Popular Science
The $580 Million Vinyl Movie Disaster (Selectavision)
You’ve probably got a ton of VHS tapes in a box somewhere — but why *don’t* you have any Capacitance Electronic Discs (CED)?. Despite being an incredible and unique technology that basically used records as home video discs, the RCA Selectavision had… a whole lot of problems. The history of technology is filled with great…
Popular Science
How to Make a YouTube Video in 1987
Decades before software like Premiere and iMovie made video editing cheap, easy, and accessible for everyone, the only option was chaining a conglomerate of vintage 80s technology – multiple camcorders or VCRs and a TV – to craft custom analog video. Then the Videonics system changed tech history forever. With professional-grade setups costing up to…
Popular Science
The $68 Million Instant Movie Disaster (Polavision)
Nearly 50 years ago, the Polavision camera blended Polaroid’s revolutionary instant film with on-demand home video – and the result was a landmark advance in analog technology that would become a mystery of science and a winding international journey into vintage tech. Because now, generations after Edwin Land bet his half-century legacy of innovation and…
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@nbrown5907
June 7, 2024 at 6:53 pm
I was shocked they even tried vinyl, vinyl is a horrible way to play music back from, it wears a little every play and does not give a flat response back. Vinyl sucks!
@Philfluffer
June 7, 2024 at 7:00 pm
Wow, I’m so surprise Popular Science exaggerated an upcoming tech products….
@daveruthmusic
June 7, 2024 at 7:02 pm
I just picked up a Zenith player this week. It’s a ton of fun despite its flaws.
@teddyfurstman1997
June 7, 2024 at 7:05 pm
Laserdisc looks way more impressive than select disc. RCA just fumbled the bag.
@tsartomato
June 7, 2024 at 7:07 pm
where to get jeollo chicken? it’s sounds like holodets but for white people
@SeekingTheLoveThatGodMeans7648
June 7, 2024 at 8:01 pm
but it’s low in calories!
@random_one1321
June 7, 2024 at 7:10 pm
Best covers and best experience ever… gtfo if you don’t know. Most collectible cover ever.
@MrSupro
June 7, 2024 at 7:14 pm
My cousins grandfather had one. We used it and when it worked it was great. Sometimes you had to load it a few times to get it to start and then you had to flip it half way through. Had a stack of movies, perhaps 20. It was part of the fun of going to his place. That and he had a swimming pool. I think the pool was more popular as VHS was more important to us.
@3DJapan
June 7, 2024 at 7:38 pm
I believe I’ve seen Techmoan talk about these.
@tsartomato
June 7, 2024 at 7:40 pm
half the songs are not streamed anywhere and not signed to any label and i own almost everything i need in multiple copies
@matt5721
June 7, 2024 at 7:41 pm
1 “Oh cool CED”
2 *Guy screaming at me*
3 do not recommend channel
@sketchyspot
June 7, 2024 at 7:59 pm
RIP RCA
@viberaiding
June 7, 2024 at 8:02 pm
Gave up under halfway. So dramatic… unbearable
@vwestlife
June 7, 2024 at 8:04 pm
It’s a shame to see the “experts” at Popular Science falling for the garbage that is the Elgato USB video capture device — see my exposé of how badly it ruins your video quality, compared to what VHS or even CED is capable of.
@oscarcacnio8418
June 7, 2024 at 8:54 pm
Popular Science ain’t what it used to be, I’m sad to say.
@Sashazur
June 7, 2024 at 8:13 pm
After Selectavision was killed, RCA switched to figuring out how to put interactive movies and video onto CDs; I joined this team as a software developer right out of college. RCA was the first company to successfully demo (not great quality) digital full motion video playing from a regular 1X speed CD-ROM. They called it DVI (Digital Video Interactive). The first software and chips they developed ended up in a few bar trivia games and training systems. Then RCA was taken over and dismembered by GE, Intel bought the DVI bit, and most of us transferred from Princeton New Jersey where RCA was to Arizona, Oregon and Silicon Valley where Intel was. The technology wound its way into Windows as a competitor to MPEG, called Indeo video. This was in 1992 and it was one of the first video codecs that could do realtime playback on a regular PC (when MPEG was first becoming popular, you couldn’t play it without special hardware). Although digital video is everywhere now, the whole vision of interactive movies never quite came off as RCA and the rest of the consumer electronics industry imagined it would, even after the technology caught up.
