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RCA CED Video Discs

B

barythrin

Veteran Member
Joined
Oct 5, 2005
Messages
6,256
Location
Texas
I know someone here mentioned them a while back, I'm not sure if they have a collectible market or are just widely out there (craigslist kinda implies not a lot of value). Regardless, at the last HamEXPO I met a person selling a large number of them (100 or more) and I think he said he had a few hundred laser discs as well. He was selling the CEDs for either 1 or $2 each but had a better price for all/bulk. Anyway, I told him I recall some folks talking about them here so if anyone is looking for something let me know and I'll relay his contact info to you. He's near Austin, TX if you're trying to guesstimate shipping or are a local collector of videos.

- John
 
There was somebody here in Portland, OR clearing his collection of a few hundred out for $1-$2 a couple years ago, too. (Funny, he ran a game store, and just brought them in one day to get them out of his garage. I *ALMOST* picked up a copy of 2001, just to have it on yet another format, but decided against it..)
 
Now this is cool... This is the first time I've ever even heard of this format! I've never even seen it mention on any of the A/V forums that I used to hang out on quite heavily.. I knew about the film bits (have some of those formats/players, not all), Beta (have a high-end deck and several tapes), VHS, LaserDisc, VideoCD, SVCD, DivX, etc... but have never seen or heard of this before... too cool!

Tell me about 'em.. I need more than Wikipedia can provide! :) Video from a stylus and needle? What kind of resolution and quality could be expected from these things? Wiki says that VHS and Laserdisc had vastly superior storage capabilities (about 60 minutes per CED disc side) - did the user have to manually flip these discs? (changing discs would be obvious as that was a requirement of really long movies on both VHS and Laserdisc - even on some of the early DVDs such as the original pressing of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, which was a flipper)

I absolutely love the idea of multiple track audio on these things. I didn't realize that was possible without a burned-disc recording capability such as Laserdisc (and DVD/etc, of course).

Too too cool... Now I wanna play with one :)
 
Maverick1978 said:
Tell me about 'em.. I need more than Wikipedia can provide! :)
Click to expand...

Don't forget that LaserDiscs are analog, too (they can contain a digital audio track, but the video is always analog). The difference is that a LaserDisc is read with a laser, while a CED is read with a stylus. The user never touches the actual disc itself. The CED player extracts the disc when it is loaded from its storage caddy and then puts it back in when done, and plays both sides automatically.

Unfortunately, CEDs hit the market too late -- in 1981, when VHS and Beta were already fighting it out for the VCR market, and laserdiscs had already been on the market since 1978 (initially called "DiscoVision") and had the best video quality (equal to or even superior than DVDs).

CEDs were advertised as a low cost alternative to tapes or laserdiscs, and they indeed were cheaper, but most people chose to save their money until they could afford a VCR, since the ability to record TV programs was a huge advantage -- and VHS ultimately won the format war simply because it could fit more hours of recording, albeit of poor quality, onto a tape than Beta.
 
Website for all the CED format info you need:
http://www.cedmagic.com/

I have a stereo CED player and a nice little collection of CEDs, mainly due to the large lot I bought at a garage sale for $20. I also wouldn't bother shipping them. Those things are heavier than LPs. Hauling them home in plastic milk crates almost killed me.

The quality is decent, providing the shape of the disc. If it's not scratched nor marked up, it's okay. Funny watching a movie skip like a CD. Even DVDs don't do that (they usually just freeze up and skip the damaged area)

And yes, you had to flip them over. They had 60 minutes of video on each side. Instead of handling the disc, you shoved the whole caddy (plastic housing for the disc) into the machine and let it take the disc out.

My copy of 2001 is on two video discs. It's also the only format I've watched the movie on.
 
More info

More info

If anybody is still reading this, I can give you some consumer history. Millions were poured into this technology until RCA pulled the plug. It was a total -'You snooze, you loose' marketing debacle. They took too long to get everything to market. Initially, it was a much better picture than VHS and fractionally better than Beta. Most of us were still using LP turntables and so the concept worked on us; very light tracking stylus to produce stereo and movie images.

