CED VideoDisc and Player Discussion

[Stephen]

Hello,

I have been interested in CEDs for a while but have not had a player or any discs until now. I have been collecting laserdiscs for a few years too. It seems to me that with both CEDs and LDs there were many more titles available in the US than in the UK and I have imported many US LDs into the UK.

I'm less sure that this is possible with CEDs. The cedmagic web site says I would need an SJT400 model that uses quartz timing rather than the line frequency as obviously the US uses 60Hz and the UK uses 50Hz, but the SJT is a model that is in demand so when it appears on ebay, they sell for high prices and often the seller will only ship to the US or international postage is more than the auction price! Some sellers have questionned whether the player would get across the Atlantic safely or whether it would be damaged in transit.

Has anyone ever imported a US player and discs and what were your experiences?

I found this statement on another web site: "European CED players were made by Hitachi and GEC McMichael, and curiously are nothing like the equivalent american SelectaVision machines - even though the format is the same (apart from PAL / NTSC differences)." What does that mean? Why were UK models different?

I have just bought a Hitachi player off ebay.co.uk but it is broken, so I'll make another post asking about manuals, repairs, etc.

[ketonic_dude]

I've always heard that PAL discs won't work in any of the US players and vice vera. I have a couple of SJT400's and I do have some PAL discs. But I don't have a PAL TV so even if I tried it, I still wouldn't know if it worked. If you want to buy a 400 and try it I would ship it to you but like everyone else, shipping to the UK would be quite a bit. I've looked into shipping discs to the UK and 10 discs is right around $30-$40. As a guess I would say a player would probably be somewhere between $100-$200 and even then there is no guarantee it will arrive in tact. I'd have to get at the very least $150 for the player, so your still looking at about $200-$300 shipped. For most people that's not worth it but let me know if you have any interest.

[waleedijaz]

I echo that too! Chris is doing a great job for his Dad!!
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ali