P. S. The first thing I bought with my employee discount was the huge TV at 0:10.
@marktalbott3835
June 7, 2024 at 8:29 pm
Love you. But you are not an “80s kid” . You couldn’t be more than 40. I was born in 1966, I am a true 80s kid.
@raymondramirez9177
June 7, 2024 at 8:34 pm
Although RCA failed here, its Japanese branch, Japan Victor Company (JVC) created the VHS standard which eventually beat the Sony standard and by 1980 everyone wanted a VHS recorder. The remains of RCA is now own by Thompson.
@princehickmon2170
June 7, 2024 at 8:34 pm
Are all eBay sellers that helpful for some arcane piece of vintage technology… the odds are low I’m sure… the B side of this video is lost… in the minutiae… how to per se …of ‘finding a person with integrity’ on the cesspool that is eBay 😂…
@ledgema7686
June 7, 2024 at 8:39 pm
I remember back in the day of Selectavision that there were places where you could rent the player and the CEDs.
@princehickmon2170
June 7, 2024 at 8:40 pm
RCA should have consulted the adult video industry… if it was a HARD pass from them… then your idea 💡 is 💩… in hindsight foresight the Internet cemented itself because of people’s personal proclivities 😂🎉… this tech is when someone doubles down again and again… you know if you keep doing the same thing over and over and expect a different result… cognitively 9 times out of 10… your going insane 🥴🤯💀
@dorkydicken
June 7, 2024 at 8:48 pm
Yup the RCA CED Select-A-Vision, it was the predecessor to the laser disc. I was in the late ’90s to mid 2000s a home videophile buff. Did you know about the VHSC movies, I didn’t until I seen one and I was actually in a case and everything going to sleep for 2 men and a baby. I had a BetaMAX player, CED player, LaserDisc, VHS/DVD combo. I still have quite a bit of hard copy movies. I didn’t see a point in owning a reel-to-reel or projector because it’d have been too much of a pain to set up.
@kumohara_319
June 7, 2024 at 8:57 pm
my family still has ours in storage. not sure if the player works any longer but we have BOXES of movies and specials that were released on Selectavision
@DM-ei6oo
June 7, 2024 at 9:02 pm
The remote is so cool
@cursethemountain
June 7, 2024 at 9:08 pm
We had the star wars trilogy on these discs and like a dozen players that my dad would cannibalize for working parts
@Scotter1971
June 7, 2024 at 9:09 pm
I often find selectavision discs at my local half price books stores for about $5.00. the large size is great for cover art display.
@br6768
June 7, 2024 at 9:10 pm
Is that the vsauce guy?
@donmoore7785
June 8, 2024 at 9:18 am
Excellent treatment
@opraiderman904
June 8, 2024 at 9:34 am
Murder Anyone sounds like the name of a soon to be banned steam game
@JahBreed
June 8, 2024 at 9:35 am
My dad sold drugs😂I had every video player that came out. Beta was the best. Selectavision was garbage.
@SmokyPondFarm
June 8, 2024 at 9:56 am
That was an extremely well done and very comprehensive review and synopsis of the RCA Selectavision CED system. Bravo!
In my opinion the interactive DisneyDisc of Mystery and Magic was easier to play than the 3 you reviewed. Of course, like all of the interactive CED’s the play was basically just one or two sessions and done. BTW, I have the “Thanks for the Memories…” disc, catalog no. 62786 that was produced for RCA employees when the Rockville Road CED pressing plant ceased regular operations on June 27, 1986.
I have way more discs than I’d care to admit to, but I haven’t powered up my SKT-400 in over 15 years.
@danieldaniels7571
June 8, 2024 at 11:19 am
Wow… That player is my holy grail. I rarely go more than a month without using my SGT-200. There’s a short video on my channel of me playing a segment of a Charlie Daniels concert on it.
