Word: vcrs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
From its introduction, SelectaVision was fatally upstaged by an electronic relative, the videocassette recorder, which had come out six years earlier. Most consumers prefer VCRs because the machines can record broadcasts as well as play prerecorded tapes. SelectaVision machines, by contrast, allow the user to play only prerecorded discs. Says Arthur Morowitz, president of New York's Video Shack chain: "It was a dinosaur from the beginning. There was never a really strong need...
...Supreme Court ruled, 5 to 4, that home videotaping of television programs for private use is not a violation of copyright law. The anxiously awaited decision grew out of a suit brought by the Disney and Universal studios in 1976 against the Sony Corp., makers of Betamax videocassette recorders (VCRS), for enabling home viewers to record movies and TV shows without paying a royalty. In 1981 a federal appeals court in California decided in favor of the studios. Since then the billion-dollar VCR industry, as well as millions of consumers, has been in a state of legal limbo. Last...
...slow motion. Arthur R. Miller, a Harvard Law School professor and authority on copyright law, notes that the most recent congressional overhaul of copyright laws in 1976 "was obsolete the day it went into effect, at least in terms of technology." In 1976 there were some 50,000 VCRS in the U.S. Since then, sales have increased steadily (by 100% last year, and an expected 50% this year). By the end of the decade there will be an estimated 45 million VCRs, or one in nearly half of all TV homes...
...sign outside Cologne's largest TV and video store proclaims that West Germany is im Videorausch (high on video). What Germans are not high on is the leaden quality of their own television programming. This is one reason why an estimated 1 million Germans will buy VCRs this year. Cassettes of U.S. movie hits like Patton and Cabaret, plus soft-and hardcore pornography, have proved so popular that a well-known chain of coffee stores was all set to add a line of cut-price VCRs to its menu of Colombian prime and Brazilian Mocha. It backed off only...
...China steamy video cassettes from the black market are a very hot item. What Americans term blue movies, the Chinese call yellow, but by any name, erotic films make party officials see red, as does anything that smacks of a "decadent" bourgeois Western lifestyle. All VCRs must be registered with local officials, and video cassettes must be approved as healthy for mind and body...