Re: [ARSCLIST] Risk assessment tool Q3--DAT

[David Lennick <dlennick@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Here's what a real live CBC producer has to say:

"As far as I know all archiving is now done to hard disc or CDR. Some DAT backup is still
being done, though a lot of stuff sits
in Archives on DAT. No idea when they expect to burn that to CD or whatever. MAny of the
early Archive DATS were done
with the wretched Sony 1000 series machines with no time code at 48K and with dubious
archival properties."

dl

Don Tait wrote:

>
> >   We at WFMT used DATs for some years for a lot of things, but problems
> > developed. Given the number of people who used some of them in one way or another,
> > such things as dropping them might have happened (Tom Fine mentioned the
> > damage that can do). But according to our engineers there seemed to be problems of
> > other types,
> > including even slightly inexact winding/rewinding that damaged the signal on
> > the tape. Whatever the cause, the catalyst for us to abandon the technology
> > was what happened to two or three years' worth of Peter van de Graaff's programs
> > for the Beethoven Satellite Network, which is produced at WFMT. All were on
> > DAT. Peter found that every one of the tapes was useless. The engineers
> > attributed it to imprecise winding -- it couldn't have been mishandling by Peter,
> > because only he handled them and he is very fastidious. So our players might not
> > have been functioning perfectly.
> >
> >   This is only WFMT's experience of course, and others whose DATs still play
> > well have clearly had better luck. We heard that the CBC abandoned DAT at the
> > time we did, because of similar trouble. David Lennick probably knows whether
> > or not that's correct.
>
> I was under the impression they stayed with DAT for quite a long time, but I'll check
> with those who were actually there (I haven't worked on a CBC program since the late
> 90s).
>
> dl