Word: magnavox
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...which will get a royalty of between $2 and $3 for every disc sold, have been happy to supply films. "It's a new market we cannot afford to ignore," says Norman Glenn of MCA, the big Los Angeles-based entertainment conglomerate, which is making discs for the Magnavox player. The company has been rummaging movie company libraries for popular films. While recent releases on the MCA discs cost $15.95, older classics like Destry Rides Again and TV movies (Battlestar Galactica, The Bionic Woman) sell for $9.95; how-to features like a Julia Child cooking course or films...
...companies' systems are incompatible: RCA discs cannot be played on Magnavox machines and vice versa. Concedes RCA Executive Vice President Herbert Schlosser: "Eventually one system will dominate." Magnavox uses smooth-surfaced plastic discs. To see a film, one places the disc on the machine's phonograph-like turntable; a laser beam picks up the sound and images, which are then played through the attached TV set. Some Magnavox discs play for 30 min. a side, but movies take 60 min. RCA's discs, which will all play for 60 min., are grooved like records, and a stylus...
...player permits viewers to skip ahead or back, or to repeat the same 15-sec. segment over and over again. The costlier Magnavox system is more versatile: the action on the 30-min. discs can be run in slow motion or reversed or even held in freeze-frame position...
Given the cost of pioneering the machines-Magnavox has already invested about $80 million, while RCA has spent more than $50 million-both companies have moved with caution. Indeed, RCA announced that it would go ahead with its system only after Magnavox began test-marketing in December. Magnavox, for its part, took the plunge because it had an agreement with MCA that it would launch videodiscs no later than 1978. Both players will be nationally available in 1980 when, despite Magnavox's test launches this year, RCA's greater number of dealers and lower price tag may give...
...market, even though several manufacturers, including Sony and Matsushita, are known to have developed disc machines. Evidently they do not want to begin promoting videodiscs while sales of VTR machines remain strong. A Sony spokesman insists: "We don't think the public is yet ready for the discs." Magnavox and RCA hope to prove him wrong...