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The 1954 BBC "1984" Production

The upgrade to Bluray and DVD is welcome but the title has circulated widely, thanks to its issue on VHS tape and broadcasts in the 1980s and 1990s. Downloads have not been hard to find.

Only the sections - were there many? - which originated on film are likely to benefit greatly from restoration. Most of it survives, iirc, as a primitive videotape.

The reviews on the Amazon link clearly refer to bootleg issues. The forthcoming issue is bound to be an improvement and the extras may be worth having but 1984 (1954) is not just liberated from the vault! :)
 
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One report that I read indicated that the BBC Archive had allowed a third party access to original negatives - which they very rarely do. This is a brand new restoration compared to the one that the "Restoration Team" did many years ago but was shelved because the Orwell estate were being prissy madams.
 
BTW, the original recording wasn't videotape. Like others if it's era, like the surviving first two episodes of "The Quatermass Experiment", it was made by pointing a film camera at a studio monitor while the show went out live: in other words, a telerecording or kinescope as they're called in the US. That explains why the quality isn't wonderful.
 
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