Philips Involvement
VLP
Philips original, and preferred name for the format was always VLP for Video Long Play or Video Laser Player.
(They referred to it both ways at various times). By the time the system was introduced, Magnavox had produced, manufactured
and marketed the Magnavision player, with VLP as Philips' Official name. The early Magnavision players even
bore a neat little VLP logo on the top of the unit.
Magnavision
The Magnavox Magnavision player was designed along the same lines as Bang & Olfusen's audio equipment in Denmark,
with a sleek black and silver look and rounded, contoured edges. It was very high-tech looking. Originally,
the lid of the player had a large plexiglas window in the shape of the disc so that viewers would see the disc
spinning and the reflection of the red laserbeam. But, because of new Laser Radiation exposure laws being
written in the US and Philips Lawyers fear of lawsuits, the turntable became completely enclosed. The first
players sold in Atlanta were almost completely much hand built. The components were manufactured in the
Netherlands, then shipped in kit form to Knoxville TN for final assembly. They were so expensive to make that
the first year, Philips lost money on every player sold. It has been said that each player cost over a thousand
dollar to manufacture. Later, assembly was automated and the costs came down somewhat, but by the time of the
nationwide roll-out, Philips had raised the price of the player to $800.00 and the Laser Optical Assembly still
had to be assembled and aligned by hand. Because of the newness of the format, the first players weren't very
good. Philips had manufactured the players to a strict set of agreed upon standards. However, due to the
high defect rate MCA DiscoVision was having, not every disc worked on every player. They would skip, stick,
refuse to play, overheat and today are considered to be less than desirable. Philips made many modifications
to the players and offered upgrades to existing players free of charge. These were only Band-Aids and it was
the introduction of the Pioneer VP-1000 (and VP-1000a) that truly made the format reliable and to seem like
a good value. The VH-8000 Magnavision players were so unreliable that many players spent up to 9 months out of
their first year on the repair bench.
MCA DiscoVision blamed Philips for making bad players. Philips blamed MCA DiscoVision for making poor quality
discs that didn't meet the standards. Word went around Philips that MCA representatives were on their way
with a solution to the problem. Eager to hear that DiscoVision had corrected the software manufacturing issues,
the Philips technicians were shocked to find that MCA's fix was not to make better discs, but to modify the
Magnavision player to be more tolerant of the "less than perfect" discs. Philips was mad. It was also
discovered that Pioneer and DiscoVision had been working together and had designed the Pioneer players with
additional lens movement capabilities to handle the current line of discs being produced. MCA did not disclose
this fact to Philips. A formal complaint was placed by Philips with the highest people at MCA charging
collusion between Pioneer and DiscoVision to hide problems in the format, and basically placing the blame with
Philips and their player. Philips was losing money by the fistfuls, and with this new issue, Philips was left
disappointed and angry. To help compensate for their loses, they started a their own disc manufacturing plant
for industrial use and that saved the disc at Philips.
Updated: June 2, 1996
Copyright ©1996 Blam Entertainment Group