U.S. Films Could Boost HDTV Sales : Entertainment: Five Japanese firms reportedly have agreed to put movies from their U.S. film libraries onto laser discs--a major marketing payback from their investments in Hollywood.

Japanese consumer electronics companies may be planning to use their investments in Hollywood movie studios to help rescue Japan’s stagnant high-definition TV business.

Five Japanese companies have agreed to make the film libraries of their studio partners and subsidiaries available on special laser discs that can be viewed on HDTV laser disc systems that will be sold in Japan, Kyodo News Service reported.

HDTV laser discs carrying Hollywood’s hottest movies may be one of the few real incentives electronics makers can offer to persuade consumers to buy the expensive new HDTV sets.

Using film studio products to boost the electronics industry would represent a clear example of a return on the huge investment Japanese companies have made in Hollywood.

Although the companies declined to confirm the report of a joint agreement on HDTV discs, industry observers said they are headed in that direction.

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Sony Corp., Pioneer Electronic Corp., Toshiba Corp. and Sanyo Electric Co. agreed last September to pool their technology to develop a common standard for building laser disc players that can show movies with the kind of stunningly clear pictures available only on high-resolution HDTV sets now sold in Japan.

Laser discs are optical discs that can store movies in much the same manner as videotape. While they are generally not recordable and erasable, they are more durable and usually present better quality sound and picture than videotape.

Matsushita and Sony cited potential synergies between movie production and consumer products when they made their respective purchases of MCA and Columbia Pictures. The laser disc deal, if carried out, would represent the first significant use of the movie assets for the promotion of a new consumer electronics product.

Sony said it has called on the five companies in the laser disc consortium to promote the products’ commercialization, including making more software available for disc players.

“If only one company does it, it isn’t much use,” said a Sony spokeswoman. However, she added, each company in the consortium will make its own decision on what to do.

The spokeswoman added that Sony has not yet decided whether to put movies from the library of Sony Pictures (formerly Columbia Pictures) on HDTV laser discs.

Matsushita, Toshiba and Pioneer also said that they have yet to decide whether to have the film libraries of their respective subsidiaries and partners--MCA, Time-Warner and Carolco--put films on HDTV laser discs.

A Pioneer spokesman said the idea of making more movies available on HDTV laser discs would be “a move in a desirable direction.” Pioneer sells a professional-use HDTV laser disc player for about $12,000 but hopes to come out with products aimed at the consumer market in the next two years.

Japanese electronics makers believe that the HDTV laser disc could help support faltering sales of HDTV sets by enabling owners of the high-resolution, wide-screen HDTV sets to watch the same kinds of popular movies now available on videocassettes.

Japanese consumer electronics makers predicted only a year and a half ago that Japanese sales of HDTV sets would reach $32 billion by the end of the decade. With under $100 million in sales last year, such a forecast now appears wildly optimistic.

The consumer who plunks down $7,500 to $16,000 to buy an HDTV set in Japan today can watch only eight hours a day of HDTV broadcasting on one channel. The broadcasts, operated by Japan’s public television station NHK, often feature movies whose technical quality is poor.

Japanese consumer electronics makers had hoped to see a surge in HDTV sales this summer because the Barcelona summer Olympics that begin this month will be broadcast with special cameras so HDTV owners can get clear images. The anticipated demand has failed to materialize, however.

Analysts are skeptical about whether HDTV laser discs will boost sales of HDTV sets.

The market for laser disc players used on regular televisions is relatively small. Sales in the first four months of this year amounted to just $280 million.

With the potential market for HDTV laser disc players also small, U.S. movie houses would profit little from putting movies on laser discs.

“They are doing this not because there is demand for this (HDTV laser disc players) but because they have to in order to help drive demand for HDTV sets,” says Michael Jeremy, electronics analyst at Barings Securities.

Japanese companies had hoped to recover the nearly $1 billion invested in HDTV technology over the past two decades by selling large numbers of the sets in Japan, then exporting them as costs and prices came down, Jeremy says.

The strategy is unraveling. While prices today are one fourth of what they were a year ago, Matsushita is expected to sell over the next few months only 1,000 of the lower-cost sets it recently introduced.

To make matters worse, a U.S. decision to adopt a different HDTV standard means that even if Japanese firms brings down the cost of the sets in Japan, they will not be able to sell similar sets in the United States.