The PMP Shop offers post free DVDs to The UK Common Travel Area - UK IOM CI ROI. Worldwide we have previously offered digital downloads of a large number of our films. In the 1990's VHS tapes sold at more £20. Bearing in mind the limitations on hobby expenditure against food, home and clothes etc we are however holding the DVDs at £16 online. £13 each in multiples by phone and post.
Weebly/Square our website and shop host has limited our storage space and screwed up our digital downloads. The workaround should ultimately be better, we'll get the order and the digital file is sent out by Drop Box. It only requires one file to load and it requires no extra storage and we can get everything that is already digital on the shop. The only head ache is loading it. I'll look at options on other sites, doing it in bulk would be great but Weebly don't have this facility. All the problems came without warning and as Square are a finance company I wouldn't trust them with kids pocked money.
Dave is now part of Online Archive and still working through oceans of cine film , scanning to HD digital standard. All cine for our productions now undergoes conversion to HD, cleaning, sharpening and increasing to 50fps.
Some of our Still Photo Prints are migrating to the Transport Library site they are printed and posted within the UK. We can offer a licence for commercial use. We will shortly be launching still photo DVDs starting with Malta plus download versions and watermarked samples on Youtube.
You can still order by post or telephone and we still accept POs and cheques. If you are online just hit the button on the shop page to open our enormous list, use our own store on this site with over 5000 DVDs listed. A very quick way to locate a DVD in the PMP shop ( if you have consulted our list) is just to enter the DVD number in the search box it will take you straight there and if it is £14 it is a DVD and if £9 it is a digital download.
Our work with digital and AI enhancements to films continues to grow. We have tried most of the software heavily promoted and others that must be sought out. Among the latter is NEAT which although quite expensive is the tool that most TV and film productions you to 'clean' older images. We have successfully coloured old B&W film, it is a bit hit and miss as to what comes out best. The better software is aimed at Hollywood and cost many thousands a year.
We are scanning through the collection of Phil Tatt together with all our friend John Bishop's material together with other collections. We have also recently been able to secure the majority of Ivor Hardings worldwide mostly steam railways films for safe keeping with OTA.
We have finished our round of advertising in Kelseys Classic and and Vintage Commercial magazine. This came about as they stopped sending out advertiser copies without warning and just repeated the same advert until I noticed 6 months later. This saves £100 in overheads each month. The full range of our truck coverage is still available and added to regularly.
We shall be working towards being all digital by 16th March 2030 when we shall cease all the heavy work and just be downloads or streaming whatever is the latest technique then. We are finding it very hard taking the PMP stand to events and unlikely to extend beyond a very small circle of events.
In the run down to retirement we both have problem with lifting and carrying. The albums of covers and discs are too heavy. We are de listing all films numbered 001-1000 as from September 2023. The material may well end up in HD form at a later date.
We have already sent to the recycle centre most of our old DVD rally stock. We are donating local photos to the NWVRT and for the mostly South East stock these photos are now with Julian Bowden.
We are concentrating on getting material loaded on Youtube as when at peak this provides greater returns than DVD orders.
We are working with our friends overseas to produce new ranges of model buses, initial types are already progressing through the factories with at least 4 applicable to the UK market. Watch out for 'Brilliant Buses'.
We feature in a coming Channel 5 TV documentary which should now hit screens in 2024. Still no news on broadcast date.
We must remind everyone that we actually make a lost selling DVDs. Recently our disc maker stopped working and we had to buy in printed blanks this together with repairs is another outlay from my savings this time of £1000.