CED VideoDisc and Player Discussion

[lynx]

Hello to all CED collectors! Today is the forty-second anniversary of RCA’s official launch of the Selectavision CED video disc system to the public in the United States Of America, and every year on this day, I have a personal tradition of posting a message here on the CED Magic forum about something fascinating about CED that I have discovered online, and also watching one of the first 100 CED titles available for sale at the RCA dealers on that day, on my RCA SFT 100 W CED player, as a reenactment of what the very first customers of CED did right after their shopping spree at the RCA dealers.



Just for fun, I got out my calculator, and I determined that the introduction of CED took place 15,340 days ago.



For this year, I am going to share all of the old technical articles published by RCA about CED that I found on a web site called World Radio History, and some You Tube videos which, in a way, pertain to CED.



In chronological order, here are the links to RCA’s publications about CED, which are all in their company’s internal technical journals:



Here is Communicate, dated July / August 1973, with a Q & A session by chairman Bob Sarnoff, on pages 14 & 15, where he mentions CED & also a different, unrelated Selectavision videotape product:



https://worldradiohistory.com/ARCHIVE-RCA/RCA-Communicate/RCA-Communicate-1973-07-08.pdf



Here is RCA Review, dated March 1978, which is an entire issue all about CED while it was still under research & development:



https://worldradiohistory.com/ARCHIVE-RCA/RCA-Review/RCA-Review-1978-Mar.pdf



Here is RCA Engineer, Volume 26 Number 5, dated March / April 1981, which has an article about CED & buried subcarrier encoding with a picture & preview on page 3, and then on pages 4 thru 10:



https://worldradiohistory.com/ARCHIVE-RCA/RCA-Engineer/1981-03-04.pdf



Here is RCA Engineer, Volume 26 Number 7, dated July / August 1981, which has an article on pages 5 thru 11 about awards won by some of the scientists who worked on CED:



https://worldradiohistory.com/ARCHIVE-RCA/RCA-Engineer/RCA-Engineer-1981-07-08.pdf



Here is RCA Review, Volume 42 Number 3, dated September 1981, which has three long articles about CED up to page 407:



https://worldradiohistory.com/ARCHIVE-RCA/RCA-Review/RCA-Review-1981-09.pdf



Here is RCA Engineer, Volume 26 Number 9, dated November / December 1981, which is an entire issue all about CED technology:



https://worldradiohistory.com/ARCHIVE-RCA/RCA-Engineer/1981-11-12.pdf



Here is RCA Engineer, Volume 27 Number 1, dated January / February 1982, which has articles about disc & caddy manufacturing in its first 42 pages:



https://worldradiohistory.com/ARCHIVE-RCA/RCA-Engineer/1982-01-02.pdf



Here is RCA Review, Volume 43 Number 1, dated March 1982 which is an entire issue all about video disc cutters:



https://worldradiohistory.com/ARCHIVE-RCA/RCA-Review/RCA-Review-1982-Mar.pdf



Here is RCA Engineer, Volume 27 Number 2, dated March / April 1982, which references video disc player production midway thru its article about engineering quantity, with a paragraph beginning on page 9, and then has an article about CED player technology on pages 24 thru 29:



https://worldradiohistory.com/ARCHIVE-RCA/RCA-Engineer/1982-03-04.pdf



Here is RCA Engineer, Volume 27 Number 4, dated July / August 1982, which has an article about stereophonic CED technology on pages 12 thru 17:



https://worldradiohistory.com/ARCHIVE-RCA/RCA-Engineer/1982-07-08.pdf



Here is RCA Review, Volume 43 Number 4, dated December 1982, which has an article about video disc mastering on pages 655 thru 664:



https://worldradiohistory.com/ARCHIVE-RCA/RCA-Review/RCA-Review-1982-Dec.pdf



RCA Engineer, Volume 28 Number 4, dated July / August 1983 is not about CED, but page 109 has an article about scientist James L. Miller, who was involved with CED, and page 111 references a scientist called Elvin D. Shimsauser, who worked at RCA Laboratories on the development of stereophonic CED cartridges:



https://worldradiohistory.com/ARCHIVE-RCA/RCA-Engineer/RCA-Engineer-1983-07-08.pdf



