CED Digest Vol. 8 No. 37

CED Digest Vol. 8 No. 37 • 9/13/2003
20 Years Ago In CED History:

September 14, 1983:
* The U.S. House of Representatives passes a resolution condemning the Soviet
Union's shooting down of Korean Airlines Flight 007 on September 1. The U.S.
Senate unanimously passes the resolution the next day.

* RCA PRESS RELEASE:
Video Disc Owners Now Have Access to 1,000 'CED' Programs of All Kinds

The number of "CED" video disc titles available at retail should
reach the 1,000 mark by the end of September, three months ahead of earlier
forecasts, Thomas G. Kuhn, Division Vice President, RCA VideoDisc Division,
announced today.

He said the heavy new release schedules for October and November should assure
that the number of "CED" titles will reach or exceed 1,200 by
year-end.

"We launched the video disc system in March 1981 with one monaural player
model, and a catalog of 100 titles. Just two and a half years later, there are
five models to choose from, including stereo and interactive players, and a
selection of programs designed to appeal to a broad cross section of
society," Mr. Kuhn said.

He said RCA alone has shipped some 6.5 million video disc albums under its own
label since the system reached the marketplace and has been custom-pressing
discs for other program suppliers.

The growing demand for custom-pressing by the major studios and other program
sources "is an evolutionary development that came sooner than expected.
However, in anticipation of this eventuality, we undertook an aggressive
program to build a broad and diverse library of titles."

Mr. Kuhn said RCA licensed programs from dozens of sources to support the
launch of its video disc system, knowing that someday these sources would want
their product custom-pressed and would want to handle their own distribution.

These licenses have staggered expiration dates, so the movement of titles from
RCA's label to the suppliers' labels will be gradual. In the meantime, RCA will
continue to aggressively acquire and develop new programs for home video, he
added.

"We believe the major studios will be custom-pressing titles not
previously licensed to RCA, as well as new releases. This will lead to
accelerated growth in the number of 'CED' titles available to the public. And
that's a definite plus in the outlook for video disc sales," Mr. Kuhn
said.

He noted that home video will not be a motion picture business forever.
"We're already seeing very successful programs in the non-feature area,
including the super-popular 'Jane Fonda's Workout' disc, and programs in the
children's and stereo music genre."

He said RCA's joint venture with Columbia Pictures in home video "gives us
access to one of the great motion picture and television libraries in
Hollywood, assuring RCA a dynamic program inventory."

Looking ahead, he added, RCA is stepping up its efforts to produce and
co-produce programs for the home entertainment market, including cable,
cassette and disc. One area getting a great deal of attention is music video,
which is expected to be a major growth area for video discs, particularly in
view of RCA's new interactive player which makes it possible for viewers to
preprogram discs for the first time.

In cooperation with RCA Records, Mr. Kuhn added, several projects in the music
disc area have been completed and others now are in production, including
"The Jefferson Starship," and "The Eurythmics."

Mr. Kuhn said the most successful non-movie disc to date -- "Jane Fonda's
Workout" -- was a co-production of RCA VideoDiscs and Karl Video. It is
the 15th best-selling disc in RCA's catalog.

Mr. Kuhn said RCA also looks to independently produced features, how-to
programs, children's shows, and the best of television to provide substantial
future programs for video discs.

September 15, 1983:
* The U.S. Congress approves a military authorization bill for the 1984 fiscal
year including funds to produce the first 21 MX missiles.

September 16, 1983:
* Yasir Arafat, leader of the PLO, is reported to be in Tripoli, Lebanon, where
he is exhorting his supporters by reaffirming that Palestinian guerrillas would
fight alongside others attempting to overthrow the government of Lebanese
President Amin Gemayel. Arafat had been forced to leave Lebanon in August 1982,
some three months after Israel launched an offensive to destroy PLO strongholds
in the country.
* Future CED title in widespread theatrical release: Easy Money.

* RCA PRESS RELEASE:
RCA Kicks Off Fall Video Disc Sales Campaign with New Three-Pronged Consumer
Offer

RCA has kicked off its fall video disc merchandising and promotion campaign
with a new three-way consumer offer.

Herbert J. Mendelsohn, Division Vice President, Marketing, RCA VideoDisc
Division, said any customer who buys a video disc player during the promotion
at participating dealers will receive a free disc of his choice, a five-day
money back guarantee, and interest-free financing for 12 months.

