Rebirth of America, this is my era

Chapter 142 Twenty-Five Boys

The CD is actually just a data storage medium known to the public. The technology it represents is actually optical recording or optical storage.

The specific way of expression is to use a low-power laser beam to "burn" digital data into the spiral track on the surface of the disc. When in use, a low-power laser scanner is used to "read" the pits on the surface of the disc, and the optical signal is converted into an electrical signal through the intensity of the reflected light.

Precisely because its technology is very complex, there are many derived patents.

The most basic one is the laser disc technology, which was born in 1958 and invented by David Gregg, an engineer at Western Electric. After obtaining the patent, he founded his own company to specialize in this technology. Because of its good prospects, it attracted the attention of MCA in 1968 and was acquired after a brief negotiation. So far, the original manufacturing patent of the optical disc has become the technical reserve of MCA.

The CD audio and video technology that was born in 1965 and the video CD system that was born in 1968 were all re-developed based on Greg's invention in 1958. They do have their own patents, but no one can get around their ancestor in 1958.

When Evelyn told Ethan this fact, Ethan was completely shocked!

"Oh Evelyn, you mean that Philips' current technology is developed based on the patents owned by MCA? They need to pay patent fees to MCA?"

"That's the theory."

The girl nodded. "No matter who makes the CD now, it's impossible to bypass MCA."

“Unless they want to face lawsuits.”

'……' This result left Ethan speechless.

He really didn't expect that in the future, the optical disc patent that could leverage the 100 billion market would be in the hands of MCA? How come they, who have both content and standards, look like a time traveler?
"Fuck, is this world so scary?"

'Are all these big companies so prescient?'

"Isn't it said that Americans never make plans?"

'How come this calculation has been carried out for decades?'

Ethan was puzzled, and asked in confusion: "Oh Evelyn - how do you know all this? I mean, how do you know who owns the patent?"

"Since you know so much, do you understand the purpose of MCA's acquisition of this patent?"

"What do they want?"

The Gatling-like question made the girl laugh and cry.

"Oh Ethan, I'm just a person, not God. I can only answer questions that I understand. Why do I know this? Because this technology was once supported by the Stanford Research Institute. As for why MCA wanted to buy this patent? You'd better ask Steven about this matter..."

David Greger is a Californian, and his home is in Los Angeles. When he began to study CD recording, CD burning, and CD copying, the first partner he thought of was the Stanford Research Institute, the leading research institution on the West Coast. The subsequent patents were perfected by the cooperation of both parties.

These cutting-edge contents may be difficult for outsiders to find, but for our own people?
How many of the research conducted in the institute are truly well-defended?
When the information was placed in front of Ethan, he was like an aphasic patient, unable to speak for a long time. He had always thought that he was very smart, and with the cognitive reserve of a world, he could easily reap the dividends of the times.

But after experiencing a series of events such as Nintendo's desperate pursuit of chips, Philips' early layout of optical discs, and MCA holding patents more than ten years ago, he truly felt that no company that could survive for decades or even hundreds of years was simple. They may have done a lot of stupid things, but that was just a failure after betting on the wrong trend. They may be blinded by one thing and have bad luck, but they are definitely not stupid.

'None of these guys are simple!'

Ethan sighed in his heart.

Since Evelyn had shown him the way, he decided to go to Los Angeles.

But when he drove to Universal Studios the next day, Spielberg was not in the company.

After asking around, I found out that "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" had already been completed and this guy had gone to Columbia to attend a film screening. If nothing unexpected happens, he would be back in the afternoon.

"Mr. Jones, do you need me to call the director for you?" the Universal staff asked, "and ask him to come back as soon as he's done?"

"No, I'll just wait for him here." Ethan waved his hand. "It's noon now. I'll go to your cafeteria to eat and then find a place to rest. That should be okay, right?"

"No problem Mr. Jones. The director has explained that you and Mr. Lucas are his best friends. We are going to treat you like him."

The Universal staff took Ethan to the cafeteria. After filling his stomach, he took a nap in the VIP room of the studio. Until a crisp knock on the door reached his ears, he woke up from his sleep and saw Spielberg in a black shirt.

