TV ARK: Returns Jan 2020

I don't know why not, it's not exactly hard to encode videos that way, I've been doing it for years.

I guess though it could have depended even then on who was encoding the videos and what software they were using.

Encoding the videos is easy but getting the material is more variable. The biggest problem I've tended to find (and the following is all just going off my experiences, so not claiming it's gospel) comes down to limitations of the hardware and drivers in the analogue capture space, which in some ways is probably why DV cameras and DVD recorders can do so well. Direct capture devices a few years ago used to be better and more flexible, however finding drivers with support beyond 32 bit Windows XP is increasingly difficult so you often have to get something newer if you want to input direct to PC. Most consumer level cards I've found available in more recent years are much more limited in capability, presumably just because there's lower demand for it now. In a lot of cases it'll only deliver you 25 frames material already deinterlaced by some silly hardware/driver-level method, with no option to disable this as it all happens before it even hits software. If you can only get your source capture in like this where a lot of the odd/even field info has already been discarded or blended, to then try and reconstruct 50fps material for encoding, you either have to duplicate the 2 'full' frames, which is pointless, or interpolate whole frames rather than still having some fields to work from. The results of this are quite variable (and often error prone on certain material such as fast panning, or, almost ironically, slow motion footage). I've been putting some experimental 50fps on my site very recently and playing with a lot more of it internally, but presently still find I have to play it by eye as to whether it'll work better as 50 or 25. If you were to multiply that up by the number of people in TV Ark's team, who presumably all have different hardware setups and run into similar issues, I can see why 50 frame stuff is going to be so few and far between.

They never did add the History pages. This one even had a typo.
http://web.archive.org/web/20150426234119/http://www2.tv-ark.org.uk/teletext/teletext_history.html

I guess it does depend, the capture equipment (can't really call it a card, as it's a USB thing with composite & S-video inputs) I have captures full 576i50 material (but then I used it for digitising my video collection anyway, so I needed stuff kept in the original format, no scaling or deinterlacing) and the software I use for encoding (Adobe Premiere Elements 10- which I probably need to upgrade some time soon as it's 6 years old) can quite easily convert 50i to 50p for uploading to various websites.

I'm amazed that the old TV Ark thread lasted nearly ten years, and also amazed that it's been even longer than that now since the relaunch took place. As others have said I wonder if they'll get round to putting stuff back online that hasn't been online since before the 2006 relaunch!

As someone who does help update a TV pres website its not the easiest thing to do, even with three other people doing other stuff! Some people may not fully understand all the ins and outs. Sometimes, you cant do everything at once, because you have to beta test stuff first, ( no point changing a load of stuff and then having to re-update down the line) But TV Ark does have some basic problems,

Its running on old tech:
One of the first thing I was told while at college etc is you need to future proof stuff. Its gets to the point where things start to break down, or you cant update or new formats are useless to yourself, while old formats also become useless. Its not like Nasa where its running on windows dot just because its works- of course it never changed. Its also useful for back ups. Why do you think companies always have those yearly away days to make sure its back ups are running properly? One single character in piece of code and that it Game over, you have to fix that to get something working, and its a right pain in the back side as anyone working with code will tell you......

Harder to update
I have been told a few times, the site not the easiest to update. For that reason there are a number of errors on the site, Not to say TV ark hasn't tried to update, there had managed to correct a number of mistakes and realigned some sections to bring into to line with other pres site on the web. Its one thing were, we should all be singing off the same hymn sheet.

Correct details
Because of the above this makes this part a little more challenging, Its like the horse and cart, why update if back office function will get changed thus you might need to re-add details etc. In some cases time needs to be spent wisely.. With the correct date - Not to worry there do have a nearly upto date list, it partly out of date because: http://tvforum.uk/tvhome/date-pres-38322/page-63 is always being updated, Its never ending.

It Federal system
This is the other sticking point. If you haven't notice most of the site is like the old ITV, with each person dealing with one section. That means if one person doesn't have time to deal with their section then nothing really can get done. It also hasn't help two of its founder members have sadly past away. I'm not sure if there roles were ever filled. I think TV ark should ask for some extra help, Im sure people would be willing to help out. I've learned you should never be scared to ask for help, no matter what its the end goal that matters. I think that was partly be solved by TV ark interactive,

Well, when they launched, in 1998 there was still local ITV idents and ITV and BBC local news presentation to look out for. A few years later everything looked the same nationally, and thanks to Sky, anyone can capture everything in every region. So yeah, they need to shuffle responsibility around. They don't need one person on Central, another on Yorkshire and another on London any more. Have everyone do whatever captures they can and have one or two experts do all the coding. Do it as a collaboration, not a federal system.

The Testcardiologist on Youtube has recently uploaded some videos which were saved from TV Ark but the quality are dial-up Real Player: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkmadn4WZVMixDZN13Gkp5A/videos

"A few years later everything looked the same" = The launch of BBC regions and ITV regions on Astra FTA satellite in 2001/2002

Uh, the "looked the same" comment was referring to the introduction of the 2000 BBC local news titles, 2002 ITV idents, and 2004 ITV news titles, the "thanks to Sky" thing was a different point, regarding exactly what you just mentioned, the ability to access regions other than your own on digital satellite. They don't equal each other. They just happened in the same timeframe.

When is the site coming back?

No one knows.