A LITTLE OF DISC, A LITTLE DAT, AND MORE

The scene was the O’Hare Hilton, located in the middle of Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. The people had been waiting in line for more than half an hour just to register. Eventually, their impatience led to some spontaneous camaraderie--and grousing.

Almost everyone in line, it turned out, had business in downtown Chicago, 20 miles away--but none had been able to book a room near the city’s center.

A woman from Florida claimed to know why. “There’s some sort of electronics convention,” she said, “and about 10,000 people are in town for it.” Even though the “10,000” was pronounced with impressed emphasis, the woman was way off the mark.

Try 100,000.

That’s how many people were estimated to have attended the International Summer Consumer Electronics Show that began Saturday and wrapped up Tuesday--and the event wasn’t even open to the general public.

The growth of this semiannual show (also held in Las Vegas each January) over the last two decades symbolizes changing patterns in America’s leisure-time choices. There was a time when “entertainment” meant going out. Now, for more and more Americans, it means staying in. Home entertainment is the industrial Topsy of the ‘80s.

In fact, the change is global. Registered at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show were 70,000 buyers representing retail outlets from around the world. There were 2,000 reporters--all trying to make their way through the mazes at the mammoth McCormick East and McCormick North exhibition halls. Several downtown hotels also housed displays.

This was the first show to display two potentially significant new video formats--CD-V (compact disc-video) and Super-VHS, a much-improved system for VCRs. In addition, this was the Consumer Electronics Show where someone finally pulled a pistol in the long standoff concerning the marketing of digital audio tape (DAT) in the United States.

CD-Video. In the middle of McCormick East stood a round structure that looked something like a blue-gray birthday cake. Every quarter-hour throughout each day of the show, the same program ran on the giant video screen within: a video by the popular rock group Bon Jovi, followed by a film showing a Humphrey Bogart impressionist extolling the virtues of a new format with “a perfect picture and a perfect sound”--CD-Video.

Nearby was a “country bedroom,” complete with a double bed, lace curtains and mahogany furniture, including one piece that held a CD-V player showing a Janet Jackson video, hour after hour. This room, a plaque told inquiring minds, was where “the husband and wife of a young, suburban family . . . (could) relax with a favorite CD or feature film.”

Next to and across from the bedroom were rooms set up by Magnavox, Sony, Pioneer and other hardware participants. In all, more than 30 hardware and software companies combined to put on the demonstration, which reportedly cost $1 million.

The focus of all this attention were machines that played both existing Laserdiscs and the new CD-V discs, which may come in sizes ranging from 3 inches to 12 inches in diameter. Getting the biggest push was the five-inch “single” configuration, which provides 20 minutes of audio and five minutes of Laserdisc-quality video. The audio portion can be played on any CD player; the video part (and other CD-V sizes) will need one of the new CD-V players.

But are these young, suburban families going to go for CD-V?

Despite the upbeat tone of the CD-V promotion (there was even a blaring techno-rock song especially recorded for the event), there was a lot of skepticism at the Consumer Electronics Show. The expected initial high price of the players ($800 to $1,200), the limited time of the five-inch size (compared to regular five-inch CDs, which hold up to 73 minutes of audio) and the similarity to the barely surviving Laserdisc made some wonder whether CD-Video might flop like a plummeting pie in the sky.

John Messerschmitt didn’t think so, of course. He hosted the presentation and has generally been recognized as the driving force behind CD-V. (Just before the Consumer Electronics Show, he resigned to form--and presumably head--a CD-V group modeled on the one that helped sell the idea of compact discs to the public in the first place.)

In a brief conversation, Messerschmitt listed three reasons why his pet project should defeat the naysayers:

“One: The number of people with compact disc players is still low, relative to those with VCRs, and many will want CD-V players.

“Two: Even though 50% of Americans already have VCRs, there’s no reason to think many of them won’t also buy a CD-V player. After all, studies have shown that 80% of people who purchased a Laser Vision player already had VCRs.

“Three: Many CD-V purchasers will be upscale consumers who want whatever the best new format is.”

Perhaps so, but soon the more ordinary American consumer is going to be confronted with a tidal wave of new formats and products. CD-V players should be on the U.S. market this fall, when Super-VHS will also be arriving--not to mention analog tape-replacing digital audio tape.

Messerschmitt was asked if there wasn’t a chance of a consumer backlash here--that people might say they’re tired of their equipment becoming outmoded? After all, maybe in another Consumer Electronics Show or two, there might be a new format with an even more “perfect” picture and sound and use--say, recordable videodisc--meaning that everyone who bought CD-V and Super-VHS will be out of luck.

“No,” countered Messerschmitt. “Because nothing you’ll buy will become obsolete. That has only happened with one format, RCA’s CED videodiscs.” Messerschmitt indicated that the industry learned its lesson from that costly fiasco. “A lot of people may say, ‘I think I’ll wait to buy.’ But enough of the others are going to be confident that they can always get the software for their equipment.”

