It’s 1981 and BBC-1’s ‘The Risk Business’, a spin-off from ‘Tomorrow’s World’ looks at how we will be watching television in the 1980s. Most likely we will be watching it via sell-though videodiscs, replacing our £35 VHS/Beta cassettes with £10 12″ discs made by JVC-Thorn, RCA or Philips – all with mutually incompatible systems, two of them using a form of microgrooves and one read by a laser!
Which one will the consumer of the 1980s pick? And why is Sony strangely sitting the battle out, ploughing on with tape instead?
This programme has the front titles cut off on the original VHS and the end is clipped by the tape running out. We’ve added back the titles so that the makers get their credits.