[HN Gopher] Fun Fact: I own porn I can't watch
___________________________________________________________________
Fun Fact: I own porn I can't watch
Author : pzb
Score : 341 points
Date : 2023-02-02 16:37 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (foone.tumblr.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (foone.tumblr.com)
| pessimizer wrote:
| Aside from the great technical trivia, it looks like the late
| Mike Vraney at SWV found this movie and saved it:
|
| https://www.somethingweird.com/product_info.php?products_id=...
|
| https://www.iafd.com/title.rme/title=adultery+for+fun+and+pr...
|
| http://distribpix.com/blog/adultery-fun-and-profit-1971
| capableweb wrote:
| The content was interesting, regardless of foone's opinion of HN.
| Here is an archive of the original content:
| https://archive.is/I00Gh
| graton wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20230202165438/https://foone.tum...
| krupan wrote:
| Too bad about the click bait title (I almost skipped reading
| because of it, but then I saw it was Foone), this is a great
| history lesson on technology and copyright stupidity!
| thiht wrote:
| I clicked because of the title! I expected something like a
| legal oddity, but wasn't disappointed, this is way better!
| Animats wrote:
| I came across a Cartrivision rewinder in a surplus store once. It
| was a simple device, with a motor, some limit switches, a key
| switch, and a counter. The counter tracked how many cartridges
| had been rewound, for billing purposes.
|
| Other bad ideas of that era: Polaroid once developed a VHS
| cartridge with a mechanical counter of how many times it had been
| played. After some number of plays, the tape jammed.
| betamaxthetape wrote:
| Do you have any more information on this? It sounds really
| interesting, and I'd love to learn more!
| Animats wrote:
| The play counter? Lots of patents in the 1980s. 3M, IBM, CBS,
| Polaroid. Dead end commercially.
|
| [1] https://patents.google.com/patent/US4586101A/en
| betamaxthetape wrote:
| Interesting. But was it ever developed commercially? I
| can't find any consumer products actually using the counter
| (either for rental or for lock/jam-after-certain-plays).
| But that could just be because I'm using the wrong search
| term - I imagine that there is a brand-specific term and
| searching "VHS tape play counter" isn't helpful since all
| the results are for either repairing VCRs, or for accessing
| the tape counter functionality in the VCR.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| > So DuArt Media Services got to work trying to rescue the tape .
| . . . DuArt then made a documentary about this, called "Lost and
| Found: The '73 Knicks Championship Tape". It won an Emmy. The
| punchline? That documentary seems to be lost.
|
| I'm just speechless.
| ly3xqhl8g9 wrote:
| ABC Britain made this probably amazing anthology series in 1962
| called _Out of This World_ [1].
|
| I say probably because out of the 14 episodes made the only one
| left today is episode 3, _Little Lost Robot_ [2], the first
| adaptation of Isaac Asimov 's _I, Robot_. The reason we don 't
| have the other episodes? Apparently ABC had this practice of
| wiping the tapes after the episodes aired. What could they have
| been possibly thinking.
|
| So many treasure troves, art and otherwise, have been lost to
| carelessness; perhaps with the new found generatively
| hallucinatory powers of statistical learning we could see some
| restorative trend, a retro-magination, based on extant
| leftovers. Perhaps Aristotle did write a treatise on Comedy
| after all [3].
|
| [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0163475/?ref_=fn_al_tt_4
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out_of_This_World_(British_TV_...
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-RX1GT4GT0
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Name_of_the_Rose#:~:text=
| T....
| jcranmer wrote:
| > Apparently ABC had this practice of wiping the tapes after
| the episodes aired. What could they have been possibly
| thinking.
|
| Maintaining archives of material is actually a pretty complex
| and expensive process, especially when we're talking about
| physical analog media (that is sometimes literally a ticking
| time bomb, as is the case with old cellulose film stock).
| Also, such media is expensive to acquire, so reusing them
| wherever possible is useful to keep costs down.
|
| Combine this with the fact that the _value_ of such
| preservation is often not apparent. Reruns of old material
| don 't provide a lot of value--especially in an era where
| there are very few available channels--and there's no
| practical means for making copies of them to even interested
| buyers, at least in any sort of economical way (see above
| about cost of media). It's not until around 1980 or so that
| the home video market is a viable way to make money on old
| productions, and it's around that time that the wiping of old
| broadcasts was stopped as a regular practice.
| ly3xqhl8g9 wrote:
| "Maintaining archives of material is actually a pretty
| complex"
|
| Sure, but the tapes had Boris Karloff himself as host, you
| can't just wipe a tape with Karloff in the 60s [1] and
| think "eh, probably no one will ever want to watch this
| again".
|
| It's just a point how awfully relative everything is. What
| if Max Brod actually listened to Franz Kafka and burned all
| his texts. How much we miss because Nikolai Gogol did
| actually burn the second volume to his _Dead Souls_.
|
| [1] "Boris Karloff was awarded two stars on the Hollywood
| Walk of Fame on 8 February 1960",
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Karloff
| pessimizer wrote:
| The loss of the DuMont archives adds to our extremely
| distorted idea of the entire celebrity environment of the
| past. Some of the biggest entertainers have had their entire
| careers lost, notably Ernie Kovacs:
| https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/dumont-network-
| gleason...
|
| > In the early 70's the DuMont network was being bought by
| another company and the lawyers were in heavy negotiation as
| to who ould be responsible for the library of DuMont shows
| currently being stored in the facility - who would bear the
| expense of storing them in a temperature controlled facility,
| take care of copyright renewal, etc..
|
| > One of the lawyers said he would "take care of it in a fair
| manner..." He took care of it all right...
|
| > At 2am the next morning he had 3 huge semis back up to the
| loding dock at ABC, filled them with all the stored
| kinescopes and 2" videotape, drove them to a waiting barge in
| n New Jersey, took them out on the water, made a right at the
| Statue of Liberty and dumped them in Upper New York Bay. Very
| neat... no problem!
|
| - Edie Adams, comedian, entertainer, and wife of Ernie
| Kovacs.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20081208112200/http://www.loc.go.
