Now that one million plus homes have video recorders and MCA is selling video disk players in at least one test market, record companies have started to consider the day when the record you buy will come with a picture as well as sound.

Because most of the executives who make corporate decisions about video don’t understand rock music (except as a way to pay off the mortgage on their house in Connecticut) and have never lived with a video machine hooked to their TV set, the future of the video disk looks great. Unfortunately, the future of the video disk is not going to be so great where rock music is concerned.

First, let’s stop calling it a video disk. Those two words are confusing. Actually, it’s a TV record. Fifty cents’ worth of plastic that has an hour of sound and picture in the grooves. It’s the same 50 cents’ worth of plastic now used to press up $16 Fleetwood Mac albums, except the technology is different and you need a different turntable—a turntable that plugs into the back of your TV rather than into the back of your stereo amplifier.