Video Disc  
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If home video recording was a revolution, then video disc must have been the underground resistance movement. Even today, many people don't realise that video disc is available and even popular - at least with dedicated movie buffs. But the road to even this limited commercial success was long and rocky, despite the predictions and expectations which had been almost universal during the First Videocassette Revolution of 1970/71.

As we have seen, the pundits of the sixties and seventies agreed that discs would be THE mass-market video product: cheap, simple and popular, the modern equivalent of the (then) ubiquitous vinyl record. And since the machines would not have to be able to record, there were many different technologies which could be used, and they all seem to have been tried at one time or another:

Only capacitive and optical disc systems made it to the UK, if you don't count the oldest home video system of all - the mechanical Baird Television Record, produced by John Logie Baird in 1927 to go with his TV system.

Although LaserDisc is now an established format, it took three attempts to launch it, in different forms, before it took off. The original LaserVision was superceded in 1988 by the gold CD-Video, which added digital sound but bombed spectacularly. The current LaserDisc format was launched in 1991.

The original appeal of disc as a cheap mass-market medium for films has never materialised, LD being very much a premium format with discs retailing for £25-£50. The main reason for this, apart from the over-optimistic predictions of market share and low-cost disc production, has been the unexpected explosion of cheap sell-through tapes. Even bulk-pressed discs can't compete with a £9.99 price tag for a feature film.

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