| ..
|
| _Edie Adams' son explains why her late husband Ernie Kovacs
| is seemingly forgotten in Hollywood_
|
| https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/edie-adams-ernie-
| kovac...
| funwares wrote:
| The IMDb page for the film [0] does appear to have an Emmy win
| as trivia, but I can't find anything about this documentary on
| the 2013 Sports Emmy Awards Wikipedia page [1] or its source
| [2].
|
| It is not listed as 'Outstanding Sports Documentary' winner or
| even as nominee. Same for the 2014 Sports Emmy Awards.
|
| [0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2883206/
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/34th_Sports_Emmy_Awards
|
| [2]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20131118154841/http://www.emmyon...
| zerocrates wrote:
| This was aired on MSG Network, a local network for New York
| sports, so I figured it was probably a local Emmy (like when
| your local news talks about winning some large number of
| Emmys).
|
| Indeed, that documentary won in the "Sports: Documentary"
| category in the 2014 New York Emmys ceremony.
|
| See this list of the winners (note: PDF): https://www.nyemmys
| .org/media/files/files/7c2ad17b/57th_NY_E...
| yellowapple wrote:
| Are there local versions of the Grammys, Oscars, and Tonys,
| too? Maybe an EGOT ain't as out of reach as I once thought.
| [deleted]
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| Imdb can be quite innaccurate; an ex colleague of mine is
| listed as some minor production staff in one of the Star Wars
| movies, but he never was involved whatsoever. He told me but
| I can't remember how he got listed.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| foone wrote:
| [flagged]
| colonwqbang wrote:
| Why don't you want people to link to your site?
| vippy wrote:
| Any reason in particular that you post things publicly you
| wouldn't want linked here on HN?
| chrononaut wrote:
| They have a Twitter thread on that topic here:
| https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1440375176604966924?s=20
| dtx1 wrote:
| [flagged]
| SteveNuts wrote:
| Why? If you post something publicly what's the difference if 10
| people see it, 1,000 people see it, or no one sees it?
| BizarreByte wrote:
| Childish and pathetic. You posted something publicly, man up
| and deal with people linking it from other places or don't post
| at all.
| standardUser wrote:
| This is incredibly fascinating. The one thing I don't get is how
| the Cartrivision was used to record off of TV. Was it a built-in
| feature? Did they sell blanks? Or maybe it was some kind of hack?
|
| EDIT: According to Wikipedia they did have a built-in record
| feature and the Wiki page even shows an image of a blank tape.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartrivision
| jayd16 wrote:
| You can just record over used magnetic tape, no? You don't
| necessarily need blanks.
| Finnucane wrote:
| But the player has to have the record function. Did it allow
| for that or did someone mod the hardware?
| getoffmyyawn wrote:
| I was surprised to find that there is at least one working
| Cartrivision system out there[0] and the host of the video says
| to contact him if you have one you want fixed!
|
| 0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcpouZiZ4UE
| spiritplumber wrote:
| foone should be followed on the birdsite as well, it's worth the
| time.
| jml7c5 wrote:
| Foone stopped posting on Twitter shortly after Musk bought it.
| They're over on Mastodon now: https://digipres.club/@foone
| amelius wrote:
| And I can't watch it on my Oculus Quest, because Zuck is watching
| over my shoulders ...
| [deleted]
| s5300 wrote:
| [flagged]
| apocalypstyx wrote:
| [flagged]
| FredPret wrote:
| [flagged]
| apocalypstyx wrote:
| [flagged]
| FredPret wrote:
| Seems like both sides want that
| apocalypstyx wrote:
| Oh, a both-sideser.
|
| Well, if that's the case, you really shouldn't care. It
| should be as easy for you to be one as the other, yet
| those who invoke 'both sides' really only ever seem to be
| favoring one side.
| jchw wrote:
| I am not staff in any way, but in the spirit of the community,
| I would just like to point out the relevant guideline here.
|
| > Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If
| a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. Don't feed egregious
| comments by replying; flag them instead. If you flag, please
| don't also comment that you did.
|
| The correct course of action if the article is inappropriate is
| to flag it. Same for transphobic comments.
|
| > The internet respects nothing, but if respect were to be a
| thing, repeatedly posting Foone for your guaranteed upvotes
| probably merits you a lack of respect.
|
| Just FWIW, as far as I can see, this is the very first time OP
| has posted content from foone. I assume they were oblivious.
|
| This is a complicated problem for a news aggregator, but it
| won't be solved in this thread. Making off-topic comments is
| just going to fuel the flamewar I think.
| s5300 wrote:
| >> I am not staff in any way, but in the spirit of the
| community, I would just like to point out the relevant
| guideline here.
|
| > Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate.
| If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. Don't feed
| egregious comments by replying; flag them instead. If you
| flag, please don't also comment that you did. The correct
| course of action if the article is inappropriate is to flag
| it. Same for transphobic comments.
|
| Transphobia leads to the suicide & murder of highly oppressed
| people, so I'm going to choose to continuously break this
| rule whenever it needs to be mentioned. For doing so,
| moderation can ban me if they please
| trononono wrote:
| [flagged]
| jchw wrote:
| I should keep my mouth shut but... I am genuinely very
| curious: Can you please explain how this sort of conduct is
| supposed to help reduce transphobia and the associated
| suicides/murders? I don't follow at all.
| implements wrote:
| Promoting a belief that people are born with gendered
| brains causes (and has caused throughout history) far
| more harm (in the utilitarian sense of: negative
| discrimination x females affected) than 'transphobia'
| (which I'm taking to mean simple principled disbelief in
| innate gender identity and rejection of socially
| constructed gender of as a primary basis for personal
| identity).
| jchw wrote:
| I really wasn't intending to start a general discussion,
| I genuinely just wanted to understand what one might hope
| to accomplish by making off-topic comments, vs the
| prescribed course of action (flagging the article,
| contacting HN moderation via email, etc.)
