I think it was the fact that the make of the television was a Matsui - not exactly the leading brand on the market...
TBH though, even if you do buy a good brand, you can't be sure that what you are getting is actually made by them. For a long while during the 90's, almost all JVC VCRs (the company which sold themselves as being 'the inventors of VHS' and thus charged a premium for their machines) were actually rebadged Alba Group products, where exactly the same machine was also sold under such prestigious brand names as Bush and Goodmans.
Meanwhile, today many Philips TVs are also made by Alba Group, whilst a lot of Hitachi stuff is made by LG Electronics (that's the company which used to trade under that coveted brand, Goldstar).
And when it comes to media, 'BBC', 'TDK' and 'Sony' VHS cassettes (which you'd assume to be good quality products) are all made by Strand Europe, a company which mass produces huge quanitites of cheap, low grade tapes and then sells them on to be sold under whatever brand name the purchaser wants - the same tapes destined to be sold in a Sony case are also sold 10 for a pound under some badly translated chinese name in a discount store (indeed the cheapness of the BBC tapes is best illustrated by the fact that until a couple of years ago they still had the pre-97 BBC logo on them - just changing the artwork was too much of an expense).
Some very prestigious names are into rebranding some very cheap kit, don't necessarily assume that the name means better quality.
And when it comes to media, 'BBC', 'TDK' and 'Sony' VHS cassettes (which you'd assume to be good quality products) are all made by Strand Europe, a company which mass produces huge quanitites of cheap, low grade tapes and then sells them on to be sold under whatever brand name the purchaser wants - the same tapes destined to be sold in a Sony case are also sold 10 for a pound under some badly translated chinese name in a discount store (indeed the cheapness of the BBC tapes is best illustrated by the fact that until a couple of years ago they still had the pre-97 BBC logo on them - just changing the artwork was too much of an expense).
Ah, I always thought that the "BBC" tapes were actually made by the same people who supplied the BBC with their media to be used on air.
I never twigged that they had they had been made by some company selling really cheap tape, but under a brand name from the BBC. Surely the BBC would have known about it as they had to have their name stamped upon them - and would be aware of its implications on their reputation if the end-user found the tapes to be shyte?
As an aside, what kind of media (tapes/CDs) do the BBC use? Is it standard stuff you can get, or is it specially made for them and branded etc?
I never twigged that they had they had been made by some company selling really cheap tape, but under a brand name from the BBC. Surely the BBC would have known about it as they had to have their name stamped upon them - and would be aware of its implications on their reputation if the end-user found the tapes to be shyte?
To be fair, they are not *that* bad - most of my Prisoner collection is held on such tapes, but they certainly ain't Memorex. I'd be more concerned about branding - in today's brand conscious world I wouldn't want a product retailing in 2003 with a logo which is 7 years out of date and with (c)BBC 1988 on the back.
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As an aside, what kind of media (tapes/CDs) do the BBC use? Is it standard stuff you can get, or is it specially made for them and branded etc?
If you mean used for production, I haven't got a clue, but I think a lot (most?) of their 2" 'quad' transmission tapes were Memorex. If you mean for things they release, again I don't really know, probably whatever stock the the duplicators they use happen to have. BBC VHS was fairly awful though - the number of B&W Doctor Who videos I've got which show colour banding consistant with cheap duplication on a high speed machine is beyond a joke, and a number of 90's sitcoms I've got on video are now litted with dropout (indicating poor quality tape) despite not having been played very much.
I don't know much about their other media - I've only got 2 BBC DVDs and no CDs or tapes.
Just to add to that -- Alba Radio and Strand are not themselves manufacturers. While cwathen is completely correct that the "JVC" VCRs were made by the same company that made *some* Alba Group VCRs, Alba were not the manufacturer either. I know the videos you're on about; they were made by a Far-Eastern outfit that I don't recall the name of. Many Alba VCRs were Orion/Thakrals though, just like Matsui. The televisions are typically made by the Turkish companies Beko and Vestel. Several major companies use these Turkish firms.
Hitachi have an alliance with LG. The Korean giants are the new Japanese; because of the fact that when you buy an LG or Samsung it's actually made by that company rather than being subcontracted, these are probably the most trustworthy brands out there today -- you know what you are getting for a change. One major exception to this is low-range LG televisions, which are produced by Beko.
Strand, like Alba, is just a distributor. Typically they'd distribute tapes from the like of CMC Magnetic, SKC or MBI. Oddly enough, Alba sub-contracted the distribution of their blank media to Strand as well. As for Sony, they do manufacture most of their own tapes, or at least did until recently.
Memorex was mentioned -- they don't manufacture either!!! They buy in from the same suppliers as Strand do, although their media is possibly of a higher standard, though I am not personally convinced. For many years Memorex bought in millions of tapes from the Korean firm SKC, but these days they are less fussy.
The badly-translated Chinese tapes you get in markets are not the same as these second-tier manufacturers though. These are very poor quality tapes produced in Chinese sweatshops usually on very old production lines and shouldn't be confused with CMC etc. The second-tier groups are hardly the greatest in the world but their products generally meet the agreed minimum reference standards at least. Kaytapes and their ilk (are they even still available any more) are even lower. One infamous producer of this very low grade media is the HK-based "Longten", which has since gone on to make DVDR media which is equally appalling.
