Pandora's Briefcase: You've got to be CED-ing me!

My eldest son was peering over my shoulder as I was looking back at my posts here, and noted that my last post was on the 21st of October, 2011. "That's a long time!", he said. "It is quiet here... too quiet!" And so once again I blow the cobwebs off the briefcase, and reach with my hazmat-gloved hand into its cavernous bowels to retrieve... Well, I thought seeing as I referred to this format when talking to a friend on facebook, how about one of these:

The Capacitance Electronic Disc (CED) was 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, conflicts within RCA, and technical difficulties that stalled production of the system for 17 years until 1981, by which time it was outmoded by the DiscoVision (Laserdisc) and emerging Betamax and VHS videocassette formats. Sales for the system were nowhere near projected estimates, and by 1986, RCA had discontinued the project, 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 1984, but cancelled the CED player as part of the system just prior to the release of the Dimensia system.

The format was commonly known as "videodisc", leading to much confusion with the contemporary Laserdisc format. Laserdiscs were read optically with a laser beam, whereas CED videodiscs were read physically with a stylus, rather like a conventional gramophone record. The two systems were mutually incompatible.

The name "SelectaVision" was RCA's brand name for the CED system.


(The preceding was ripped straight from Wikipedia)

The above photo shows the size of the disc inside its caddy, compared to a DVD. During the 1981 through 1986 CED market era, around 1700 titles were released. The Wikipedia entry explains the reasons for its demise.

The disc itself is contained within a plastic caddy (a white caddy for mono, blue for stereo sound). The caddy protects the disc, which is extracted from the caddy upon insertion into the player.  As can be seen, the disc looks very much like an audio stylus record.  Each side has one hour of recording, thus requiring the caddy to be ejected from the player,  turned over, and reinserted into the player when the recording was longer than an hour. each side's spiral groove is about 19 kilometres long!

So there we have it. The CED.

And now for some sad news. I'm afraid the CED will be the last gem to be dragged out from Pandora's Briefcase. The reasons are many and varied, but it can be mainly blamed on this:

You see, the bowels of Pandora's Briefcase were already full to overflowing, when out of the blue a mysterious stranger (known only as "Jesus of Bellerive") made a very generous donation! It split the briefcase wide open! He suggested I seek larger lodgings - perhaps Pandora's Suitcase, or Pandora's Shipping Container? My intention was always to keep this collection "contained"; I have strict rules stating only one example of each format shall be in the collection. Soooo... OK, there will be more of Pandora's "treasures" presented here, but from now on I can't guarantee they have ever lived inside the "famous" briefcase! And by the way, now that the case has been "broken open", I'm open to donations! Just don't be upset if I say "I'm sorry, but I've already got one!" Cheers.