|
| If HN staff doesn't want to prohibit links even at the
| author's request, I don't see what can be done here. It's
| a link to a publicly available resource. But I figure
| making comments like these just stokes the flames, like
| it evidently is right now. Seems these divisive and
| irrelevant conversations are more likely to promote
| hatred than to prevent it.
|
| Unfortunately I've contributed by replying in the first
| place.
|
| My bad.
| implements wrote:
| > I really wasn't intending to start a general
| discussion, I genuinely just wanted to understand what
| one might hope to accomplish by making off-topic
| comments, vs the prescribed course of action (flagging
| the article, contacting HN moderation via email, etc.)
|
| Some topics seem to cause some people psychological
| distress if they can't explicitly repudiate the opposing
| worldview when encountered.
|
| [Honest disclosure] My bad, too - couldn't not
| counterpoint my own gender critical beliefs in response
| to your OP's implied position.
| s5300 wrote:
| Sometimes
|
| When people learn that those whose work/passions they
| find interesting absolutely despise them & their
| ideologies
|
| Something clicks in their head. "Why does somebody who
| leads such a cool life/does cool things not like me/my
| views?"
|
| In this case, we're talking about transphobia. If one
| person who's transphobic goes on to find out that Foone,
| who does cool/interesting enough things that they
| regularly make it to the front page of HN, is trans -
| they may finally realize "maybe I'm the bad guy" & change
| for the better.
|
| This, in theory, leads to less hatred of trans people-
| which, in theory, leads to less trans suicides/murders.
|
| This probably wasn't the explanation you were after, nor
| is it amazingly well articulated, but it's all I can
| offer you in this instance.
|
| Not going to reply to anything past this in the thread as
| a whole - I have posted what I wanted and spent my karma.
| jchw wrote:
| If this was the point you were trying to make, then I
| would agree. And frankly, I truly believe the vast
| majority of HN users are not hateful despite that it is
| clear there is an increasing perception that it is.
| Usually when I flag obvious transphobia and hatred, it is
| already downvoted to the minimum score. I would hope
| anyone here would view suicide of any kind as a
| preventable tragedy. We've seen it happen here before
| plenty of times to people I'd like to think were highly
| respected by HN.
|
| Personally I would not take the karma hit too seriously.
| Like any community with voting, the votes are ascribed
| more meaning than deserved. People vote mostly out of
| irrational emotion.
|
| I will close with this: if this was the point you were
| making I hope you can understand why I didn't get it. The
| first post seems like you wanted this removed, which is a
| reasonable perspective, but the best way to get an
| article removed is probably to flag and email staff. If
| you don't think this should be removed, or at least are
| neutral about it, I think the best we can do is at least
| flag the off-topic comments that made Foone hate this
| place in the first place. I really hate this conundrum,
| because Foone makes amazingly good content, and I
| genuinely, truly believe that it finds it's way here out
| of virtue that it's just that good, not out of malice.
|
| Unfortunately, as it always is, a minority of terrible
| people are always out to ruin nice things.
|
| Oh well. I should leave this thread too, at this point.
| jedberg wrote:
| If they didn't want their posts linked from HN, they could
| block it like jwz.org does.
| s5300 wrote:
| It was to my knowledge that they had tried in some method,
| but for whatever reason it was repeatedly worked around &
| their work kept showing up here, typically leading to them
| being harassed on Twitter by users coming from here.
|
| You can now see, that for various reasons including this,
| they no longer use Twitter
|
| I may be remembering some things incorrectly, but that's the
| jist.
|
| Just thought I'd pass along the knowledge of their hatred for
| this site out of respect, as I don't think most who
| repeatedly post & upvote their work know. Feels. Grimy as
| fuck to me, but I'm nobody.
| eternalban wrote:
| _Adultery for fun and profit_ , 1971 /g
|
| https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1817219
|
| An informative review (8/10 rating)
|
| * The Happy Home Wrecker
|
| 10 February 2008
|
| Sherpix, the company that produced and distributed works by
| filmmakers as diverse as Paul Morrissey and Alex De Renzy in the
| late '60s and early '70s, inadvertently helped jump-start the
| short-lived "Porno Chic" trend with ADULTERY FOR FUN AND PROFIT.
| Grand prize winner at the second (and last) Wet Dream Film
| Festival in Amsterdam, sponsored by Suck Magazine which had none
| other than Germaine Greer amongst its editorial staff, it was the
| first narrative feature by Richard Robinson and a considerable
| step up from his "white coater" THE ABC'S OF MARRIAGE.
| Apparently, Robinson (a/k/a "Rick Jr.") had a thing about wedlock
| as his 1974 masterpiece MARRIAGE AND OTHER FOUR LETTER WORDS is
| anything to go by. With a happy go lucky script by E.E. Patchen,
| who would delve into far darker territory for Chris Warfield's
| sexploitation classic LITTLE MISS INNOCENCE, he seems more intent
| however on blowing this cornerstone of society to smithereens on
| this occasion.
|
| Chunky California Casanova Richard (alleged one shot Frank
| Harris), with adorably chubby cheeks and great Bay City Rollers
| hair, has a lucrative sideline going, seducing married women on
| the brink of separation so their husbands won't have to put up
| alimony. His employer, a devious divorce lawyer (like there's any
| other kind !), is played by character actor John Dunn who
| supplemented his "respectable" work in movies like ANDY WARHOL'S
| BAD with non-sex appearances in skin flicks like LITTLE GIRLS
| (now wittily changed to WOMEN by Something Weird to avoid legal
| hassles !) GETTING AHEAD. This premise provides opportunities for
| successive sexual encounters with some of the genre's earliest
| and unjustly forgotten starlets. The classy platinum blonde with
| the great gams in scene 2 is Susan Westcott, also in Walt Davis'
| astonishing SEX PSYCHO and BLONDE IN BLACK LACE, an early Johnny
| Wadd entry by Bob Chinn. Richard charms her with the best pick up
| line ever, convincing her he makes "the most persuasive Martinis
| in town", adding "two olives for a pretty lady" pausing a beat
| "three for you !" How could she resist ? Lynn Holmes is the
| giggly blonde who was paired with namesake John in both SUPERSTUD
| and FOUR WOMEN IN TROUBLE and Casey Lorraine recycles her British
| bitch routine from Joe "Adele Robbins" Robertson's riotous romp
| LORD FARTHINGAY'S HOLIDAY as the story's catalyst, the
| dissatisfied wife who blackmails Rick into making it with her gay
| husband ! As envelope-pushing as early erotica may have been,
| this scene is suggested rather than shown.
