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RCA Press Release for January 7, 1981 No. 2

LAS VEGAS, Nev., Jan. 7 --- RCA today predicted its entry into the projection screen TV market will push industry sales to some $175 million in 1981.

President Arnold T. Valencia of the RCA Sales Corp. told a news conference that RCA's planned major marketing effort this year will help shift projection television "from being a curiosity in public places to an important new video product for the home."

RCA will introduce in February a one-piece projection TV with a 50-inch screen for the home. Mr. Valencia said the Model PFR100R is designed to be 50 percent brighter than current best selling projection systems.

Aiding the rise of the projection TV industry, RCA will help provide "broader distribution for this promising segment of the total video industry," he said.

"By the end of 1981, we fully expect to be moving toward the leadership position in projection color television sales," Mr. Valencia said.

It was such emphasis on distribution and marketing, he said, that resulted in RCA taking first place in video cassette recorder (VCR) sales. Projection TV sales will rise sharply "once major brand names support the concept of projection television with national advertising and product exposure at the local level," he said.

The RCA projection TV set will have infrared remote control. It features a stereo amplifier with 10 watts of power per channel feeding the unit's four speakers. The model includes video and audio inputs so that both a VCR and a video disc player -- which RCA will begin selling in March -- can be connected simultaneously to the projection set.

Vice President David E. Daly, chief of product planning and industrial design of the RCA Consumer Electronics Division, told the press meeting here that the bulky projection receivers in public viewing places may have discouraged acceptance of the larger screen in the home.

He said "RCA's design approach has been to reduce the total dimension of the cabinet. The RCA set in a closed position is not much greater than that of a typical 25-inch console."

The RCA projection TV receiver has 1,176 square inches of viewable picture. Mr. Daly said that is four times the size of RCA's largest receiver with a 25-inch (diagonal) direct view picture.

In 1947 RCA tested the American market for large screen sets with a 300 square inch model. It had an option retail price of $1,200. That proved too high in the face of the then public preference for smaller sets.