Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Help Us Digitize Reboot”.
Uh, okay: we’ve got something really important for you, guys, yeah here, sorry, one sec, I’m just going to yes. Yes, yes, Capital games! Yes! Yes! Oh it’s funny! Sorry uh yeah! Oh! So I’ve got my notes from Tanner here um. We need your help. Okay, so this is up to date, as of 3 days ago uh we are trying to digitize the full quality masters of reboot, the first computer animated TV series. Uh, the reboot Master tapes, are in a D1 format.
Uh. There were only six models of vtrs that used that format, and only two or three of them will likely be able to read these particular Master. Tapes uh, the vtrs that will work are the DCR 300 and the DCR 500 from broadcast television systems, which was a Bosch and Phillips partnership. We purchased three vtrs, oh good, lord uh.
We apparently purchased a DCR 300 and two DCR 500s and we’ve had some small playback test successes confirming that the tapes are in surprisingly good shape and it says, see bottom of dog. It looks great uh, okay, so here we’ve been working on this. In the background for a while, because we just think this is pretty sick and Good Vibes – and oh my God, yeah that looks so good yeah, okay man. Now I want to watch some reboot okay anywh who yeah? Oh man, that’s super, exciting, um, very clean.
All right, the problem, one of the DCR 500s, was working for a short time. However, it is now experiencing errors, and, while all three machines have some sort of issue, there should be enough to Cobble together something that works. The main error we’re getting across the machines is Servo reference V pulse frequency too high.
The machines will not load or play back with clearing these checks. We’Ve tried tracking down the company that made them so far. None of our contacts have been able to find anything. Um these particular machines were manufactured by BTS from 1992 to 1995, which meant a different thing. Back then uh Phillips took over BTS in 1995, which then turned into okay.
This is a lot of thank you, Tanner uh. These are a lot of Tanner details. Uh. Let me distill it down. Um Thompson broke up blah blah Grass Valley Inc may have taken over the D1 Hardware back catalog, but our conts there we’re not able to find anything. The parts that didn’t go to Grass Valley Inc were sold to partner Capital group in 2008, something something something prad Studios didn’t have any information for us. They are based in India, where it appears the D1 format was never in use.
Our replacing capacitors uh is something that we have tried and we apparently had replacement rollers fabricated and replaced where they were degraded. What we are looking for. Ah, yes, this is this is what I was looking for: manuals for the DCR 300 and DCR 500. We’Re missing operator manual circuit diagrams part one and bts’s internal service manuals. We also are looking for some specialized tools.
We would like to get extender board 1409 for tape, deck adjustment, tape, dr5 and any additional calibration tapes. We also would love to get in touch with some experts if you have hands-on experience with BTS D1 machines, particular the D, particularly the DCR, 300 or DCR 500, doesn’t matter what region you have experience in um. They had offices in Netherlands, Salt Lake City, Utah, Singapore, uh, Brazil, France, Burbank, California and mulgrave Australia. Um odds are good. If anyone knows about these machines, they would have worked at or near one of these locations. What we are not looking for armchair technicians that think they might know what the issue is. We have plenty of those internally.
Sorry, my finger slipped um rude. We are not looking for technicians with similar for a familiarity with similar players um these were produced in a time when Tech standards were fast loose and constantly changing. We are not looking for anyone to cold call. Any of the companies involved do not cold call on our behalf. We’Ve already done it. Don’T harass people, it’s it’s stupid, um, we’re not looking for anything that is built for a tape deck.
That is not the D1 format and we are not looking for external options to capture the tapes. We want to learn and share the knowledge, not just hire a capture service um. The contact information is right here. This is very important: reboot rewind, reboot, rewind doc atgmailcom. If you can legitimately help us with any of those things, we said we do need and not the things that we said. We don’t need um, very hopeful that we can restore reboot to its former glory. That would be super cool.
I had heard we were interested in doing that. I didn’t know. Tanner was doing any work on that yeah dog. This is very cool.
To hear epic going yeah. I I I was like blank check, let’s go and then apparently we bought three machines. Apparently, it’s an extremely blank check, a blank check with a really long underscore on it. Look I think it’s a, I think it’s it’s cool, it’s very cool.
It starts a lot of conversations about how we think of the internet and we think of things that are digital as as as as being preserved forever as being around forever, but actually as the as the the the waves and waves of of data creation have gotten Larger and larger, we are actually at risk of losing more and more and more unless we make a con, a concerted effort to preserve what we had. What was important – and this is again you know back to you – know the skin that I have in the game. It’S a Canadian show uh produced here in Canada, and it is, I, I believe, of historical significance being the first animated computer, animated TV show so yeah Toy Story pretty special moment. Um reboot also a a pretty special moment in uh in computer Graphics, but I also have to leave see you later.
Goodbye sort of not end of show asks how’s this better quality than Blu-ray. You can’t make a Blu-ray without the master tapes. These are the master tapes. These are where the episodes are stored, they’re not available in their original quality anywhere else. So this is so that there could be a Blu-ray, potentially .