Police in UK need VHS experts!

[BarryTheCrab]

https://apple.news/AOfPa_NR2Q2OaVVbw-5EgLA

Apparently various law enforcement in the UK has a need to digitize millions of VHS evidence tapes. Big money budget. Is this news? I would think this would have been ongoing.

[aramkolt]

My guess is they were doing it internally as needed when they thought that certain tapes could be relevant to active cases, but now they might be figuring they want to free up space and make sure that the footage is still watchable for future evidence.

My guess is that a few companies will probably try to set up shop to grab as much of the budget as possible and they probably won't be aiming for quality of transfers which you'd think would be of utmost importance when it comes to evidence.

You would think they'd just create an internal department or division for this though so that media doesn't get lost or stolen and so that the quality of captures is all up to par.

I actually wouldn't be too surprised if now they want an AI searchable database of videos in their possession so that they might be able to link certain individuals on different tapes as being the same people.

[lordsmurf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by aramkolt

My guess is that a few companies will probably try to set up shop to grab as much of the budget as possible and they probably won't be aiming for quality

Yep. Lots of government ineptitude. Although, in UK, I wonder if they'll take advantage of BBC resources.

[radiokom]

I'd be very surprised if the BBC had any VCRs left. They have all sold them or thrown them away long time ago. I bought two Studer A80RCMK2s from their agent in the early 2000s for about £500 each.

[timtape]

Millions of VHS tapes is huge. I wonder if anyone has estimated how many VCR's would be needed to transfer than many tapes. Let's say there are 3 million tapes and one VCR can reliably play 1000 tapes. That's 3000 VCR's needed which each still have 1000 plays in them.