Video Cartridges: A Promise of Future Shock

THE first two waves of the electronic-appliance age have left an indelible mark on America. The nation has more radio receivers than people and more television sets than bathtubs. Now the third wave, the video cartridge (or cassette) player, is about to break upon the U.S., and it could transform the cultural habits of the nation at least as dramatically as the first two. Like pay TV, which for years has been proclaimed as ready to revolutionize the television world any day, the video cartridge has been grandiosely heralded; but even skeptics are now willing to concede that cartridge television seems certain to become a reality in the marketplace by the mid-1970s.

The cartridge unit is a sort of video phonograph that converts any TV set into a home movie projector and screen. The variety of available programs should be almost endless: Olivier's Hamlet, all kinds of other films (including instant home movies), Broadway musicals, or how-to series by Arnold Palmer or Julia Child. Owners will be able to play the cartridges at any hour of the day or night and, if they have the right equipment, to replay a sequence or freeze the action in order to study Palmer's back swing or tend to a squalling baby. Because the signal goes by wire to the TV set, the picture reproduction will be far sharper than on today's over-the-air video.

Quickened Change. Seldom has the arrival of new hardware stirred such excitement in the entertainment and communications industry, or aroused such anxiety among the potential victims of change. Enthusiasts insist that video cartridges in time will radically alter the status quo in television, motion pictures, theater, music, journalism, book publishing and many other fields. Some futurists, notably Alvin Toffler, author of Future Shock (TIME, Aug. 3), argue that TV cassettes will quicken the already bewildering pace of change in American life, carrying the U.S. farther away from standardization in the arts, education and cultural tastes. Many young TV makers feel that the new equipment will lead to an era in which video cameras may outstrip typewriters as instruments for creative expression. Marshall McLuhan prophesies that cartridges will affect "every aspect of our lives--will give us new needs, goals and desires, and will upset all political, educational and commercial establishments."

Some analysts go so far as to predict that the industry growing up around video cartridges will become a mainstay of the U.S. economy. By 1980, officials of RCA expect the new industry to reach $1 billion in revenues. Less conservative forecasters put the figure at three times that sum. So far, the cassette gold rush has attracted at least a dozen companies from the U.S., Japan and West Germany. They are battling for the emerging new medium with five competing but incompatible technologies:

>> Miniaturized film, as in CBS's Electronic Video Recording (EVR) system, is coiled in cartridges and inserted in a converter unit connected to the antenna terminals of a TV set. The sealed cartridge threads and rewinds itself and is as uncomplicated to operate as a toaster. Each plate-sized cartridge carries 25 minutes of color programming, or, if books are filmed (a page per frame), about 500 average-length novels.

>> Super 8mm film, as developed by Germany's NordMende, projects a sealed, self-winding reel through a specially designed Colorvision unit, which feeds the image into a TV set.

>> Magnetic tape, a video version of the audiotape deck, is being perfected by Japan's Sony and the U.S.'s Avco, among others. The tapes can be run through TV sets as easily as films; cassettes can play for 110 minutes.

>> Vinyl tape, patented by RCA's SelectaVision, works through a combination of laser beams and holography. It comes in saucer-sized units that look much like those of competing methods and play for 30 minutes.

>> Plastic disks, a more sophisticated version of phonograph records, are being rushed into development jointly by Decca and Telefunken. If the system lives up to expectations, the Teldec unit would be the cheapest of cassette hardware, but there are still too many deficiencies in the lab model (no color, maximum playing time of 15 minutes) to consider it in the running yet.

Sharing the Bonanza. It is too early to discern which technology is leading the cartridge race. Before color-TV receivers began to reach consumers in the 1950s, the Federal Communications Commission authorized only one system--RCA's. No Government agency has the authority to impose standardization on cassettes, so the bonanza is likely to be shared by several manufacturers. CBS's EVR will reach the market first, probably starting next month. EVR President Robert Brockway is aiming at first-year volume of 100,000 converter units (produced by Motorola) and 3,000,000 cartridges. But the price is so high--$795 per converter, $18.50 per 25-minute color cartridge, not counting the program production cost--that the whole run is aimed at the industrial and educational market.

Thanks largely to the economies of mass production, CBS hopes to cut EVR prices in half and so to tap a substantial market among individual consumers by 1972. On the other hand, RCA officials contend that their SelectaVision system will eventually dominate the consumer market, because of its apparently cheaper technology. At demonstrations so far, however, RCA has shown only prototype equipment; moreover, the video was murky.

The video tape systems of Sony and Avco have several advantages that make them serious contenders. Unlike EVR or SelectaVision, both can record on-air TV shows (on raw, erasable tape) for future replay. Another big selling point of the videotape (and Super 8) system is that consumers can buy a portable camera and shoot their own cassettes at home. Frank Stanton,* president of Avco's cartridge subsidiary, expects to attract additional customers by bringing out the first combination TV set-cartridge player-video recorder in mid-1971. Price: $895.

Heads in the Sand. With so many incompatible systems in contention, moviemakers and many other potential suppliers of programs for video cassettes have so far avoided new production. Says Vice President Peter Guber of Columbia Pictures: "Most of the major studios are sticking their heads in the sand in hopes the cartridge will go away--just like their first reaction to television." Yet Guber insists that when "the cartridge revolution" strikes, the Hollywood work force, now 40% unemployed, will not only expand but scramble to make films in three shifts around the clock.

Hollywood's reluctant approach is caused in part by its concern for movie exhibitors, who may lose much of their audience. Accordingly, studio involvement so far consists mainly of selling cartridge rights for old movies moldering in the can. New York's Optronics Libraries Inc., headed by Irving Stimmler, has enlisted an imposing board of directors (among others, TV Interviewer David Frost, Documentary Producer David Wolper, New York Times Drama Critic Clive Barnes), but its catalogue is a mixed bag of kiddie cartoons, late-show features and sex films.

Escape from the Ratings. The great boon of cartridges--or any pay-TV system--is that they should enable U.S. television to escape the pressures of ratings and start programming for small and discriminating audiences. Primetime series seen by 25 million viewers on the commercial networks are often canceled as losers. But an opera attracting 500,000 cartridge patrons at $2 per rental might well earn a profit. Most experts assume that consumers will prefer to rent cassettes rather than buy them.

Some experts envisage the cassette explosion as only one phase of an upheaval in education, home entertainment and communications. The performing arts might become economic for the first time. McLuhan and Paul Klein, NBC's ratings vice president and philosopher of the future (TIME, May 25), foresee a decline of textbooks and suspect that network TV will be reduced to producing little more than sports and news. Klein also maintains that cartridge marketing plans and, in fact, cassette converter units are already 20 years out of date. The solution, he says, is cable TV (which perhaps 75% of Americans will have by 1980) hooked to a central computer switching station with hundreds of cassettes on tap. "I call it 'jukebox TV,' " says Klein. Klein leaves NBC this week to form a company to mesh computer retrieval, CATV and the cartridge. He calls the idea "the ultimate 20th century combination,'' and optimistically predicts that it could reach the market in ten years.

* No kin to the CBS president.

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