MCA DiscoVision Industrial

DiscoVision was much more than simply a movie platform. Early adoption at an industrial level began as General Motors started deploying PR-7820 players in a kiosk format to dealerships throughout the United States and Canada. This system utilized what is now referred to as a Level II data dump. Playback would be interrupted at startup by reading a set of programmed instructions stored on the Right audio track. When played back on a consumer player, this track would sound like an old modem or fax machine for a few seconds and would then fall silent. Once the program was loaded, it was executed - running through an introduction clip of some kind and then dropping to a menu. The user would then follow the instructions on the screen to select the programmed sequence, which could offer multiple segments, but also in multiple languages.

Industrial titles could also be encoded with no programming (now called Level III) and all interactivity could be controlled by connecting the player to a computer. This process was used significantly in the educational environment where a computer program could be referenced for a the requested data and this would in turn execute the search to the player to display the requested image, or play a video segment.

There is no way of knowing (without records from Pioneer, Technidisc and 3M) how many of these kinds of programs were produced. Industrial disc production continued for some time after consumer disc production ceased in 2000. The list here represents a handful of industrial titles that were done of which copies have been obtained. I expect to include General Motors discs at some point, but they are not included here.