|
| Absolute best of show is an extended sequence that has Richard
| and a recent divorcee and former client (George Peters, who was
| in COMING WEST with "nudie cutie" royalty Maria Arnold and Sandy
| Carey) laying pipe with busty brunette Starlyn Simone from
| Dominic Bolla's memorably warped ANGEL ABOVE, THE DEVIL BELOW and
| delectable, fair-haired Rainbow Robbins, star of Robinson's
| subsequent MARRIAGE AND OTHER FOUR LETTER WORDS as well as Gerard
| Damiano's extremely obscure EVIL WAYS OF LOVE. They move from
| fireplace to shower and bedroom, exhibiting sustained erotic
| enthusiasm throughout, accompanied by several awesome tracks that
| sound suspiciously like library music even though a composer,
| Mario Litwin, is credited. This is also the most interesting
| scene visually as it allows the cinematographers, Sven Conrad and
| Robinson himself (as "David Worth"), to throw in a couple of
| clever compositions like both men back to back as they receive
| oral pleasure from their girlfriends in a nifty mirror image
| effect. Conrad remained to hone his skills within the industry,
| graduating to directing with some of the most eye-popping adult
| movies of the '80s (PINK CHAMPAGNE, BODY MAGIC, DOING IT !) and
| Robinson went on to helm POOR PRETTY EDDIE, one of the most
| notorious and hard to shake "blaxploitation" efforts ever. *
| trononono wrote:
| [flagged]
| danbruc wrote:
| I have always wondered if it would be possible to build a generic
| reader for magnetic tapes that essentially just scans whatever
| tape you throw at it and then it is up to some software to decode
| the content. I know close to nothing about the details of
| magnetic recording on tape, so maybe this is just not possible
| with reasonable effort, i.e. you could but you would need SQUIDs
| to make it work or something like that.
| tbirdz wrote:
| For VHS there's the VHS-Decode project that's trying to do
| something similar. I don't think they work by scanning the tape
| itself with some custom hardware, but rather by recording some
| kind of internal RF drum head signal inside the VCR itself.
| Then they have a software stack to decode the VHS signal into
| actual video. Looks pretty cool, but I've never used it.
|
| https://github.com/oyvindln/vhs-decode
| delecti wrote:
| You might be surprised at how the signals are actually recorded
| on tapes. For VHS tapes for example, it's actually a series of
| stacked "diagonal" lines of signal. Imagine a sequence of
| symbols like \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\, except at any given
| horizontal point along the tape there are about 5 stacked
| traces of signal. They're also diagonal on audio cassettes, but
| much less "slanted" relative to the tape's length.
|
| I don't remember the precise terms for the various concepts,
| but hopefully that shows how specific to a given format the
| reader needs to be.
| eternityforest wrote:
| "Find the lines" seems to be a common image processing
| technique. If you had the 2D data couldn't you virtually scan
| along them with that?
| Y_Y wrote:
| hence the name: Vertical Helical Scan
| delecti wrote:
| That's a backronym. VHS originally was an abbreviation for
| "Video Home System".
|
| Edit: also, the helical scan on a VHS tape can't really be
| said to be "vertical". A helical scan already implies a
| direction along the length of the helix, and "vertical
| helix" doesn't really make sense in the context of scanning
| down the length of a magnetic tape. Adding "vertical" to
| the actual term "helical scan" can really _only_ be an
| attempt to back-fit an acronym to "VHS".
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| I don't know about DAT as an audio format but DAT in its data
| storage format "Digital Data Storage"[0] is also helical
| scan.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Data_Storage
| EamonnMR wrote:
| That sounds like a similar problem to reading unknown floppy
| formats. I'll bet you that actually scanning the flux (I
| think that's the term) image of the tape without shredding it
| is a more difficult mechanical problem.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| One of the terms was interlaced, the nearly forgotten "i"
| next to something like 480i (versus 480p).
|
| Individual magnetic lines of a VHS tape would only describe
| half a frame and the two halves would be interlaced back
| together.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Well, that's just how the underlying PAL/NTSC signal
| worked.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Right, and the fact that there were two different signal
| standards and VHS was a leaky abstraction that mostly
| just encoded the signal as-is all adds to the
| complication of any "generic magnetic tape reader" and
| hoping to get useful digital data back from that.
| midasuni wrote:
| I think one major network in the US is 720p60, but the vast
| majority of broadcast transmissions globally is 1080i25 or
| 1080i30*
|
| Of course sadly so much content is produced at 1080p24
| nowadays for that "film" effect it's rather meaningless for
| display purposes.
|
| Online of course it tends to be p50 or more commonly p60
| (even in 50hz countries). YouTubeers tend to be able to
| afford more lights and clearer microphones than big budget
| productions too.
|
| * 30000/1001
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| Technology Connections did an excellent video on this:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfuARMCyTvg
|
| I'd recommend pretty much all of his video series to anyone
| in the HN crowd that's at all interested in analog media
| formats:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@TechnologyConnections/playlists
| delecti wrote:
| Yeah, that channel is where I learned it as well. I
| probably should have linked it.
|
| Basically every video he does scratches that itch of
| learning a new thing about the world. The analog video
| series is indeed especially fantastic (laserdisc, VHS, B&W
| vs color TV, blu-ray, etc).
