LAKE WALES, Fla. -- Sony Corp. of America announced Monday it will provide Paramount Pictures Corp. with 8mm video software to produce home video movies.
Eastman Kodak Co. announced a similar deal Monday with Embassy Home Entertainment of Hollywood, Calif.
Sony said 8mm video products, which are the size of audio cassettes with quarter-inch tapes, are more convenient than traditional half-inch wide tapes.
Sony said the 8mm videos will sell for under $30, well below the price of conventional tapes.
Paramount Home Video, a subsidiary of Paramount Pictures, will release 15 of its movies on 8mm video cassettes by this summer, said Sony spokesmen, who are holding a new-products conference in Florida.
'With the Paramount announcement and other software titles to come, the 8mm video format is well positioned as a major force in today's home video entertainment industry,' said Neil Vander Dussen, president of Sony Corp. of America.
Some of the first titles to be distributed will be 'Beverly Hills Cop,' 'Witness,' 'Foul Play,' 'The Bad News Bears,' 'Star Trek 3: The Search for Spock,' 'Trading Places,' 'Teen Wolf,' 'Flashdance,' 'Harold and Maude' and 'Jazz Singer.'
Eric Doctorow, Paramount vice president for sales and marketing, said his company will release 8mm movies at the same time it releases its conventional home videos.
Eastman Kodak and Embassy Home Entertainment said they signed a deal allowing Kodak to also begin distributing major motion pictures in the 8mm video format this summer.
Kodak said the 18-month agreement with the Hollywood-based Embassy was meant to 'seed the industry with 8mm software' to ensure growth of the video format Kodak pioneered two years ago.
Titles scheduled for release in June are 'Kiss of the Spider Woman,' 'The Emerald Forest,' 'The Graduate,' 'The Sure Thing,' 'The Cotton Club,' 'Bladerunner' and 'This is Spinal Tap.'
Daniel Carp, general manager of Kodak's consumer electronics division, said the 8mm video cassettes will sell for $29.95, compared with the $70-to-$80 price of motion pictures in the dominant VHS and Beta formats.
Kodak said it pioneered the much-smaller 8mm video format in January 1984 when it introduced its Kodavision video cassette recorder, and other companies later began production of 8mm equipment.
Sony also unveiled a line of water- and sweat-resistant products that are aimed at joggers and boaters.
The products include a 4-inch water-resistant television, a solar-powered Walkman cassette-radio, which runs on solar energy in the sun while recharging a solar battery to power the unit indoors or after dark.
The other new products are HandyCam, which is a water-resistant 8mm movie camera; and SportsBand, a wafer-thin radio that can be worn on a sweatband.
