Sharp Places Three Digital Discs on Call in One Unit

Due on the market in September is a five-in-one laser disc player featuring multiplay capabilities for up to three 3-inch or 5-inch compact discs or three 5-inch CD videos at one time.

Like other similar units, the MV-D100, recently introduced by Sharp Electronics Corp., plays 8- and 12-inch laser discs, as well as the 3- and 5-inch CDs and 5-inch CD videos.

Touted by Sharp as “the ultimate digital disc player,” the unit offers 20-step random access programming and many automatic functions to facilitate editing from CD to cassette. When taping from a CD, for instance, the MV-D100 arranges songs according to length so you get maximum use of the tape.

For playback, the unit has an automatic system that skips ahead or back to locate the start of the next or previous selection. It has repeat and scan functions, which allow a preview of the first 15 seconds of an LD or CD track.

Suggested retail price for the MV-D100, about the size of a VCR, is $1,499.95. It will be available nationally in electronics and department stores carrying Sharp products.

Visual Art Guide

For Southern California tourists and residents unfamiliar with the area’s art museums and galleries, there’s a new guide to visual art locations from Santa Barbara to San Diego.

ArtScene, which publishes a monthly guide to art exhibitions and openings, has put together a new map and guide to 300 art galleries and museums in Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, San Diego, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.

The handy work includes gallery and museum phone numbers and addresses, as well as area map guides and tours by region. It tells you how to get there, where to park and where you can take walking tours of galleries and museums.

Edited by ArtScene publishers Bill Lasarow (co-founder of the Los Angeles Mural Conservancy) and Beate Bermann-Enn, the guide also offers highlights of “must-see” viewing dates each month through December at specific museums.

The Map and Tour Guide is available at most museum and gallery locations and in many hotels. Or you can order it by mail for $1.50 prepaid from ArtScene, P.O. Box 861176, Los Angeles, Calif. 90086; (213) 482-4724.

Melitta Goes Natural

Melitta, the world’s largest coffee filter manufacturer, has introduced a new line of filters--”Natural Brown” models made of unbleached paper rather than the bleached paper pulp the company has used for its white filters.

The company created its new filters because of “consumer demand for natural, environmentally benign products,” said H. Helmut Radtke, president of Melitta North America.

Environmental groups recently have expressed concern that some bleached papers contain too much dioxin, a toxic chemical.

Melitta officials say levels of dioxin in their bleached paper coffee filters “can only be measured in parts per trillion,” according to tests by the company, the Federal Health Ministry in West Germany, the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington and the American Paper Institute. “The governmental agencies have concluded that this is too low to pose any health threat,” a Melitta representative said.

Melitta advises that taste-tests of its natural brown filters have shown that some consumers find coffee brewed in them to be slightly milder than coffee made in the bleached paper models.

The natural filters cost a little more than white models. They are available in the No. 2, 4 and 6 cone sizes in 40 per package and the basket size in 100. Suggested retail prices are $2.19, $2.29, $2.39 and $1.99 respectively. They can be purchased nationwide in supermarkets, department stores or gourmet specialty stores.