@kevinwheeler4061
June 8, 2024 at 10:10 am
12:12 That caught me off guard. My name is kevin
@KennethScharf
June 8, 2024 at 10:24 am
I owned a second generation RCA CED player. The disks took about twice as much space to store as a laser disk (thicker jacket). Video quality was better than VHS or BETA, but not as good as LD. However, RCA kept the cost of software below that of LD, that, and greater availability of the players and disks (LD machines and software were initially only sold in speciality high end stores, while the CED machines found shelf space in most department stores). Yeah, I knew there was a risk in buying the machine (that it would be abandoned), but at a cost of less than a VCR for the machine, and less than VHS for software, I got to enjoy a reasonable sized collection. CED disks would eventually wear out, it was believed that LDs would last forever, but that turned out to be false (laser rot?). The stylus actually didn’t touch the surface of the disk, it floated above it on a cushion of air in the same way that the head of a hard disk does. However, unlike the hard disk, the player isn’t sealed against dust, so there will be microscopic wear of the disk and stylus over time. The RCA CED system wasn’t the only one developed, but was the only one for sale in the US. Two similar systems came out in Japan.
I would later replace the CED player with a SONY LD combo machine (it would play, CDs, DVDs, Video CDs, as well as LDs. It also had a large frame buffer that allowed freeze framing in both CAV and CLV modes, along with a puck wheel to select single frames. There were some LD players that could play both sides of a disk without flipping it, and maybe even a dual tray player that held 2 disks at once. For a brief period, the price of LD software was dropped to capture market share (about the time that SONY entered the market with the machine).
@lilricky2515
June 8, 2024 at 10:30 am
I find it strange a gen X’er never heard about laserdisc.
@nutzeeer
June 8, 2024 at 10:52 am
i swear these old obscure video formats just spawn out of nowhere
@struckfire-de7or
June 8, 2024 at 11:28 am
I sold a PALLET of these DISCS ,700 of them ..about 15 years ago ,for less than $100 … they weighed a ton. Hence the pallet ..Got it out of a storage unit couldn’t sell them for nothing. I tried hard and finally I just got rid of them for next to nothing. Should’ve held onto them.
@c.jishnu378
June 8, 2024 at 11:35 am
You sound like that one bit coin guy who threw his harddisk worth billions away to the trash.
@Disthron
June 8, 2024 at 11:30 am
I suspect they could have made it like a big diskette if they want to… You do realise that diskettes turn around when they are read too right?
@elektrokinesis4150
June 8, 2024 at 11:50 am
RCA almost invented the blue LED, they wanted to make a FLAT SCREEN TV IN 1976. But the suits pulled the plug on that for this dumb video disc.
@thedoctor3996
June 8, 2024 at 11:57 am
It’s sad that back then, corporations were interested in having consumers own their media, but now they don’t want us to own anything at all.
@archerelms
June 8, 2024 at 9:21 pm
Back then they made the mistake of thinking we wanted to own much more than we could, now they won’t let us own what we want to.
@XeroCool420
June 8, 2024 at 1:03 pm
I had a TV that used that old RCA remote.
@lastnamefirstname8655
June 8, 2024 at 2:33 pm
nice history.
@DaiAtlus79
June 8, 2024 at 2:59 pm
25:48 point of order, i would need to contact my cousin but Playboy DID release stuff onto Selectavision, and in STEREO!!!
@dustyrhodes92806
June 8, 2024 at 3:26 pm
V sauce! Good to see you back, I’ve always been curious about what happened to the v sauce channels. You Tube really messed up those channels
@HalJalikakik
June 8, 2024 at 3:52 pm
Dude!!!! You went deep down the rabbit 🐇 hole on this one. We had a video disc player when I was a kid but I don’t remember anything about this one. I will say the movies played great… if you got them within the first five renters. Like a scratched record they would skip and the only way (we knew) to marginally correct that was to induce a tiny bit more downward pressure on the stylus. Picture quality was significantly better than VHS or Beta. Plus – no rewinding!!! My Dad loved that part.
@kloss213
June 8, 2024 at 3:57 pm
I had 2 players and over 100 CED. The best part was the 1st version Star Wars and the great concerts with that wonderful sound quality.
@seren_derpity
June 8, 2024 at 4:42 pm
Its like Aaron Paul, except without the meth
@TheBudgie29
June 8, 2024 at 5:24 pm
I have two players, and 420 of the 480 PAL disc’s. White caddy Mono, Blue Caddy Stereo. Loved them since the 80’s. Some films and concerts are still not on DVD, or Blu-Ray. And some films are totally Uncut, Pre-Cert’s. The only thing I can’t get, Is new Stylus’s.
