DISC DEAL GOES FOR TOP IMAGE : CHATSWORTH FIRM JOINS MANUFACTURER TO PROMOTE NEW DIGITAL VIDEO SYSTEM.Byline: Gregory J. Wilcox Daily News Staff Writer Chatsworth-based Image Entertainment Inc. will partner with home products giant Thomson Consumer Electronics in marketing a new digital home video system, the companies said Friday. Image Entertainment will distribute the 5-inch digital video discs See DVD. Digital Video Disc - Digital Versatile Disc featuring motion picture titles from major studios. Thomson, the world's fourth largest maker of home electronics products, will sell the disc players for about $500 through its RCA See RCA connector and video/TV history. dealer network. The players and discs - which holds the audio and visual tracks for a full-length feature film - will be marketed together. Digital video discs are purported pur·port·ed adj. Assumed to be such; supposed: the purported author of the story. pur·port  ed·ly adv. to produce much better audio and visual quality than videotape videotapeMagnetic tape used to record visual images and sound, or the recording itself. There are two types of videotape recorders, the transverse (or quad) and the helical. . And they are smaller than laserdiscs, which now offer better quality than tape. So far the range of disc prices has not been set but it will be controlled by the movie studios releasing the titles, said Garrett Lee, Image Entertainment's marketing director. ``I'm hearing figures in the $25 range,'' he said. ``The studios will dictate a suggested retail price just as they do now with videocassettes and lasers. But that hasn't been ironed out.'' Image will stock titles from a number of studios and about 250 will initially be available, he said. Executives at Indianapolis-based Thomson said the deal with Image allows RCA dealers to build an inventory of titles by placing one order rather than having to go to several vendors. Having both the player and discs available at the point of purchase will be critical to stimulating sales, said Larry Pesce, manager of DVD DVD: see digital versatile disc. DVD in full digital video disc or digital versatile disc Type of optical disc. The DVD represents the second generation of compact-disc (CD) technology. product management at Thomson. Equity analyst Johnny Svoren at the Red Chip Review in Portland, said that it's an attractive partnership for Image Entertainment. ``It gives them a good position in the market right at the beginning,'' he said. Image Entertainment has more than a 40 percent share of the laserdisc An earlier optical disc used for full-motion video and interactive training. It was introduced in the late 1970s and became obsolete in the 1990s. Videodisc systems based on a stylus were introduced (see CED), but only the optical-based LaserDisc survived, although never very popular. distribution market, he said. Image Entertainment is the largest licensor and distributor of laserdiscs in the United States United States, officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. and it has the biggest library of titles in the industry. This new venture opens a potentially huge market. ``RCA has about 14,000 dealers worldwide and about 5,000 may sell the new disc players when the machines are introduced,'' said Lee, Image's marketing director. The players will capable of such features as audio tracks in various languages, closed captioning and up to 32 different subtitle sub·ti·tle n. 1. A secondary, usually explanatory title, as of a literary work. 2. A printed translation of the dialogue of a foreign-language film shown at the bottom of the screen. tr.v. tracks. The discs can deliver the same picture quality as the original film studio master print. Thomson is one of the major developers of technology used in the disc system, which is expected to be sold worldwide by 1997. |
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