CED VideoDisc and Player Discussion

[dumbchemist]

Last week, I attempted to play my copy of Horton Hears a Who. I say attempted as the disc played about half side 1 before it began to skip. Well, any owner of CED's is familiar with skips and I was not too concerned until the video went to horizontal color streaks and then nothing and the time display went to "--". I rejected the disc and reloaded it. There was no picture and the "--" appeared on the time display. I shut the player and decided to troubleshoot the problem at a later time.

Last Saturday, I took the player out of its niche and opened it up. Nothing looked out of the ordinary.. I decided to exchange the stylus with a new one I had and did it. I then loaded a disc and watched the display. After disc spinup, the display showed "00" and after a minute advanced to "01". I shut the player down and placed the player back into its niche and rehooked up the cables and power. As a test, I player ELO at Wembley Stadium and it played without 1 skip and the video looked better than anytime I have played it in the past.

I always thought that the stylus would go bad gradually. Meaning, the video would suddenly get worse and worse and the skipping would also get bad. It appears that the old stylus went bad catastrophically. Has anyone else had a similar experience?

As an aide, I placed a piece of magic tape on the right top of the player and recorded the stylus change on it. Unless you are keeping detailed records for your players, this seems an easy way to keep track of player maintenance. The magic tape makes it easy to remove the record without having to mark on the player's plastic top.
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Sears 934-54780150 & 934.54810350,
Realistic CED-1
1-SJT-400. 2-SJT-200 & 1-SJT-090.
CLD-D406, CLD-980.
MDP-600, MDP-MR1.

[Rixrex]

Yes, on occassion a stylus tip has been known to be ruined by a bad spot on a disc in one split second. I've had that happen, and best thing is to not play that disc anymore, just get a replacement.

ALso, you can send the stylus to CEDATUM.com and see if it is rebuildable.

[Beetlescott]

Hey Chemist,

The exact same thing happened to me a while back. We were finishing up The Diary of Anne Frank, and on the last side, the exact same thing happened to me, I did what you did, and, it played fine. I sent the stylus to CEDatum, sure it would have to be rebuilt. He sent it back with pictures saying the tip of the stylus was covered in something red! Something like a childs crayon or something. He did say I should check my strike pad, where the stylus is automatically swept off each time a disc is loaded. (2 on some) Anyway, like rixrex said, send it to them, they won't do anything until they check it out an contact you. I bought my SJT-200 from BlindFury and I LOVE IT!

[Daxi Don]

Loss of picture or a very grainy picture during disc play is not uncommon. In most cases the stylus tip is not permanently damaged. Cleaning the styus tip will restore the picture and sound. Check the stylus cleaner in your player. The cleaning pad may have worn or become dirty. Do a visual check of the stylus tip under magnification. If you see dirt on the tip remove it. A fine artists brush can be used to remove the dirt.

The signal on the CED disc is detected by a deposited metal electrode on the trailing edge of the diamond tip. The electrode can be destroyed by static electricity ( rare) or by a collision of the diamond tip with a hard 'foriegn' object on the disc surface. This could be a finger print or hard dust. Always check the disc surface on any disc you have not previously played.

CEDatum offers a free stylus test and a report. Many of the stylus carts we receive can be cleaned or repaired.

Amanda B at CEDatum

[dumbchemist]

Thank your for your responses to my post.

I will be sending the questionable stylus to CEDatum for cleaning or repair in the future. I have an inventory of 6 NOS 154216 stylus's (styli ?) so there is no rush. Right now the stylus that I want to send for repair or cleaning is for a Sears Hitachi player. It has many hours on it, but, it still plays fine.

Back in Aug. 1983, I bought a new Sears Hitachi player. My mother and I watched many a movie on it and it performed flawlessly. Sometime ago, I bought another Sears Hitachi player off E-bay which came with no stylus (bummer). Back in April, 1987, I had bought a new stylus off Sears for the first Hitachi player because the original stylus was getting many hours on it. I decided to put the new stylus in my original player and put the worn stylus in the E-bay player. It is the worn stylus that will be first one to go to CEDatum for a cleaning or rebuild.

I originally bought my SJT-200 player from a company in Washington state around 1990 who had one drop shipped to me from Chicago. It had been rebuilt and it had a new stylus (I think).. I bought the SJT-200 because the 154216 stylus's were still available which I could not say for the Hitachi ones (Sears had zero inventory and could not get any more). I got my inventory of stylus's from a company in California that had Pacific as part of their name. The Hitachi stylus that I bought in 1987 cost $90 from Sears which precluded me from buying a second one

So to end this post:
I will check the stylus cleaning pad and remove any debris if I find any. Another thing I did to my SJT-200 player is to apply a small amount of petroleum jelly to some of the gears and to the linear bearing that the stylus assembly moves on. The jelly seems to have made the player work smoother (especially the movement of the stylus assembly)

It is too bad that I will have to ditch "Horton Hears a Who" CED. It is a movie that is silly enough for a child as well as an adult to watch.

As an aside:
I have a copy of Linda Ronstadt in Concert with Nelson Riddle Orchestra that I got off E-bay and it is a well used CED. The video is slightly blurry; but, the audio is full of static. I believe the disc is on its last legs.
_________________
Sears 934-54780150 & 934.54810350,
Realistic CED-1
1-SJT-400. 2-SJT-200 & 1-SJT-090.
CLD-D406, CLD-980.
MDP-600, MDP-MR1.

[cbertra2]

CEDatum rebuilt a Hitachi stylus for me and it works great. Mine was the first rebuild of an Hitachi stylus so he did for free to see if it would work and it did. I highly recommend them.

[dr8track]

[Jesse Skeen]

I had a stylus short out while playing a disc the first time which I had gotten sealed! It displayed a weird pattern of lines on my TV when it happened, then wouldn't work anymore when I paused it. On today's digital equipment the signal would just drop out if that happened.
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Videodisc and stereo sound- there's no better value around!

[SelectaVision420]