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Audiotape is - or at least, Phillips compact cassettes are -
| recorded linearly. The recording method you're talking about
| for videotape is called helical scan, because the heads trace
| out a helix pattern. You might be confusing that with the
| head azimuth, which _does_ alternate between fields on VHS to
| reduce cross-talk or something.
|
| Some other bits of jank in the VHS spec:
|
| - Because the tape is moving while it's being written, it
| stretches the signal out on the tape. This is perfectly fine
| for normal playback. But when the tape is not moving, the
| signal's now too wide for the playback head, and you can only
| read about half the picture. That's why your VCR had bars of
| static whenever you paused (unless you sprung for the four-
| head model)
|
| - Audio is still recorded linearly, and you can't exactly
| chuck a linear head in an angled, spinning drum. So you have
| to put the audio head further away from the tape. And that
| distance is fixed; changing it means your machine is now
| playing audio out of sync with the video.
|
| Also, there _is_ an extension to VHS that lets you record
| audio along the video in the helical area, it 's called VHS
| Hi-Fi and it improves the audio dramatically with the trade-
| off that any minor video glitches will add pops to the audio.
| Humans are way more sensitive to gaps in audio than video,
| after all.
| andrewxdiamond wrote:
| If a high resolution reader could "recreate" the entire tape
| signal in memory, you could do the format specific parsing in
| software. You could even identify the tape type based on the
| signal patterns
| pjc50 wrote:
| I've heard of someone doing this by connecting an ADC
| directly off the heads of a VHS player, but I can't find it
| now. The bandwidth of such a system is only about 6MHz,
| putting it well within modern SDR capability.
|
| Certainly this is how the "applesauce" reader works:
| https://applesaucefdc.com/
| danbruc wrote:
| I am at least aware of the diagonal recording on VHS tapes,
| that is why I assumed it might be hard do build a generic
| reader as you could not necessarily take advantage of the
| geometry or the speed of the tape or things like that. There
| is probably a good reason for the complexity inside an old
| VHS recorder.
| dunham wrote:
| Other tidbits I recall from what my Dad told me years ago.
| He repaired VCRs for a while.
|
| The beta machines would phase shift the signal 180@ every
| other frame when writing, and they use that for noise
| cancellation. VHS did four frames at 90@ each, because of
| patents.
|
| The read heads were on a spinning drum. Beta machines had
| an L loading system that would grab the tape and wrap it
| almost all the way around the drum with the read heads,
| exposing more tape at once to the reading mechanism. VHS
| had an M loading system that grabbed the tape on either
| side and pulled it up, covering maybe half of the drum,
| because of patents.
|
| And supposedly VHS won out because Sony was begging a lot
| of money for patent licensing. But tape capacity was
| probably a factor, too.
| yencabulator wrote:
| If you "scan the magnetism" for the whole width of the tape
| -- which such a generic reader for magnetic tapes would have
| to do anyway -- you can parse out such things after the fact.
| adg. .beh ..cf
|
| Even if your input is "a..db.gec.hf", that should be able to
| postprocess out later, for any possible angle, given enough
| resolution.
|
| It's a lot like decoding music from vinyl grooves based on a
| 2D image scan of the vinyl.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| This seems quite possible in principle, despite the different
| helical scanning, tape widths, speeds and whatnot. A device at
| the British Library archival research did similar for wax
| cylinders and old disc records, scanning the physical surface
| with a small wavelength laser interferometer. AFAIK it
| generated an _obscene_ amount of point cloud data.
|
| My thought is that, if you could develop a sensor capable of
| sampling magnetic alignment at sub-micrometer resolution it
| would also generate unbelievable amounts of data that would
| first need compressing or decoding into AV signals.
| acdha wrote:
| This system is similar for old analog audio recordings:
|
| https://irene.lbl.gov/
|
| https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2012/03/unlocking-sounds-of-the-
| pa...
|
| I remember one of the curators mentioning that they had a ton
| of WWII records for things like daily newscasts which due to
| wartime supply issues were made from less durable materials,
| and since they weren't commercially valuable the owners
| hadn't spent time transferring many of them to newer media.
| zokier wrote:
| > My thought is that, if you could develop a sensor capable
| of sampling magnetic alignment at sub-micrometer resolution
| it would also generate unbelievable amounts of data that
| would first need compressing or decoding into AV signals.
|
| Hard disk drive read head sweeping across the tape? Hard disk
| track widths are well below 1 micron so presumably the
| potential for high resolution is there?
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Nice idea. I think you'd have a problem with shedding. A HD
| head is designed to fly/float above a clean platter. Old
| tape is icky, flaky mess of brown dust and wobbly plastic
| that would foul up the head PDQ. But rather than scanning
| maybe you could encapsulate a bunch of old HD densely
| together in some kind of epoxy/glass to make a high-res
| tape head?
| sophacles wrote:
| This idea sounds similar to "software defined radio"... but
| for tape reading. Interesting.
| koofdoof wrote:
| TechMoan has used a reel to reel player as a version of this
| for audio tape. A few obscure formats only fit in rare
| specialty players, so he's simply wound their internal tapes
| onto reels and digitized them that way.
| pikminguy wrote:
| In theory you could have some sort of multi head or rasterizing
| system scan every bit of the tape and construct a 2D map of the
| magnetization. It would have to be 2D because many tape formats
| have multiple tracks, not even in parallel. But decoding that
| data would be a nightmare that made optical character
| recognition look like child's play.
| eternityforest wrote:
| Really? Couldn't you just 3D model the player and run the
| simulated tape through it? Pretty amazing if there's
| something a 70s mechanical device can do that a computer
| can't do easily.
| tezza wrote:
| lol. i am sure to that there are some porn magazines which no
| longer open
| Pxtl wrote:
| This reminds me of Jay Bauman's rant about how VHS is a shit
| format when his Youtube team (RedLetterMedia) obliterated every
| VHS copy of Nukie they could find in a wood-chipper.
|
| https://twitter.com/JayBauman1/status/1613910812632186881
|
| Basically, old magnetic video tape is such a bad format that the
| only sane approach of "preservation" is to destroy it and
| digitize it.
| MissTake wrote:
| Not about the format here; but I was interested in the image for
| "Brother Rat" downplaying Ronald Reagan's billing, whereas the
| three posters available on IMDB has him basically on top billing.
|
| Wonder what changed...
| greenburger wrote:
| I don't know, but it must have happened to Jane Wyman too.