I bought one new and was very happy with it at first. But very shortly after that Pioneer came out with their laser disc system and had even better picture. VHS was steadily become the 'winners' choice and their picture was improving as well.

What you have to remember was how the rental shops handled all this "technology". First the shops divided the areas between Beta and VHS. Clever marketing won VHS the stronghold, because Beta machines and picture were actually better! Many rental shops had all three; Beta, VHS and CED for rent. Some adventurous shops had just CED....very short lived success and a fatal decision on their part.

I drug my feet or I could have had hundreds upon hundred of titles for pennies on the dollar when these rental places went out. I was just never in the right place at the right time.:-( I still have my machine and a few movies, but would like an entire collection. As far as shipping, book rate is the only way to go, but SLOW. There is a difference between rental discs and homeowner- the rentals ones suffered from many machines that were abused. The discs can be cleaned on a record cleaning machine, but you lose the silicone sealer treatment on the surface itself. Personally, I don't think it's a big deal to lose the treatment, but a gain to make the movies more playable.

Also, there are still RCA people retired, who repair and fiddle with these machines. So...they are fixable, but the movies however, are what they are. Beware of people who claim all their movies play well. The CED definition of "playing well" is that the movie doesn't skip so badly it stalls. In other words, it plays it through, however rough and flawed sound and picture are.

Kevin
 
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It was longer recording time which drove the market towards VHS over Beta. People wanted to be able to fit an entire football game onto one tape, regardless of how blurry the picture or how muffled the sound was. With cable and satellite TV starting to become available, there was a wealth of new TV programming on the air, and consumers wanted to be able to record it for later viewing. That's why even LaserDisc hardly made a dent in the U.S. consumer market, due to its playback-only nature, except for rich people with big-screen TVs and hi-fi sound systems who could appreciate its superior quality.

And had LaserDiscs been a success, then we probably would've seen the computer multimedia revolution years earlier. In the early to mid '80s there were big plans for computers and video games which could interface with and control a LaserDisc player, but due to LD's lack of success, most of it never left the prototype stage.
 
Not necessarily...there was always a steady market for 'playback-only' if it was marketed properly. And the laser disc was a success that went on for yrs-even Walmart carried them. It was just that so many people had been burnt (or heard about being burnt), with extinct technology like Beta and CED that they weren't always ready to try again with something newer. While they waited to see the dust settle, the Pioneer laser disc faded into a smaller format that eventually morphed into DVD's. Clearly, you're in error about your "playback-only" theory. I base this on the fact that almost every home in America has a DVD movie player and now Blu-ray for those that want HD. TIVo killed the VHS crowd that wanted to catch up on their cable/satellite programs, along with fact that you no longer had to deal with analog tape. There will always be a market for the convenience of "playback-only" equipment and consumers have proven this over and over. Did you lean nothing from the recent battle of Blu-ray versus HD-DVD?

And I disagree about VHS over Beta....the VHS was a marketing ploy success. For whatever reasons, Beta didn't step up to the plate and go after VHS. Beta could have easily won 'king of the mountain' status if they had just stepped up more. Perhaps their executives had reasoned that their machine quality and picture quality would win out no matter how many features VHS offered in competition. This is exactly analogous to Dolby versus dbx. Most of us feel dbx was clearly the better NR system for the consumer and recording artist, but Dolby got a foothold into cheaper cassette decks and won the battle by the numbers, not by the sound.

Kevin
 
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VHS won the number battle because there were plenty of VHS machine makers while BETA was pretty much Sony only (and much more expensive). Generally the best advertisements help the cheaper initial investment product win in the market.

I still have a few VHS players here, never got into CED (before my time) or Laserdisc (too pricey and you had to flip the huge discs over in the middle of a movie). I liked VHS for movie rentals, these days I have netflix for DVD and streaming. I don't see much of a point anymore in buying movies.

