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Post by Diet Kolos on Sept 18, 2019 17:48:26 GMT -5
Now we just hope that someone finds a season 1 episode with commercials. Technically, I have 3 of those. But they're from the 1995 Turkey Day marathon. But I know what you mean. It's been a bear to find fully-taped w/commercials episodes older than mid-1993. Mostly due to the fact that Comedy Central had a tiny footprint and was barely carried on any cable providers until ~1994.
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Post by Diet Kolos on Sept 18, 2019 19:37:21 GMT -5
New episode up! Another early tape I've unearthed, 203-Jungle Goddess, broadcast almost exactly 27 years ago. Sept 18/19th, 1992 at 12:30am.
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Post by jadenh on Sept 18, 2019 21:11:33 GMT -5
I'd be fine with the 1995 versions, but it would be pretty awesome to find a season 1 episode from when it was still new. The Comedy Channel era of Comedy Central is one that doesn't seem to be documented very well, probably because (like mentioned above) not many people had it. But maybe one day something will turn up.
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Post by mylungswereaching on Sept 19, 2019 19:38:23 GMT -5
Now we just hope that someone finds a season 1 episode with commercials. I still have my MST3k tapes. I'm in the process of converting them to digital with commercials. I am doing it the quick and dirty way, straight to my laptop. I've started with the SCIFI episodes because I have multiple copies of each, most of them with the air date written on the tape. (I knew I'd do something like this eventually so I copied the episodes multiple times with different brands of tapes on different vcr's to see which would get the best copies.) All Scifi eps were recorded in SP mode. My cc era tapes were almost all slp recording so the quality isn't as good. I didn't have CC when MST3k started so all of the season 1 eps are rebroadcasts. I've go most of the season one eps on tape. It's going to take me months to get through all of the tapes.
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Post by Diet Kolos on Sept 19, 2019 21:14:39 GMT -5
Now we just hope that someone finds a season 1 episode with commercials. I still have my MST3k tapes. I'm in the process of converting them to digital with commercials. I am doing it the quick and dirty way, straight to my laptop. I've started with the SCIFI episodes because I have multiple copies of each, most of them with the air date written on the tape. (I knew I'd do something like this eventually so I copied the episodes multiple times with different brands of tapes on different vcr's to see which would get the best copies.) All Scifi eps were recorded in SP mode. My cc era tapes were almost all slp recording so the quality isn't as good. I didn't have CC when MST3k started so all of the season 1 eps are rebroadcasts. I've go most of the season one eps on tape. It's going to take me months to get through all of the tapes. I tried doing it the quick and dirty way with a hookup straight to the laptop, but the quality loss was too much for me to get over. So I kind of went overboard in the other direction and now it takes 12+ hours just to transfer 1 episode, lol. If I did this for my entire tape collection it would take...years. And cost a small fortune in DL DVDs. Let me know once you get to your CC tapes if you've got anything 1993 or earlier with commercials intact. Or if you find anything interesting or rare, like MST Hour versions. Once you transfer them yourself, if there's anything good, I'd love to put your tapes through my process.
