Revolutionary Dual-Deck VCR Headed to Marketplace : Recording: It will be a boon to consumers and small retailers, but a nightmare to video manufacturers.

The dual-deck VCR, which is a boon to piracy in the home-video market, will finally be available to consumers March 28--after five years of product development and legal battles.

This revolutionary machine, marketed by Go-Video of Scottsdale, Ariz., and manufactured by the Korean company Samsung, was on display at the Consumers Electronics Show, which concluded here this week. Known as the VCR-2, the machine, anticipated with both glee and dread depending on who you’re talking to in the home-video industry, may have far-reaching effects.

Though the VCR-2 will certainly be attractive to consumers, it’s also a blessing for small video retailers. For video manufacturers, though, it’s as welcome as a plague.

Selling for $999, the VCR-2 has two wells, one for a blank tape and one for a recorded cassette--markedly simplifying home cassette-copying. Want your own copy of “When Harry Met Sally . . .” but don’t want to shell out $90 for it? With the VCR-2 you can rent a copy for $2 and transfer it to a blank tape that you bought for $5.

At the moment, copying tapes at home is only possible by hooking two VCRs together. This procedure is not only expensive--buying two VCRs--but it also usually results in inferior copies, with fuzzy images and blurred colors. The low-quality dupes and the hassle of using two machines has discouraged home-copying.

But with the dual-deck VCR, dubbing--or copying--is a breeze. It’s much like using the double-welled decks in your stereo system for copying audio tapes. Judging from the demonstration at the Go-Video exhibit, making a copy on the VCR-2--which is done in real time rather than high speed--is an uncomplicated process.

The VCR-2’s most attractive feature, though, is that it makes excellent copies. A display at the Go-Video exhibit showed how even a fifth-generation copy--with all copies made on the Go-Video deck--was only slightly inferior to the original.

This VCR is the first of its kind available anywhere in the world, boasted Terry Dunlap, co-inventor of the machine and chief executive officer of Go-Video.

What has kept the machine off the market so long is legal battles with Japanese manufacturers who, Dunlap charged, didn’t want it competing with the standard, single-deck VCR, most of which are made in Japan.

“The Japanese cartel didn’t want our machine out there competing against their machines,” he said. “We had to file antitrust suits against them. The battle is still going on, but we’ve gotten $2 million in settlements. We’re trying to recover some of the revenues and profits we’ve lost by being kept out of the marketplace.”

Originally, Dunlap tried to have the machine manufactured in Japan. “But they banded together to freeze me out of the market,” he said. “But Samsung (a Korean company) came to me and said they’d manufacture it.”

Only 80,000 to 150,000 machines will be made by the end of the year, Dunlap said, so the major effect of the machine may be a few years away. Still, its availability may quickly be felt in Hollywood if many of the first units are purchased by small video retailers. In their struggle to compete with prosperous chains, they could cut their overhead by buying one copy of a title and making several others.

Such an action would be an illegal copyright infringement, but it would be difficult for video distributors to police the thousands of video outlets across the country.

Not all tapes can be copied, however. The dual-deck VCR does not override Macrovision, the anti-copying process added to many videocassettes.

This is the result of an agreement made in September, 1988, with the Motion Picture Assn. of America, which speaks for the video companies that lose revenue when their product is illegally copied. Now the association, according the public affairs director Charlene Soltz, hails the VCR-2.

But video companies still aren’t likely to embrace it. Though most of the major movies are encoded with Macrovision, many titles aren’t. According the Dunlap, only 15% of the new movies released on home video last year were protected by Macrovision. Companies use Macrovision sparingly because its cost cuts into their already narrow profit margins.

“We may all have to use Macrovision if this machine becomes popular,” said Reg Childs, president of Nelson Entertainment. What the VCR-2 can do, he said, “is just plain thievery.”

Ultimately, the consumer may suffer--as well as video retailers who don’t resort to copying. Video manufacturers, to make up for the cost of Macrovision and lost revenues from copying, may raise wholesale prices. Such hikes, of course, will be passed on to the consumer through rental increases.