How did CED videodisc ever make it to market?

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by DaleClark, Nov 13, 2017.

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  1. DaleClark

    DaleClark Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Columbus, Ohio
    we had a top line RCA ced player. The discs skipped, noisy plus you had to turn the thing over in the midfle of a movie. We had a vcr way before ced.

    I dont get two things:

    1. Why CED? You would have thought RCA would have learned a lesson with Quadraphonic

    2. Why did my dad buy one?
     
  2. Higlander

    Higlander Well-Known Member

    Location:
    Florida, Central
    A guess.
    There was nothing else at the time?
     
  3. JamieC

    JamieC Senior Member

    Location:
    Detroit Mi USA
    Last edited: Nov 13, 2017
  4. JamieC

    JamieC Senior Member

    Location:
    Detroit Mi USA
  5. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    I always say: "it would've been a huge hit if it had come out in 1965 like they had planned." But the moment average people realized they could record anything they wanted on videotape off broadcast TV 10 years later, for free, that pretty much killed it. Great idea, too late. And the reality is that the damned thing never really worked well.
     
    Dan C, forthlin, Spadeygrove and 6 others like this.
  6. Simon A

    Simon A Arrr!

    CED is truly dead and gone but more people are discovering and enjoying legacy Quadraphonic recordings than ever before because of reissues on SACD, DVD-A/V, Blu-Ray and DTS CD. The problem with Quadraphonic was not that it was created, but marketed. Just another stupid format war, but Quadraphonic itself was not the issue.
     
  7. Michelle66

    Michelle66 Senior Member

    When CED was launched, it was initially sold at more places than laserdiscs, and the offered titles were cheaper than LDs. (The players were also a lot cheaper.)

    To the average person, CEDs might have even seemed more futuristic than LDs because they came in those caddies and you never had to touch the discs.

    But as Vidiot pointed out, RCA came to the party at least a decade too late. Still, they likely needed to at least attempt to recoup some of the money sunk into CED's development.
     
  8. jtiner

    jtiner Forum Resident

    Location:
    Maine
    Agreed; most of my friends were springing $300 - $400 for a VHS machine. The stereo disc player was $99 I think, and my local RCA dealer had bins full of discs that they rented for 3 days for 99 cents, as I recall.
    The stereo bit was a killer - everyone would gather at my apartment so we could watch discs with stereo soundtracks. Pink Floyd at Pompeii...
     
  9. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    One of the head RCA execs admitted to me that they lost more than $600 million dollars on CED over the years. I think it's not coincidental that RCA bailed on the entire consumer electronics business a few years after that.
     
  10. kwadguy

    kwadguy Senior Member

    Location:
    Cambridge, MA
    CED is a high profile example of a common business mistake: Investing heavily in a new technology that takes so long to come to market that it is outdated or overcome by competition unforeseen when it was first green-lit.

    Polaroid's instant video camera (Polarvision) is another example.
     
    JohnO and Vidiot like this.
  11. artfromtex

    artfromtex Honky Tonkin' Metal-Head

    Location:
    Fort Worth, TX
    We bought one before we had a VCR. I guess we were lucky, ours worked great. I was like 7 years old and was a big Elvis fan. Getting "Aloha from Hawaii" and " Elvis On Tour" along with some others was very exciting for me at the time. We ended up with a pretty large collection. I still had them in our storage building as recently as 5 years ago. My wife threw them all out without telling me. I would have kept the Elvis and Star Wars titles. They had great artwork. Oh well.
     
    Spadeygrove likes this.
  12. Dude111

    Dude111 An Awesome Dude

    Location:
    US
    I would LOVE getting a MONO CED PLAYER..

    I have 1 movie on VIDEODISC but no player :(
     
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