Silicon Chip's 'Radio, TV & Hobbies' DVD

[Agent24]

I see that Silicon Chip now sell a scanned archive of Radio, TV & Hobbies magazines on DVD: http://www.siliconchip.com.au/Shop/3/2950


Has anyone bought one or otherwise knows what the image quality is like?

[rob.manderson]

I bought it as a download about two years ago - the image quality is fine and very readable.

[aargee]

I’d like to see one of EA an ETI, I don’t think that will happen until they’ve milked every “photocopy of article”  charge / sale of back copy, that they can.

[jonovid]

the United States is the most litigious society in the world.
however many American vintage electronics and hobby magazine back issues are either free or available at minimum cost.
this is in contrast to Australia were Silicon Chip Publications continues to withhold EA Electronics Australia archives from the public.
with excuses of the possibility that legal action will be taken because of individual's or corporation's content in past EA magazine back issues. that are more then 30 years old. no one is saying Silicon Chip should give content away for free.

[jonovid]

Bit strong to say they are withholding the archives from the public. I haven't heard them make excuses about legal action. Have they? If they don't have the copyright and choose not to release the archive because of it then the worst you can say is they are doing what is right. There cannot possibly be such a large demand for DVD's of magazines that haven't been published for nearly 20 years.

I have Radio Television & Hobbies on DVD-ROM from the 1930's up to 1965 .
demand for the 1970s - 1980s EA archives should be more.  then this

[EEVblog]

I've heard the reason they don't produce EA and ETI DVD's is because no-one uses DVD's anymore.
Or it might have been to do with the difficulties of gaining copyright holders permission to the material. Magazines themselves as I understand it only hold copyright to the printed magazine.

Correct. I think I asked Leo this in a video interview once.
Didn't stop them selling rights to the articles to other magazine though... 
I never did get paid for my uCurrent article published (without my permission or knowledge) in Elector or whatever mag it was that SC sell a lot of articles to.

[EEVblog]

I have Radio Television & Hobbies on DVD-ROM from the 1930's up to 1965 .
demand for the 1970s - 1980s EA archives should be more.  then this

How many would you think they would sell? One hundred? A thousand?
I wouldn't mind getting hold of Australian Electronics Monthly.

Considering their entire print audience last I heard was close to dropping under 10,000, a few thousand sales at best.

[EEVblog]

Bit strong to say they are withholding the archives from the public. I haven't heard them make excuses about legal action. Have they?

I know one serial nutter who's a previous contributor that objects to having his articles distributed again without compensation.
IIRC talking with Leo once about it he indicated there were perhaps a few.

[Circlotron]

Page quality is similar to this screenshot if you don't zoom it too far.
If posting this single page is too naughty re copyright issues then just take it down.
The idea is to get people interested enough to buy the DVD.

[Brumby]

Quite acceptable, I would think.

"Page  Fifty-four" ???

It's in words.  I cannot recall seeing that before.

[EEVblog]

Didn't stop them selling rights to the articles to other magazine though... 
I never did get paid for my uCurrent article published (without my permission or knowledge) in Elector or whatever mag it was that SC sell a lot of articles to.

2 years after I published it in Silicon Chip
No "arrangement" with me.
At least they kept my name and linked to my shop.
First I heard of this publication was when a viewer emailed me about it.

[jonovid]

Bit strong to say they are withholding the archives from the public. I haven't heard them make excuses about legal action. Have they?

I know one serial nutter who's a previous contributor that objects to having his articles distributed again without compensation.
IIRC talking with Leo once about it he indicated there were perhaps a few.

its sad when one or two serial nutters is standing in the way of progress of the release of historical magazine content on DVD.
maybe Silicon Chip Publications should be proactive and take action against the individual's in the interest of in saving the national electronics engineering history. vacuum tubes to the transistor, and then the integrated circuit.  the EA archives 1960's to the 1990's is of great Australian historical value. as time goes by. many of the electronic engineering public will no longer be with us.
that will more then prepared pay for this good historical content.  in Australia we need to do more in saving and sharing our engineering history, whether it is related to war or not.  lest we forget were the archives are, & their lost -gone forever.

first became interested in electronics.
as a kid my Father had over 400 Electronics Australia, Radio TV & Hobbies magazines in binders. but sadly through divorce and moving the magazine collection was lost. 

