New Product Special Full-Sized Tape VHS Camcorder, Super Beta
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Sword and Sandal Sagas The #1 Magazine of Home Vu New Product Special Full-sized Tape VHS Camcorder, Super Beta Heard Anv Grind MnvieQ? BERGER-BRAITHWAITE VIDEOTESTS Sansui VHS Hi-Fi VCR Canon Portable 8mm VCR Canon 8mm Color Camera Bib VHS Video Alarm £ ^eX Vietnam V>1 ,‘--^og^onf6«ed ca^*e^ iSi*'"*'*'" i MGM/UA Home Video, 1350 Ave. of the Americas, New York, NY 10019. ;tna\\-^ettjv . Can they I Available ‘n racked iollo^-np lheW"j“’‘^,Svd«‘ron^ D»e?Xe‘»yirien<i'*tt’e i raiders fi^rroitK.FiM«'lessiv into* t$s*#** sssi^SS*- %£03(2£$2* S&tS* April 1985 Contents Volume IX, Number 1 Features Program Guide Columns The Greatest Stories Ever Told News & Views Channel One Our critic makes a selective By Ken Winslow.43 The Digital Class.6 survey of ‘the epic, ’ the film Top 10 Fast Forward genre in which too much is enough. Tape & Disc Sales & Rentals.45 Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Sony.8 By Tom Soter.66 Reviews Feedback What's New Film & Video Clips/Quick Takes.46 Who’s the Sucker?.10 We’ll tell you what’s new. Super New Products Beta! Korean VCRs! Camcorders! Directory NEC’s Quadruplets: 2 Beta, 2 VHS.. 14 And accessories are multiplying What’s New on Tape & Disc.57 like Rabbits (which is the name Fine Tuning of one of ’em). Yes, we have seen The Proper Dub the future of video—or at least Videotests By Roderick Woodcock.26 this year’s version of it. Videogram Sansui SV-R9900HF VHS Hi-Fi VCR By Richard Jaccoma.70 Flying Blind? Canon VR-E10 Portable 8mm VCR By William Wolfe.30 Found Sound Canon VC-200A 8mm Color Camera Those who take the trouble can Bib VHS Video Alarm TV Den find free multichannel riches By Berger-Braithwaite Labs.92 Resolution Resolved buried in movie soundtracks. By Roderick Woodcock.32 By Tim Onosko.77 Random Access Heard Any Good Movies Lately? Screen Protection It’s coming. It’s on the horizon. Ditlea/KunkellMcMullen.36 It’s creeping closer. It’s almost here. It’s digital movie sound. New Channels By Martin Porter.80 Low-Power Lowdown By William A. Marsano.38 The Art of the Chip One pixel is worth a thousand Dateline Tokyo words—so for a change, we’ve laid Warm & Softies out five pages of computer art— By Ichiro Kakehashi.142 a pictorial exploration of the Video Bookshelf artistic power of the microchip. LARRY, The Stooge in the Middle By Various Artists.83 By George L. George.144 Through the Lens, Lightly People The new generation of ultralight Judd Hirsch on the Boardwalk video cameras provides for new By Lorenzo Carcaterra.146 techniques in picture shooting. Off the Air By John Bishop.88 Technoturkeys By Bob B rewin. 148 Channel One The Digital Class There is little argument here that one of the wonderful perquisites of working at a magazine like VIDEO is a life of indentured servitude to the world of “digital.” Things could be worse. The snob appeal of digital is straight-up evident in every walk of middle-class (and up) life. We are talking digital sound, digital disc, digital dashboards, digital computers, digital TV (soon), and just plain old digital readout. If you’re living in an analog household, you just cannot cut it anymore—not with the Joneses down the block, and certainly not with us. Take plain old readout. Liquid crystals and light-emitting diodes are ridiculously ubiquitous, from the cabbie’s taximeter to the airline pilot’s instrument display to VCRs (even low-rent ones) to wristwatches. There is something strangely gratifying in manag¬ ing one’s life in numerical flashes, with the exception of the out-and-out bummer of seeing a 7 a.m. readout on your alarm dark after an evening’s excess. An editor, affectionately known as the young curmudgeon, recently visited a friend who is an upscale orthopedist by day and an audio/videophile by night. After being shown around the bone man’s competently equipped media room, the young curmudgeon was overheard muttering to his wife: “Dammitall. He’s got more digital readouts than we do. ” The doc’s autodialer handset (with digital readout phone number, naturally) was the coup de grace. It was a sweet anecdote for us. No longer do people compete with conventional status symbols—prep schools, BMWs, country homes, men’s clubs. Why, the stakes are much higher. One thing you should immediately know about digital: what you hear is not necessarily what you get. As Marty Porter explains in his piece “Heard Any Good Movies Lately?, ” digital doesn’t necessarily mean “pure” digital. Most of what we hear in cinema—high- quality sound though it sometimes