Posted by Dave Thewlis on June 19, 1997 at 21:43:03:
In Reply to: S&A (PAL) Video Availability posted by Ian Baines on June 19, 1997 at 12:49:16:
Actually it means you are in the same boat that we in North America have been until recently when
Republic seems to have come out with the NTSC version. By the way, Jansen offers Coot Club and
The Big Six (together called for some reason "Swallows & Amazons Forever" by the BBC when it was
produced, and offered in the U.K. on a single tape under that title. Jansen doesn't offer the
1974 Swallows & Amazons -- they told me they'd tried to get the rights from Republic a while back
and Republic had told them no, but that there were no plans to release it. So Kurt's posting about
the Republic video being available caught us U.S. TARS quite by surprise. We had been certain there
was no way of getting copies but making them ourselves via PAL-->NTSC conversion since we couldn't
buy it commercially.
The only other option is probably to have a good copy made of a PAL original that somebody already
possesses -- since the copyright holder doesn't want to release it, you're not exactly depriving them
of their use fee. That would probably make you a better-quality copy anyhow than duplicating the
NTSC tape since PAL is higher-resolution.