Victor Co. of Japan (JVC) has announced that its VHD videodisk system will not be offered in the U.S. until next summer. The company said it delayed the introduction, scheduled for this month, because of the continuing recession in the U.S. and Japan. The VHD (Very High Density) system is a grooveless capacitance system that is visibly distinguishable from the RCA grooved capacitance system because of the absence of grooves on the disk and the use of a stylus about 10 times larger than the RCA stylus. Since the stylus is not locked into following a groove, it is free to be directed laterally across the disk while it spins. This freedom allows random access, freeze frame, and a variety of slow and fast speeds in reverse and forward. The Japanese launch scheduled for April, was postponed until early 1983.
The delay caused JVC to lay off a number of disk production workers in Irvine, CA. The extra year will allow JVC to increase the size of its initial disk catalog to some 250 titles-about half of which will be feature films and half musical and interactive programs.
Meanwhile, other fins, expected to offer VHD products, had little to say about the delay. "We are assessing the market and economic conditions," said a spokesman for General Electric Co., "but we have not set a firm date for introduction." At press time, neither Panasonic Consumer Electronics Corp. nor Quasar Co. had announced launch dates.
