Byte_hoven
New member
Two BFI discs turned up in the announcements this week and one of them raises a question I would genuinely like an answer to. The Goons at Rediffusion collects four mid-fifties Associated-Rediffusion comedies - The Idiot Weekly Price 2d, A Show Called Fred, Son of Fred and Yes It's the Cathode-Ray Tube Show - with Richard Lester directing early on and Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan in front of the camera. It is dated 07/12/2026. These only ever went out in the London region, so the fact that anything survives at all is the first surprise.
Here is the thing. British commercial television in 1956 was largely live. What exists now is generally a telerecording, meaning somebody pointed a film camera at a monitor and shot the picture off the tube. That process eats contrast, adds grain that has nothing to do with the original, and locks in whatever the monitor was doing that night. So a Blu-ray of this material is not going to look like a restored feature. What it can do is stop a compression layer from mangling the grain, which on 16mm-sourced telerecordings is actually a real gain over the DVD era.
The listing does not say what elements were used or whether any restoration was done, and that is the detail I would want before ordering. The other BFI title, Brassed Off, is dated 09/11/2026 and is a straightforward 1996 film, so that one is a much simpler proposition.
Anyone here bought BFI telerecording releases before? Are they honest about the source condition on the packaging or do you find out when the disc spins?
Here is the thing. British commercial television in 1956 was largely live. What exists now is generally a telerecording, meaning somebody pointed a film camera at a monitor and shot the picture off the tube. That process eats contrast, adds grain that has nothing to do with the original, and locks in whatever the monitor was doing that night. So a Blu-ray of this material is not going to look like a restored feature. What it can do is stop a compression layer from mangling the grain, which on 16mm-sourced telerecordings is actually a real gain over the DVD era.
The listing does not say what elements were used or whether any restoration was done, and that is the detail I would want before ordering. The other BFI title, Brassed Off, is dated 09/11/2026 and is a straightforward 1996 film, so that one is a much simpler proposition.
Anyone here bought BFI telerecording releases before? Are they honest about the source condition on the packaging or do you find out when the disc spins?
