ST Format- Autumn '89

[MagikGimp]

With the magazines not being allowed to be shared online it's a good incentive to collect the original printed media. For the most part ST Format was one amazing read and had some of the most fabulous covers of any magazine I've ever seen; it's definitely up there on my favourite magazines of any genre.

A few years back I bought a vast collection of Amiga Formats from someone who was otherwise going to send them to the dump (ironically I think you can download Amiga Format but I digress...). It cost me a lot of money, mostly on postage, but I had high hopes that Amiga Format was going to be just as good as its Atari namesake. Boy was in for some disappointment! Chock full of ads and dull articles with dreary and uninspired covers to top it off I now own a huge, heavy stack of paper of which I have next to no interest in perusing. Saying that I should probably give them a second look before I completely dismiss them but first impressions were not good at all I can tell you. I have nothing against the Amiga (I'm an equal rights kind of guy in any computer war, best of both worlds I say) so I'd say this was totally down to the staff at each magazine, it can make a huge difference never mind the subject. I can list many others that have either gone bad under new management or just have never been good and plenty more that haven't managed to last despite being superb reads.

Anyway, to go back to my first point, I have around 15 STFs I think so I have a long way to go but once I get some cash I'll be collecting them again you can be sure.

[MagikGimp]

You get a nice PDF of only 37MB, instead of the 116Mb of the CBR.

The reason for this is probably due to further compression of the PDF (as in further from JPEG and RAR compression) which is fine if you like it that way (although that's a heck of a lot of quality loss) but personally I would prefer that my CBR file be the one that is distributed around.

[AtariSince1989]

You get a nice PDF of only 37MB, instead of the 116Mb of the CBR.

The reason for this is probably due to further compression of the PDF (as in further from JPEG and RAR compression) which is fine if you like it that way (although that's a heck of a lot of quality loss) but personally I would prefer that my CBR file be the one that is distributed around.

Quality loss? I didn't know that. Thanks for thelling

[wongck]

Quality loss? I didn't know that. Thanks for thelling

I'm already old so... makes not so much difference to me....

[Desty]

You get a nice PDF of only 37MB, instead of the 116Mb of the CBR.

The reason for this is probably due to further compression of the PDF (as in further from JPEG and RAR compression) which is fine if you like it that way (although that's a heck of a lot of quality loss) but personally I would prefer that my CBR file be the one that is distributed around.

TBH, in my experience it's very hard to spot loss of quality in a decent JPEG. I scan documents all the time and a 10mb PNG is nigh indistinguishable (sometimes the black text isn't quite as black) from a 200kb JPEG. Once you put the quality at 95-100%, anyway.

But in any case, lossless is probably the way to go if you're archiving stuff for posterity.

[havoc]

How about taking down the untergrund.net download now that the file has been mirrored? As you stated yourself, the service they provide is not intended for this kind of stuff.

[ozy2000]

Yeah it is a bit of a shame about the fact you will get in a bit of trouble if you scanned all of ST Format and tried to sell it on a DVD etc because this means nobody is really bothered to do all those many issues of ST Format (ditto for Amiga Format).

I know ST Amiga Format has been partially scanned and never removed from the Amiga Magazine Rack though, so if you don't tell them and it is not in their face I'm sure they turn a blind eye to it. Anyway as the ST related pages are missing on AMR I have been looking for issues of ST Amiga format to scan completely and offer up on a free to view website. The webserver will be based in E.Europe so pretty untouchable too But the scanning process to save time would involve the magazines being destroyed...but on the plus side they will be saved forever as a digital copy with 1% compression in progressive JPEG format.

I can scan them without taking the magazine apart, but this takes a lot more time, but if it's the only way to get a loan of the magazines for scanning and I have to return them in good condition then so be it

[MrMaddog]

Yeah, Future Publishing still owns the copyrights and they're still in buisiness of course...

It's a shame that they wouldn't give permission for someone to perserve a magazine that no longer makes them money. anticmagazines.com has scans of all the old Atari magazines from the States and they got the ok from the publisher (now defunct).

Would be nice to see the history of how the ST fared very well in the UK...