Can anyone recommend the best way to archive tv programmes, please.

I always use to archive to videotapes, but have recently tried archiving to DVD. I'm now reading that DVDs are not good for long term storage, and would like advice, please.

Whatever I use does need to play on a tv not connected to a computer.

Thanks for any advice.

You could use a DVD recorder with built-in hard-drive. Most of these are unreliable, but Panasonics are good. (Reliability is an issue with keeping stuff on hard drives).

Personally, I store them on my PC hard drive and just watch them on there.

I think anything is not good to store long term

even video tapes which should ideally be rewound after use

You should get a NAS hard drive with Raid capabilities . This is external hard drive storage , with a mirror hard drive so everyhing is copied onto a back up hard drive. If one goes faulty , you simply back up the other hard drive.

The beauty is that TVs nowadays are now readily available which can play these files straight from the TV , so ensure the NAS hard drive has an ethernet port.

The bad part is converting these files to Divx or MKV , whatever the TV supports. This can be a tedious affair ,with problems of judder , what file type to use, speed of process and picture quality to use.

Whatever you do , back up to computer file anyway, as that can be sent to anything BUT keep the original tapes

I have some 8mm tapes of an event I was involved with over several years.

Am I right in thinking these use higher grade tape and do not deteriorate in the way VHS does? The tapes are mainly TDK & Sony.

DVD-RAM, the data is stored for an estimated 30 years minimum.

chance of finding a DVD-RAM drive ( or 8mm tape player ) in 30 years to read it might be another issue
probably need to change the medium every 10-15 years or so

Very true

Other problem is that some of these combi units have slightly flaky DVD Writers in them.If you get one do some test recordings onto DVD and then check that they'll play on as many other DVD players that you can.I've got a load of discs that were recorded on a JVC DRMX1 turns out they won't play on most other players.I strongly believe that there was a firmware issue but can't check this as JVC aren't very forthcoming when it comes to this sort of thing.Just as well I didn't ditch the source material which was mainly VHS tapes.

What are the chances that in the future, PC DVD drives will be capable of playing DVD-RAMs?

How can you store a couple of hundred discs worth on your PC drive?
The guy wants to "archive" recordings long term .

"Most" are unreliable ?
I've been using HDD/DVDR combos since 2003 and they've yet to fail.
My first was Panasonic but I've found the Pioneer units to be far better .

Archiving to dvd is what I do as long term storage on a single HDD could result in massive losses if the drive dies .
If a dvd disc dies then the loss is minimal.

Although I had some DVD+ R discs fail within a year or two that was down to the faulty Philips dvd recorders.
All my -R and +R discs done since 2003 are all working now without a glitch.

If the content is so very important then you could opt for dvd's with a HDD as backup , but anything and everything has the potential to be faulty so unless you have multiple backups there is always the chance of failure.

Its unimportant whether future drives wil read RAM discs or -R for that matter.

Just as we did with VHS , if it gets to the point where the original format has had its day you simply copy it to to the new format.
We've copied VHS tapes to dvd and we might copy dvd to Bluray if the need arises and if we ever reach the situation where discs are dying out you can copy them to hard drives or memory sticks or whatever is the latest format.

Its not really important whether current formats will still be in use in 20 years as you will copy them , so just use dvd's for now or take the risk with a separate hard drive.

Some tv's already have slots for memory card although I think these are only for photos at the moment but no doubt these will be playing back full videos in years to come

Compress them? Store them in zip folders?


Yyyyyeah, that's two brands compared to how many?

And Pioneer have stopped making consumer electronics.

Many early ones were reliable because they were expensive. Prices drop, quality of build drops as well. And you use collective terms such as "combos", "they've", "my first" and "units", implying that you've had more than one in 8 years. Hardly a case for disproving my point.


It's a combination of the players and the discs. I only use those manufactured/pressed by Taiyo Yuden.


I believe this was my point above. Use a DVD recorder with HDD.


In response to the point of mine you quoted, it't not.


Yes, probably because that doesn't share the same basic format outlines as DVDs/CDs/blu-rays. It's tape based for one. Analogue for another. That's why this doesn't really add to what you were saying. It becomes ever easier for newer and newer DVD drives to support CD/DVD/blu-ray/whatever else formats because they share the same basic outline. VHS is totally different and that's why that happened.


It obviously was to the person I was replying to, otherwise they wouldn't have brought it up.

Get a drop in esata/usb caddy, connect it to a PC.

eg

http://www.allcam.biz/catalog/produc...roducts_id=693

Stick in a 1TB drive (as little as £40.00), should be good for around 250 DVD's in playable Video_TS folder or .iso image format. If you are paranoid back up on a 2nd drive. (I have archive drives in a drawer that are fine after over 30 yrs).

To play them simply get a media player like the WD TV live and connect the drive caddy to it.

You can do the same with HD formats though of course you need more hdd space.