"Wow, did you get your hair done? That's damn cool."

Looking at Spielberg with his side-parted hair, Ethan immediately gave him a thumbs up.

“Yeah, I did it on purpose.” Spielberg shook his head and said, “Today’s screening will be attended by people from North American theaters. They will decide the screening schedule for my movie, so I need a handsome hairstyle to ensure that they will think I am reliable after seeing me.”

'……' Ethan was stunned for a moment.

Then he said in an exaggerated voice: "Oh Steven, when you keep declaring to the public that Star Wars is a good movie, you are the most reliable director in the world!"

"If there's still someone who thinks you're unreliable, I'll just spray him to death!"

"Isn't this stupid!"

"Hahahaha——" Ethan's words made Spielberg laugh out loud.

Perhaps because the preview of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" received widespread acclaim, he was very happy now. After chatting with Ethan about his work for a while, he took the initiative to ask Ethan about his purpose. When he learned that Ethan was very interested in the optical disc technology owned by Universal's parent company MCA, he laughed and said, "Optical disc? Did you go to study Philips?"

How could Ethan tell the truth about such a question?

He shrugged and said, "I just heard some news that Philips doesn't want to give up the Apollo project team at MILO because they are very satisfied with the video interface that Apollo has."

"Oh, I understand, I understand." Spielberg didn't dwell on Ethan's words.

He punched Ethan's shoulder with his fist and said, "Brother, don't be so cautious~"

"When you help George, we'll be a real family."

"We are a family!"

Spielberg shouted, then asked Ethan to follow him with a smile. When Ethan arrived at his office, he took out a blue plastic box from the drawer.

"This is..." Ethan narrowed his eyes.

"Jaws." Spielberg directly opened the palm-sized box, and then two CDs with movie posters printed on them appeared in front of Ethan.

This situation made Ethan's pupils shrink suddenly.

Spielberg motioned for him to sit down and turned on the TV in the office. Only then did Ethan realize that there was a machine as thick as a briefcase in the TV cabinet.

After some debugging by Spielberg, the CD-ROM drive that was basically the same as the one in Ethan's previous life was spit out by the machine. When Spielberg put the CD in, the TV screen that was still flashing with snow dots suddenly turned black, but after a few seconds, the Universal logo jumped into the screen.

This fact made Ethan frown, "Steven? You already have a product?"

To be honest, even though Ethan had prepared himself mentally after hearing that MCA owned the patent for the CD, he was still very surprised when he actually saw it.

His surprise did not come from the product itself, but from the fact that all his guesses were correct.

When the CD containing "Jaws" appeared, Ethan was sure that Philips was using MILOWA to promote its own new standard!

While he was surprised, Spielberg sat back on the sofa and said, "Ethan, if you want to know about the CD... then it will be very troublesome for us to talk about it..."

"Because this story happened ten years ago..."

As Ethan guessed, when MCA saw the optical disc technology in the 1960s, they thought it could become a trendsetting thing. It could carry audio and video, allowing Hollywood entertainment to break away from the limitations of theaters and enter thousands of households like television. So, MCA directly acquired it and wanted to vigorously develop it.

During the MCA research, they found that Philips, a world-renowned consumer goods company, was also researching this thing. More importantly, the two parties had different research directions. MCA was researching transparent optical discs, while Philips was researching reflective optical discs. The latter seemed to have more advantages than the former.

Since the basic patents of optical discs in America belonged to MCA, Philips, who wanted to do this part of the business, communicated with MCA, hoping to study this project together. MCA, who wanted to get better technology, agreed directly and reached a specific agreement. In the cooperation, Philips was responsible for producing players and MCA was responsible for producing optical discs, "equally sharing" the huge market that could exist.

Because the future was so bright, technicians from the two companies began tinkering with optical discs in 1969. After three years of research and development, laser discs capable of carrying movies finally appeared.

Now that the product is out, the next thing to do is to register the patent and launch it into the market.

