Seventy-nine percent of USA citizens find statistics a bore or so it was said in a recent comedy programme. That aside, I will give you only one statistic this month. I quote Matsushita's spokesman Akiri Harata who estimates that worldwide sales of video recorders this year will exceed six million units. That is some number and underlines the rapidly growing interest in home video. Matsushita owns Panasonic and JVC and can be presumed to be fairly knowledgeable on the subject. Interestingly, only 27 percent of these machines will be sold in the USA - perhaps they are approaching market saturation there. The United Kingdom can be considered to be relatively well-developed video-wise but countries such as France and West Germany are not nearly so video-minded. I thought you'd like to know that if you're already a video owner you are still in something of a minority.

Turning to matters more practical, I thought we would talk this month about music and video. Considering the musical bias in this magazine there's more than a fair chance that you are interested in music as well as video. I know this is a great column but I don't flatter myself to the extent of believing that you buy the magazine for this article alone! The shame is that music and home video do not always mix, or to be more precise, high fidelity reproduction of audio is difficult on the average home video machine. This is due to three factors, the slow (and not even constant) tape speed employed, the audio processing in the video tape recorder and the indifferent audio amplifier and tiny (tinny?) speaker used in the average domestic TV set. Despite these shortcomings, you can get quite decent music off a video tape!

Let's dig a little deeper and see what's involved. First of all the speed of the tape: given typical tape speeds and audio track widths it's amazing that you can record and replay usable audio at all. Still, with most TV speakers you cannot notice the deterioration in frequency response and signal to noise. Things would be more bearable if tape speeds were constant, but if you record a continuous tone on most VCRs you get a very sad result. Try dialling a nonexistent number on your telephone and record the unobtainable tone on your VCR. You may be horrified at the result. Some machines are better than others in this respect e.g. the Panasonic, Akai, Sony and the new "super" machines. Early JVC-based VHS machines were pretty awful; I have one myself and it's impossible to enjoy music tapes on it.

Audio processing in the VCR is the second factor. Because the manufacturers think the controls are complicated enough already, they don't allow you to play with the audio input levels. Instead they fit an automatic gain control (AGC) circuit which is very effective but can be noticeable on sudden transitions from low to high audio outputs. The result on music is a "pumping" sound. There is nothing you can do to defeat the AGC circuit. Fortunately, the newer machines are including Dolby noise reduction processing which is a welcome step.

The third weak link in the chain of reproducing music on video is in the TV receiver. With the exception of one or two expensive "hi-fi" sets from people like Philips and the late lamented Tandberg, the audio is disappointing. Fortunately all VCRs provide an audio out socket and you can connect this to your hi-fi system. Results can be agreeably good - once you have got over the fact that the sound is not coming from directly in front of you! Frequency response is at least the equal of 16mm film optical soundtracks and if you have a scratch filter you will find this eliminates the hiss without losing high notes.

So far I have said nothing about the music on video tapes, either prerecorded or the music you record yourself. In the latter category I had in mind TV programmes but of course you may well be into making demo tapes for a local rock group. The range of prerecorded tapes is a bit restricted, due no doubt to contractual problems, and is unevenly balanced. VCL stand out for their creditable range of music tapes with quite a few big names like Thin Lizzy and Average White Band. I bought one of these and found the production and quality very reasonable although the performances were not exactly "prime time" material. There are several other music tapes on video - Blondie's "Eat to the Beat" has been plugged to death - and you can buy full length epics like "Woodstock". Trouble is that £20 or £30 seems a lot of money to pay for thirty or forty minutes of music when you can watch similar artistes on "Rockstage" or "Whistle Test" for nothing and record them for the cost of a blank tape.

Despite some criticisms of current VCRs and their music performance, I am hopeful for the future. If you recall how the audio compact cassette developed from a scorned gimmick to a respectable hi-fi medium in a decade I think you can expect a similar improvement in VCRs. This will come for three reasons. First, there will be keen competition from video disc machines which will have full hi-fi (and stereo) capability. Second, new metal tape formulations will enable better recording quality to be achieved. Third and most important, the manufacturers will be under pressure to bring out new features to make us dissatisfied with last year's model. Already they seem to have perfected video features (clean edits, shuttle search, stable freeze frame) so they may well turn their attention to the audio circuits which are still primitive by comparison. Stereo capability may well be with us within five years - it has been a reality for three years in Japan. Over 2.5 million stereo TV sets or adaptors have been sold since 1978, although only 30 hours of stereo television are broadcast weekly. Stereo TV will soon be a reality in the USA also, possibly by mid-1982. It is only a matter of time before Europe has stereo television too. It will be worth waiting for.