The afterlife is expensive for digital movies

Industry report says movie studios must address digital archiving problems now or risk losing movie archives forever.
The New York Times

The story "The afterlife is expensive for digital movies" published December 22, 2007 at 5:19 AM is no longer available on CNET News.

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[jltnol]

I'll do it for $100,000.00 a year

This just seems crazy!

Regardless of how much data is generated, $200.000. would
buy a lot of RAIDs... in different cities for safety.

You could keep the drives running, and as new storage
technology come along, just copy it over.

Still the over $200,000 figure seems way out of line.

[rnieves1977]

yeah... seems kinda ridiculous

why not just create a master disc in something like stainless steel, even plastic.... It would be something simple, albeit a bit larger than standard media but a whole lot more durable. I really find it hard to beleive that there isn't a cheaper more durable way of creating long term universally recognizable raw data storage...

[markjazz]

This issue is resolved with separation masters

Last year TDI (part of Technicolor) and EFILM (part of Deluxe) received Academy award for technical achievement for creating a separation master that can store the color channels on three black and white films. This will allow preservation for more than hundred years, stored in the same salt mines. More info at: http://oscar.com/oscarnight/?pn=technicalachievement

[CharlesRovira]

And some movies aren't worth the bits

they're stored on.

Be that as it may, one of the problems with digital media is that it has a rapid (<10 years) life cycle.

It doesn't matter what kind of content (old Word documents are gone forever,) the audio and video wolds are evolving over the years as formats change.

Nobody is thinking of maintaining file compatibility.

[alegr]

Steer manure

Just pack the digital media (CD, DVD, BR) with dry nitrogen, and chill to 0 C. That's not expensive at all.