Let me put it this way: I have gone a lot further down this road than any of you (except maybe Silverwook), and it is far more difficult journey than any of you imagine. I obviously don't think it's impossible, but the threads that pop up every time a battered 16mm print go up on eBay make me laugh and frustrate me, all at once.

Maybe if the chit-chat went beyond "maybe we could get the money together to buy a print!!!" and started heading toward "maybe we could get the money together to help those who have prints make transfers!" it would be worth paying attention to.

Actually, no, it wouldn't. Because the attention generated by taking up a collection would almost certainly kill any transfer project, either because LFL would come to bear, or because of the sheer reporting burden ("No, still not enough progress to make any of you happy...").

(Oh, and by the way: ronlaw, I don't see that the 700-line broadcast camera is anything but SD. That's still 20 lines off the digital SD spec, and nowhere near the 1280 "lines" of 720p.)