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| Ronald Reagan, the actor!?
| BizarroLand wrote:
| And Jack Benny is Secretary of the Treasury!
| Semaphor wrote:
| Heh, I read it and remembered knowing a lot of it already. Of
| course, it turns out it was them even then [0] ;)
|
| And yay! They are on tumblr! So much easier to read _and_ I can
| subscribe to their posts.
|
| [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28302722
| downvoteme1 wrote:
| Just head over to the bay and get it from there .
| pessimizer wrote:
| It's a $6 legal download:
| https://www.somethingweird.com/product_info.php?products_id=...
| jrnichols wrote:
| I agree. After reading this article, that was the first thing I
| thought of. Copy protection mechanisms like these were
| downright obnoxious and it's no surprise that customers get
| sick of them and go with the cracked/pirated versions. Things
| like DiVX were doomed from the start.
| RajT88 wrote:
| I won't argue with the downvotes as you're advocating piracy,
| but this appears to be technically accurate.
|
| It seems possible indeed to obtain the film there and view it.
|
| You know. For science.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| [flagged]
| p0pcult wrote:
| Sexual shame damages people. I grew up in a Catholic household
| where my sex ed consisted of Focus On The Family's workbooks,
| and their blame and shame, sinful outlook on what turns out to
| be a normal part of most mammalian lives.
|
| Echoing the sentiment of a sibling comment: this damaged me.
| I'm middle aged now, and some of residual shame-trauma still
| exists.
|
| That shame mechanism is one of the things that enables sexual
| predators to repeatedly prey on others, because ashamed people
| don't report being sexually abused.
|
| Fortunately, I didnt have to deal with that, but given my
| upbringing (Catholicism, Altar Boy, Boy Scouts), its just down
| to probability that I was lucky enough to not have been groomed
| by a pedophile.
| antisthenes wrote:
| I'd rather hear about their porn habits than endless virtue
| signalling that's prevalent in the 21st century USA.
| RangerScience wrote:
| real / not real question
|
| but like
|
| when does lamenting about virtue signaling itself become
| virtue signaling?
| dpkirchner wrote:
| And when will the people crying about virtue signaling
| admit the concept goes way, way back. Look at how popular
| necklaces with crosses are, as a prominent example.
| antisthenes wrote:
| Just because something goes way back, doesn't mean one
| shouldn't complain about it.
|
| It was crass 1000 years ago and it's still crass now.
| dpkirchner wrote:
| Oh, sure, I agree. But it's never considered. People just
| seem focused on modern virtue signaling like sharing
| their belief that some people are transgender (or that
| that's even a thing). It's a weird right-wing cry fest,
| which is ironic because the right is associated with the
| aforementioned cross-based virtue signaling.
| RangerScience wrote:
| Haha, excellent point. And fitting - I can't shake the
| thought that the OP article is also "unlicensed bread
| goes back to 1973"
|
| ref: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-
| bread-a-...
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| No.
|
| 99% of people around me including close friends pretend sex,
| naughty bits and porn don't exist. It's this weird social norm
| black hole that makes other honest interactions feel less
| honest and more fake. And it's not a victim less thing either -
| like anything else that we pretend doesn't exist, it allows
| things and people and issues to fall through unspoken cracks.
|
| Just like with any other topic in the world, if I don't want to
| hear details I don't need to hear details. And I really really
| don't want or need to hear 99% of details from more than. 99%
| percent of people :). But I'd like it to be a conscious choice
| not a social taboo of shame.
|
| My 2 cents and note I wasn't born with this perspective - it
| took lots of work and many years to clear out my own social
| conditioning :-/
|
| (that being said note that the article isn't even REMOTELY
| about pronography but an Interesting short anecdote about long
| lost video format and piece of television history. It's safe to
| read! Even if you're ashamed of your porn!:-)
| shp0ngle wrote:
| When I googled, it seems the document didn't actually win an
| Emmy.
| philwelch wrote:
| Local Emmy:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34631203
| temptemptemp111 wrote:
| [dead]
| throwawayacc3 wrote:
| [flagged]
| dang wrote:
| We've banned this account for trolling (and for regularly
| breaking the site guidelines).
|
| If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email
| hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll
| follow the rules in the future. They're here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| sleepychu wrote:
| foone uses they/them pronouns :-)
| csours wrote:
| I'm sure I'm not the first to say this, but I'd prefer to use
| they/them as the default for people I don't know well (ie,
| everyone on the internet that I don't have a social or
| parasocial relationship with)
| jsnell wrote:
| I bet that the kvetching doesn't happen now that it's a single
| Tumblr post rather than a tweet thread.
|
| And if it does, the complaints can be flagged instead of the
| post.
| fknorangesite wrote:
| > I bet that the kvetching doesn't happen now that it's a
| single Tumblr post rather than a tweet thread.
|
| Maybe. But also HN doesn't have a great reputation re:
| gender, and foone is non-binary. So there are multiple
| reasons.
| sschueller wrote:
| I don't understand? Why would you post a blog on the public
| internet and then have an issue over it being shared? It's not
| like HN is reprinting it and the discussions are interesting.
|
| I would not have know about this format if it hadn't been
| posted here.
| fknorangesite wrote:
| > Why would you post a blog on the public internet and then
| have an issue over it being shared?
|
| Correction: an issue with it being shared _on Hacker News_.
| Foone has explained this themselves:
|
| https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1440375176604966924?s=20
| deadbeeves wrote:
| I find it rather interesting that someone wants to write
| publicly and can't deal with others disliking specific
| aspects of their writing. Not that the readers _tell_ the
| writer they don 't like it, but the _fact itself_ that the
| readers don 't like it and that they tell that to each
| other. I'm not sure someone this ill-equipped to deal with
| dissent should be on the Internet.
| labrador wrote:
| The old "Tantalean punishment" reworked as a sexual fetish
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tantalus
| patapong wrote:
| Fascinating.
