- published: 28 Sep 2014
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DiscoVision is the name of several things related to the video laserdisc format.
It was the original name of the "Reflective Optical Videodisc System" format later known as LaserVision or LaserDisc.
MCA DiscoVision Inc. was a division of entertainment giant MCA, established in 1969 to develop and sell an optical videodisc system. MCA released discs pressed in Carson and Costa Mesa, California on the DiscoVision label from the format's Atlanta, Georgia launch in 1978 to 1982 and the release of the film, The Four Seasons. DiscoVision titles included films from Universal Studios, Warner Bros. Pictures, Paramount, and Disney. Agreements were made with Columbia Pictures and United Artists, though no discs were released on the DiscoVision label from either studio. Most of these companies later established their own labels for the format, the first being Paramount with a dozen movies released on the Paramount Home Video label in the summer of 1981.
The successor to MCA DiscoVision, Discovision Associates (DVA) was the result of a partnership between IBM and MCA. It was hoped that the merger would provide the basis for improvement of the quality of DiscoVision pressings, but no appreciable improvement ever took hold. In 1981, responsibility for the laser videodisc was sold to Pioneer Electronic Corporation. Pioneer, in association with MCA, had a disc replication facility in Kofu, Japan that produced discs. Some of the last DiscoVision label discs were manufactured by Pioneer in Japan. In the same year, MCA had an abrupt failure from its DiscoVision system and was replaced by MCA Videodisc; this was changed to the "MCA Home Video" name for both its VHS and videodisc releases.
This was the very first publicly-available demonstration laserdisc (there had been a few for prototype display uses only before this.) It shows a bit on how the system worked and how the first discs were made- it turned out that for optimal quality, much cleaner conditions than what's shown here were needed. This disc ends with a clip from the TV show "Columbo" with English on the left channel and Japanese-dubbed on the right, but YouTube's content ID system automatically blocked that so I had to cut it off at that point. The dead side of my copy has Chevrolet's "Just a Little Misunderstanding", which someone else has already uploaded here!
This "Bumper" was at the front of all "DiscoVision" LaserDisc presentations. There are a lot of defects in the picture, such as speckles and dropouts. In the early days they had not yet figured out that the discs need to be pressed in "Clean Room" like conditions. in fact I have seen hair and pieces of bugs in the plastic on some early Discs.
This is a clip with two versions of the DiscoVision bumper, one without the copyright and the other with. This also contains the end of side bumper, side 2 bumper, a static pattern bumper found in the DiscoVision title "The Choirboys", and the Disco-Vision blue screen dead side.
This was taken from my DiscoVision disc... American Grafitti, and was the first issue version. This has the intro, rating, MCA Universal intro, The "come visit Universal", and the only type of bumper.
Finally have a working Pioneer VP-1000! Decided to use it here. "The Lives of a Bengal Lancer" is a four-sided CAV DiscoVision film. This copy I won on eBay has a dead side on its fourth side instead: Side 5 of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." Very strange, not to mention the last fourth or so of the film is missing...
MCA DiscoVision issued 3 Bionic Laserdiscs in 1978-9. I finally got one: the "movie version" of The Bionic Woman, Parts I & II. Music by Oliver Nelson, performed by yours truly.