Bit on an update about these old Pioneer units.
I made images of the drives and gave them back to the owner back in 2023. Only recently I have been able to extract the contents so I can now process them.
I also got a couple of Panasonic DMR recorders recently and have extracted old recordings from them too. Now I keep an eye out for any cheap or free recorders. 
What are some of the strange or surprising things you have found on tapes?
I found a recording of someone watching Austar and constantly flicking between a replay of a VFL grand final on fox footy and one of the porn channels.
Once, when looking through an old tape of a GLV8 news bulletin from 1987… it abruptly cut to…
…an ultrasound video.
Well…could be worse. The ultrasound may not have been of a unborn kid, and could’ve been much, much, MUCH worse. Like something Zoo magazine may have put as a joke. IYKYK. 
That, or something with Glenn Ridge.
IDK
@WAtvVideos, did you randomly stop archiving Free to air TV in September 2022 or took a break? But, ik you came back to discuss the shutdown of MDV, and to showcase 9Now FAST channels.
@Petarkco, how do you archive TV? Maybe via a capture card, but could you please confirm?
That is a very vague question, what are you trying to do?
I list some of my equipment here.
i need a new VCR
my existing one is starting to eat up my tapes lmao, unless if there’s an easy fix
It is a top of the range S-VHS VCR too, with NICAM decoder and multi system capability.
Such VCRs were very popular in Hong Kong and expat Chinese communities in the 1990s.
@TV.Cynic, how do you archive 1080p content from your Panasonic DVR?
Hi, nice to meet you all. I’m https://www.youtube.com/@tapedmostlybyaccident and for some reason I like collecting a batch of tapes every now and then and archiving them to YouTube, as long as the content isn’t already online, or I can offer a higher quality upload. A long time ago I was also the terribly named https://www.youtube.com/@gonadsftw (I was a kid then, smh).
I use the amazing Panasonic DMR-ES35V DVD/VHS recorder that I bought new from Retravision in the 2000s and it still serves me well. I didn’t realize how good this unit is until I started to read about it having TBC-like functionality, and the hassle this has saved me from.
My workflow is simple: record to DVD usually in XP mode (1 hour) or FR mode at 1.5 hours → keep the DVD in a DVD wallet → use tsMuxer on the .VOB files to get them into a merged .TS file → use LosslessCut to get it into .MP4 files (no re-encoding) for better compatability with video editor software and a slight file size decrease compared to .TS → archive the .MP4s to cloud storage.
For getting them onto YouTube I use Capcut to create a 720p .MP4 then delete that large file when I’m done, keeping the DVDs in their wallets and .MP4s in cloud storage as the source.
So greatful for this Panasonic unit, it’s kept things very simple for VHS digitisation. I recently acquired an LG VCR from the 2000s for a bargain, and I’m using this one to scan through recently acquired tapes in order to slow down wear on the Panasonic.
My main thrill is uncovering lost footage, particularly ad breaks and random programs that may have significance to someone out there. Plus anything that’s aged badly is fascinating, horrifying or entertaining.
Good to see you here, love the Big Bite episodes you put up. I would love to have a better quality than YouTube encodes though.
Keep in mind that transferring to DVD-Video you are usually limited to H.262/MPEG-2 Part 2. There are more modern methods that give better results but it all comes down to what hardware you have and for a lot of people convenience.
I abandoned YouTube after 3 years of being restricted, I moved to Odysee and sometimes live stream captures on Twitch.
Thanks for the heads up. I had a feeling there were better quality methods now but didn’t want to dive into those because of the convenience of my current method. Pick your battles etc.
I was considering uploading my source files to archive.org to mirror the YT account, which I tried recently but the upload seemed to get stuck. Perhaps it was an intermittent issue.
Any other avenues for uploading these for public accessibility that you’re aware of? Ideally they’re accessible as the same files I’m grabbing from DVD and converting (not re-encoding) to .mp4 files so that there’s no further compression, and anyone can do whatever they like with it.
Re: Big Byte - I’ve got several more hours to digitise and upload! Also got some Beyond 2000 although those are easier to come by on YT.
Internet Archive is slow because of its popularity by uploaders, leechers and even attackers.
Odysee you can upload anything and it will not modify the original file. Keep in mind though that for web playback it needs to be in a friendly format and reasonable bit rate which is H.264, ACC in a MP4 +faststart container. This is because pretty much everything out there supports playback with this.
You can upload H.265 in a MP4 but only supported devices and later version web browsers support H.265 playback.
DVD-Video based files are better than a cheap nasty USB capture device at least. You can play them on a media centre for example just that they don’t want web browsers to play them for some reason.
This is why YouTube (and many other sites) re-encode videos and why the Internet Archive make derivatives (if it is not H.264, MP4). They sacrifice quality for low bandwidth and fast playback.
Most importantly YouTube is not an archive and should not be treated as such. Lots of things are not there or have been removed because of censorship by abusing the content identification system they have.
I loved Beyond 2000 back in the day, so futuristic.
Saved an old LG DVD/HDD Recorder and managed to extract dozens of Sydney DTV recordings ranging from 2008 to 2015.
Took a gamble and saved another HDD Recorder (which was listed as “not working”) and salvaged more old DTV recordings.
Essentially the more modern version of finding a lot of old VHS/Betamax/U-matic off air recordings in a garage or a cardboard box.