|
| These red tapes feel like a ridiculous and cumbersome idea.
| Thinking about it, their concept won in the end though, in terms
| of media consumption and ownership...
|
| Our current streaming services feel much more akin to these
| tapes, where you rely on a centralized entity to decide what you
| can watch and how, rather than infinitely repayable and
| transferable video tapes.
| sneak wrote:
| My NAS running Jellyfin would like a word.
| SergeAx wrote:
| Right after my torrent client, please.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Either you broke the law many times to fill that NAS, or you
| have massive gaps in content because those items have never
| been broadcast or released on disc.
|
| So it doesn't disagree very well.
| patapong wrote:
| You are the person opening the red tapes to be able to watch
| them again!
| Pxtl wrote:
| Somebody recently said the best phrase on the modern internet
| is "iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts" because
| podcasts are probably the most recent media-consumption
| technology where open standards won out and it's just a bunch
| of standardized data and metadata you can use as you like.
| mywittyname wrote:
| There's a symbiotic relationship that exists with podcasting
| that doesn't necessary exist for other media. Podcasters want
| to reach the largest possible audience because they are paid
| relative to viewership. Hosting their own content has an
| expense and doesn't provide them with very effective
| discoverability. Podcast platforms make their money from
| having a large collection of podcasts and, for
| spotify/itunes, podcasts don't generally have royalty fees
| associated with playback.
|
| This isn't really possible with things like movies.
| sys32768 wrote:
| Very fascinating.
|
| Reminded me of FlexPlay from 2003, "self destructing" DVDs for
| short-term rentals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexplay
| cesarb wrote:
| > Reminded me of FlexPlay from 2003, "self destructing" DVDs
| for short-term rentals
|
| The first post recommended by tumblr at the bottom of this
| article was about FlexPlay (and DIVX):
| https://foone.tumblr.com/post/705631633513005056/so-regardin...
| agotterer wrote:
| Before that it was DIVX, Digital Video Express (not the codec),
| who in the late 90s tried to create an alternative to video
| rentals: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIVX.
| crunchyfrog wrote:
| It reminded me of DIVX[1] from 1999. Amazing how many times
| this horrible greedy idea was tried.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIVX
| ghaff wrote:
| It isn't clear to me why it's unreasonable to have different
| pricing for rental vs. owning. In any case, the general trend
| seems to be towards not owning digital media in general.
| salawat wrote:
| Stating this as an observation in general really needs a
| caveat of "and absolutely no clamoring by users for
| something otherwise is heeded".
|
| Producers rent seek. More at 11
| flomo wrote:
| The real issue with DIVX wasn't the rental/PPV model, it
| was certain studios who were boycotting DVD, due to poor
| DRM security. (Which they eventually 'patched' legally.) So
| it was imperative that DIVX failed to avoid a format war.
| btilly wrote:
| Which occasionally has unexpected consequences.
|
| The licensing of the music on certain movies didn't
| anticipate the internet. And the studios never came to an
| agreement. As a result you can buy DVDs of movies like
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Fair_Lady and
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullets_Over_Broadway, but
| you can't rent them off of any streaming service. Given
| that most of us no longer have DVD players, they seem
| destined to only survive in pirated copies. If that.
| ghaff wrote:
| For that matter, the licensing of the music on certain TV
| series didn't anticipate DVDs. Northern Exposure and WKRP
| in Cincinnati were missing a lot of the original music on
| the DVDs--although this is apparently partly corrected in
| the newer complete series releases.
| btilly wrote:
| Yes, the high profile examples can get fixed.
|
| But the second tier ones don't. There isn't so much money
| to be made from fixing them, nor is there the public
| pressure. So they languish..indefinitely.
| iamdbtoo wrote:
| Similarly, Beavis and Butthead has never had a release
| that mirrors the broadcast because of the music videos.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| This shit is the entire reason I bother with piracy at
| all. I very, super-duper much don't want to maintain a
| media server, but I _do_ want several things in their
| full, original versions (Beavis and Butthead is one, in
| fact, but there are several), or that flat-out can 't be
| had otherwise, or whatever, and as long as I'm having to
| maintain the server anyway....
|
| If they (all these companies) ever fully sort out audio
| rights, start providing great-quality copies of movies
| without screwing with them (the 4k77 and related projects
| are _far and away_ the highest-quality copies of the
| original, unmolested Star Wars trilogy available, period,
| for any price, and they 're entirely a very-expensive-to-
| produce volunteer fan-made effort, available for free!
| WTF?), stop cutting episodes, and stop revoking access to
| things, I can finally scrap that stupid server. It's
| 1000% not worth the cost and effort just to avoid paying
| for the things I watch. Buuuuut if I'm maintaining it
| anyway, for other reasons, well, that's another matter.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| The general trend seems to be towards not owning anything
| in general.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm not sure how true that is as a general statement.
| Definitely yes for digital content that used to be
| shipped on physical media: music, movies, software, books
| to some degree. Uber and Zipcar (and competitors)--along
| with incremental public transit and cycling
| infrastructure along with e-bikes--have probably made it
| marginally easier to get off without owning a car in some
| locations.
|
| But other than that I can't think of a lot of examples.
| philwelch wrote:
| What about homes?
| ghaff wrote:
| Fair enough--although the magnitude of the change is
| still much smaller than in the case of digital content.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| The number of homeowners in the US has plateaued after
| the Great Recession while the number of people who rent
| housing has been increasing since then. Yes, your clothes
| and kitchen appliances are safe for now, but who knows
| for how long?: https://www.forbes.com/sites/worldeconomic
| forum/2016/11/10/s...
| Gigachad wrote:
| It might not be the worst idea to make renting houses
| normal and just as convenient as owning. If rental laws
| were fixed to provide extreme stability and decent
| rights, you'd only own for investment purposes. And you
| wouldn't have extreme upwards pressure from renters
| trying to buy at any cost to avoid shitty renting
| conditions.
|
| We really should allow renters to stay indefinitely at
| rentals and also pass on the general maintenance
| responsibilities on to them as well.
