[geeks] Computer Chronicles

[Nate]

On a whim I recently did a search for Computer Chronicles recently, the old
computer news show that was hosted by Stewart Cheifet (and Gary Kildall in the
early years), and was happy to see there are some episodes in the Internet
Archive of all places:

http://www.archive.org/details/computerchronicles

I especially like that I can download episodes... I've found that the MPEG-2
versions, while the largest, tend to be the highest quality, but are some of
the most problematic files.  I had a lot of trouble playing some episodes (no
audio being most common) in Linux and OS X, though in OS X I found Movist and
especially MPlayer OSX Extended could play back just about all of them (VLC
not so much).  Converting (since the other versions for download aren't as
high resolution I've found) the MPEG-2 files has proved to also be
problematic, and I've had to use either HandBrake, ffmpegX, or MPEG
Streamclip, through trial and error.  In a few cases I've also had to fix
audio sync issues with SimpleMovieX.  (It looks like a lot of these episodes
are coming from TV station tapes, so I don't know what equipment/software is
being used to digitize these.)

I grew up watching this show in the '80s, and a lot of the episodes in the
archive are obviously dated, and the show wasn't a very big-budget production,
but anyone who appreciates computer history or nostalgia will appreciate these
shows... they certainly bring back some memories for me!