Interesting to see broadcast video from 27 years ago preserved in such high quality. The BBC has spent a lot of money to preserve pretty much everything it has broadcast in the last 30 years.
You'd hope the original broadcaster would have broadcast quality archives. It's not like they'd keep them on LP VHS.
The BBC has had to do various work to keep the archives accessible, mid-90s stuff like this was probably recorded on D3 digital composite tape, but that's now long obsolete, so has to be transferred to modern formats (nowadays as files on LTO tape AFAIK). AFAIK stuff on 2" quad (the first practical video tape format, used from the 1950s to early 80s) has been transferred at least twice, from quad to D3 or DigiBeta, then to files.
Blue Peter actually has a really good survival rate, most stuff from the mid-1960s onwards survives. Whilst this is perhaps partly forward thinking on the part of Editor[1] Biddy Baxter, AFAIK it was partly so older material could be reused in later editions to save money.
[1] The title of the "showrunner" of Blue Peter, so in the meaning of "editor of a newspaper", not "videotape editor".
The BBC has had to do various work to keep the archives accessible, mid-90s stuff like this was probably recorded on D3 digital composite tape, but that's now long obsolete, so has to be transferred to modern formats (nowadays as files on LTO tape AFAIK). AFAIK stuff on 2" quad (the first practical video tape format, used from the 1950s to early 80s) has been transferred at least twice, from quad to D3 or DigiBeta, then to files.