Memories of Videodisc (1986) (V)

User Rating:

(awaiting 5 votes)

Director:

Robert Huck

Genre:

Documentary

Plot Keywords:

Videodisc | Montage | Promotional | Industrial

Cast

Dr. Jay J. Brandinger

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Company:

RCA Corporation

Movie Connections:

References Citizen Kane (1941)

Selectavision's Grand Finale

Wow, someone entered the details for this but no comments? Well let me provide the first. This was the very last disc made for the CED-format "SelectaVision" videodisc players (the 8-track tape of video formats) in June 1986, right before the disc pressing plant in Indianapolis was shut down for good. (There was a second plant run by CBS Records near Atlanta that operated from 1981 to 1984, then switched back to LP production.) Player manufacturing had already stopped in 1984 but RCA was determined to continue putting out new movie titles as long as there was still demand for them. The final movie released on the format was Jewel Of The Nile, and then this disc, which was given to the remaining videodisc employees. Unfortunately a large portion of the disc is still photos accompanied by music; it would have been more interesting to see more video or film footage of the people and day-to-day operations. Still they are interesting to see, you get photos of the building and almost everyone who worked there, and things like staff parties and awards dinners. The most interesting part of this disc is a video tour of the disc pressing plant and player manufacturing center, originally shot in 1983 for another promotional-only disc sent to dealers (which I haven't been able to acquire yet.) You get to see how the disc masters are made all the way up to them being packed up for shipment to retailers. Then they show how the later-model players were put together- sadly RCA was planning on moving the player manufacturing to Mexico for cheaper labor, but that never happened as the players were scrapped altogether. The end of the disc shows the staff leaving the building for the last time, however this leaves me with the question of who went back in to master and press this final disc? Memories Of Videodisc is very hard to find since it was available only to those who worked at the Indiana manufacturing plant, I was lucky enough to buy one from a former employee this year. It's a must-have however for collectors of the format, and anyone interested in the early years of home video should at least try to see this. I never had a CED player when they were being produced, but later found one at a flea market and was intrigued enough to start collecting all the titles I could find for it. The biggest problem this format had was that it skipped; when I am watching a movie on it I find it usually happens during important dialogue too! They should have eliminated that problem before putting it on the market. As it was, it already reached the market much later than they had expected, and when it did in March 1981 the superior Laserdisc format had already been out for a while as well as the VHS and Beta cassette formats. The one bright spot was that those who did buy the players ended up buying more discs than expected.