Here is RCA Engineer, Volume 28 Number 5, dated September / October 1983, which has a graphic on page 16 of a planned teletext game related to CED, and a technical article on pages 57 thru 59 about post-moulding requirements for video disc production:



https://worldradiohistory.com/ARCHIVE-RCA/RCA-Engineer/RCA-Engineer-1983-09-10.pdf



Here is RCA Engineer, Volume 29 Number 1, dated January / February 1984, which has an article on pages 4 thru 13 about the multiprocessor control system for the RCA model SJT 400 CED player, and how it can connect to a computer:



https://worldradiohistory.com/ARCHIVE-RCA/RCA-Engineer/RCA-Engineer-1984-01-02.pdf



Here is RCA Engineer, Volume 2 Number 2, dated March / April 1984, which has an article on pages 11 thru 18 about the robotic arm assembly of the arm drive in video disc players:



https://worldradiohistory.com/ARCHIVE-RCA/RCA-Engineer/RCA-Engineer-1984-03-04.pdf



Here is RCA Review, Volume 45 Number 3, dated September 1984, which has an article about a contour deformation model of signal pickup on pages 397 thru 420:



https://worldradiohistory.com/ARCHIVE-RCA/RCA-Review/RCA-Review-1984-Sep.pdf



Here is RCA Review, Volume 46 Number 2, dated June 1985, which has an article about keel lap micromachining technology used for the production of CED styli on pages 170 thru 199. It’s ostensibly the last article written by RCA about CED:



https://worldradiohistory.com/ARCHIVE-RCA/RCA-Review/RCA-Review-1985-Jun.pdf



Finally, here is RCA Engineer, Volume 30 Number 4, dated July / August 1985, which is not about CED, but has an article on pages 66 thru 70 about the RCA Dimensia system:



https://worldradiohistory.com/ARCHIVE-RCA/RCA-Engineer/RCA-Engineer-1985-07-08.pdf



Now for something much shorter. One month ago, I discovered some company logos which use Mussorgsky’s Pictures At An Exhibition as their fanfares, just like CED.



One logo is for an Egyptian studio called El Alamia For T.V. & Cinema A.T.C., which has an orchestral performance of the music. The name in the logo is written in both the English & Arabic languages. It was apparently only used on Monday, 15 December, 1986 in Qabl Alwadae. Here is the logo:



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35TCm5L-_WI



Another logo is for a studio called World-Northal Corporation, which was also called W.W. Entertainment. They were in business back in the 1970s & 1980s, and they released kung fu movies. The fanfare is a synthesiser recording of the Promenade of Pictures At An Exhibition. Here is the logo:



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7w-LUHrBHU



Finally, the last three logos I found are for a nonprofit TV broadcaster called South Carolina Educational Television, which is still in business today, and is the group of PBS affiliates throughout the state. Back in the 1970s, they used three logos which had music from side one of Memories Of Video Disc. It’s the same recording of the electronic background music from the disc, and it’s located at the first part of the slide show, titled Video Disc Manufacturing: A Different View, right after Dr. Brandinger’s monologue about CED.



When I discovered these logos, I also discovered the title, composer, and performer of the music. It’s called Sonata In G Major, K. 455 (L. 209), originally composed by the Italian Baroque composer Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti, and performed by Wendy Carlos in 1969, who also worked on the music for the CED titles 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, and Tron.



Here are the three logos with this music. The logos are different, but the music is identical in all of them:



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XOe_M-__1w



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZRQkApe_lc



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsrLSY6sTiA



That’s all for this year, and I will look for some more intriguing information about video disc to post next year.
_________________
Let RCA turn your television into Selectavision!

[kfbkfb]

2023-04-04, the 39th anniversary of the announcement to end (RCA brand) CED player production.

I recall a short ABC TV news break news item the evening of 1984-04-04 that said RCA was phasing out their troubled videodisc system, a friend called the next morning and mentioned that CED "died".

I bought a Pioneer VP-1000 LD player from another friend in 1981-11 and I bought a closeout RCA SJT-090 in 1984-10 (where I lived, the video rental store I bought the player from continued to acquire and rent CED videodiscs until they went out of business suddenly in mid-1985).


Kirk Bayne