Capacitance Electronic Disc
The Capacitance Electronic Disc is an analog video disc playback system developed by RCA, in which video and audio could be played back on a TV set using a special needle and high-density groove system similar to phonograph records.
First conceived in 1964, the CED system was widely seen as a technological success which was able to increase the density of a long-playing record by two orders of magnitude. Despite this achievement, the CED system fell victim to poor planning, various conflicts with RCA management, and several technical difficulties that slowed development and stalled production of the system for 17 years—until 1981, by which time it had already been made obsolete by laser videodisc as well as Betamax and VHS video cassette formats. Sales for the system were nowhere near projected estimates. In the spring of 1984, RCA announced it was discontinuing player production, but continuing the production of videodiscs until 1986, losing an estimated $600 million in the process. RCA had initially intended to release the SKT425 CED player with their high end Dimensia system in late 1984, but cancelled CED player production prior to the Dimensia system's release.
The format was commonly known as "videodisc", leading to much confusion with the contemporaneous LaserDisc format. LaserDiscs are read optically with a laser beam, whereas CED discs are read physically with a stylus. The two systems are mutually incompatible.
RCA used the brand "SelectaVision" for the CED system, a name also used for some early RCA brand VCRs, and other experimental projects at RCA. The Video High Density system is similar to that of CED.
History
Beginnings and release
RCA began videodisc research in 1964, in an attempt to produce a phonograph-like method of reproducing video under the name 'Discpix'. Research and development was slow in the early years, as the development team originally comprised only four men, but by 1972, the CED team at RCA had produced a disc capable of holding ten minutes of color video.The first CED prototype discs were multi-layered, consisting of a vinyl substrate, nickel conductive layer, glow-discharge insulating layer and silicone lubricant top layer. However, failure to fully solve the stylus and disc wear and complexity of manufacturing forced RCA to search for simpler solutions to the problem for constructing the disc. The final disc was crafted using PVC blended with carbon to allow the disc to be conductive. To preserve stylus and groove life, a thin layer of silicone was applied to the disc as a lubricant.
CED videodiscs were originally meant to be sold in jackets and handled by hand similar to audio records, but during testing, it was shown that exposure to dust caused skipped grooves. It was learned that if dust was allowed to settle on the discs, then the dust would absorb moisture from the air and cement the dust particle to the disc surface, causing the stylus to jump back in a locked groove situation. Thus, an idea was developed in which the disc would be stored and handled in a caddy from which the CED would be extracted by the player so that exposure to dust would be minimized.
After 17 years of research and development, the first CED player went on sale on March 22, 1981. A catalog of approximately 50 videodisc titles was released at the same time. The first title to be manufactured was Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown. Fifteen months later, RCA released the SGT200 and SGT250 players, both with stereo sound while the SGT-250 was also the first CED player model to include a wireless remote control. Models with random access hit the market in 1983.
Demise
Several problems doomed the new CED system before it was even introduced. From an early point in the development of the CED system, it was clear that VCRs and home videotape—with their longer storage capacity and recording capabilities—would pose a threat to the system. However, development pushed ahead. Once finally released, sales for the new CED players were slow; RCA had expected to sell 200,000 players by the beginning of 1982, but only about half that number had been sold, and there was little improvement in sales throughout 1982 and 1983.| "...Machiavelli noted that '..there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things...' At videodisc, I believe these words had special significance..." |
| Dr. Jay J. Brandinger, Vice President, RCA SelectaVision Videodisc Operations, June 27, 1986. |
The extremely long period of development—caused in part by political turmoil and a great deal of turnover in the high management of RCA—also contributed to the demise of the CED system. RCA had originally slated the videodisc system for a 1977 release. However, the discs were still not able to hold more than thirty minutes of video per side, and the nickel-like material used to make discs was not sturdy enough to put into manufacturing. Signal degradation was also an issue, as the handling of the discs was causing them to deteriorate more rapidly than expected, baffling engineers.