Super-VHS and ED-Beta. Here’s where equipment replacement is going to mean tough decisions for a lot more people than in the CD area. While only about 6% of Americans own CD players, almost 50% have VCRs. In just two to five months, they’ll all be confronted with what appeared to be the biggest hits at the electronics show here--Super-VHS and ED-Beta.

At the big JVC exhibit, a buyer who’d been staring at a Super-VHS image of “Top Gun” turned away in disgust. As he walked away, he said to his assistant: “Oh, great. Now I’m going to have to throw away my old VCR.”

Or try to sell it, at least. Super-VHS was very impressive at the show. Over at the booth of another Super-VHS exhibitor, Toshiba, two side-by-side screens demonstrated the difference between the new format and the currently best available VHS picture (with HQ circuits). Toshiba may have seemed to pick some strange images--a shot of a woman’s hair was followed by one of a beer can--but the message was delivered: On the monitor showing Super-VHS, you could see the letters more clearly on the can, and you could see loose ends in the woman’s hair that weren’t visible on the other screen.

On the other side of downtown Chicago, at the Drake Hotel, Zenith staged its Super-VHS demonstration. Zenith representative Matt Mirapaul said that his company’s side-by-side comparison, like Toshiba’s, was honest and straightforward--the two monitors were the same model and the best available VHS picture was shown next to the Super-VHS image.

While most of the previous publicity about Super-VHS had stressed increased horizontal resolution (about 430 lines), Mirapaul explained that the new system also delivers a sharper picture because it separates the “luminance” (brightness) and “chrominance” (color) components in a unique way, besides employing a higher-density tape. (By flipping a switch on a Super-VHS deck, the viewer will be able to play standard VHS tapes too.)

There are other features coming on these “Super” machines to entice customers to pay the initial high cost ($1,200-up retail). The Zenith VRD700 model, for example, will boast all four HQ circuits, improved VHS hi-fi (a 10-decibel increase in dynamic range over current VHS hi-fi machines), an indexing system that will enable users to find a movie in the middle of a reel, MTS stereo decoding, on-screen programming and four heads providing special effects at both SP and EP speeds.

JVC, the company that developed both VHS and Super-VHS, is expected to be the first to market the new system in the United States. JVC video general manager Steve Isaacson said Super-VHS recorders could be in “some stores” in the United States as early as late July. The other companies licensed by JVC (including RCA, Sharp and Hitachi) generally named “sometime in fall” as a likely debut date.

Sony’s new improved Beta system, ED-Beta, had an image that seemed to be even sharper than that of Super-VHS. Emphasis on the seemed because there were no side-by-side comparisons of the two systems. But even if Sony has the best new VCR format, Super-VHS has the biggest potential market share by far: all those people with VHS machines who’ll want to be able to play their current library on their new VCR, even if it’s “Super.”

Michael Meltzer, vice president of consumer video products for Sony, wanted to stress that “ED-Beta is not a response to Super-VHS. Sony has been working on it for over a year and a half. We’re on our own timetable, and we see ED-Beta as an evolution of the technological advances we accomplished with Beta.”

Still, Meltzer and another Sony representative couldn’t come up with any reasons to expect ED-Beta to win consumers away from VHS. Another disadvantage: ED-Beta isn’t expected in American stores until early 1988. However, in terms of improved video quality, ED-Beta was the winner at this Consumer Electronics Show.

Digital Audio Tape. At the show, Chatsworth-based Marantz announced that it would introduce its DT84 model DAT recorder in October. This would enable consumers, for the first time, to use the high-quality, compact disc-like recording equipment and tape that previously has been available only to professionals.

American and Japanese manufacturers had previously held off marketing digital audio recorders because major record companies are up in arms over that old issue of home taping. They want the manufacturers to include a device in DAT recorders that will cause the machines to improperly tape prerecorded material (notably compact discs) that has been encoded. Without such a device, home tapers would be able to make high-quality, digital-to-digital recordings superior to the ones they can make now on analog tape recorders.

James Twerdahl, Marantz’s recently appointed president, struck a defiant tone in announcing the company’s intention: It was damn the record companies, full speed ahead.

Twerdahl said the insistence of the record industry on an anti-copying device in DAT equipment was “naive, short-sighted and self-serving in its attempt to withhold (this) important new technology from consumers.”

Marantz plans to market its DAT machine, he said, “even if there is no prerecorded software, and even if there are legislative barriers. . . . “

The Marantz model is expected to carry a suggested list price of $1,300.

If the price tags on this and other prototypes shown at the Consumer Electronic Show--including a digital VCR with a dozen slow-motion/still effects; another VCR with bar-code programming, an attachment that gives your TV “picture-in-picture” capabilities even if it isn’t digital, and improved camcorders--seem out of sight, remember that the figures tumble quickly (at least within a year or so) in the electronics industry, one of the few where prices go drastically down rather than up.