Universal Studios Home Entertainment (formerly
Universal Studios Home Video,
MCA/Universal Home Video and
MCA Home Video) is a
home videoHome video is a blanket term used for pre-recorded media that is either sold or hired for home entertainment. The term originates from the VHS/Betamax era but has carried over into the current DVD/Blu-ray Disc age...
company founded in 1978 as MCA DiscoVision. The company is owned
NBC UniversalNBC Universal, Inc. is a media and entertainment company formed in May 2004 by the combination of General Electric's NBC with Vivendi Universal Entertainment, part of the French Media Group. The deal excluded the French Canal+ operations, which were retained by Vivendi. GE owns 80% of NBC Universal...
, the entertainment division of
General ElectricThe General Electric Company, or GE , is a multinational American technology and services conglomerate incorporated in the State of New York. In 2009, Forbes ranked GE as the world's largest company...
and
VivendiVivendi SA is a French international media conglomerate with activities in music, television and film, publishing, telecommunications, the Internet, and video games. It is headquartered in Paris.-History:...
.
The company released
BetaBetamax is a home videocassette tape recording format developed by Sony, released on May 10, 1975. The cassettes contain 1/2-inch -wide videotape in a design similar to the earlier, professional 3/4-inch U-matic format...
and
VHSVideo Home System, better known by its abbreviation VHS, was a video tape recording standard developed during the 1970s. It was released to the public during the latter half of the decade. During the late part of the 1970s and the early 1980s it formed one-half of the VHS vs Betamax war, which it...
videocassettes on the
MCAMCA, Inc. was an American corporation in the music and television businesses. MCA published music, booked acts, ran a record company, and distributed television productions and home videos.-The Early Years:...
Videocassette, Inc. label in 1980, with films including
JawsJaws is a 1975 American horror/thriller film directed by Steven Spielberg and based on Peter Benchley's novel Jaws. The police chief of Amity Island, a fictional summer resort town, tries to protect beachgoers from a giant great white shark by closing the beach, only to be overruled by the town...
,
Jaws 2Jaws 2 is a 1978 horror thriller film and the first sequel to Steven Spielberg's Jaws . Directed by Jeannot Szwarc and starring Roy Scheider as Police Chief Martin Brody who must deal with another Great White Shark terrorizing the waters of Amity Island, a fictional seaside resort.Like the first...
, and
19411941 is a period comedy film directed by Steven Spielberg and written by friends Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale. It starred John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd and premiered in December 1979...
.
Universal Studios Home Entertainment (formerly
Universal Studios Home Video,
MCA/Universal Home Video and
MCA Home Video) is a
home videoHome video is a blanket term used for pre-recorded media that is either sold or hired for home entertainment. The term originates from the VHS/Betamax era but has carried over into the current DVD/Blu-ray Disc age...
company founded in 1978 as MCA DiscoVision. The company is owned
NBC UniversalNBC Universal, Inc. is a media and entertainment company formed in May 2004 by the combination of General Electric's NBC with Vivendi Universal Entertainment, part of the French Media Group. The deal excluded the French Canal+ operations, which were retained by Vivendi. GE owns 80% of NBC Universal...
, the entertainment division of
General ElectricThe General Electric Company, or GE , is a multinational American technology and services conglomerate incorporated in the State of New York. In 2009, Forbes ranked GE as the world's largest company...
and
VivendiVivendi SA is a French international media conglomerate with activities in music, television and film, publishing, telecommunications, the Internet, and video games. It is headquartered in Paris.-History:...
.
The company released
BetaBetamax is a home videocassette tape recording format developed by Sony, released on May 10, 1975. The cassettes contain 1/2-inch -wide videotape in a design similar to the earlier, professional 3/4-inch U-matic format...
and
VHSVideo Home System, better known by its abbreviation VHS, was a video tape recording standard developed during the 1970s. It was released to the public during the latter half of the decade. During the late part of the 1970s and the early 1980s it formed one-half of the VHS vs Betamax war, which it...
videocassettes on the
MCAMCA, Inc. was an American corporation in the music and television businesses. MCA published music, booked acts, ran a record company, and distributed television productions and home videos.-The Early Years:...
Videocassette, Inc. label in 1980, with films including
JawsJaws is a 1975 American horror/thriller film directed by Steven Spielberg and based on Peter Benchley's novel Jaws. The police chief of Amity Island, a fictional summer resort town, tries to protect beachgoers from a giant great white shark by closing the beach, only to be overruled by the town...
,
Jaws 2Jaws 2 is a 1978 horror thriller film and the first sequel to Steven Spielberg's Jaws . Directed by Jeannot Szwarc and starring Roy Scheider as Police Chief Martin Brody who must deal with another Great White Shark terrorizing the waters of Amity Island, a fictional seaside resort.Like the first...
, and
19411941 is a period comedy film directed by Steven Spielberg and written by friends Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale. It starred John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd and premiered in December 1979...
. In late 1983, both the
LaserdiscThe Laserdisc is an obsolete home video disc format, and was the first commercial optical disc storage medium. Initially marketed as Discovision in 1978, the technology was licensed and sold as Reflective Optical Videodisc, Laser Videodisc, Laservision, Disco-Vision, DiscoVision, and MCA...
sister label
MCA Videodisc and the VHS/Beta label
MCA Videocassette were consolidated into a single entity,
MCA Home Video. In 1990, with the 75th anniversary of Universal Studios, it became
MCA/Universal Home Video.
