newt said:
hi,

i just saw that angrysvn did a preservation of this. has anybody seen that? i'm wondering what the quality is like and whether it's worth me duplicating that work.

I have it and the quality is shit, with aplologies to Rikter, but i am being honest. I don't think these were his transfers but he was the first person i believe to archive them all in a single disc. Single layer i think, though i don't have the disc in front of me but for an entire season of a cartoon that is low quality, if i remember most of the episodes are either youtube quality or worse in some cases unwatchable.

At one point he was going to do a version 2 of this and do the ewoks too from pal tapes from the uk, but then afterwords said this was good enough or he lost interest.

The preservation i believe is from online showings from cartoon notwork and the sci fi channel tv re-broadcast in the 90's, and most likely old taped off of tv vhs. None of them are even close to professional store bought vhs pre recorded tapes, were talking like low quality xvid with mp3 audio, dodgy audio and picture.

At least they have the original opening song, which i my opinion is awful as most eighties tv cartoon themes for Saturday morning were painfully cheesy.

I don't think the great heep was ever rebroadcast beyond the one time it was shown in the usa, we also never had it on tape either but the uk got it. You know the Episode supposedly written and directed by Ben Burtt, i have heard it was awful and better off forgotten like the holiday special.