Since both parties knew that the promotion of this kind of product requires continuous output of content, MCA took the initiative to take the lead and negotiate with several other Hollywood companies one by one, hoping that they could join in. After a period of tug-of-war, they finally reached a consensus on interests, so Universal and Philips decided to launch the machine in the North American market next year, that is, in 1978.

The first movie to be released in conjunction with the film is naturally Universal's "Jaws".

"I was already playing with it when Sidney told me they were going to make Jaws the first commercial film to be released on disc in North America..."

Spielberg crossed his legs and said with a smile: "This disc projector is actually quite useful. It allows people to enjoy the joy of movies at home."

"If you like it, just take it."

"If you want to burn other movies I can help you."

“It doesn’t matter which company’s movie it is.”

Spielberg's words are very grand.

Judging from the contracts signed by each company, the current Big Seven is indeed an alliance.

But as he told the story, the dark cloud between Ethan's brows not only did not dissipate, but became even darker, because he discovered a problem. If Philips had reached a cooperation with MCA as early as 1969, then when Philips' subsidiary Milova had a conflict with him... why did Spielberg choose to help him so calmly?
This is obviously not common sense!

“Steven…”

Thinking of this, Ethan suddenly became tangled and spoke, "Can I ask you a question?"

"Of course!" Spielberg said with a smile, "What else do you want to know?"

"I will definitely tell you if I know anything."

The more frank Spielberg acted, the more confused Ethan became. After he showed his surprise with a constipated look on his face, the guy leaning on the sofa immediately took over the conversation.

"Oh Ethan, you ask me why I chose you between Philips and you?"

"Brother, this question is very simple! Because Philip tore up the treaty first!"

Spielberg smiled and said: "We at MCA actually had great hopes for CDs at the beginning, but this hope was destroyed by Philips!"

"Didn't I just tell you? As early as 1972, we had already developed the current optical disc! But in that year, Philips did something that made us angry!"

"As for what the matter is..."

"You should know that, right?"

"That's what you came here for, after all!"

After Spielberg's reminder, Ethan immediately remembered that in 1972, Philips released the world's first home video recorder, the Philips N1500!

With that product, Philips opened the door to the era of home video recorders!
In the same year, MCA also worked with them to develop a commercially available CD player?
Oh--

This is simply a backstab!
"You mean, Philips' cooperation with you is just to block your patent? So as to better promote its own products?" Ethan asked, "Maybe they did something with the CD research?"

"Who knows?" Spielberg shrugged and said, "I only know that their behavior made the bosses of MCA very angry! They once questioned Philips what they were doing!"

Having said that, Spielberg's subjective thoughts are extremely strong.

"If Philips hadn't suddenly released the N1500, how could the CD issue have been delayed until now? If Philips hadn't discovered that Sony and JVC's products were better than theirs, they might not have returned to the CD industry, right? After all, they don't have the most basic patents!"

After hearing this, Ethan immediately understood why Spielberg would help him.

When the Philips guys tricked MCA during the cooperation, Sidney Sheinberg, the CEO and president of MCA, must have wanted to beat them to death!

In this case, when Spielberg found that helping Ethan Jones could annoy Philips and vent his anger on the person who discovered him...

Not helping is the biggest problem!

Not to mention that he was already very fond of video games.

In this situation, hitting Philip hard would not cause any psychological pressure for him at all!
"Well... I thought it was because I was so handsome..."

Ethan muttered.

"What?" Spielberg was a little surprised as he didn't understand.

When Ethan said that he thought it was his handsomeness that conquered Spielberg and won his friendship, the director leaning on the sofa was stunned.

Then he held his stomach and laughed.

"Hahahaha—oh Ethan—hahaha—you really are—hahaha—"

He was amused by Ethan's words.

Ethan asked back with a straight face: "Am I not handsome?"

As soon as he said this, Ethan couldn't hold it in anymore and covered his eyes with his hands.

The next second, the small office suddenly became a sea of ​​joy.

With Ethan's joke, the slightly serious atmosphere of the conversation suddenly disappeared, and in the subsequent chat, Ethan also learned the latest situation of the CD from Spielberg.