is—is some kind of second-generation audio mastered from analog and transferred to digital. Hollywood knows this, and Hollywood knows that folks like us know this. So producers are now planning to digitize movie soundtracks from top to bottom. And videophiles will eventually benefit when the Hi-Fi (albeit analog) tapes come out. The digital age has also brought certain aesthetic wonders, and this month we offer a five-page display of computer art. It’s one of our infrequent forays into the offspring of research and development, a satisfying merger of science and beauty. That computer art isn’t yet considered fine art doesn’t bother us a whit. Soon, as you’ll see in our portfolio, critics will be debating its merits. Is it art? Write and tell us what you think. In recent months we’ve been rather closemouthed about giving you previews of what’s coming in future issues. There are two reasons for this. One, we don’t like our competi¬ tion to know our plans. Two, we often change our minds. This month, however, we’d like to break silence and give you a preview of the May issue. We’re planning a special number, dubbed the “software special” in interoffice memos. In it is an exciting lineup of stories. For starters, we’re publishing the toughest video trivia quiz you’ll ever take. There are 100 questions designed to keep you up all night with your VCR. After you’ve taken the test, we offer our editors’ and critics’ choices of their “Hot 100” prerecorded titles. We have a tough, critical look at how exercise tapes sometimes can be harmful to your health; and an in-depth report about violence in rock video. And that’s not all. We also have an interview with a Hollywood giant. Don’t miss it. 6 Video QWhy are TDK Hi-Fi video Reference tape. With audio fre¬ cassettes the best choice quency response of 20-20,000 Hz, for Hi-Fi VCRs? plus output uniformity within 0.3% at 7 kHz, it all adds up to clean, TDK Hi-Fi video cassettes A crisp, life-like color reproduction achieve a new level of audio and crystal clear sound. You’ve AFTER and video recording quality. got to hear and see new TDK Hi-Fi They’re designed to meet the criti¬ on your VHS or Beta Hi-Fi VCR to cal demands of today’s sophisti¬ believe it. SPENDING cated VHS and Beta Hi-Fi VCRs like no other cassette. QWhy does TDK Hi-Fi look TDK Hi-Fi offers virtual freedom and sound better? MEGABUCKS from dropouts and jitters, while de¬ livering unparalleled uniformity A Our unique HDD (high den¬ and stability in picture and sound sity/durability) binder sys¬ quality. What’s more, TDK Hi-Fi is tem facilitates optimum particle encased in our unerringly precise dispersion and delivers the lowest SQ cassette shell mechanism with dropout rate, which is critical to six control torqued screws which the performance of these sophisti¬ increases the rigidity of flatness of cated VCRs. Additionally, TDK’s the cassette's lower half ensuring ultra-smooth/flat film base and more perfect tape positioning. high conductivity back coating, combined with our SQ (super pre¬ QWhat enables TDK Hi-Fi to cision) cassette shell mechanism deliver such fantastic per¬ (built to tolerances 2.5 times the formance? industry standards), deliver vir¬ tually the smoothest running per¬ By developing new ultra-re- A formance of any video cassette fined Super Avilyn magnetic designed for Hi-Fi VCRs. particles that are smaller, thinner and more uniform than others cur¬ QWhy is TDK Hi-Fi the best rently available, we’re able to pack for PCM digital recording? the particles more densely; With TDK Hi-Fi, PCM re¬ YOU SHOULD achieving a BET value of 35ma/g. A cordings can achieve their That translates into unsurpassed full potential, in a medium where signal-to-noise ratios in both uniformity is of paramount impor¬ GET chrominance and luminance for improved audio/video clarity and tance, TDK Hi-Fi ensures that resolution play after play. signals will maintain their vital MEGASOUND. integrity. And because it delivers QHow does that translate the lowest dropout rate in its class, technically? TDK Hi-Fi is particularly beneficial to reproducing digitally encoded TDK Hi-Fi features lumi¬ A music. It also yields a higher nance and chrominance RF output, further reducing the signal-to-noise ratios of + 4.5 dB probability of erroneous readings and + 5.5 dB, respectively; plus a of digital signals. 1 dB improvement in audio sen¬ sitivity, compared to our Standard Q What’s next from TDK? g\ More videophiles are learn- #■% ing that TDK is where great entertainment begins. With 50 years of magnetic media techno¬ logy behind us, we always look toward the future.