CED VideoDisc and Player Discussion

[Dude111]

www.tvdawn.com/silvaton.HTM

Kind of looks like an early VIDEODISC player

[kitchensynch]

Unfortunately, it didn't work very well and as you probably read from end to end, as I have many times, it took computer technology to recover the picture (no sound).

Forty years later CEDs and Laserdiscs would be in development.

Four years or so earlier, video pioneer and amazimg inventor John Logie Baird was building a very large videodisk (definitely ANALOG, you will like this) with film frames inserted in order...HUGE, but it was a start.

A fascinating site that covers early television very well!
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A New Vista of RCA Victor COLOR!

[Dude111]

Yes I noticed that!!!!!!! (About early TV)

I wonder if this unit is where they got the Idea for Videodisc from??

I didnt think it produced GOOD QUALITY seeing the record only spun @ 78rpm (Videodisc runs @ 450 as you know) I wonder if thats why there wasnt any sound?? (Only 78)

[Rixrex]

I doubt that this unit somehow spearheaded the RCA videodisc development. That's more likely from the fact that RCA had so much experience in record production, that looking towards producing a videodisc was a logical step.

[kitchensynch]

No storage system existed in 1930 with even the slightest capacity to accomodate a television signal WITH sound. Meanwhile, color TV experiments were already in progress at that time.

I'm not sure that RCA's experience with record production had a lot to do with the development of Selectavision CED...the 'groove' is unlike a phonograph record in about every way imaginable and MCA, the original party behind Laserdiscs gained much of their technologies by purchasing Gauss.

RCA reasearch was somewhat unique, earned patents and some accolades for the engineers involved and involved more complex idead that just pressing a disc. The protective caddy. disc coating, materials that were engineered tocreate the disc itself...

Both could have easily ended in disaster, not just the CED if Pioneer hadn't foreseen the importance of the optical disc in their future path (CD and DVD and Pioneer had already proposed a prototype for the Compact Disc before joining the joint Universal Pioneer venture and then taking it into their own hands). Optical discs of ~12 inches were prototyped or at least mocked up for PCM digital audio playback as far back as the early seventies (1973?) by Sony.

Pioneer's CD proposal was dual sided and could handle 4 channel quad on a disc about the same size as the current CD. I think it also had a pressed in paper label on each side, much the same as the laserdisc's or 7" 45 rpm record. When I first saw it on the web I was amazed!

RCA's development of the CED had a more rational process to it than the DiscoVision program. It produced a consistant product, unlike the foibles that accompanied LD's creation. In the end with much improvement in the production methods Laserdiscs were able to move Pioneer FORWARD to the creation of DVD and survive and RCA simply went out of business over the whole thing.
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A New Vista of RCA Victor COLOR!

[SRSanford10]

I believe that RCA's experience in phono record production did have a lot to do with the technical success of CED. I have followed technical papers by RCA Phd's , Dr. Khanna and Dr. Datta from the period of the early 1970's to the early 1980's. These relate to the flow of PVC plastic material under various temperature and pressure conditions. Mr. Sonnenfeld (see book chapter in CED Magic) realized that, as he took over the CED project in the mid '70's that he had a very interesting lab project that occasionally made good pictures and sound. The pressed discs, however, were unreliable. He knew he could not sell this to the public. The research, which also aided stereo and CD-4 phono records, was vital to make a production disc which had a warp of less than 0.5mm and had the electrical characteristics (from the embedded fine carbon particles) to make the FM replay system work.
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Scotty

[Rixrex]

You are right about that, and I know this from firsthand experience directly from those who worked at the RCA plant in Indiana on both phonograph records and later CEDs, one of whom was my Dad and another who was my Uncle, among various friends they had in the engineering and development depts.

The fact that RCA was heavily involved in production of audio phonograph records led naturally and directly to the idea of eventually finding a way to place video and audio on a phonograph record. This was always a topic of discussion since broadcast television. I recall many conversations in the 1950s and early 1960s about plans to develop a videodisc. Where would these ideas germinate if not from the natural progression of audio phonographs to those with picture as well?

Another point is the fact that RCA had such great technical expertise in the area of record pressing, only rivaled by Columbia of Terre Haute, that an inexpensive method of manufacturing videodiscs in the same general manner was certainly impetus to the development of videodisc by RCA. Some things can also be learned and understood from anecdotal evidence.