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Post by mylungswereaching on Sept 19, 2019 22:15:28 GMT -5
I still have my MST3k tapes. I'm in the process of converting them to digital with commercials. I am doing it the quick and dirty way, straight to my laptop. I've started with the SCIFI episodes because I have multiple copies of each, most of them with the air date written on the tape. (I knew I'd do something like this eventually so I copied the episodes multiple times with different brands of tapes on different vcr's to see which would get the best copies.) All Scifi eps were recorded in SP mode. My cc era tapes were almost all slp recording so the quality isn't as good. I didn't have CC when MST3k started so all of the season 1 eps are rebroadcasts. I've go most of the season one eps on tape. It's going to take me months to get through all of the tapes. I tried doing it the quick and dirty way with a hookup straight to the laptop, but the quality loss was too much for me to get over. So I kind of went overboard in the other direction and now it takes 12+ hours just to transfer 1 episode, lol. If I did this for my entire tape collection it would take...years. And cost a small fortune in DL DVDs. Let me know once you get to your CC tapes if you've got anything 1993 or earlier with commercials intact. Or if you find anything interesting or rare, like MST Hour versions. Once you transfer them yourself, if there's anything good, I'd love to put your tapes through my process. My earliest tapes are three shows to a tape slp mode with commercials. I started recording while MST3k was airing year 2 episodes. Some of the year to episodes may be original showings. I haven't looked at some of them in several years. I'm recording box by box working down so it will be a while before I get to them. I recorded them as they came out starting around late 91 or so. The tapes are in pretty good shape. They've been played a few times but once I started getting bought tapes I tended to watch them instead. I had the Ha channel when MST3k first came out and I started recording when I got the comedy channel when ha and the comedy channel merged in 1991.
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Post by Diet Kolos on Sept 20, 2019 6:37:16 GMT -5
I tried doing it the quick and dirty way with a hookup straight to the laptop, but the quality loss was too much for me to get over. So I kind of went overboard in the other direction and now it takes 12+ hours just to transfer 1 episode, lol. If I did this for my entire tape collection it would take...years. And cost a small fortune in DL DVDs. Let me know once you get to your CC tapes if you've got anything 1993 or earlier with commercials intact. Or if you find anything interesting or rare, like MST Hour versions. Once you transfer them yourself, if there's anything good, I'd love to put your tapes through my process. My earliest tapes are three shows to a tape slp mode with commercials. I started recording while MST3k was airing year 2 episodes. Some of the year to episodes may be original showings. I haven't looked at some of them in several years. I'm recording box by box working down so it will be a while before I get to them. I recorded them as they came out starting around late 91 or so. The tapes are in pretty good shape. They've been played a few times but once I started getting bought tapes I tended to watch them instead. I had the Ha channel when MST3k first came out and I started recording when I got the comedy channel when ha and the comedy channel merged in 1991. *mouth waters* Well, again, once you get to them and are finished transferring them yourself, I'd love a crack at them. I'd even pay a nominal fee, plus shipping. Keep me updated, please.
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Post by mylungswereaching on Sept 20, 2019 10:49:43 GMT -5
My earliest tapes are three shows to a tape slp mode with commercials. I started recording while MST3k was airing year 2 episodes. Some of the year to episodes may be original showings. I haven't looked at some of them in several years. I'm recording box by box working down so it will be a while before I get to them. I recorded them as they came out starting around late 91 or so. The tapes are in pretty good shape. They've been played a few times but once I started getting bought tapes I tended to watch them instead. I had the Ha channel when MST3k first came out and I started recording when I got the comedy channel when ha and the comedy channel merged in 1991. *mouth waters* Well, again, once you get to them and are finished transferring them yourself, I'd love a crack at them. I'd even pay a nominal fee, plus shipping. Keep me updated, please. I looked through a pile of loose tapes that I took with me when I moved about a year ago and found MST3k2, the second tape I recorded (I gave each tape a number since there were 3 episodes on a tape.) I just converted Jungle Goddess and I'm currently converting First Spaceship on Venus. There was an add for the movie Mortal Thoughts, now playing, which would put the recording of Jungle Goddess in late April 1991. More than likely the 3 episodes were taped 3 weeks in a row, so late April to early May 1991. In First Spaceship on Venus there's an add that says that the show Dinosaurs premiers tonight which would place the date as Friday April 26, 1991 for the 2nd episode on the tape. The recording is slp so its a little fuzzy but it is otherwise in good shape. In a quick spot check, I didn't see anything wrong with the tape. Sound and picture are clear within the limits of VCR technology. I watched the tape a few times right after I recorded it and maybe once a year after that until I started getting DVD's so it hasn't been worn out. I'm really only looking for the tape back along with a copy of your recording and maybe a prepaid envelope for the next tape once you've recorded the first one. I know it will take a while for you to convert the tape. Pm me if you are interested. FYI, I live in New England.
