On 30 Jan 97, Amy Ballantyne wrote to John Giannini:
 ->> If the copy was legitimate, why did you say in a prior message it
 ->> was a "terrible" copy?  Does Disney archives deliberately release
 ->> 4th or 5th generation copies on purpose, to discourage piracy?  It
 ->> seems to me if the copy came from Disney, it would be crystal clear.
 AB> I know one way it could be a "terrible" copy.  If Kit has used it a lot,
 AB> or had it for quite a long time.  You see, John, video tapes wear out
 AB> when played, or when not played.  That's the nature of the beast.
 AB> That's why we prefer laser discs.
Sheesh.
In the first place, everyone knows what "terrible" means.  It almost always 
means a 4th or 5th generation, grainly ol' pirate copy.  Admit it, Kit just 
stuck his foot in his mouth when he posted his original message.
Secondly, part of your "theory" on tape degeneration is crap.  I have been 
taping since October 6, 1978.  On that day, I bought my first VCR, an RCA 
VBT-200, a 2/4 hour machine that had no special effects.  The remote was only 
a wired pause button.  I got the machine that day to record "Carrie" that was 
going to be on network TV that night.  In the year following, I did lots of 
movies and TV shows.  I became a video maniac.  I still have every one of 
those tapes.  Now, in 1997, I am up to some 3500 tapes.  I have one of the 
largest private video collections in the country.  And I can tell you THIS. 
My tapes of Battlestar Galactica for example, done in 1979, done right of off 
ABC's network first run broadcast, look great, to this day.  They were taped 
on the old RCA VK-250 cassettes at the 4 hour speed, back when a single tape 
(we now call a T-120) ran 20 bucks.  The tape formulations weren't that good 
then, but properly stored, they age very well.  My tapes have degraded very 
little; they have almost no dropouts and except for a very slight grain (due 
to loss of magnetic signal on the tape) they look fine.  I certainly would 
not qualify even one of my 18 year old tapes as a "terrible copy".  So a tape 
stored does not equal a bad looking tape.
Now it is true that a tape played many times can start to degrade.  Most 
experts and tape companies say, though, that you have to run a tape at least 
500 times for that to start to happen, and even then, you only begin to 
encounter dropouts.  To look "terrible", a multiplely-played tape would 
probably have to be played some 3000-5000 times, and I seriously *doubt* you 
have *any* tape that's been played that many times.
The bottom line is that I believe you're just trying to lamefully cover your 
respective butts after having carelessly put out a VERY inciminiating piece 
of information in a message, that you're just praying no one at Disney sees. 
Nuff said.
--- GoldED 2.50
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