Sandy Horvath, VP, Sales, Technicolor AV

Visiting Windsor Castle with Jack Minor, President

That biting economic climate forced my hand, leading to the heavy decision to close the doors on NorPac. But as one chapter abruptly ended, another opened at breakneck speed. Jack Minor, the President of Technicolor AV, brought me aboard as his new VP of Sales on a two-year contract. It was a massive pivot. We rented out our home and relocated to San Juan Capistrano to be near the Costa Mesa headquarters.

I walked in on my first day expecting to settle into my new desk and get the lay of the land. Instead, Jack looked at me and said, "Pack your bags, we’re going to Europe." By the very next day, we were on a flight to Brussels, launching straight into a sweeping tour to train the international sales teams. It was a whirlwind induction punctuated by moments of unexpected awe—including a detour to Windsor Castle, simply because Jack loved the place.

Out of that entire rapid-fire European tour, the snapshot of me standing in front of those ancient stone walls is the only visual record that survived. The rest of the trip's photos were lost years later when a mechanical hard drive crashed. For some reason, that single surviving picture was in black and white. But fittingly, AI stepped in to bring it back to life today—converting the memory into vivid color and seamlessly blending in some of my own graphics. Oorah!

Heading back to The Palace Hotel with a sunset stroll through St. James's Park. Between the famous flowerbeds, the quiet lake, and the unbeatable view of Buckingham Palace, it was a front-row seat to London's royal history. My original photos of this exact view were lost to a hard drive crash years ago, but thanks to the genius of Gemini's AI, the memory has been perfectly rebuilt—lifting my image from that one lonely, surviving photo and blending it beautifully with a fresh view of the park!

1979 Technicolor Audio Video Division

When the recession hit, I left NorPac to help keep it afloat.  Jack offered me a two-year contract to be the Vice President of Sales and Marketing.  They moved our family to San Juan Capistrano, CA.  He had been importing a unique portable video recorder made by Funai.  When I first got to the Technicolor office, Jack introduced me to the management team and then called me into his office.  He said pack your bags, you and I are going to Europe for 10 days.  I took great pride in the naming of our product line, “MicroVideo”.  Jack was a great salesman who was unfortunately led down the wrong path.

For many years, this division of Technicolor lead the industry by helping business and industry develop 8mm size films that were used to demonstrate products or services to other business.  Jack Minor, President, took some bold steps to introduce video tape products as a better, lighter method of making presentations.  During prior years, he worked with Funai Technology in Japan to develop the MicroVideo by Technicolor line of products.

Once again, we rented out our home in Washington and this time we moved the family down to San Juan Capistrano.  The Technicolor office was in Costa Mesa, about 20 miles north and at peak times, could take over an hour on I-5 and I-405.  A few days after the move, Jack told me to pack my bags because we were leaving for Europe on that Monday.  Jack was a frequent flyer to and from Europe, setting up representatives and distribution companies and he wanted me to meet the principles of those companies.  We landed in Belgium.  I was amazed at the fact that the cabs were Mercedes Benz cars and the beer was warm.  Jack had me taste it, I don’t drink beer and didn’t then. 

We had a whirlwind trip, having meetings in Belgium, France and England, with not much time for any tourist activities, although we spent an evening walking around Paris and I was amazed at how tall the Eifel Tower was in person.  In England we stayed near Buckingham Palace, so I got to see the guard change, but not the Queen.  Big Ben was indeed very big and visible from where we stayed.  Harrod’s one of the world’s largest department stores in the world was a hoot.  Walking inside from one department to another all of a sudden took us over a bridge from one building to another.  All of a sudden, I see Bob White, my next, door neighbor’s dad from up in Washington.  We said a quick hello and since we were on moving sidewalks, we didn’t have a chance to talk much.

My worse encounter with technology

 Sales to dealers was pretty good, but they kept needing help with defective product.  Jack and his technical manager kept making trips to Japan to visit with Funai management, to no avail.  The product never got better. Sad, because we were so proud to offer the smallest, most portable video recorder in the industry at the time.

Our enthusiasm went up, when we finally received shipments of the first portable MicroVideo Showcase.  This product allowed salespeople to do their product demonstrations without needing to set up a screen and projector.  It too sold quickly but ran into the same technical problems.

Technicolor hoped that CVC tape format would compete with 8mm tape later being introduced by the industry giants, like Sony.  An even worse attribute of the CVC cassettes was the low quality of the tape stock which was prone to dropouts (appearing as lines of white snow) during video playback. These dropouts would show much more prominently than on wider tape formats. A drawback of the CVC player resulted in the mechanism's loading ring frequently failing to complete its intended travel as the decks aged. The load ring failure would render the unit unusable. *17

Unfortunately, Funai kept promising Jack that they would correct the technical problems they were having.  Jack convinced the Technicolor board of directors to keep losing money.  As my second year started, Jack had to throw in the towel as the board bankrupted the division.  Great idea gone bad.  Fortunately, Technicolor Corporate honored my contract. Georgia and I began the process of going home to Washington.  Today, I can’t find a word about the product on the internet.  Funai has the photo I posted on their website.

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