Oprah Winfrey

There’s a frustrating trend I keep seeing — not just in archival circles, but across enthusiast and collector communities too. People form strong opinions about professional broadcast gear based on what they’ve read online, not what they’ve actually used, maintained, or digitised real footage with. These opinions get repeated, reinforced, and eventually mistaken for fact. 🔍 What is the Dunning–Kruger Effect? It’s a well-documented cognitive bias where people with low ability or experience in a domain overestimate their knowledge or competence. The less someone actually knows, the more confident they tend to be — because they don’t know enough to recognize what they don’t know. Take the Sony BVH-2000 vs BVH-3100 1 inch machines from the 1980s. A lot of people confidently state that the BVH-2000 is “better.” But better how? Based on specs? A forum post? A friend of a friend’s opinion? In reality, these two decks have very different design goals. The BVH-2000 is a robust and well-built deck, yes. But the BVH-3100 has far superior diagnostic feedback, better transport control options, and integrates more easily into hybrid analog-digital workflows — if it’s been properly maintained and aligned. But none of that nuance matters when people just parrot hearsay. Instead of asking what are the trade-offs? or what kind of tapes and tolerances were these built to handle?, it becomes a game of “this one's better” — usually based on what someone read, not what they actually experienced in real life. And it’s not just Sony decks. Look at how people talk about the Ampex VPR-3 — called the Rolls-Royce of 1-inch machines. That line gets thrown around all the time. But ask anyone who's actually tried to keep one running, and you'll hear a very different story. Yes, it's beautifully engineered. But it’s also delicate, and for its benefits has a price in terms of extra things to go wrong and to keep working. But my point is the immediate praise tends comes from an idea, what people heard — not the lived experience of managing head wear, drift, calibration, or sourcing rare parts just to make it run. This is the problem: too many opinions, not enough firsthand knowledge. If you haven’t: Run hundreds of hours through these decks Calibrated and repaired them yourself Seen how they behave with different tape stock, recording standards, or dropout levels … then maybe don’t declare what’s “best.” Because the truth is: no machine is universally better — they all have context. And when you’ve used them properly, you learn to respect their strengths and their limitations. 👉 This is the kind of work I do every day at the Australian Television Archive — hands-on with the machines, recovering footage others can’t, and keeping these formats alive the hard way: through knowledge, NOT noise! and that's both what sets me apart! (and this can be a good or bad thing depending which side of the fence you sit!)

27

3 Comments

The US makes less than 10 per cent of the global output of movies. It accounts for half of the $30.6 billion global film revenues in cinemas.   That is why American president Donald Trump’s baffling plan to impose 100 per cent tariffs on films shot outside the US, could end up harming rather than helping the world’s largest movie industry. Just one simple round of reciprocal tariffs could hammer the market for US films. My short take based on Omdia research and with generous dollops of perspective from David Hancock's note on the whole issue. https://lnkd.in/dTMhxHsB

76

11 Comments