Hopefully someone will take notice of this, because this is going to be a long rant on something that I consider very important to the future of the tape trading community at this site and various others.
Plain and simple, the tape trading community currently sucks. As I'm sure some of you may have noticed, most tapes being traded around are several copy generations old and were copied onto low grade six hour VHS tapes at the EP setting. Needless to say, nearly everytime a copy like this is sent out, it again is copied and traded, again and again until the end of time. VHS tape when copied, especially in a setting like EP, causes the quality to lessen an incredible amount every single time. Even the originals wear down significantly over a short amount of time.
At the current rate of things, in just a few years, most of the circulating tapes will be of far less quality than they are now. As such, here is what needs to be done:
1. Low generation (preferably master copies) tapes need to be located.
2. These tapes need to be transferred to DVD-R.
3. The DVD-Rs need to be copied (Digital copies are lossless) and distributed.
On the surface, this may sound difficult and it probably will be, though I believe it is necessary to the survival of trading of professional wrestling. I wish to point out, that this is not impossible. Here is a story that you may wish to hear:
Just a few years ago the Nirvana bootleg community (traders of audio and video shows) consisted mostly of high generation tapes, mp3s, and vcds. Currently, thanks to a mass organizing it is possible to locate the best circulating audio on cd-r and the best circulating video on dvd-r in an easy fashion. The way of trading that is used by that community is the same one that I would advise here. It's called B+P or Blanks and Postage and here is how it works:
1. Person A has a show that Person B wants.
2. Person B contacts Person A and asks to make a B+P trade which Person A agrees to.
3. Person B sends an padded mailer with a DVD-R inside it, as well as a stamped mailer for Person A to send it back in.
4. Person A, at no expense to himself, makes a copy of the disc and puts it back in the already stamped and addressed mailer that was included.
5. Person A and Person B now both have the same show without any quality loss and at minimal expense.
At the current moment I do not have a DVD-R/W drive or a video capture card, however, I am sure that someone here most certainly does and can help with this project. I would be willing to contribute low-generation or master copies of various shows under the condition that my tape would be returned to me and I would also receive a DVD-R of the show.
- Andrew "The Bad Guy" Harris