[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.