This company was the video distributor for
DreamWorksDreamWorks, LLC, also known as DreamWorks Pictures, DreamWorks SKG, DreamWorks Studios or DW Studios, LLC, is an American film studio which develops, produces, and distributes films, video games, and television programming. It has produced or distributed more than ten films with box-office grosses...
titles until DreamWorks was sold to
ParamountParamount Pictures Corporation is a Worldwide American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood, California. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is the world's oldest existing American film studio; it is also the last...
/
ViacomViacom , short for "Video & Audio Communications", is an American media conglomerate with various worldwide interests in cable and satellite television networks , and movie production and distribution with Paramount Motion Pictures Group. Paramount is also the distributor of movie studio DreamWorks...
in 2006, at which point Paramount took over distribution. After Viacom sold DreamWorks in 2008, Universal Studios Home Entertainment distributed DreamWorks films on DVD again.
In addition to DVDs, Universal was a major supporter of the
HD DVDHD DVD is a discontinued high-density optical disc format for storing data and high-definition video.Supported principally by Toshiba, HD DVD was envisaged to be the successor to the standard DVD format...
format until March 2008, when
Toshibais a Japanese multinational conglomerate manufacturing company, headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. The company's main business is in infrastructure, consumer products, electronic devices and components.Toshiba-made Semiconductors are among the Worldwide Top 20 Semiconductor Sales Leaders...
discontinued manufacturing of HD DVD players. Since July 22, 2008, Universal released
Blu-ray discBlu-ray Disc is an optical disc storage medium designed to supersede the standard DVD format. Its main uses are for storing high-definition video, PlayStation 3 games, and other data, with up to 25 GB per single layered, and 50 GB per dual layered disc...
s; it was the last major Hollywood movie studio to do so. The label's first Blu-ray releases were
The MummyThe Mummy is a 1999 American adventure film written and directed by Stephen Sommers and starring Brendan Fraser, and Rachel Weisz, with Arnold Vosloo in the title role as the reanimated mummy. The film features substantial dialogue in ancient Egyptian language, spoken with the assistance of a...
,
The Mummy ReturnsThe Mummy Returns is a 2001 American adventure film written and directed by Stephen Sommers, starring Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, John Hannah, Oded Fehr, Patricia Velásquez and Arnold Vosloo. The film is a sequel to the 1999 film The Mummy, which primarily took place in 1926, and is set seven...
, and
The Scorpion KingThe Scorpion King is a 2002 film starring The Rock, Michael Clarke Duncan, Kelly Hu, Steven Brand, Ralf Moeller and Grant Heslov, and is directed by Chuck Russell...
.
In 2009, Universal Studios Home Entertainment accquired exclusive US rights to
Pokémonis a media franchise published by the video game company Nintendo and created by Satoshi Tajiri in 1996. Originally released as a pair of interlinkable Game Boy role-playing video games, Pokémon has since become the second most successful and lucrative video game-based media franchise in the world,...
films starting with
Pokémon: Giratina and the Sky Warrior.
Internationally
In the
NetherlandsThe Netherlands is a country in Northwestern Europe, constituting the major portion of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a parliamentary democratic constitutional monarchy. The Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east...
, Universal distributes most
DVDDVD, also known as Digital Versatile Disc or Digital Video Disc,is an optical disc storage media format, and was founded in 1995. Its main uses are video and data storage...
s of films released theatrically by Independent Films.
It also distributes
Alliance AtlantisAlliance Atlantis Communications Inc. is a Toronto-based media company that operated primarily as a specialty service operator in Canada. Alliance Atlantis also had offices in Halifax, Los Angeles, London, Dublin, Madrid, Barcelona, Shannon and Sydney.Alliance Atlantis was acquired by Canwest...
DVD titles in Canada, most of the
Republic PicturesRepublic Pictures was an independent film production-distribution corporation with studio facilities, operating from 1934 through 1959 and best known for its specialization in quality westerns, movie serials and B films emphasizing mystery and action.They were also responsible for financing one...
theatrical library in the UK, and most of the
Carolco PicturesCarolco Pictures, Inc., Carolco International N.V., or Anabasis Investments was an independent production company, that within a decade went from producing such blockbuster successes as Terminator 2: Judgment Day and the first three movies of the Rambo series to being made bankrupt by bombs such...
library in Australia and Brazil & finally the libraries of
Artisan EntertainmentArtisan Entertainment was a privately held independent American movie studio until it was purchased by a Canadian studio, Lionsgate, in 2003. At the time of its acquisition, Artisan had a library of thousands of films developed through acquisition, original production, and production and...
&
Summit EntertainmentSummit Entertainment is an independent American film studio headquartered in Universal City, California with offices in London.-History:...
releases in USA.
Universal previously distributed its films on video internationally through
CIC VideoCIC Video was a home video distributor, owned by Cinema International Corporation , and operated in some countries by local operators...
(a division of
Cinema International CorporationCinema International Corporation was a film distribution company started by Paramount Pictures and Universal Studios in the early 1970's to distribute the 2 studios' films outside the United States – it even operated in Canada before it was...
) alongside
Paramount PicturesParamount Pictures Corporation is a Worldwide American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood, California. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is the world's oldest existing American film studio; it is also the last...
. Following Universal's acquisition of
PolyGramPolyGram was the name from 1972 of the major label recording company started by Philips as a holding company for its music interests in 1945. In 1999, it was sold to Seagram and merged with MCA Music Entertainment, to form Universal Music Group....
in 1999, PolyGram Video (which had international operations) was absorbed into Universal.
External links