RCA had hoped that by 1985 CED players would be in close to 50% of American homes, but the sales of players continued to drop. RCA attempted to cut the prices of CED players and offer special incentives to consumers such as rebates and free discs, but sales only slightly improved. RCA management realized that the system would never be profitable and announced the discontinuation of production of CED players on April 4, 1984. Remaining stocks of players were sold by dealers and various liquidation retailers for as little as $20 each. In an unexpected twist, demand for the videodiscs themselves became high immediately after the announcement, so RCA alerted customers that videodiscs would continue to be produced and new titles released for at least another three years after the discontinuation of players. A few months after this announcement, however, the sale of discs began to decline, prompting RCA to abandon videodisc production after only two years, in 1986.
The last titles released were The Jewel of the Nile by CBS/Fox Video, and Memories of VideoDisc, a commemorative CED given to many RCA employees involved with the CED project, both in 1986.
Advantages
CED players, from an early point in their life, appealed to a lower-income market more than VHS, Betamax, and LaserDisc. The video quality was comparable to or better than a VHS-SP or Betamax-II video, but sub-par compared to LaserDisc.CED players were intended to be "low-cost" because they cost around half as much to manufacture than a VCR and had fewer precision parts.
The discs themselves could be inexpensively duplicated, stamped out on slightly-modified audio
LP record presses.
Like VCRs, CED videodisc players had features like rapid forward/reverse and visual search forward/reverse. They also had a pause feature, though it blanked the screen rather than displaying a still image; many players featured a "page mode", during which the current block of four successive frames would be repeatedly displayed.
Since CEDs were a disc-based system, they did not require rewinding. Early discs were available only in monophonic sound, but many later discs were issued in stereo sound. Other discs could be switched between two separate mono audio tracks, providing features such as bilingual audio capability.
Like the LaserDisc and DVD, some CEDs feature random access, allowing users to quickly move to certain parts of the movie. Each side of a CED disc could be split into up to 63 "chapters", or bands. Two late RCA players could access these bands in any given order. Unlike its laser-based counterparts, the chapters in a CED are based on minutes of the film, not scenes.
Novelty discs and CED-based games were produced whereby accessing the chapters in a specified order would string together a different story each time. However, only a few were produced before the halt of CED player manufacturing.
Disadvantages
In comparison with LaserDisc technology, CEDs suffered from the fact that they were a phonograph-related contact medium: RCA estimated that the number of times a CED could be played back, under ideal conditions, was 500. By comparison, a clean, laser rot-free LaserDisc could, in theory, be played an unlimited number of times.Since the CED system used a stylus to read the discs, it was necessary to regularly change the stylus in the player to avoid damage to the videodiscs, while worn and damaged discs also caused problems for consumers. When a disc began to wear, video and audio quality would severely decline, and the disc would begin to skip. Several discs suffered from a condition called "video virus", where a CED would skip a great deal due to dust particles stuck in the grooves of the disc. However, playing the disc several times would generally solve this problem.
Unlike VHS tapes, CEDs required a disc flip at some point during the course of almost all films as only sixty minutes of video could be stored per side ; if a feature ran over two hours, it would be necessary to spread the feature over two discs.
In some cases, if a movie's theatrical running time was only slightly longer than two hours, studios would often trim short scenes throughout the movie and/or employ time compression in order to avoid the expense of issuing two discs.
This problem was not unique to CEDs: LaserDiscs presented the same difficulty, and some longer features, such as The Ten Commandments, still required more than one tape or disc in the VHS, Beta, and LaserDisc formats. There were no two-disc UK PAL releases.
Less significant disadvantages include lack of support for freeze-frame during pause, since CEDs scanned four frames in one rotation versus one frame per rotation on CAV LaserDisc, while computer technology was not advanced enough at the time to outfit the player with a framebuffer affordably. However, a "page mode" was available on many players that would allow those four frames to be repeated in an endless loop.
CEDs were also larger than VHS tapes, thicker than LaserDiscs, and considerably heavier due to the plastic caddies.