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Post by Afgncaap5 on Sept 20, 2019 14:47:11 GMT -5
For many younger MSTies, the show has been disconnected from its broadcast roots. THIS was how the show was originally seen and experienced. The commercial breaks are an integral part of the show. This is an oddity about the show that I've wondered about. As a franchise, MST3K does seem to require breaks in ways that other similar things don't. Rifftrax, for example, generally doesn't stop their show midway through (though their live shows often do have "simulated breaks" from watching shorts or having other segments before the main feature starts.) Netflix seemed to notice this; not only does it have host segments, but sometimes you also just get Max pausing the show with a quick comment on the movie's plot or the characters' reaction to it while the Skeleton Crew plays, a sort of "Welcome Back" moment that doesn't really have a commercial before it. It's kinda like MST3K has a tie to the horror-host commercial break or drive-in theater intermission just baked into its DNA. About the only version of MST3K that seems to have worked without commercial break spots was The Movie, which limited itself to just a few host segments (including one where they had to be chased back to the theater when Forrester caught them trying to call for help.) The Movie was built to be in a different format, though, and is even the shortest "episode" of the franchise when you take out commercial length, so it's something of an odd duck. (Still my favorite "episode", though.)
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Post by mylungswereaching on Sept 20, 2019 15:51:13 GMT -5
For many younger MSTies, the show has been disconnected from its broadcast roots. THIS was how the show was originally seen and experienced. The commercial breaks are an integral part of the show. This is an oddity about the show that I've wondered about. As a franchise, MST3K does seem to require breaks in ways that other similar things don't. Rifftrax, for example, generally doesn't stop their show midway through (though their live shows often do have "simulated breaks" from watching shorts or having other segments before the main feature starts.) Netflix seemed to notice this; not only does it have host segments, but sometimes you also just get Max pausing the show with a quick comment on the movie's plot or the characters' reaction to it while the Skeleton Crew plays, a sort of "Welcome Back" moment that doesn't really have a commercial before it. It's kinda like MST3K has a tie to the horror-host commercial break or drive-in theater intermission just baked into its DNA. About the only version of MST3K that seems to have worked without commercial break spots was The Movie, which limited itself to just a few host segments (including one where they had to be chased back to the theater when Forrester caught them trying to call for help.) The Movie was built to be in a different format, though, and is even the shortest "episode" of the franchise when you take out commercial length, so it's something of an odd duck. (Still my favorite "episode", though.) Part of that I think is that at some point the show may leave Netflix. Having natural commercial breaks makes it easier to sell to channels that have commercials. Also, I'd love to see MST3k released with commercials again but with the MST3k crew riffing them. Nothing to cruel to keep the advertisers coming back but advertisers might like this because people would actually watch the commercials. If the company stops paying rotate in a new riffed commercial.
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Post by Mod City on Sept 20, 2019 16:38:40 GMT -5
Keep an eye out for Exit 57 at the end, featuring a VERY young Stephen Colbert. Man, I've been trying to remember the name of that show for a decade or more. Whenever I'd try to figure it out I'd keep running into The State, and I was sure that wasn't it. Might have helped if I remembered Colbert was on it. Thanks for mentioning that was on there. Behold the power of commercials in MST3K recordings!
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Post by Diet Kolos on Sept 22, 2019 9:41:00 GMT -5
New episode! 1003-Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders, broadcast 2/2/2002. And exciting news! Board member mylungswereaching and I have begun initial planning for me to create high quality transfers of his tape collection; which includes VERY early tapings from April 1991, the month HA! and The Comedy Channel merged to create CTV: The Comedy Network (it wouldn't be renamed Comedy Central until June 1991). This is EXTREMELY big for this project, as its NEARLY impossible to find tapes with full commercials from earlier than 1993 due to Comedy Central's low carriage in the early 90's. I'll be transferring over his entire collection for him, sending the tapes back and forth across the country with digitized copy in-tow, and not all of his episodes will end up on Youtube, so I may not upload as frequently while I'm working on his collection, as its going to be very time consuming over the next few months. Since his tape collection includes episodes I've already uploaded, like 203 and 211, I've decided to edit my video titles to include the air dates, so double-dipping will be easier. I look forward to working with mylungswereaching on this, and am VERY grateful for the opportunity to work on such rare tapes!