The thing is with each new media format that comes out there are tons of movies (or music) that studios don't bother to release on the new format so you are stuck with a rip off of an older media or just buying the older recording. People held onto Laserdisc to watch the original releases of Star Wars and back to the future because of the lack of DVD releases of the original editors cut.
 
Real1shepherd said:
Clearly, you're in error about your "playback-only" theory. I base this on the fact that almost every home in America has a DVD movie player and now Blu-ray for those that want HD.
Click to expand...

DVD players did not replace VCRs, they complemented them (at least until DVRs became affordable). Even today you can buy DVD/VHS combo units. DVDs also came at a time when "home theater" systems were all the rage, with large-screen 16:9 TVs and hi-fi surround sound audio. I'll admit that CEDs were before my time, but I just can't see play-only movies being enough to support the system to anywhere near the success of VCRs, given that the average home only had a 19-inch TV with a tinny mono speaker, clearly far from ideal for watching movies at home.

Maybe CEDs could've carved out a niche for themselves nonetheless, but the home video market was becoming saturated with video games and computers as well, and everything had to go through the TV's antenna input, so it was quite inconvenient to have more than one device connected at any time. But ironically RCA introduced the ancestor of today's home theater systems -- the Dimensia series of integrated big-screen TV, VCR, and audio systems -- just a few months after they ceased all production of CEDs.
 
vwestlife said:
But ironically RCA introduced the ancestor of today's home theater systems -- the Dimensia series of integrated big-screen TV, VCR, and audio systems -- just a few months after they ceased all production of CEDs.
Click to expand...


...and then RCA sold its consumer electronics division to Thomson sending quality down the tubes.

On the subject of dead formats, recording HD video to tape was tried before DVRs became cheap and commonplace. It was called Digital VHS, now its dead. JVC pushed it from 1999 to about 2005. DVRs killed it off for time shifting and Bluray killed it off for pre-recorded movie playback. Of course content producers didn't help either, HD video could only be recorded to tape via firewire. It was great when cable boxes and ATSC tuners came with firewire ports, but now its all but disappeared from those devices.
 
There was a big push for Super VHS in the late '80s and early '90s, too, which gave us the now-familiar S-Video port. A reasonable number of S-VHS VCRs and camcorders were sold, but I've only ever seen a handful of pre-recorded movies on S-VHS tape, probably because nobody wanted to lose compatibility with standard VHS machines (although many of those added support for "Quasi S-VHS" playback), and through the ubiquitous RF connection, the extra picture quality would've been lost anyway. (Even today, when cable companies are converting everyone over to digital cable, their installers still set it up with only the RF coax connection to the TV's antenna jack... arrrgghh!)
 
rca video disks - we have some available

rca video disks - we have some available

Real1shepherd said:
If anybody is still reading this, I can give you some consumer history. Millions were poured into this technology until RCA pulled the plug. It was a total -'You snooze, you loose' marketing debacle. They took too long to get everything to market. Initially, it was a much better picture than VHS and fractionally better than Beta. Most of us were still using LP turntables and so the concept worked on us; very light tracking stylus to produce stereo and movie images.

I bought one new and was very happy with it at first. But very shortly after that Pioneer came out with their laser disc system and had even better picture. VHS was steadily become the 'winners' choice and their picture was improving as well.

What you have to remember was how the rental shops handled all this "technology". First the shops divided the areas between Beta and VHS. Clever marketing won VHS the stronghold, because Beta machines and picture were actually better! Many rental shops had all three; Beta, VHS and CED for rent. Some adventurous shops had just CED....very short lived success and a fatal decision on their part.

