I've converted all the Goodies episodes I have (20eps) to VCD. This was partly for convenience but also because I figured they would be ideal to trade with, compared to VHS tapes.



The quality is about the same as VHS tape and the quality never drops the more copies you make. Blank Cd's are pretty cheap too...



A lot of the newer DVD players play VCD's ( which you can then copy them back to tape from ) and if you have to play them on your PC/MAC you don't require any special video codecs.



You also don't have to worry about the whole NTSC/PAL thing.



All it needs is one person to have a copy of an episode and the ability to transfer it to VCD, such as myself- but there are a few other people out there.



Once created, it should be easy to swap/trade/weed out to those that want it- like a bootleg concert cd.



Anyway, if anyone's interested in swapping goodies VCD (or want to trade a VHS PAL/NTSC tape of episodes I can convert for VCDs) then please get in touch.



Ross

tvvcdtrades(nospam)@AOL.com



Goodies list at:

http://tv_vcd_trade.tripod.com/the_goodies.htm

Count me in too.  This would be a fantastic thing to do.

This is genius.

There is another possibility.



There's an appreciation society for Jean Shepherd (the late American radio personality, on whose writings the classic movie "A Christmas Story" was based), called "Fathead Central".  Its main function is to compile MP3 files of every broadcast, album, and live appearance by Shep, and to make them available to fellow afficionados, for personal/research use, free of charge (although donations of postage stamps or packaging materials or blank CDs are welcomed).



To access the collection, you send an e-mail, agreeing to copy the CDs yourself and return the originals to Fathead Central.  You further agree that you will absolutely, positively NOT sell them (particularly on eBay...and yes, Fathead Central frequently checks up on this).  A few weeks later, a neat little package of CDs arrives in the mail; you copy them for yourself, and you send back the originals, in their original box.



This way, the Club becomes a central information source; the materials are available to all who wish to research them, and nobody ends up being swamped by all the copying work.  It also avoids the quagmire of "selling copyrighted material", since no actual money is changing hands.  It's a straight loan/swap.



This sounds like it could work for us too.  And since each person would be making their own copy from one master, there wouldn't be the deterioration that comes with each successive generational copy.





To start up, it would be wise to have 6 copies of everything, organized by Series.  One copy is the Uber-Master, which is never, ever sent out.



The remaining 5 copies would be lent out to those who have requested them by agreeing to the terms of the lending agreement (perhaps in an online form on the Club website).  So things don't get too crazy, it might be wise to limit each request to a maximum of 2 series of episodes.  Upon return of the original tapes, the user could request additional series by again completing the online form.



But what of the "PAL / NTSC" issue?



Since I'm in Canada, I could handle requests from North American fans.  If I had one set of PAL originals here, I could convert them to the North American NTSC format, upon receipt of the necessary blank tapes from users.



It would take a bit of doing to set up this "lending library", but, based on what I've seen with Fathead Central, it could certainly work!



What do you think?

I have pretty most all the episodes bar 3 or 4 am willing to copy for you, based in London

rahrahrah78@hotmail.com won't be untill july as i'm snowed under with essays for my english lit degree. Feel like i'm going mad!

Somebody more organised and with more influence than myself should propose a getting together of all the individual episodes that various fans have, and to put them together into a collection. Ideally the collection could then be copied either by a few responsible people with easy access to video copying facilities (and understandably probably for a fee), or like a chain letter - only good, where the last person to receive the episodes copies them for the next person - the only drawback being that the quality would get quite poor. Still, I would love to see as many episodes as possible, and have the following non-official episodes to offer:



The Stone Age

The Race

Rome-antics

Clown Virus

Down On The Farm

Invasion Of The Moon Creatures

The New Office



If anyone wants to make some trades in the meantime (I'm in the UK, but willing to trade overseas) email me: tomatorama@hotmail.com