Video Vinyl: RCA's CED System

It's been just about 30 years since we've seen the last of a format called CED. Capacitance Electronic Disc, as it's more formally known, seems s strange subject for a blog about records. But once you learn what a CED is (if you're not already familiar), it'll all make sense.

CEDs work the same basic way that records do: a diamond stylus reads the grooves on a disc and translates the information into audio (and in CED's case, video). There are two differences: first, the grooves are much smaller on a CED (over 9500 per inch) so it spins much faster (450 RPM as opposed to 33 1/3 or 45). Also, CEDs are in plastic caddies for protection. The player extracts the disc from the caddy for playing. To watch the second side of the disc, you put the caddy back into the player to get the disc back, then flip the caddy over and insert it into the player again. Put the caddy back into the player one final time at the end of the movie to retrieve the disc again and store it until the next time you watch. It's a quaint system, even by early '80s standards.

That could be one of the reasons it only lasted three years. CED was intended for original release in the mid '70s. A change in the top at RCA, the company that invented CED, coincided with the need for further testing and research, and the confluence of events held CED's relesase back until early 1981. By that time, families were fighting over whether their first VCR should be VHS or Beta. That was another thing: you could record on a VCR. You could only play a CED.
It didn't help matters that at the exact same time RCA was working on CED, MCA was doing its own disc-based thing with help from dutch electronics conglomerate Philips. It was called DiscoVision. First demonstrated in 1972, DiscoVision beat CED to the market by three years...and stayed viable until the after the advent of DVD in the mid '90s. You know it better as LaserDisc...the format that gave us Karaoke.

RCA closed the book on CED in 1984 after losing a reported $500 million on the venture. Not two years later, RCA was merged with GE and sold off bit by bit. Today, the TV operations of RCA are part of South Korea's ON Corporation. The rest of the brand is owned by Audiovox.
There's still a contingent of groovy CED collectors out there, and I count myself among them. I don't have the biggest or best collection, but I do have one of the last CED players made and a few dozen movies to watch on it....when I'm not spinning vinyl the other way.

For more than you ever thought there was to know about CED, spend an hour or two (I'm serious - there a LOT there) at Tom Howe's glorious CED Magic site. You'll find complete lists of every player made and every disc produced. There are notes from those present at the creation and even a forum full of people who still keep their machines going.