Media Websites

The Continuity Booth

(January 2004)

This site closed in March 2021 and is now a read-only archive
RU
russnet Founding member
Just went on the The Continuity Booth website and they have closed it down until later in the year.

Such a shame when a fantastic website like that closes down when it could have been left open with a notice saying that updates will happen later in the year. That way people could still enjoy the site
NW
nwtv2003
I noticed this when I visited the site the other day and I am shocked that it is offline, I know there was a notice about how updates will resume later im 2004, but I wouldn't have guessed it was going to be taken offline.

I know the webmaster is probably concentrating more on the excellent Ultimate LWT Website, as that was updated the other day. But the weird thing about it it isn't the first time, as they did this about this time last year. But a good site it is.

50 days later

JV
James Vertigan Founding member
Update from the Continuity Booth website:

We're currently updating, rationalising, and streamlining TCB to return to its original, core objective which was as a tribute site to continuity announcers past and present. A new-look, but slimmed down TCB will return later this year with updated text, and re-captured images and video clips grouped in a more logical way. The old site ran to around 1,700 separate pages and contained thousands of images and hundreds of video clips. So the re-design will take a couple of months at the very least. Thanks for your patience.
AS
Aston
Yes, deffo a shame. Why couldn't the site stay up in the mean time?

Also I don't see why they want to "return" to their "core objective", why couldn't they leave it as it was and just not add stuff they no loger thought was relevant?

Hmmm, very odd...
:-(
A former member
Hi, TCB's down for several reasons:

* We regularly exceeded our bandwidth limits, leading to significant extra cost.
* Large parts of it were out of date.
* Many of the original video files (encoded before we improved software and refined our technique!) were poor quality.
* The structure of the site was unwieldy and time consuming to update.
* Some git has also downloaded all video fles (along with many from TV-Ark), burned them to a CD, and is flogging them on e-bay. So, we also need to improve security and may well decide to offer only streaming video in the future.

I took the decision to temporarily pull the plug (mainly because of the cost of the bandwidth) while all these issues are addressed.

We're working on the new-look site at the moment but it will be sometime before it is complete. We will probably re-launch before then with just a few completed sections and then add the rest gradually.

I realise this isn't ideal but that's the way it is!
JV
James Vertigan Founding member
tcb2003 posted:

* Some git has also downloaded all video fles (along with many from TV-Ark), burned them to a CD, and is flogging them on e-bay. So, we also need to improve security and may well decide to offer only streaming video in the future.



Well one thing you could do to stop that is disable the right-click function on your website (you can probably find some code to do this on the net somewhere) and this should stop anyone from downloading files from your site to their computer or a disk... but I'm not sure if it stops them from saving it once they've streamed it... I think some people have been able to crack these right click disable things as well (sort of going in the back door)
NH
Nick Harvey Founding member
I think the right-click function WAS disabled on TCB, James, but that counts for nothing.

I won't say WHICH key here and release the secret to the remaining three people on the web who don't yet know, but it's only ONE keystroke between pressing and releasing the right-click button to get straight past the disable.
MO
moss Founding member
It's basically impossible to stop people saving your work; once it's been downloaded to a computer, any form of trying to stop it (disabling right-clicking, etc) is just an annoyance to *everyone* (the majority of which have no intention to do anything other than view the clips or read the text) rather than stopping people who really want to copy it.
BB
BBC TV Centre
tcb2003 posted:
* Some git has also downloaded all video fles (along with many from TV-Ark), burned them to a CD, and is flogging them on e-bay. So, we also need to improve security and may well decide to offer only streaming video in the future.


How do you know they are downloaded from your site? Have you actually bought one of these CD's and seen the files on them?

Confused
CR
Crispin
I've always found the ability to disable right-clicking on websites absolutely pointless. There's always a way around it. For exapmle: if you are protecting music content and thus offer only streaming files then people can use their sound recorder to record whilst playing (providing they have an appropriate sound card), if you are protecting graphical content then people can make use of their Print Screen key and paste it into a graphics program.
BE
Ben Founding member
Crispin posted:
I've always found the ability to disable right-clicking on websites absolutely pointless. There's always a way around it. For exapmle: if you are protecting music content and thus offer only streaming files then people can use their sound recorder to record whilst playing (providing they have an appropriate sound card), if you are protecting graphical content then people can make use of their Print Screen key and paste it into a graphics program.


Indeed theres a way around almost everything for the most determained of people. I suppose the only other alternative is to have some kind of dog/logo or web address on the clip itself but then you have the obvious problem of having an annoying logo on the clip and the extra work it takes to include that.
MO
moss Founding member
Ben posted:
Indeed theres a way around almost everything for the most determained of people. I suppose the only other alternative is to have some kind of dog/logo or web address on the clip itself but then you have the obvious problem of having an annoying logo on the clip and the extra work it takes to include that.


I'm going to be putting some clips of some Red Dwarf continuity on my site at some point; seeing as I won't be getting permission from the broadcasters to do so, I won't really have a right to say what people can or can't do with the clips, as they're not my copyright.

If you've got permission from the broadcasters, it's a bit different; especially if they've only given permission for you to use it. Perhaps as you say, some kind of DOG on the clip could be used, or maybe just some kind of slide at the start, although that could obviously be cut off.

But to be honest, I don't really see why people worry so much about clips being nicked. On Ganymede & Titan, I'm so busy writing new content that I don't really care if anything gets taken. (Indeed, I've specifically given people license to do so.) Keep creating new content (or distributing hard-to-get old content) and eventually people will come direct to you, rather than getting it from 3rd parties. A simple way round the problem Smile

Newer posts