15-06-2024, 11:46 AM
A lot less footage online from historic ITN elections sadly. Though of course the BBC elections having been repeated on several occasions has a lot to do with that. Apart from the 4 hours of 1983 coverage I linked to yesterday, there's only short clips of the 87 and 92 elections and nothing from 1979 and earlier.
When I have seen clips of their coverage of the 59. 64 and 66 elections, I'm suprised how poor the quality is, even though they survive, at least partly, on videotape- looks like they were put through a not brilliant 405>625 conversion at some point, probably quite early on with primitive standards converters, and presumably the original 405 tapes no longer exist to do a better conversion from. I almost wonder if it was an optical conversion.
When I have seen clips of their coverage of the 59. 64 and 66 elections, I'm suprised how poor the quality is, even though they survive, at least partly, on videotape- looks like they were put through a not brilliant 405>625 conversion at some point, probably quite early on with primitive standards converters, and presumably the original 405 tapes no longer exist to do a better conversion from. I almost wonder if it was an optical conversion.