Word: videodisc
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Million Tube Job. The investment RCA made in the videodisc machine and the amount it stands to lose if the discs do not catch on. The disc machine, unlike the tape, cannot copy; it can only play. It excels as a teaching tool, but RCA has marketed it for consumer entertainment, where it has fared poorly compared with tape. The bright hope is what vid whizzes call interactive discs. These can instruct the viewer in a variety of pursuits or, wired through a home computer, can let him seek specific help. On one prototype, for example, a viewer with...
...cameras work as simply as movie cameras but produce pictures with sound that can be seen instantly on a home television set with a videotape recorder. Sony predicts that the Mavica will soon take its place in the evolving home entertainment center alongside video computer games and videodisc players showing Hollywood movies...
...upwards of $14,000, the home entertainer can furnish his room with, say, a big-screen Kloss Novabeam projection TV, a Sony Betamax video recorder, a Panasonic video-tape color camera, an RCA videodisc player, a Yamaha audionics stereo with electrostatic-charged speakers, a film library, video tapes and discs, stereo records and Atari electronic games. He may add specially crafted lounge chairs at $1,000 each and banquettes ($2,000). For the addicted media roominator there is also a computer to keep the collection organized. Some dealers complain that advances in equipment are so rapid there...
...Videodisc machines are marvelous instruments, but is there a market for them? Industry experts believe that videodiscs will initially be used primarily for old Hollywood movies. Says RCA Executive Vice President Herb Schlosser. "Motion pictures will make up at least 50% of the business at the beginning." Yet many observers wonder whether Americans will spend up to $30 to own their personal copy of a film that they will view only once or twice. Says Richard Ekstract, publisher of Video Review magazine: "You can watch Gone With the Wind or The Wizard of Oz more than two or three times...
Another unknown is how the videodiscs will fare in competition with videotape recorders. Machines like Sony's Betamax or Panasonic's OmniVision, which will record and replay movies or anything else shown on television, cost from $700 to $1,500. They were introduced in 1975 but only recently have begun to catch on. Some 2 million of them have now been sold, and sales last year jumped by 69%. Another 1.5 million are expected to be sold this year. Six-hour blank videotape cassettes, which can be used over and over again, cost only about $20, although tapes...