I drug my feet or I could have had hundreds upon hundred of titles for pennies on the dollar when these rental places went out. I was just never in the right place at the right time.:-( I still have my machine and a few movies, but would like an entire collection. As far as shipping, book rate is the only way to go, but SLOW. There is a difference between rental discs and homeowner- the rentals ones suffered from many machines that were abused. The discs can be cleaned on a record cleaning machine, but you lose the silicone sealer treatment on the surface itself. Personally, I don't think it's a big deal to lose the treatment, but a gain to make the movies more playable.

Also, there are still RCA people retired, who repair and fiddle with these machines. So...they are fixable, but the movies however, are what they are. Beware of people who claim all their movies play well. The CED definition of "playing well" is that the movie doesn't skip so badly it stalls. In other words, it plays it through, however rough and flawed sound and picture are.

Kevin
Click to expand...

hello kevin...

i work with a senior organization and have had a box of video disks donated to us. My guess is that we have about 25 disks with some very good titles, also the folders and disks appear to be in very good condition...

would you be interested in acquiring them for a donation to our organization?

if you are, lets correspond outside of the forum and perhaps we can reach an
agreement where you acquire the disks and our organization receives a donation!

pls let me know if you will consider this offer...

regards

carmellobos
carmel, ca
 
I am watching "Pavarotti in London" on my RCA Selectavision SJT-300 Stereo CED player. I have this title on laserdisc as well, and the CED version beats the pants off of the laserdisc - especially sound-wise. I love this player. I had one when they originally came out when I was a teenager and I love it just as much today. I know I can see the same things streaming on my laptop through Netflix or on my iPod, iPad, iPhone with iTunes, but nothing beats the experience of these discs. Laserdiscs too, but I think I love my CED player more than my laserdisc player. The funny thing is I don't love my DVD player. I have no emotional attachment to DVDs whatsoever. I use it but I don't love it.
 
CED Format

CED Format

But the thing that is not taken into consideration here by the other replies was the video market at the time the CED format was released. I may be a bit confused by my time frames, but when I was a kid - the only option for video entertainment we had at home was to subscribe to HBO or Showtime. My family didn't subscribe to either of those, and then the VCR came along, but the average cost of a VHS or Beta tape to purchase was about $90. At some point Paramount led the way away from rentals with the release of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn, which was introduced on home video at $39.95. But between the years when you had $90 tapes and $40 tapes, the only way you could have your favorite movies were to rent them. I think that the video disc system was introduced as a way to be able to purchase movies at an affordable price. $90 to $100 for a videocassette was a lot of money in those days. It's a lot of money today. So while there were complaints about the fact that the CED and laserdisc players were play only, I think on some level it was seen as an alternative to renting videocassettes, until the studios started releasing cheaper tapes and then there was no turning back. Even if the videodisc systems had better sound and picture quality.



Maverick1978 said:
Now this is cool... This is the first time I've ever even heard of this format! I've never even seen it mention on any of the A/V forums that I used to hang out on quite heavily.. I knew about the film bits (have some of those formats/players, not all), Beta (have a high-end deck and several tapes), VHS, LaserDisc, VideoCD, SVCD, DivX, etc... but have never seen or heard of this before... too cool!

Tell me about 'em.. I need more than Wikipedia can provide! :) Video from a stylus and needle? What kind of resolution and quality could be expected from these things? Wiki says that VHS and Laserdisc had vastly superior storage capabilities (about 60 minutes per CED disc side) - did the user have to manually flip these discs? (changing discs would be obvious as that was a requirement of really long movies on both VHS and Laserdisc - even on some of the early DVDs such as the original pressing of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, which was a flipper)

I absolutely love the idea of multiple track audio on these things. I didn't realize that was possible without a burned-disc recording capability such as Laserdisc (and DVD/etc, of course).

Too too cool... Now I wanna play with one :)
Click to expand...
 
^
That model must've been one of the last before RCA ended CED production in 1984. It's a lot smaller and sleeker than the big, clunky woodgrain players you usually see. And I can see some white sparkles in the video picture, but it's still pretty good. As the stylus wears out, the sparkles will get worse.
 
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