From: bill@bilver.uucp (Bill Vermillion)
Subject: Re: Seeking info on a 10 year old video disk player
Organization: W. J. Vermillion - Winter Park, FL
Distribution: usa
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1992 15:39:00 GMT

In article <4021@vidiot.UUCP> brown@vidiot.UUCP (Vidiot) writes:
>In article <Bu7zGu.4sJ@fc.hp.com> rjn@FC.HP.COM writes:
><> brown@vidiot.UUCP (Vidiot) writes: >
><>>  <HELP!  Can somebody tell me anything about this beast?
><
><Sent standard article LD#16.

><> You just wasted $5 on a piece of junk.  CED discs are no longer made.
><> I hope you like your boat anchor :-)

><I would pay $5 for a working CED player.  The going rate is $50.  The discs
><may no longer be made, but there are still a number of titles available on
><CED that have not turned up on LD, according to CED afficionadoes.  Stashes
><of CED media turn up from time to time.

>Personally I say you would be putting good money into bad.  CED didn't make it
>because the discs just wouldn't play right (skipping etc) and the quality just
>wasn't as good as LD.

Mike - a few comments here.

Quality wasn't as good as LD, but it was better than tape.  I bought
one of the first CED players.  After the end of the first two weeks and
returning more disks than I bought, I returned it to the dealer for
full credit.

The first units were horrible.  As time progressed RCA really did
improve the machines.  There were titles on CED that weren't available
on LD, and in the early days there were about 3 times as many titles on
CED as on LD.   And I re-bought CED.  One was the same as the original
unit I bought.   At $50 instead of the $500 it was a good deal.  Then I
got a deal on a discontinued 200 series, and my final new purchase was
a discontinued SJ400 - probably about the best RCA produced.

In the last year or so some of my favorites that were on CED have
FINALLY been released on LD.   If you are into the message and not the
medium  CED does make sense in certain cirucmstances.

When CED was killed off int he revolving CEO wars at RCA they had
finally gotten the machines to the level they should have been when
they were introduced.

The first units had a distinct weave to the picture.   Caused in great
part by the belt drives.  The last units, the 400J and 400K series were
really pretty good machines.    

They were direct drive machines, the weaving motion of the picture was
gone, and the CED artifacts, if you knew what to look for were
virtually absent.

When I say artifacts, maybe I mean signature or fingerprint, or
something similar.

You could tell CED just the way trained viewers can immediately spot
the differences between VHS and BETA - though the later VHS units have
become a lot better.

On CED there was a pattern of faint lines - or your mind said their
were lines running just a few degrees from vertical - probably about 5
to 10 degrees in right to left pattern - eg  /  and not \ .

One reason that many things were not on LD but were on CED was that RCA
had long term exclusives for disk formats from what I have heard - this
is hearsay only and I have no proof of this.

>Sooner or later the supply is going to dry up and you will end up with worn out
>CED discs and probably a player that breaks.

>To me, it isn't worth it under any circumstances.

And I have old 78s and there are no new disk available for those either
- with the execption of the package release a year or so ago of current
hits for those who owned old jukeboxes.  Rhino does some really strange
things at times!

But if the item is available only on CED it makes a good way to get
that item you want, and then transfer it to some other medium.  Given
that CED was better than VHS/BETA but not up to Super-Beta or S-VHS it
was not that bad.  Some of the early disks were pretty bad.  But the
400 series units, as mentioned above, were good, tracked well, and
really were pretty  much problem free.   They even had interactive
modes on those models.     Much too late to save CED.

I do think however, in retrospect, and having seen my first LD demo a
year before they were even put on sale to the public, that the
competition from RCA forced Pioneer to be better.  The massive original
publicity made disks aware to the general public.  The competition kept
the LD prices down - as they went up rather drastically when RCA
annonced they were stopping the medium.             

The revolving CEO syndrome came into play here.   RCA seemed to be able
to keep each CEO on an average of about 2 years.   Each new one killed
what the predecesor had started.   

Given the rivalry between CBS and RCA for years, this really pissed of
CBS.  Earlier CBS brought out 33 rpm singles while RCA was pushing the
45.  And RCA brought out 45 rmp albums while CBS was pushing LPS.

They both wound up bowing to the other in single and album format.
Neither would jump on the bandwagon that the other had started until
they were forced too.

CBS brought a CED pressing plant on line just a few months before RCA
announced abandonment of production.  I imagine the surviving RCA
executives really enjoyed that one!

At one time, disregarding commercial units, you could find at least
twice many MANFACTURERS - not just brand names of CED players than there
were LD players.

Another footnote to CED history.

Again I don't have hard facts, just what has been told to me long ago.

When RCA announced the CED disk and players - they set it up so they
had it for 6 months exclusively before the player announcements by the
other manfactures.

At the time of release Tandy corporation proposed a simultanous launch
in all the Radio Shack stores, to coincide with the launch in all the
RCA dealers.   RCA, wanting to have the lead, didn't go for  the deal.

LD survived because of the determination of Pioneer, and the video
purists who wanted the quality of LD.

But as you can tell by the average persons purchases of cheap VHS
machines, and 6 hour recording mode, quality doesn't usually win out,
cheap does.

If RCA had done a simultanous launch, had brought out machines originally
that were the quality of the final machines produced, and had been able
to price the machines for resale at what were the closeout prices - eg
$250-$300 for stereo interactive 400 series, they might have
established a consumer disk market.

And boy am I glad that NEVER happened.  I own a pair of CED players,
and have many disks, but when the last of my favorites appears on LD,
I'll put the machine on a shelf as a museum piece - and remember that I
really enjoyed it for things it gave me.



-- 
Bill Vermillion - bill@bilver.oau.org  bill.vermillion@oau.org
                - bill@bilver.uucp 
                - ..!{peora|ge-dab|tous|tarpit}!bilver!bill