On the subject of DVDs and other optical media, this brand engineering has infested that market as well. Buy a Sony and you get a disc made by Acer. TDK is Taiwanese (usually CMC), Mitsubishi/Verbatim is usually MBI India. The only way of guaranteeing good media these days it seems is to specify unbranded Taiyo Yuden media, made in Japan, one of the few decent manufacturers left. But even there, there are fakes about -- HK companies putting the TY name into the disc's ID string. Barstewards.
I'd be more concerned about branding - in today's brand conscious world I wouldn't want a product retailing in 2003 with a logo which is 7 years out of date and with (c)BBC 1988 on the back.
Not only is the logo 7 years out of date, but it was never right to begin with - you can clearly see that someone in a Taiwanese factory has tried to redraw it using Adobe Illustrator version 1.0 (or maybe they did it by hand on a drawing board). The slant of the /B/B/C/ is completely wrong and the typography is nothing like that of the real logo. I presume they couldn't be arsed to send the packaging designers an eps file of the BBC logo - an incredibly sloppy bit of quality control considering the British market was flooded with tens of millions of those cassette tapes throughout the 1990s.
And for some unknown reason the artwork on the cassette box also featured the BBC Sport 'globe' logo circa 1988 (with the orbit things spinning around it).
Yeah the BBC branding was pretty bad. Strand are box-shifters -- the only reason they bought the rights to use the BBC name on tapes is because it's a cheap way to shift more cassettes. Pay the Beeb a few pennies per tape and shove out millions of them at over-inflated prices to people who don't know any better. It is directly equivalent to any other distro -- you buy in loads of cheap and cheerful far-Eastern product that would never sell under the manufacturer's name, and buy in known names from whoever will sell them to you. Alba are the same, look at Bush, Hinari, Goodmans, Breville, Grundig and so on. Most of these are established companies who went bust and the brand-names are useful tools. Bush hasn't existed as a manufacturer in decades.
The BBC won't care because it's an old agreement and they'll just be getting a cheque in each month to pay for the directors' entertainments. Strand won't care because they know that (a) it would cost them to buy in the rights to the new logos, and (b) most of their target market won't realise, much less care, about the duff branding.
And quite frankly, anyone who seriously thinks that the BBC has a factory at Telly House churning out VHS videotapes deserves to be ripped off.
Meanwhile, today many Philips TVs are also made by Alba Group, whilst a lot of Hitachi stuff is made by LG Electronics (that's the company which used to trade under that coveted brand, Goldstar).
And when it comes to media, 'BBC', 'TDK' and 'Sony' VHS cassettes (which you'd assume to be good quality products) are all made by Strand Europe, a company which mass produces huge quanitites of cheap, low grade tapes and then sells them on to be sold under whatever brand name the purchaser wants - the same tapes destined to be sold in a Sony case are also sold 10 for a pound under some badly translated chinese name in a discount store (indeed the cheapness of the BBC tapes is best illustrated by the fact that until a couple of years ago they still had the pre-97 BBC logo on them - just changing the artwork was too much of an expense).
I know you say that, but I did buy some of those BBC tapes in 1997, and I have to admit I've never had a problem with them. They still play fine 8 years on.
The BBC won't care because it's an old agreement and they'll just be getting a cheque in each month to pay for the directors' entertainments. Strand won't care because they know that (a) it would cost them to buy in the rights to the new logos, and (b) most of their target market won't realise, much less care, about the duff branding.
I'm sure over the last couple of years however I have seen BBC tapes with the current logo on them. I think it may have finally been changed. I didn't check whether they were still Strand tapes though.
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I know you say that, but I did buy some of those BBC tapes in 1997, and I have to admit I've never had a problem with them. They still play fine 8 years on.
As I said myself, they weren't *that* bad. I personally bought an awful lot of them between 1999 and 2001. But that was when Index were selling them at £5 for 5 3 hour tapes - by then they were being priced as the budget tape that they were.
Wheras until around the mid-90's, ISTR them being sold as some sort of premium quality media because they had the BBC logo on them - and they were priced accordingly. Privately owned A/V stores (back when DSG didn't quite have the high street sewn up) where you automatically paid more for everything anyway seemed particularly big on them.
Not only is the logo 7 years out of date, but it was never right to begin with - you can clearly see that someone in a Taiwanese factory has tried to redraw it using Adobe Illustrator version 1.0 (or maybe they did it by hand on a drawing board). The slant of the /B/B/C/ is completely wrong and the typography is nothing like that of the real logo. I presume they couldn't be arsed to send the packaging designers an eps file of the BBC logo - an incredibly sloppy bit of quality control considering the British market was flooded with tens of millions of those cassette tapes throughout the 1990s.
And for some unknown reason the artwork on the cassette box also featured the BBC Sport 'globe' logo circa 1988 (with the orbit things spinning around it).
Really? I always remember seeing these BBC tapes in Tesco, and looking, and thinking wheather they were actually from the BBC or someone else who had nicked the brand name. The logo never looked wrong to me on them though.
Can someone post a pic of a BBC tape box so I can see please?
