Company type | Software company |
---|---|
Founded | 1984 |
Defunct | 1997 |
Fate | liquidation |
Successor | The Criterion Collection |
Headquarters | United States |
Products | LaserDiscs, Interactive CD-ROM, The Criterion Collection |
The Voyager Company was a pioneer in CD-ROM production in the 1980s and early 1990s. It was founded in 1984 by four partners: Jon Turell, Bill Becker, Aleen Stein, and Robert Stein in Santa Monica, California, and later moved to New York City. The firm took its name from the Voyager space craft. In partnership with Janus Films, the company published The Criterion Collection, a pioneering home video collection of classic and important contemporary films on LaserDisc. Voyager introduced the release of special editions on LaserDisc. [1]
In 1986 it decided to make it company policy to only release widescreen films on LaserDisc in their original aspect ratio rather than pan and scan formats that was common for home media releases at the time. Many other labels followed suit. [2]
In 1994, the partnership was diluted by selling 20% of it to the von Holzbrinck Publishing Group, a German holding company. In 1997, the Holzbrinck Group withdrew with its 20%, the name "Voyager", and half of the CD-ROM rights. Robert Stein took the other half of the CD-ROM rights and the Toolkit rights. This left the Criterion Collection in the possession of three of the original partners, each with a third: Aleen Stein, the Becker family, and the Turell family.
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An optical disc is a flat, usually disc-shaped object that stores information in the form of physical variations on its surface that can be read with the aid of a beam of light. Optical discs can be reflective, where the light source and detector are on the same side of the disc, or transmissive, where light shines through the disc to be detected on the other side.
Video CD is a home video format and the first format for distributing films on standard 120 mm (4.7 in) optical discs. The format was widely adopted in Southeast Asia, South Asia, East Asia, Central Asia and West Asia, superseding the VHS and Betamax systems in the regions until DVD-Video finally became affordable in the first decade of the 21st century.
Voyager may refer to:
The Beatles Anthology is a multimedia retrospective project consisting of a television documentary, a three-volume set of double albums, and a book describing the history of the Beatles. Beatles members Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr participated in the making of the works, which are sometimes referred to collectively as the Anthology project, while John Lennon appears in archival interviews.
Tales of Mystery and Imagination (Edgar Allan Poe) is the debut studio album by British rock band the Alan Parsons Project. It was released on 25 June 1976 in the United Kingdom and Ireland by Charisma Records and 20th Century Records in the rest of the world. The lyrical and musical themes of the album, which are retellings of horror stories and poetry by Edgar Allan Poe, attracted a cult audience. The title of the album is taken from the title of a collection of Poe's macabre stories of the same name.
The LaserDisc (LD) is a home video format and the first commercial optical disc storage medium, initially licensed, sold and marketed as MCA DiscoVision in the United States in 1978. Its diameter typically spans 30 cm (12 in). Unlike most optical-disc standards, LaserDisc is not fully digital, and instead requires the use of analog video signals.
Full-motion video (FMV) is a video game narration technique that relies upon pre-recorded video files to display action in the game. While many games feature FMVs as a way to present information during cutscenes, games that are primarily presented through FMVs are referred to as full-motion video games or interactive movies.
The BBC Domesday Project was a partnership between Acorn Computers, Philips, Logica, and the BBC to mark the 900th anniversary of the original Domesday Book, an 11th-century census of England. It has been cited as an example of digital obsolescence on account of the physical medium used for data storage.
The Criterion Collection, Inc. is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films". A de facto subsidiary of arthouse film distributor Janus Films, Criterion serves film and media scholars, cinephiles and public and academic libraries. Criterion has helped to standardize certain aspects of home-video releases such as film restoration, the letterboxing format for widescreen films and the inclusion of bonus features such as scholarly essays and documentary content about the films and filmmakers. Criterion most notably pioneered the use of commentary tracks. Criterion has produced and distributed more than 1,200 special editions of its films in VHS, Betamax, LaserDisc, DVD, Blu-ray and Ultra HD Blu-ray formats and box sets. These films and their special features are also available via The Criterion Channel, an online streaming service that the company operates.
