Unseen Moon Landing Video Released 212
bazzalunatic writes "Digitally remastered footage of the moon landing, including high-quality and brighter images of Neil Armstrong stepping off the ladder will be shown for the first time ever to the general public at an awards ceremony in Sydney, Australia. The magnetic data tapes seem to have all been lost — erased — by NASA, so all that's left are VHS recordings, which have been restored, giving the best-ever film of the whole moon landing. The publicity over this seems to be pushing NASA into releasing the whole 3-hour recording."
VHS recordings? (Score:5, Informative)
There was no Video Home System [wikipedia.org] when the moon landings happened. There was reel to reel tape, and cinescope, but no VHS until 1976.
Re:VHS recordings? (Score:5, Informative)
RTFA: It's a 1980s dupe onto VHS of the original reel-to-reel.
Isn't that summary wrong? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:VHS recordings? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:VHS recordings? (Score:5, Informative)
There was no VHS at the time of the airing of the First, Second, or Third Doctors either.
Nevertheless some of the lost episodes were recovered from VHS or Betamax because that's all we have left. Perhaps some engineer copied the original 1969 tapes over to a VHS collection. Then the originals were erased by an idiot, so all that's left are the backups.
Aside - VHS is a really crummy format for storage. Only ~320 pixels across by 486 scanlines. The original magnetic tapes from 1969 probably offered the full resolution possible with NTSC-I, or about ~640x480. Super VHS can capture that full resolution, but not regular VHS.
Re:NASA....in Australia!? (Score:3, Informative)
Why do we keep getting stupid questions from people who have obviously not bothered to RTFA? No, I'm not going to tell you either, it's too early in the morning to be nice.
TFA is wrong (Score:3, Informative)
At the time of the Moon landing, three stations - Goldstone in California, Honeysuckle Creek in Canberra, and Parkes in New South Wales - simultaneously recorded the events onto magnetic data tape. The direct recordings were not of broadcast quality, says John, so they had to set up a regular TV camera pointed at a small black-and-white TV screen in the observatory to obtain higher-quality images that could be relayed to television stations around the world.
They didn't use the TV camera to obtain a higher quality, but to convert from the odd signal used by NASA [1] to PAL/NTSC.
1: the nonstandard TV signals were used to make video transmission possible in the small amount of bandwidth available.
Re:Careful with the headset feed (Score:3, Informative)
As long as the Australian presenter doesn't announce that it was Buzz Aldrin who got off the ladder first.
LOL funny but your also so mean
for those who missed it this is the reference.
http://www.thecelebritytruth.com/wrong-winner-announced-australias-top-model/0019829 [thecelebritytruth.com]
The poor girl you won ... opps sorry wrong person
Re:NASA....in Australia!? (Score:4, Informative)
The source tapes were from Australia. The highest quality video from the moon landing were in Australia. Since they decided to land on the moon early, the US was under the horizon, so they transmitted to Australia instead.
Fixed that for you (Score:4, Informative)
RTFA - Not released. (Score:1, Informative)
"PREVIOUSLY UNSEEN FOOTAGE OF of the historic Apollo 11 moonwalk will be shown exclusively at the 2010 Australian Geographic Society Awards in Sydney on 6 October." (emphasis theirs)
Re:VHS recordings? (Score:5, Informative)
The footage we're talking about was originally taken with a slowcan camera, 250 TV lines at 10 fps. That's not "a high definition camera".
Re:Bah! (Score:3, Informative)
On a (somewhat more) serious note: man went to the Moon ONCE
Well, six times really:
Apollo 11
Apollo 12
Apollo 14
Apollo 15
Apollo 16
Apollo 17
All of them had man walking (and for some even driving) on the moon.