Living-Room Cinema

By JAY COCKS

This may not be the best kind of consumer bulletin for straitened economic times, but be warned: It's time to consider moving the family VCR over and $ making room for another piece of equipment.

Now if movies are a casual family pleasure and everyone is happy renting tapes from the nearest video outlet, there is no immediate threat or sweat. But for people who like to own movies, who bought any of the 35.4 million theatrical films sold on cassette in 1987, who spent any fraction of the $637.2 million raked in by video distributors, a fresh temptation is at hand. Laser videodiscs, compact discs with pictures, have such a clear picture and such a rush of sound that they make even the best-quality videotapes look shoddy. In many cases they are as good as what is onscreen at the local multiplex. Sometimes they are better.

"It's kind of a sexy technology," says William Mechanic, president of Worldwide Video Operations at the Disney studio. "Laser vision is different stuff," says Robert Stein, whose Los Angeles-based Voyager Company turns out definitive disc versions of classics like Citizen Kane and contemporary gems like Blade Runner. "We're talking about radical technology." Technology, it should be added, that has been around for almost a decade. Laser discs hit the market in the late '70s and promptly took a commercial trouncing from the VCR. Laser players could not record, and, in the words of Warner Home Video's president Warren Lieberfarb, "it was a simple conflict for the consumer: Why buy a machine that only plays back when you can get one, for the same price, that records too?"

"Laser buffs have a simple answer," says Douglas Pratt, editor of the lively monthly Laser Disc Newsletter and author of The Laser Video Disc Companion (New York Zoetrope; $16.95), which reviews more than half of the approximately 2,000 titles available in America. "We say, 'Got a turntable at home? That doesn't record either.' " Despite its clear technical superiority and the fact that movies on disc often retail for 50% less than tape, laser still went for a rough ride in the marketplace. Both RCA and MCA pulled the plug on their separate videodisc ventures in the early '80s, which led consumers to the misconception that the technology had gone bust. Pioneer Electronics, which manufactures virtually all the laser players sold in the U.S., soldiered on alone, going into the software business as well, but discs remained mostly the playthings of film fans and technofreaks until CDs revolutionized the audio market. "The triumph of the CD is giving the laser- disc industry a tremendous help," says Kenichi Ohmae, a top management consultant in Tokyo. Voyager's Robert Stein is blunter: "At the consumer level, CDs completely saved the ass of laser discs."

Laser uses the same basic technology as CDs and delivers the same clarity and impact. Laser players (which start in the U.S. for a little over $400) have friendlier features than VCRs, and the latest models -- "combi machines" -- can play both compact and laser discs. These newly available combis will likely heat up the laser market even further. In Japan, where the laser business is now valued at $1.5 billion, the major electronics companies are gearing up for a grand-scale manufacturing push, and Sony will start to sell its laser-disc player in the U.S. this spring.

The attraction of laser for buffs is not simply how much better the technology makes films look and sound. There is material available on laser that cannot be had on tape. In Japan, films as various as Once upon a Time in America, The Mission, El Cid and Poltergeist are available not only in English but in their original wide-screen format. All three Star Wars movies have been released in a special edition that boasts not only the full image (which had been cropped for tape and broadcast TV) but also a wall-shattering digital sound track. Stateside, Warner and Universal/MCA make ravishing discs fresher than any print to be seen in a revival house. With a little prodding from Laser Fan Steven Spielberg, Warner has released its version of The Color Purple with its image uncropped and intact. The same version is available on tape, but it lacks the sparkle and force of laser.

Voyager, however, makes discs that establish a world-class technical standard while also adding appreciably to film scholarship. Co-Founder Stein, 42, sees Voyager's Criterion Collection as something like the Modern Library for the video age. Its editions of such classics as Swing Time, King Kong, Citizen Kane, The Seventh Seal and It's a Wonderful Life usually contain supplementary material (memos, stills, trailers), as well as a second sound track, which can be switched off at will, featuring an informal talk by a film historian. Criterion's version of The Magnificent Ambersons also contains notes on the ruinous studio recutting of the film, stills from deleted scenes, production designs, interviews with Orson Welles and his original script.

This Ambersons should help motivate any film lover to make the laser move. Fans with a slightly less sober interest in cinema might check out the futuristic film noir flights of Blade Runner, its deep shadows and wet streets, cramped buildings and flushed neon and drizzling skies becoming almost tactile on laser. Any basic laser library should also include the Japanese import versions of Once upon a Time, El Cid and the Star Wars trilogy; Warner's American discs of The Crimson Pirate, Barry Lyndon and The Color Purple; MCA's western classic Winchester .73, with a second audio track of reminiscences by James Stewart; Disney's Pinocchio, which looks as if it came fresh from the animator's table; and a further sampling of Criterion discs, including Kane, Kong and Life, as well as Lola Montes and Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Stein calls Blade Runner "Criterion's calling card to the industry," and one look is enough to tempt the unacquainted. The eyes have it. Laser disc is just about the best thing to happen to movies since projectors.

With reporting by S. Chang/Tokyo and James Willwerth/Los Angeles