In optical storage, constant angular velocity (CAV) is a qualifier for the rated speed of any disc containing information, and may also be applied to the writing speed of recordable discs. A drive or disc operating in CAV mode maintains a constant angular velocity, contrasted with a constant linear velocity (CLV).
An interactive film is a video game or other interactive media that has characteristics of a cinematic film. In the video game industry, the term refers to a movie game, a video game that presents its gameplay in a cinematic, scripted manner, often through the use of full-motion video of either animated or live-action footage.
F for Fake is a 1973 docudrama film co-written, directed by, and starring Orson Welles who worked on the film alongside François Reichenbach, Oja Kodar, and Gary Graver. Initially released in 1974, it focuses on Elmyr de Hory's recounting of his career as a professional art forger; de Hory's story serves as the backdrop for a meandering investigation of the natures of authorship and authenticity, as well as the basis of the value of art. Far from serving as a traditional documentary on de Hory, the film also incorporates Welles's companion Oja Kodar, hoax biographer Clifford Irving and Orson Welles as himself. F for Fake is sometimes considered an example of a film essay.
Rick Prelinger is an American archivist, writer, and filmmaker. A professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Prelinger is best known as the founder of the Prelinger Archives, a collection of 60,000 advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur films acquired by the Library of Congress in 2002 after 20 years' operation.
Sound + Vision is the first box set by English musician David Bowie, released by Rykodisc in 1989. By the end of the 1980s, the rights to Bowie's pre-1983 catalogue reverted to Bowie and his former management company, MainMan. Rykodisc had approached Bowie in 1988 to re-release his albums on CD and Bowie agreed, and in September 1989 the Sound + Vision box set was released. By April 1990, the box set had sold over 200,000 copies, which, for a set costing $50–$60, was considered "phenomenal".
Blond Ambition World Tour Live is a video album by American singer-songwriter Madonna released exclusively on LaserDisc by Pioneer Artists on December 13, 1990. It contained the Blond Ambition World Tour's final show, filmed at the Stade Charles-Ehrmann in Nice, France, on August 5, 1990. The concert had previously been broadcast on American network HBO as Live! Madonna: Blond Ambition World Tour 90, and became one of its highest rated specials. The decision to release it exclusively on Laserdisc grew when Pioneer Artists signed up to sponsor the tour; the company also wanted to use Madonna to reach a new demographic and increase Laserdisc sales. It received positive reviews, with some critics saying it captured the concert better than the documentary Madonna: Truth or Dare (1991) and the HBO broadcast. At the 34th Annual Grammy Awards, it won for Best Music Video-Long Form, becoming the first Grammy award Madonna received in her career. With over 100,000 copies sold, Blond Ambition World Tour Live was one of the highest selling laserdiscs of its time.
Geneon Entertainment (USA) Inc. was an American anime, multimedia production and distribution company that was owned by Geneon Entertainment. It was primarily involved in the production and distribution of anime from Japan to North America.
Sony Digital Audio Disc Corporation is a manufacturer of CDs, DVDs, UMDs, and Blu-ray Discs. The company has many plants worldwide. Although it primarily services Sony Music Entertainment-owned record labels, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, and Sony Interactive Entertainment, it also manufactures discs for other labels, home entertainment distributors, and video game publishers.
This is a comprehensive list of all of the commercially released recordings made by Orson Welles. Welles is heard on many recordings that were not intended for commercial release and for which he was not compensated.
While every attempt has been made to provide a complete listing of Welles's commercial recordings in the order of their release, it would be folly to assume that such a list could ever be compiled with certainty.
The Citizen Kane trailer is a four-minute, self-contained, "making of" promotional short film by Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre, released in 1940 to promote the film Citizen Kane. Unlike other standard theatrical trailers of the era, it did not feature any footage of the actual film itself, but was a wholly original pseudo-documentary piece. It is considered by numerous film scholars such as Simon Callow, Joseph McBride and Jonathan Rosenbaum to be a standalone short film, rather than a conventional trailer, and to represent an important stage in developing Welles's directorial style.
The Inland Sea is a 1991 American travel documentary directed by Lucille Carra. It is inspired by the 1971 travelogue of the same title written by Donald Richie. In the documentary, filmmaker Carra undertakes a similar trip across the islands of Japan's Inland Sea as Richie did twenty years prior. Donald Richie narrates the film.
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