crunchie

I've acquired many TV shows on DVD (such as Meet The Wife, Royal Variety Shows, Citizen James, It's Lulu, NME Pollwinners Concerts, etc), but all of these are spoiled by a constant timeclock and other onscreen menaces.

I only have found 8 episodes of MEET THE WIFE so where are the other 31? It's a fantastic comedy show with a great cast. Does anyone have any more episodes of this series, or, indeed, any at all WITHOUT timecode?

In fact, where does all this timecoded material come from? Some episodes have "BBC F&VTL" in the corner - I presume this to mean 'BBC Film And Video Tape Library' - am I right? Is someone "raiding" the BBC library, or is this "timecoded" material all that remains?

Adam01

In answer to your questions...

1) Yes, BBC F&VTL stands for BBC Film and Video Tape Library. Now more commonly known as BBC Information and Archives, based at Windmill Road.

2) 23 episodes of "Meet The Wife" have been junked according to Kaleidoscope. INFAX lists 15 remaining episodes.

3) The time clock won't exist on the master copies. Time clocks and on screen DOGS are put onto viewing copies to deliberately "spoil"them. This is to prevent people from making copies, showing it to a fee paying audience etc. This is common practice in television companies and media archives.

marker

Hi Adam very interesting comments this has answered some questions I had about time clocks on material

cheers marker

crunchie

Thanks very much Adam - you're a wealth of information!

Apart from the eight episodes I already have, do you - or anyone else reading this - know if the other 7 'still-existing' episodes of MEET THE WIFE are in circulation, or if the BBC ever plan to release all 15 surviving episodes?

image45

Yes if you can find a none commercially available copy of a program removed / copied from the BBC archive that it not timecoded or syphored with the BBC F&V,TL or BBC I&A logo then you have done very well indeed or you haved dubbed it direct from the Panasonic D1 or D3 digital tape yourself

"Seya next time!"