35 - Sunday, June 17, 1990 - North Shore News NV firm helps videophiles get the goods on film VIDEO VENDORS vying to place products inside the VCR connected to your home television set are ever wat- chful for a new spin on marketing. Approaches vary. Some stores garner customer loyalty on the strength of mom and pop neighborliness. Some target the art, import and oldies- but-goodies set. Others choose the buckshot school of service ap- proach — stock the shelves with lots of copies of contemporary mainstream releases aimed at pleasing the tastes of middle-of- the-road videophiles. T.V.L. Inc., a young North Local accounts include 24-Hour Video, Videomatica, Save-On- Foods and Overwaitea Foods. T.V.L. has recently enhanced its video rental system with the addi- tion of the ‘‘public terminal,’’ a computer terminal networked into the video rental system. Customers can, if so inclined, avoid the bug-eyed ritual of peer- ing at hundreds of video cassette boxes and instead make a bee-line to the nearest public terminal to access a handy movie data base. The user may investigate movies by entering a title (or portion of title), actor or actress, or director. Information is also provided about movies duc in soon or new movies in stock. In addition, the public terminal offers ‘‘real-time’’ information on which movies are in or out as well as a plot synopsis of the film (a handy tool for those who enjoy looking at video cassette boxes as NEWS photo Nell Lucente TODD EDMONDSON of T.V.L. Inc. shows Gay Nordio-James hew to use a computerized video movie data system, installed at Super Video in Lynn Valley. The ‘‘public terminal,’’ developed by North Vancouver-based T.V.L., allows customers to see which movies are in or out, The system enables a client to choose movies by litle, director, actress or actor and other categories. The Super Video system is the first of its kind on the North Shore. well). Said Edmondson, ‘‘What’s happened is we went into the video market, got our feet down on that one and now we’ve come north shore high tech Michael Becker Vancouver R&D company specializing in bar-code software development, has in the past five years revolutionized the way we boob-tubers go about renting videos. In the process it has also given a marketing edge to soft- ware-smart video outlet owners. Several years ago, T.V.L. ini- tially developed something called Rapid Rental, a computer system designed to handle transactions in video rental outlets. The introduction of software utilizing bar code and scanning technology to video stores resulted in an efficient management system for store owners and faster trans- actions for clients. T.V.L. co-owner Todd Ed- mondson says the system has been picked up by about 50 per cent of video stores in western Canada and is being used by video retailers across the country. up with a new dimension to video that’s really gone like gangbusters.”’ The latest was installed in North Vancouver at the Super Video outlet in Lynn Valley. T.V.L.’s Edmondson and co- owner Martin Ortmayr originally formed the company to help pay their way through engineering studies at university. “One thing led to another and now we're hiring engineers,’ Ed- mondson said. The company does about $1 million in sales annually. The bulk of its income comes from software sales. T.V.L.’s approach has been to link with computer hardware dealers and distributors. The company focuses on devel- oping vertical market software packages. Hardware vendors, in turn, sell the software as a value- added service. 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