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Post by hike'em'up on Sept 22, 2019 19:48:31 GMT -5
And exciting news! Board member mylungswereaching and I have begun initial planning for me to create high quality transfers of his tape collection; which includes VERY early tapings from April 1991... I'll be transferring over his entire collection for him, sending the tapes back and forth across the country with digitized copy in-tow... I look forward to working with mylungswereaching on this, and am VERY grateful for the opportunity to work on such rare tapes! This is honestly a far more interesting and exciting project to read about than when Joel announced his MST3K kickstarter, which I was quite excited for as well. But what a collaboration this is going to be between just 2 genuine fans of the original show. Good luck, and thank you. The time and effort you 2 put into this - and it sure sounds like a helluva chore - will be appreciated and enjoyed immensely!
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Post by mylungswereaching on Sept 22, 2019 22:35:09 GMT -5
And exciting news! Board member mylungswereaching and I have begun initial planning for me to create high quality transfers of his tape collection; which includes VERY early tapings from April 1991... I'll be transferring over his entire collection for him, sending the tapes back and forth across the country with digitized copy in-tow... I look forward to working with mylungswereaching on this, and am VERY grateful for the opportunity to work on such rare tapes! This is honestly a far more interesting and exciting project to read about than when Joel announced his MST3K kickstarter, which I was quite excited for as well. But what a collaboration this is going to be between just 2 genuine fans of the original show. Good luck, and thank you. The time and effort you 2 put into this - and it sure sounds like a helluva chore - will be appreciated and enjoyed immensely! Diet's doing the hard lifting. I've got two laptops so when I know I'm going to be home I pop in the next videos and set my phone alarm for 1 hour and 55 minutes so I can stop the recordings. It only takes 2 minutes at the beginning and end to make a quick recording. The qualities good enough but far from perfect. I've bought two used hard drives and move the vids to both of them when my hard drive starts to fill up. I use used drives because I can get them real cheap on e-bay. I'd rather have two copies on a used drive than one on a new drive because one drive means I could lose months of work if I dropped the drive or it just decided to die one of these days. I'll send the best tapes to diet so he can work his wonders and clean them up as best he can. He gets to copy my old tapes. I get nice clean digital copies. Fair trade. Sometimes there are advantages to being a disorganized pack rat. I haven't thrown them out because I've always wanted to do something like this and I've got a huge pile of unlabeled and mislabeled tapes, some of which are home videos of my kids when they were little I don't want to lose.
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Post by Diet Kolos on Sept 23, 2019 8:21:36 GMT -5
This is honestly a far more interesting and exciting project to read about than when Joel announced his MST3K kickstarter, which I was quite excited for as well. But what a collaboration this is going to be between just 2 genuine fans of the original show. Good luck, and thank you. The time and effort you 2 put into this - and it sure sounds like a helluva chore - will be appreciated and enjoyed immensely! Diet's doing the hard lifting. He's not kidding, lol. My process has ballooned a bit since I started. In addition to everything else, I now strip out the audio and run it twice through a noise reduction filter in Audacity, export out to a Wav file, and re-synch it with the video in Shotcut. And if the video is muddy or washed out like with that Turkey Day version of 207? Those video filters take FOREVER. But thankfully I've only had to do that once. I timed it last night as I put together a copy of 913, a standard 2-hour episode, front-to-back takes 13 hours to burn, convert, strip, edit, and re-merge, at high quality. You don't wanna know how long that 321/521 double feature took.
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