[Agent24]

I loved Electronics Australia as a kid, was disgusted when the library threw out all their copies. They keep magazines only so long, before they're deemed out of date, apparently. Idiotic.

Have been collecting them second-hand since, and have most of them now.

Was going to try R, TV&H too, but might get the DVD instead. Just worried that the quality might have been too low. Elektor published a DVD with old projects archived, but it's quite terrible. The scans are very low quality and the PCB artwork is practically unusable. Not impossible, but you either have to work magic in Photoshop or just redraw the whole thing in CAD anyway.

And I've had enough of badly scanned and barely readable schematics in service manuals! (Who hasn't?)

[jonovid]

I loved Electronics Australia as a kid, was disgusted when the library threw out all their copies. They keep magazines only so long, before they're deemed out of date, apparently. Idiotic.

Have been collecting them second-hand since, and have most of them now.

Was going to try R, TV&H too, but might get the DVD instead. Just worried that the quality might have been too low. Elektor published a DVD with old projects archived, but it's quite terrible. The scans are very low quality and the PCB artwork is practically unusable. Not impossible, but you either have to work magic in Photoshop or just redraw the whole thing in CAD anyway.

And I've had enough of badly scanned and barely readable schematics in service manuals! (Who hasn't?)

yes some are badly scanned ,  but today this is no longer the case .
with professional full color archiving from the original magazines if you can get it.
some signs of ageing are ok and so is the odd dog-eared pages. here is two ebay-Images. of original magazine collections for sale.
update-
just added an Image from my DVD of PDF from Silicon Chip Publications. this is the Image quality on the DVD.

[Circlotron]

November 1944, page six.

[jonovid]

Silicon Chip Publications should look into crowdfunding for it magazine archives to a digital database.
and then consider release archives to the public in batches as part of a careful marketing strategy.

[CJay]

The one mag I'd like a compelte archive of would be ETI, if that were available I'd happily pay for a disk, download, USB stick, whatever.

It's of limited utility these days I guess but I learned a lot and remember the sense of humour with fondness,.

[johnwa]

I’d like to see one of EA an ETI, I don’t think that will happen until they’ve milked every “photocopy of article”  charge / sale of back copy, that they can.

I've put too much thought into this topic... the scanning cost would be nuts as the age of the magazines means you can't just shove them all through a high-speed scanner. Someone will have to sit there and scan 'em in one page at a time. Labour cost is too much, and you don't want to risk sending the collection offshore for cheaper scanning.

It looks like the guys over at http://www.americanradiohistory.com are quite happy to do the scanning work, though I don't know how the copyright hurdles could be overcome. TBH, I am surprised they are getting away with what they have at the moment, though they do say some of the content is with the owner's consent.

At any rate, they have some good titles up there now, including Byte and ETI.

I too would be quite happy to pay for a complete scanned set of EA (sans DRM of course!), though it doesn't look like it's going to happen anytime soon. I guess I will have to try to complete my set from garage sales and radio swap meets...

[Agent24]

just added an Image from my DVD of PDF from Silicon Chip Publications. this is the Image quality on the DVD.

Thanks, it looks perfectly usable, although the right hand side of the page seems cut off? Is that in the original, or just your uploaded image?

[Agent24]

I finally decided to buy the DVD download - about half the price of buying the DVD + postage.

Overall I'm happy with it, here and there there are problems (page edges cut off, low quality images, crinkled paper, image processing errors/skewed pages) but it's better than nothing, and even on the worst pages, still mostly readable, though some schematics are basically unreadable due to a low scanning resolution. Sure, nobody's likely to ever build them these days, but it's still annoying - and if you DID want to build them or use them for restoration etc - good luck with that!

Would I get better quality if I scanned them all myself? For sure. But would I be able to find every issue for a lower price, and scan them faster than buying SC's copy? I doubt it.

It's fascinating to read these in any case, from the perspective of an era I was never in, and for the entertainment and general interest alone I think it's worth it. It's also quite refreshing to read articles from a time when articles were written for people who actually bothered to sit down and take the time to read them, rather than so many now who just skim mindless tweets and farcebook.

Hopefully this will make anyone else's decision to purchase (or not!) easier.