Although the laser disc is a very powerful product, MCA's top management agreed that it is difficult to promote this product, and the core reason is that it is too expensive.

After consultation between Philips and MCA, they decided to launch the CD player to the market at a price of seven hundred dollars, and seven hundred dollars... could now buy a home computer other than Apple.

More importantly, selling the machine at this price would actually be a loss.

When the price of a CD player remains high and it is selling at a loss, failure is inevitable. But the so-called attempt is also necessary because MCA is a public company. If there is no failure in the market, the management will still need to explain to shareholders why the well-developed product is shelved.

"That's troublesome, isn't it?" Spielberg winked at Ethan.

"Yeah~ Public companies are so troublesome." Ethan nodded with a smile.

Ethan arrived at Universal Studios at noon and did not leave until after dinner.

The communication with Spielberg made him very happy, because he not only confirmed the ownership of the patent for the CD, but also learned about the relationship between Philips and MCA. He also learned that even MCA was very pessimistic about the CD product, but had to push it forward due to pressure from shareholders.

When this kind of thing is put in front of him, what can it do even if Philips has made arrangements in advance?

Although business is business, if one party takes the initiative to act as a traitor in business, don't blame others for always picking on you!

In addition to these, Spielberg also revealed one thing to Ethan.

"In fact, there has always been a voice in MCA that wants to temporarily abandon video recording and focus on sound storage, using CDs to erode the market for tapes."

"By doing this, we can promote the CD product at a lower cost. Secondly, we can teach Philips a lesson. They made the world's first cassette tape and they hold the patent. If we can get rid of the tape, we can get rid of Philips's constraints and gain more profits."

"But unfortunately, this voice was not strong in MCA, because VHS recorders were so easy to use, and some people felt that magnetic storage might continue to develop, and optical discs should stop."

When Ethan heard Spielberg's words, he remained silent.

Because a song popped into his ears directly——

"Give you a CD from the past, and listen to our love back then."

That's right, Ethan remembered Eason's song.

If we ignore the video storage and only do the sound, then it would be a Sony CD player!

Although they did not really make tapes history, they were indeed epoch-making products!
At the same time, Sony also successfully promoted its own CD format with that thing!

and so……

The other ideas within MCA that Spielberg mentioned are actually operational.

But in his memory, MCA didn't seem to have done these things?

After a quick thought, Ethan put these things behind him.

He sighed with some emotion, "What the hell..."

"This era is truly a time when gold is everywhere!"

"Just chatting about it, those special codes are all industries worth tens of billions of dollars!"

It’s a pity that these things are still a bit far away for him.

Now his butt is full of shit.

When Destiny wants to make games, make consoles, and have a showdown with Nintendo...

He has only one head and two hands, which is really not enough!

I don’t even have enough work to do, so how can I find the time to do these things?

"Ugh--"

"If only I could create a shadow clone—"

"Assign a bunch of guys to work, and then I can have fun slacking off~"

Note: ① After David Gregg obtained the optical disc patent in 1961, he jumped from Western Electric to 3M. Through 3M and Stanford Research Institute, he studied optical disc technology and perfected the functions of recording, copying and signal storage. In 1963, Stanford had already worked with him to develop an optical disc recorder, which was later known as optical disc DV. ② The company that MCA held the optical disc patent at that time was called MCA DiscoVision. They jointly developed optical discs with Philips and launched a projector in 78. The first movie was indeed "Jaws", but because Philips had backstabbed MCA before, the cooperation was stopped only in 1981. Since they authorized the agency to Pioneer, we will see more Pioneer LD players. The MCA company was eventually renamed because of the expiration of the patent. Its current name is Universal Pictures Home Entertainment. ③ The world's first video game using LD was Sega's "Astron Belt" in 1982. This technology is not necessarily available in the PS era. Many times, the reason why a product cannot be promoted is not due to technical reasons, but due to the profitability of a single product (commonly known as squeezing toothpaste) or market competition.



(End of this chapter)