CED VideoDisc and Player Discussion

[cedmagic]

Hello All:

I've learned of this cool site that contains a number of early episodes of the "Computer Chronicles" TV show, including this one where the CED VideoDisc is discussed as a potential computer storage device:

http://www.archive.org/movies/details-db.php?collection=computerchronicles&collectionid=113

The videotape this episode was captured from has obvious tracking problems early on, but they clear up by the time CED is shown.

It's interesting how inaccurate some of the future predictions made in the episode are. The 3.5" floppy was brand new at this time, but guest Al Shugart predicts it will never displace the 5.25" floppy, and his estimate of CED error rate is inaccurate. CED does have a higher error rate than magnetic media for digital storage, but it's not several orders of magnitude.

The Memorex representative does a good job of predicting optical storage would take off once it became read/write, but his estimates of the maximum bit capacity of magnetic hard drives are off, as we have 40GB iPods available right now with 80GB not far off.

One other interesting bit of trivia concerns the late Gary Kildall, the host who demonstrates how to open a CED caddy. He was the author of the CP/M operating system, which was IBM's first choice for the PC in 1981. But he was off flying his airplane, and IBM went to Bill Gates and Microsoft instead:

http://www.cedmagic.com/history/dec-rainbow.html

-- Tom Howe

[Jesse Skeen]

Wow, I've gotta see that- I can't download video on my computer so I'll have to see if my friend can do it. BTW anyone know of an online archive of old TV commercials? I have a lot of old tapes I've picked up at thrift stores and flea markets and am slowly compiling them onto DVD, always looking for more though! Still need to find most of the Videodisc commercials. They were advertised "agressively" in 1981, but so far I've only found one tape with a commercial for them on it (which is on the CED Magic site).
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[Surge]

[Dude111]

Wow thats quite nice!!!! (I used VLC to view the video)

I could have used WMP and watched the MPEG 2 stream but seeing as I downloaded the mp4 file,it would take too long downloading the Mpeg2 file!

[Rixrex]

Just goes to show you that typically 90% of the predictions are wrong or way off, and then there's that other 10% made by people who have good analytical abilities and are either very close or right on the mark.

[SelectaVision420]

and i have a 120 gig ipod lol, terrabytes are cheap now thanks to solid state
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[kitchensynch]

Computer Chronicles was possibly the best TV show about computers I've ever seen...it was always to the point and didn't leave you fogged in jargon and technoflash...credit Stewart Cheifet for that, he was an excellent host.
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