Easy pre-setting with new range of video recorders

Press, 7 April 1987, Page 21

Easy pre-setting with new range of video recorders

A new range of video recorders that use bar codes to help users record their favourite programmes will be available from this month. The recorder comes with a bar code scanner that records the channel, date and time details of a programme to be recorded and then sends this information to the recorder for use. According to the machine’s distributor, National Panasonic, a division of Fisher and Paykel, Ltd, this makes child’s play of pre-setting videos. “The Listener” plans to publish bar codes for selected programmes alongside normal programme details some time in the next two

months. National’s video sales manager, Mr Stephen Parker, said that only half the 400,000 recorders in the country were ever used for programme recording. “It’s human nature that if someone has to take time to play around with the recorder they don’t bother,” he said. The domestic market for videos had reached saturation level, with about 40 per cent of homes owning one/ he said. This new recorder was aimed at the replacement market when people traded in their four or five-year-old machine for a new one. said.

The recorders with

hand-held scanner and programming sheet will retail for between $1299 and $1699 and come in three models.

The scanner works on the same principle as a remote control unit and sends' the digitally encoded programme details on a beam of infra-red light. As many as eight programmes can be preset for recording up to a month in advance. The machines were first released in Japan last October and five major television guides now carry bar codes with programme details. Mr Parker said Hong Kong and New Zealand were the first countries outside Japan to receive the new machines.