"These are three great reasons for buying a video disc player now,"
Mr. Mendelsohn said. "Another is the exciting selection of nearly 1,000
programs to choose from -- movies, music video, children's shows, sports,
performing arts, and many more."

He said the exceptionally strong promotional effort for video disc is designed
to further expand consumer awareness of the relatively new video product in
concert with the current record-setting demand for the other major video
products, color television, and video cassette recorders.

Mr. Mendelsohn said the consumer offer, which runs until October 15, 1983, will
be supported by a complete advertising campaign, including network TV, national
magazines, newspapers, and point-of-sale materials.

He gave these highlights of the RCA VideoDisc advertising campaign:

-- National TV commercials promoting the three-way consumer offer have started
running, featuring Gene Kelly. The consumer-offer commercial will run a total
of 28 times on the ABC, CBS, and NBC networks.

-- Full page ads will appear in the full national run of major weekly magazines
-- Newsweek, Time, People, U.S. News, Sports Illustrated -- starting this week.
A schedule of nine insertions is planned.

-- RCA's "Expo '84" newspaper insert, including a full page dedicated
to the video disc, will run the week of September 8. The insert will reach 40
million homes.

-- As a follow-up to the "Expo '84" insert, a 1,500-line newspaper ad
will run September 22 in 230 daily newspapers.

In addition, the consumer promotion will be supported at the retail level by
radio commercials, point-of-sale advertising material and in-home loan program
of a player at participating dealers.

September 17, 1983:
* Vanessa Williams of Millwood, NY, becomes the first black Miss America.
* Two U.S. naval vessels off the coast of Lebanon begin a bombardment of
antigovernment military units deep inside Syrian-controlled territory.

September 18, 1983:
* In response to a reporter's question, President Ronald Reagan states that his
administration is actively reviewing the Kennedy-Khrushchev understanding and
the question of whether the ongoing transfer of MiG-23 aircraft to Cuba
constitutes a violation of the 1962 agreement.

September 19, 1983:
* The Caribbean twin-island state of St. Kitts-Nevis becomes an independent
nation called St. Christopher and Nevis. Kennedy Simmonds becomes the first
prime minister. The islands had been Britain's first Caribbean colony,
established in 1623.
* Marc Rich, a commodity trader in New York City, is indicted for $48 million
in tax evasion, the largest amount to date in U.S. history.

September 20, 1983:
* The 38th regular session of the United Nations General Assembly opens at U.N.
headquarters in New York City. Jorge Enrique Illueca of Panama is elected to
serve as assembly president for one year.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: SonyFan13
Date: Mon, 8 Sep 2003 09:37:04 EDT
Subject: Re: CED Digest Vol. 8 No. 36
To: tom@cedmagic.com

>Here are links to a couple articles published in the last few days
>regarding audio CD's and vinyl LP's. The first article describes how
>the ease of downloading music, both by free file sharing services and
>fee-based systems may make the actual ownership of discs obsolete at
>some time in the future. This would even apply to ownership of DVD
>movies as the download bandwidth continues to increase;
>
>http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/09/03/cd.future/

Maybe, maybe not.  The problem with most downloads is that the level of
presentation quality is not up to snuff to DVD or CD.  Other potential problems
with downloaded material is usually a lack of extras, and a lack of 5.1
soundtracks with movies.  Both venues would have questionable archival value.

>Even if physical media does eventually become a thing of the past,
>there will probably always be a collector's market for original CD's,
>DVD's, CED's, LaserDiscs, etc. simply for their retro appeal."

As long as the industry reacts in a way that makes sense, physical media may
never disappear.  - Reinhart

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From: katglen1
To: digest@cedmagic.com
Subject: Letter from Robert Huck
Date: Mon, 08 Sep 2003 23:43:17 +0000

Just saw the email from Robert Huck to the Digest.  Wouldn't it be great if
he would share some stories with us?  Please?

Thanks,
Glenn

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From: marks4q2
Date: Tue, 9 Sep 2003 14:00:38 -0400 (EDT)
To: digest@cedmagic.com
Subject: cleaning ceds

tom
   many advocate cleaning ceds with a machine designed to clean records.
 i want to know if there is a protective coating on the ceds.
   and if there is a coating,would it be removed in the cleaning process
causing accelerated wear on both the stylus and disc? 
                  barry
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