Anyone Remember CED? (1 Viewer)

[Marcus Brody]

Anyone Remember CED?

 

[jonathan_little]

Yup, my Granddad still has 2 players hooked up and ready to go.

 

[Patrick McCart]

I have 25 titles I'd like to sell, if you're interested.

My website has a page with all of the titles if you'd like to see.

 

[Angel Pagan]

I loved those things but man did they skip.

 

[GregK]

Yes-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s

(Sorry about that.. the stylus was stuck.)

 

[Bob Graham]

I remember them, too, fondly. It was the first format to focus on classic titles and make them semi-affordable($19.95 at a time when VHS or Beta titles cost $59.95). First format to make a committment to letterboxing (although too late to save it form extinction). There's a great website for CED maniacs: cedmagic.com.

 

[Jeff_HR]

I remember them & I'm damned glad I went the way of Laserdisc instead of CED.

 

[Mark Bendiksen]

Oh, do I ever remember! I had tons of those discs. (Actually I still have a few, come to think of it.) Thanks for pointing out that website, Bob. It's pretty cool to again watch those RCA "fanfares" that appeared at the beginnig of their discs.

 

[Wouter Heyse]

I never even heard of this system until I moved to the States for a while a couple of years back. One of my new friends over there had one of them, and I refused to believe it actually worked with a stylus. Once I figured out it indeed did work that way, I felt like I needed to own one. But since I was moving back home eventually anyway, I skipped it. A shame, actually. I would probably have been the only person in The Netherlands to own one. Not to mention that it would have gone great with my CD-I player, my Video 2000 recorder and my DCC tape deck. I always did pick the losers...

 

[Dick]

Actually, laser disc was the first to letterbox on any regular basis (in fact, other than Woody Allen's MANHATTAN, which the director dictated had to be widescreen, I can't think of any other letterbox CED titles offhand...) They only began releasing stereo discs (blue plastic casing) in the last couple of years of existence.

I owned about 200 of these extremely heavy, clunky things. I found them quite superior to VHS, especially in color rendition, and they offered many classic titles not available (yet) on laser. But, yes, they certainly jumped around alot. Occasionally you could go back and forth over a skip and clear it up, but most times you just had to live with that.

It would be fun to hook one up and watch a few discs on it now, having grown used to the superb quality of DVD, and then remember that, once, CED seemed desirable.

You can't sell most of these for even a buck each on eBay, and the shipping is five to ten times that!

 

[Patrick McCart]

While CED didn't regularly do letterboxing, the format WAS the first to have a letterboxed home video.

Armacord was presented in widescreen, as were Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Woodstock, Manhattan (first film to be letterboxed on VHS and LD), King of Hearts (1966), and The Long Goodbye.

Plus, Monty Python and the Holy Grail had the trailer as an extra.

 

[Randy A Salas]

The funny (sad) thing is that the technology of a videodisc played by a stylus goes back to 1927, when the first one was invented and used. It's amazing that they tried to make it viable for nearly 60 years.

 

[nousername]

Yup, I remember CED. In fact, we still have one, and our titles include Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Star Trek: Wrath of Khan. Picture quality was much better than VHS at that time, but had a tendancy to skip.

 

[Neil S. Bulk]

Still have my player and all of my movies.

Neil

 

[Matt Stone]

I have a friend who bought a player and some discs off of eBay last summer.

The entire concept of vinyl movies blows me away

 

[Jesse Skeen]

I might be the biggest CED nut on this forum. I've got several working stereo players and about 1200 discs- I'm trying to eventually get every title put out. I love dead formats, this is video's 8-track equivalent! It's fun to watch them on a somewhat-current setup; the sound is pretty good, the picture is jaggedy though.
I recently obtained the very last CED title made before the plant was shut down in 1986- "Memories of Videodisc", which was given to RCA employees and shows mostly still pictures of people on the job, as well as video footage of the staff leaving the building on the last day of operation (don't know who went back in to press this disc though!) and a video tour shot in 1983 showing how discs and players were made.
I have a Cartrivision videotape machine from 1972 also, and a few tapes, but can't get the motor on it to start. I've also got a Quasar Great Time Machine VCR but no tapes, and a sealed blank Sanyo V-Cord tape but no machine. I'd like to get a VHD player, which was a 3rd videodisc format sold only in Japan, but they're hard to find in the US and go for a lot of money on Ebay.

 

[Wouter Heyse]

Could you elaborate on this, Jesse? First time I ever heard about this format.

 

[Eric-S]

Go to this website for everything you ever wanted to know about CED's! What a trip!

 

[Brian W.]

I had one for a short time -- titles usually skipped, so I returned it. I always liked it, though. It looked better than VHS.

 

[Jesse Skeen]

There's a picture of a VHD player on the CED Magic site, as well as a trade booth for the American introduction that never happened (I have a photocopy of a brochure from that too- don't know what made them pull out at the last minute.)
I contributed the RCA Videodisc commercial from 1981 that you can see on the website, complete with VHS linear stereo tape hiss!