Magnetic Video

Magnetic Video
Magnetic Video logo

Magnetic Video was a home video/audio duplication service established by Andre Blay in 1968 and based in Farmington Hills, Michigan. In 1977 it became the first corporation to release theatrical motion pictures onto Betamax and VHS videocassette for consumer use. (Cartridge Television, Inc. preceded it in 1972 when it introduced the Avco Cartrivision home VCR with a line of major motion pictures available for rent on the Cartrivision videocassette format. Cartrivision went off the market thirteen months after its debut.)

Magnetic Video is notable for its contribution to the birth of the modern-day home video empire and the birth of video rental systems. In the fall of 1977, Blay came up with the idea to release pre-recorded motion pictures on videocassette. That year, he convinced Twentieth Century Fox, which was then in financial difficulty, to license fifty of their films for home video release in VHS and Betamax formats. Blay also established the Video Club of America in order to sell the titles directly to consumers by mail.

That same year, George Atkinson bought one Betamax and one VHS copy of each of the first 50 movie titles from Magnetic Video that were then being sold to the public and established the Video Station rental company from a storefront in Los Angeles. He charged $50 for an "annual membership" and $100 for a "lifetime membership," which provided the opportunity to rent the videos for $10 a day.

This and similar video stores were a success, and Magnetic Video took off, later adding titles from United Artists (including pre-1950 Warner Bros. classics which were owned by UA at that time), ABC Pictures, ITC (Magnetic's first release from ITC was The Muppet Movie), Avco-Embassy Pictures and Viacom in addition to the original titles from Fox.

The Magnetic Video project was such a success that it soon came over to the United Kingdom as "Magnetic Video UK" in 1978. Not long after, Australia also obtained Magnetic Video's VHSs; there, it was called "Magnetic Video Australia".

In 1979, Fox purchased Magnetic Video, which was a small OTC traded public company (Blay was a major shareholder and Chairman). In 1982, shortly after Blay's departure from the company, Fox reorganized Magnetic Video into 20th Century Fox Video. Around the same time, Magnetic Video began to issue films in laserdisc format. Later that year, Fox merged its video operations with CBS Video Enterprises, resulting in the creation of CBS/Fox Video in mid 1982.

Rights to their library

External links


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Поможем написать реферат

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Video — For films or movies, see Film. For other uses, see Video (disambiguation). For the use of video in Wikipedia articles, see Wikipedia:Creation and usage of media files. Video is the technology of electronically capturing, recording, processing,… …   Wikipedia

  • magnetic recording — magnetic recorder. the process of recording sound or other data on magnetic tape, wire, etc. [1940 45] * * * ▪ electronics Introduction       method of preserving sounds, pictures, and data in the form of electrical signals through the selective… …   Universalium

  • Magnetic storage — and magnetic recording are terms from engineering referring to the storage of data on a magnetized medium. Magnetic storage uses different patterns of magnetization in a magnetizable material to store data and is a form of non volatile memory.… …   Wikipedia

  • Magnetic Scrolls — was a British computer game developer during the mid 1980s and early 1990s. It was one of two largest interactive fiction game makers of the 1980s.[1] Their primary focus was the development of text adventure games (also known as interactive… …   Wikipedia

  • Magnetic Fields (computer game developer) — Magnetic Fields (Software Design) Ltd. Type Computer game Developer Industry Computer and video games Interactive entertainment …   Wikipedia

  • Magnetic stirrer — A stir bar mixing a solution on a combined hot plate magnetic stirrer device. The left knob controls the stirring rate and the right knob controls heating. Other names Magnetic mixer Uses Liquid mixing Inventor …   Wikipedia

  • video — ► NOUN (pl. videos) 1) the system of recording, reproducing, or broadcasting moving visual images on or from magnetic tape. 2) a film or other recording on magnetic tape. 3) a video cassette. 4) Brit. a video recorder. ► VERB (videoes …   English terms dictionary

  • Magnetic river — is an electrodynamic suspension magnetic levitation (maglev) system designed by Eastham and Eric Laithwaite in 1974. It consists of a thin conductive plate on an AC linear induction motor. Due to the transverse flux and the geometry, this gives… …   Wikipedia

  • Video denoising — is the process of removing noise from a video signal. Video denoising methods are divided into: * Spatial video denoising methods, when only one frame is used for noise suppression. Such methods are close to image noise reduction. * Temporal… …   Wikipedia

  • magnetic tape — n. A long thin plastic ribbon coated with iron oxide or other ferromagnetic material, used to record audio or video signals digital data in the form of small magnetized regions on the tape; it is a common digital data storage medium for computer… …   The Collaborative International Dictionary of English

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”