBC website about recycling and repairing ‘old’ technology resonates strongly with the work of Greatbear. The story focused on the work of Restart Project, a charity organisation who are encouraging positive behavioural change by empowering people to use their electronics for longer. Their website states, the time has come… Continue reading Repairing obsolete media – remembering how to fix things
Collection of obsolete of audio and video tape machines for digitisation
Over a several years, Greatbear has been collecting and restoring old audio and video tape machines. By trawling through the online car boot sale that is ebay, or travelling round the country to visit real ones, the collection has built up over time and now constitutes over seventy working machines and forty other machines that… Continue reading Collection of obsolete of audio and video tape machines for digitisation
video tape obsolescence – spares supplies disappearing
Greatbear protects tape-based analogue and digital media from the wave of obsolescence faced by these formats. The speed of technological change in the 20th and 21st centuries has been, and continues to be, breathtaking. Consider the amount of tapes and machines that have been made since the invention of magnetic recording tape by Valdemar Poulson… Continue reading video tape obsolescence – spares supplies disappearing
broken DAT / degraded mouldy tape
Early tape based digital formats such as DAT, Tascam DTRS and ADAT, etc are often problematic now, partly with tape issues and also reliability and spares availability. In 20 or even 10 years time these machines will be much less serviceable than the analogue tape machines of the previous generation and as a result more… Continue reading broken DAT / degraded mouldy tape
how to transfer video to dvd
So how do you do it? Contact us, of course! No seriously, how to transfer video to dvd or any other digital format is a very simple concept but the reality can be pretty complex. As with much mature technology, the domestic video formats and machines were often made pretty straightforward to use and hid much of… Continue reading how to transfer video to dvd
Sony PCM 7030 DAT repair
We have several of these large, wonderful machines. It’s not often we need or want to get involved in DAT machine repair as generally they are not easy to service machines and many key transport parts are becoming unavailable. The Sony 7030 DAT though has been designed with easy servicing in mind. There’s alot of… Continue reading Sony PCM 7030 DAT repair