Prove to me BetaSP is dead.

[Keith Elphick]

Having just retrurned to take up a new executive production position here with Capital TV, Bangkok, Thailand (from Australia), I was very surprised to see the old Beta SP format being used in archive, send outs ,even the old massive Beta cameras being utilised in the field.

Thus I found the points of view about this subject in this forum very interesting, and obviously there is still much trust (love & loyalty) in converting analogue to digital and back again regardless.

I’m not converted, but I beg the question: If BSP is in such widespread use across such huge markets world wide, for heavens sake why is Sony not continuing a specialist “pro service division” dedicated to this obviously flourishing (and existing)International clientel. Why abandon their faithful & dedicated industry?

Here at Capital there is 15 years of archived Beta Tape (14,000 tapes), and someone suggested I have a look at the first tapes ever stored. I did, and its not good.

I can see an enormous historical resource and financial asset slowly but surely corroding away over the next decade (aircon on..air con off..aircon on etc.)

I say keep the existing library, but pay a few people a few bucks to digitise it to Blue Ray, and store it in another building (just like they told us to at Uni) because if a better storage format pops up over the next 5 to 10 years I’ll bet the Blue Ray copies will transfer cleaner then than Beta SP.

P.S. I’ve been working with some documentary material shot on a Sony DV HD 1080i camera, and I can tell you it’s been a joy to work with and to my eyes and my equipment, it stands head and shoulders in clarity and detail to anything else I’ve seen for TV.

Good forum.

[Rueben Marx]

Hello my name is Rueben. I am in the entertainment business, I run a small film distribution company, and have a library catalog of well over 200 films. (The masters are on Beta SP) and DVCam, that came from 16mm-35mm print.

35mm is whats dead! Anyway long story short. I converted the Beta SP to DVD-R and sell my films on DVDs. Cult classics, folks! lol.
Now I am looking into converting the Beta SP masters to BD-R
masters, for Blu-ray Distribution, if this is possible.

I will say, that I value the beta Masters very much, as I would not have the quality of DVDs today without them.

Ok enough said.

[Saied Marham]

Hi Rueben, cult films! Do you have a link?