About 8 years back I archived all of my vhs's to dvd+rs on a Philips dvd recorder. I couldnt notice any quality loss at all. Some of the recordings are lp instead of standard play, but again, no isssues.To date, all of the discs are fine and they are a mix of tdk , philips and maxell's. All of the discs play on any machine so far, and none have gone bad. My brothers discs were recorded on a sanyo dvd recorder and they are all naff. Ive had to copy a lot of his stuff for him to have again on my machine over the years.
If the format changes again in future years, I will transfer stuff again.

As videos are just digital data these days, I think it makes sense to just treat them as data and store them on 2 external hard drives for redundancy. You can then play them back on a media player if you don't want the computer turned on.

I think NAS is best with RAID and ethernet

Assuming that you don't need to lose quality by compressing the content , my point remains that relying on a single unit for multiple discs is not a good idea because of the loss that would result from failure.

I think the best solution is to have them on dvd's with the HDD as a backup

I would be wary of those Philips recordings.
The Philips models from 2002 onwards were a disaster.
The 880 and 890 (or was it 980) all failed , some more than once and recordings made on them , at least before the were repaired will all fail.

Subsequent Philips recorders only lasted a little bit longer and were almost as dodgy.

If there was no quality loss you would have recorded in SP.
The LP mode has noticeable quality loss .

Around seven years ago I bought a Pioneer hdd/dvd recorder and started recording my favourite repeats and archiving to DVD to replace my video cassettes. It was very basic without even a Freeview tuner but made great recordings from an rgb scart connected Sky stb. It's still working perfectly.

A couple of years ago I bought A Sony RDR-HXD890 hdd/dvd recorder which is supposed to be the last of the good Sony's, being based on Pioneer components. It's recordings are just as good as the Pioneer's but has a Freeview tuner and HDMI out.
Between the two I must have burned over a thousand dvds and the earliest ones are still working fine.

Recently I bought an Asus O!Play media player and a 1.5TB hard drive. Just pop a finalized dvd in a pc's drive and copy the whole VIDEO_TS folder to the hard drive, rename it and then play it back through the Asus (connected to the tv by HDMI) like a normal dvd player. I've transferred around a hundred dvds to the hard drive so far and at around 4GB per dvd it'll be a long time before the hard drive is full.

At £64 for a 1.5TB drive it's a cheap and easy way to store a large collection and if you fill several drives you can hot swap them (usb) to the Asus which only takes a few seconds to detect them. If a hard drive fails you still have the dvds as back up.

It's a bit of a pain transferring the dvds, around 10-15 minutes per disc, but once on the hard drive it's such a joy having easy access to your recordings in one place plus the Asus can play just about anything else you save to the hard drive e.g. Youtube videos, wmv files etc. No conversion required.

I can vouch for this.

Now, unlike Tomfoolery's point, my DVDR3305 has lasted 7/8 years without fault, but I really don't like it as I do a heavy bit of VHS/Betamax>DVD>hard drive>internet transferring.

Well, put it simply, these things don't have timebase correctors, so any glitches on the tape are edited out by the machine pausing recording when it loses a timebase sync pulse, due to the irregularities and imperfections of the mechanism inside my VCRs. This "chopping out glitches" can be especially jarring if a glitch happens in the middle of someone speaking - half their words or a bit of their sentence is chopped out, meaning a perfectly understandable statement from whoever is on the VT recording can be turned into something completely nonsensical on the DVD copy.

I'd like to sniff what Philips' engineers were sniffing when they decided to avoid using a TBC in their DVD recorders, unlike most of the other "big" manufacturer's DVD recorders.

Thanks to everyone that replied. You have put to rest my worries about using DVDs at the moment. Many thanks.

Ive never had a problem in 300+ discs recorded, and Ive dipped into them often to watch.They play fine today in all my machines ( various makes). I have a philips tv set that is 13 years old and that is still perfect.

One of the big things for me is what to do you do if your archived programme doesn't work.

A video would never stop working! The tape might deteriorate (still watchable), the tape might break (mend it), the case might break (live with it or put the tape in a new case). There were always solutions with video. I have never ended up with a video that simply will not work. Having used video for archiving for over 25 years. (yes I am old!)

But having used DVDs for a couple of years, I already have DVDs that simply will not work. In a DVD player or on a computer.

Well, either your DVD recorder or VCR has a timebase corrector.

I find older HiFi stereo VCRs are better than 90s or noughties crap, so the picture and the stereo sound quality is better but the downside is these machines will not have a TBC.

If you put one in a PC can you copy the .vob files from the VIDEO_TS folder to your PC using file explorer. ?

I must admit I don't have recent experience of a DVD not working since I became more confident with the likes of transferring vob files.

There is still the issue - and call me a ludite if you want to - that if a video case warps or breaks, including the tape itself breaking, there are solutions.

If a DVD warps or breaks, you're lost!