The Avengers On Britbox

[Frankymole]

Especially the New Avengers which badly needs some work on it. I have UK, French and German sets and there are different problems on different sets but the prints used are uniformly poor.

The Restoration Team rely on being commissioned, so budgets are usually the sticking point. You would think for broadcast material they'd be in demand (repeat seasons on TV, streaming etc) - but amazingly the "main" BBC weren't able to use restored episodes on the odd occasion they repeat a Doctor Who classic, unless they "buy" it from BBC Worldwide (or whatever the commercial arm is called now) and so are tempted to show unrestored ones. Madness.

I know people have been asking for the early 1970s ITV favourite "Timeslip" to have colour recovery done on it (it has a colour signal on many - perhaps all? - of the B&W telerecordings) but no-one wants to pay for it.

[Elle]

Yes, part of the problem with these things is that they have no obvious outlet for any restoration work to be aired through. The last port of call for many shows was DVD releases (Blu-ray for a select few). Now they've been released (sometimes more than once), there's nothing else to give them a profile. TV doesn't generally want the old series such as Timeslip any more, so it's a vicious circle of no exposure equals no money to spend on upgrading them!

[Andrew Pixley]

I know people have been asking for the early 1970s ITV favourite "Timeslip" to have colour recovery done on it (it has a colour signal on many - perhaps all? - of the B&W telerecordings) but no-one wants to pay for it.

... but I have seen such restoration/colourisation done online very successfully by enthusiasts. I think a lot of this all comes down to how much time and money people can afford to pump into these things. And when it comes down to it, there have been some amazing DVD releases from enthusiasts rather than the major companies; I know that we cherish our discs of "Mogul" and "The Vital Spark" which came about this way. If enthusiasts are enthusiastic enough, they'll do the work anyway in all manner of fields... and can still achieve things that the commercial outfits can't.

All the best

Andrew

[darren]

Britbox/ ITVX have added series 2 & 3 to their Avengers streaming.

The initial upload was a mess with all the episodes wrongly filed but they have now sorted it.

I'd dearly love the sound on these episodes to be remastered.

Do Britbox and ITVX share content now, or are they separately hosting it on different sites?

I'm not really too clear on what happened but the BBC sold its share in Britbox to ITV (although BBC mtaerial will still be added) and ITV have added all the britbox contents to ITVX. I don't know if Britbox will continue as its own entity.

[Ian Wegg]

I'm not really too clear on what happened but the BBC sold its share in Britbox to ITV (although BBC mtaerial will still be added) and ITV have added all the britbox contents to ITVX. I don't know if Britbox will continue as its own entity.

I imagine the Britbox interface will eventually be retired. It's no longer possible for a new user to sign up to Britbox and if you let your subscription expire you aren't able to renew it.

ITVX has all the Britbox content plus current ITV programmes for the same price so there's not much incentive for sticking with Britbox at renewal time.

[mousemeat]

so how big was Brit Box ? i.e. did many people use it, etc ?

[Frankymole]

Quite a few, I think, anecdotally at least I knew people who watched all of certain series on it to catch up, and I myself watched a few things on it, which I never did for other pay-to-stream services.

[mousemeat]

thanks for the info...I always like to hear about such channels-or-streaming sites like Brit Box, etc..and users opinions, and more...the way we view things has been changing so fast at times.....