Gigantic VHS videotape hoard of videos being given away for free

https://www.tomshardware.com/software/video-editing-graphic-design/gigantic-vhs-videotape-hoard-of-thousands-of-videos-stored-in-mcdonalds-boxes-being-given-away-for-free-internet-archive-looks-set-to-claim-the-tapes-of-u-s-news-output-spanning-2004-09

8•doener•2mo ago

Comments

evanjrowley•2mo ago

Glad to see this came from the r/DataHoarder subreddit[0] because that's exactly the correct place for it.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/

irthomasthomas•2mo ago

Looks like these are going to the internet archive, so we'll probably never see them digitized. https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/1ouprgf/free_t...

zucked•2mo ago

>so we'll probably never see them digitized

That seems to run contradictory to the author's claim in the article and what I believe to be true about the internet archive. Can you elaborate?

squigz•2mo ago

I'm just guessing but it might have to do with the concerns raised by the first commenter in the reply by textfiles (Jason Scott) in that reddit thread

tl;dr seems to be they received a massive (71,000 tapes) archive that hasn't seen any activity or communication in 7 years.

If you read further in the thread, you'll also find other concerns about Jason's reliability

textfiles•2mo ago

Yeah, it's a nail-biter.

squigz•2mo ago

Well they do kind of seem like reasonable concerns, though I'm assuming/hoping there's more to the story.

zucked•2mo ago

Even mundane recordings become interesting to me once enough time passes. I've watched a bunch of Nickelodeon/Cartoon Network programming from early days and to be honest, the commercials are more interesting than the cartoons because they so perfectly capture where we were as a society -- toys starting to integrate new technology, sugary cereals being touted as part of daily breakfast, etc. Fascinating stuff.

nocoiner•2mo ago

Same thing with old magazines. The articles - eh, I could take them or leave them. But I just get lost in the advertisements.