|
| Renting things like appliances doesn't make sense since
| you require exclusive access to them and generally use
| them for their entire lifespan. While houses mostly exist
| before and after your need for them.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The problem isn't the different pricing. The disgusting
| greedy thing is purposely designing something to destroy
| itself to enforce that false dichotomy.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Neither the red tapes nor DIVX destroyed themselves. Red
| tapes were rewound by a store, and any DIVX disc could be
| converted to unlimited watching if you paid for it.
|
| Plus it's not like CD's/DVD's are incredibly resource-
| intensive. Remember AOL CD's you got sent for free? A
| quick Google says one _billion_ of those were sent out.
| There 's about as much plastic by weight in an average
| Chinese takeout, or a single plastic clamshell of fresh
| greens at the grocery store.
|
| Awesome for the environment? Of course not. But
| "disgustingly greedy"? Nope, just a tiny drop in the
| bucket of plastics usage.
| jtbayly wrote:
| unlimited watching... until the servers went offline.
| RajT88 wrote:
| > Neither the red tapes nor DIVX destroyed themselves.
| Red tapes were rewound by a store, and any DIVX disc
| could be converted to unlimited watching if you paid for
| it.
|
| I loved the story of DIVX. As a format, it never actually
| got hacked to unlock unlimited viewing of the far-
| cheaper-than-DVD discs.
|
| It never got hacked not because its security was great
| (after all - a static disk which received unlock codes
| over dialup, had to have some significant attack
| surface), but because it sucked and wasn't worth hacking.
|
| Video quality was lower than that of DVD's and soon
| enough after release, the pricing of used DVD's was close
| enough that buying DIVX made no sense at all. To say
| nothing of paying a premium price for all of that in the
| players.
|
| Having now read about Red tapes, it seems like pure folly
| that DIVX should have been attempted.
| brookst wrote:
| Wait, renting versus owning is a false dichotomy?
|
| Does that mean I own every book I've checked out of a
| library? Every hotel room I've stayed in?
| ghaff wrote:
| How is that any different from "buying" a digital rental
| on Amazon that expires after some length of time?
| horsawlarway wrote:
| Morally - I don't see much difference, and think the push
| towards "rent everything, own nothing" is a bad, bad idea
| for social cohesion, economic equality, and general
| health and happiness.
|
| Realistically - there is a considerable difference in the
| resources required to create a digital copy of a good vs
| a physical copy. The digital good has the slight upside
| that when companies abuse consumers through predatory
| pricing practices (literal rent-seeking...), they are
| destroying slightly less of the environment in the
| process.
| brookst wrote:
| I always find it funny when people try to use "rent-
| seeking" as a pejorative.
|
| Like, yes, someone invested a lot of capital up front and
| hopes to make a profit by selling time-limited access to
| what they bought, thereby making the goods accessible to
| people who don't have the up-front capital.
|
| I can see preferring to own, but as a moral position,
| "rent-seeking" is synonymous with "risk-taking" and
| "access-providing."
|
| For my part I am very happy to be able to rent a digital
| movie for $4 rather than buying a DVD for $20. The risk
| to me is lower and I'm more likely to try movies I
| wouldn't take a $20 chance on.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| "Rent-seeking" is when there isn't risk. If you set up a
| new investment in a competitive market, and sell access,
| that's not rent-seeking.
|
| In this scenario, the predatory pricing is a key aspect
| of how it becomes rent seeking, and a well-functioning
| market would not have predatory pricing. And the root
| issue is tied in to how current US copyright law has
| major flaws.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Wasn't rent seeking meant to be referring to a party
| which wedges itself between a buyer and seller and skims
| a fee off the transaction despite not really adding much
| value but in some way has made themselves difficult to
| bypass.
|
| Someone making content and renting it out wouldn't count,
| while say the App Store fee would.
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| Digital rental is less wasteful.
| mikebenfield wrote:
| Given the scale of wasteful packaging and other materials
| people dispose of without a thought, a DVD seems like
| basically nothing.
| temporallobe wrote:
| To me it's not so much about greed than it is about waste.
| WirelessGigabit wrote:
| Indeed! Nice 'documentary' (what do you call this format?):
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccneE_gkSAs
| vopi wrote:
| Perhaps you could call it a video essay?
| nemo44x wrote:
| Formats like this sort of reenforce Steve Albini's claim that he
| only records to tape because he's more certain people will be
| able to play it back hundreds of years from now than any other
| (digital) format. The tech is super simple and requires no
| proprietary anything. He believes that even the most open digital
| formats will become obscure and forgotten eventually and no one
| will really be able to playback lots of music that was only
| recorded that way.
| soneil wrote:
| Seems somewhat ironic that this _is_ tape?
| jesboat wrote:
| > Formats like this sort of reenforce Steve Albini's claim that
| he only records to tape because he's more certain people will
| be able to play it back hundreds of years from now
|
| This article seems like a pretty strong argument in the
| _opposite_ direction: about a tape format which is effectively
| unreadable without significant heroics (to the extent that a
| documentary was made about trying to play one of these tapes.)
|
| The format admittedly wasn't exactly successful, and I imagine
| more common formats would have better luck finding usable
| hardware. But even then, the tape still degrades.
|
| If I _really_ needed something to last a Very Long Time, I 'd
| print it in highly redundant QR codes on lots of paper, and
| then also print the specs for QR codes and whatever other
| encodings were necessary.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > He believes that even the most open digital formats will
| become obscure and forgotten eventually and no one will really
| be able to playback lots of music that was only recorded that
| way.
|
| Oh please. Just use raw PCM audio. No one will ever lose track
| of how to play that.
|
| A 10.5 inch reel of 2 inch tape can be digitized just fine to
| 16 bit samples, 44/48kHz, 24 channels, most of an hour. That's
| about 7 gigabytes. So you could back up a huge number of
| digitized tapes to a dozen different locations quite easily.
| You could put a thousand of them on a pocket SSD.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-02-02 23:01 UTC)