Voyager Company
| Company type | Software Company |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1984 |
| Defunct | 1997 |
| 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. The company published The Criterion Collection, a pioneering home video collection of classic and important contemporary films on Laserdisc. 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 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: Aleen Stein (1/3), the Becker family (1/3), and the Turell family (1/3).
Releases
Laserdiscs
- De Italia
- The Great Quake of '89 (in partnership with ABC News Interactive)
- The National Gallery of Art
- Devo: The Complete Truth About De-Evolution
- The Residents: Twenty Twisted Questions (Part 1/2)
- Louvre
- Theatre of the Imagination: Radio Stories by Orson Welles and The Mercury Theatre (1988, ISBN 0-931393-90-6)[1]
- To New Horizons: Ephemeral Films 1931-1945
- The Vancouver Disc
- Vienna
- You Can't Get There From Here: Ephemeral Films 1945-1960
- The Voyager Videostack
CD-ROMs
- A Hard Day's Night (Demo)
- A World Alive (Demo)
- All My Hummingbirds Have Alibis By Morton Subotnick (Demo)
- Amanda Stories (Demo)
- American Poetry The Nineteenth Century (Demo)
- Amnesty Interactive (Demo)
- Baseball's Greatest Hits (Demo)
- The Beat Experience
- The CD Companion to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony CD-ROM (Demo)
- The CD Companion To Mozart's Dissonant Quartet (Demo)
- The CD Companion to Dvorak The New World Symphony(Demo)
- The CD Companion to Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" (Demo)
- Circus!: An Interactive Cartoon (Demo)
- Comic Book Confidential (Demo)
- The Complete Maus (Demo)
- Criterion Goes to the Movies (Demo)
- The Day After Trinity (Demo)
- Dazzleoids
- Ephemeral Films 1931-1960 (incorporating two previously-released titles, To New Horizons and You Can't Get There From Here) (Demo)
- Exotic Japan - A Guide to Japanese Culture and Language by Nikki Yokokura
- First Emperor of China (Demo)
- First Person: "Defending Human Attributes in the Age of the Machine" Donald Norman, three Norman books and a number of technical papers (Demo)
- First Person: Mumia Abu-Jamal, Live from Death Row (Demo)
- First Person: The Society of Mind, starring Dr. Marvin Minsky (Demo)
- For All Mankind(Demo)
- If Monks Had Macs... (Demo)
- Invisible Universe, starring Dr. Fiorella Terenzi
- Last Chance to See
- Laurie Anderson's Puppet Motel (Clip)
- Macbeth (Demo)
- Mystery Science Theater 3000:The CD-ROM (Cancelled)
- Our Secret Century: The Darker Side of the American Dream (12 discs, 2 unreleased, of films and collateral material from Prelinger Archives
- Painters Painting (Demo)
- People Weekly - 20 Amazing Years Of Pop Culture (Demo)
- Poetry in Motion (Demo)
- The Residents Freak Show (Demo)
- Rodney's Wonder Window
- Sacred and Secular: The Aerial Photography of Marilyn Bridges[2]
- Silly Noisy House
- So I've Heard: A Collector's Guide to Compact Discs
- Stephen Jay Gould On Evolution (Demo)
- Theatre of the Imagination: Radio Stories by Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre
- This Is Spinal Tap
- The Trout Quintet
- Understanding McLuhan (Demo)
- The Voyager Audiostack
Expanded Books series
- Jurassic Park - Crichton, Michael
- The Complete Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Adams, Douglas (EB2)
- The Complete Annotated Alice in Wonderland - Carroll, Lewis, Intro & notes by Gardner, Martin (EB1)
- Virtual Light - Gibson, William (EB52)
- Neuromancer / Count Zero / Mona Lisa Overdrive - Gibson, William (EB15)
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Lila: An Inquiry into Morals - Pirsig, Robert (EB8)
- Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman - Gleick, James
- Who Built America
- A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, and Many Waters - L'Engle, Madeleine
- The Complete Stories, Volume 1 - Asimov, Isaac
References
- History
- Amy Virshup. "The Teachings of Bob Stein". Retrieved 2009-02-16.
- "Voyager Company CD-ROM products listed on Amazon". Retrieved 2010-01-15.