Years ago I had a quite a large collection of Musical films on LP. I would like to indulge and take trips down memory lane. Where is the best place to find them and what is the best media so that I can port them onto my TV?
I think we were confused by "Musical films on LP". Obviously LPs can only hold sound, not video, so we assumed you wanted modern-formats copies of the LPs, (CD, or MP3 via online, HDD or pen drive) so you could play the sound through your TV. Now you mention "complete film", it becomes clear: you want the film (sound and pictures) for which you currently have sound-only on LP. As a matter of interest, are the LPs made using the original soundtrack (and therefore cast) or are they cover versions of the songs made by other artists which was a common practice with musical soundtrack LPs.
Try Youtube or Netflix, or maybe a web vendor such as Network who may sell it on DVD. The medium that you buy it on will depend on what player equipment (DVD, MPEG-2/H264, Netflix etc) you already have.
Maybe I'm a Luddite but I always like to own a physical copy (LP or CD for music, DVD for TV/film), even if I port that onto a computer for easier playing on my PC (eg via iTunes or VLC) or TV (eg via Plex on our Roku box).
As others have said: the term "LP" refers to a flat disc with grooves that's played on a "record player" (a Long Play(ing) record); the technology was unable to carry video information for a film. Perhaps you're getting confused with one of the tape technologies (VHS, Betamax), or video disc?
I believe Baird experimented with recording his 30-line TV pictures onto the grooves of a record, but apart from that, I don't think there have been any mechanically-written/read video recording formats.
On VHS (and maybe Betamax) there was a tape speed that was designated LP (long play) which ran the tape at half the full SP (standard play) speed and so could record a whopping 10 hours on a 5-hour tape. The picture quality was crap, and freeze-frames were monochrome. Ironically, the later EP (extra-long play) which ran at 1/3 speed gave better quality pictures and colour freeze-frames. I hadn't realised how crap VHS was until I came to copy some tapes (mostly at SP, some at LP or EP) onto MPEG using an analogue capture card: for some reason, all the capture devices I've tried have made the timing jitter (wiggly vertical lines) far more obvious than they are when displayed on an analogue TV. I wasn't rich enough to own a VHS that had a timebase corrector :-)
I think he was more interested in film conversions which are not all soot and whitewash and bloopy like many you get on DVDs from Ebay or so I'm told. Brian
Quite a lot have been donated to the Library of Congress in the states and the UK ones probably the British Film Institute, but don't know how you might find a decent transcription. Also what is considered sacrilege, ie obviously colourisation will be, but what about cleaning up the sound track or enhancing detail etc? Brian
I apologise to all who replied. I had, more than a senior moment, more like a senior day. What I'd like is recordings of the original sound tracks, of course they were on LPs. What would be the best media for modern TV's, as that is where I can get the best sound? Also how large are the recordings in terms of disc space? As I asked originally, what is the best source please. Thanks to anyone who bothered to answer this after my stupidity!
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