@mikespark72
June 8, 2024 at 5:39 pm
We had a video disc player back in the 80s, and i can tell you we definitely rented discs at our local video rental store. And this was in a very small town in ontario canada!
@turbomustang84
June 8, 2024 at 6:12 pm
However Laserdisc was already out and VCR VHS was way cheaper selectavision was dead on arrival
@TheCreth808
June 8, 2024 at 6:35 pm
The father of a friend of mine used to work for RCA and still had one of the players and the entire catalogue of movies in their basement. Logan’s Run was great to watch this way.
@ll1881ll
June 8, 2024 at 6:49 pm
It’s should be rereleased in a hand held version. For zombie scrolling
@increiblepelotudo
June 8, 2024 at 9:21 pm
You’re just too young to have enjoyed the short lived magic that was the CED disc player. My family went all in, and it looked amazing. Can’t lie. My brother still has the entire collection in his house. We had the audio out to our stereo system and it sounded just so immense. It was a moment in time
@lucasrem
June 9, 2024 at 4:27 am
Nipper is German, as are the Disks…
Edison was late as usual.
Laserdisc HD next ?
@metonAlternate
June 9, 2024 at 5:41 am
A 6.4 billion buy out deal with GE isn’t a catastrophic ending at all, not when compared to the two decades long shit show by RCA mismanagement that preceded it. That is a win-win deal for stock holders and the worthless management and I suppose for GEs IP portfolio because they probably liquidated everything else as fast as possible after that.
As opposed to, total bankruptcy where all investors get nothing
@Derpy1969
June 9, 2024 at 7:34 am
I lived through this video disaster. It was garbage when it was new.
@borusa32
June 9, 2024 at 8:29 am
That was super. I lived in those times but I don’t remember the Selectavision at all.
@Nelevita
June 9, 2024 at 8:30 am
Nice to get informations about there demensions in a form were 99% of the world nothing measures.
@Manveru1986
June 9, 2024 at 9:05 am
How old are you?
@jkl872
June 9, 2024 at 10:12 am
Why are you so angry?? 😅
@BearMeat4Dinner
June 9, 2024 at 10:19 am
I ALWAYS WANTED ONE OF THESE!!! IN DA MIDDLE OF CHICAGO ❤ N MRT – HAPPY BIRTHDAY BUDDY!
@BearMeat4Dinner
June 9, 2024 at 10:30 am
I miss Block Buster! 😂❤
@bagel29
June 9, 2024 at 11:06 am
12:01 the world’s first YTP. It’s beautiful
@renakunisaki
June 9, 2024 at 11:12 am
I’ll never understand how companies can be so bad at naming things. Whether it’s RCA forgetting they already used the name Selectavision (or just not realizing how confusing it would be?), or Microsoft being so bad at counting that they start throwing words in, or Nintendo choosing the most confusing possible names.
The whole “refusing to allow porn” thing is pretty funny too. Did they not look at sales figures and realize what a huge market that was? For the first time, you could enjoy naughty films – not just photos but moving pictures with sound! – in the privacy of your own home, instead of having to head out to some sketchy theatre. How could that _not_ be huge?
@ChaunceyGardener
June 9, 2024 at 12:02 pm
25:35 – I will leave this piece of research here: “1983 RCA CED test disc- Girl From Ipanema”
@firewalker1372
June 9, 2024 at 12:14 pm
Techmoan does some really great videos on CED, Laser Disk and other obscure video players from the 70s and 80s.
@zaphod100
June 9, 2024 at 12:20 pm
There are plenty of movies not available to stream or purchase.
@Shadowfoxxy30
June 9, 2024 at 2:29 pm
your statement about. in the title about this being the Netflix of 1984 is highly preposterous CED players were not widely Adopted enough, for that statement to even hold water. they were inferior to a much better formats Laser disc who RCA were riding the success of. this format was such a failure it cost RCA the Business, if you wanna talk about the Real Netflix of 1984 Talk About early Cable Television and early Pay per view from the 60’s & 70’s. other wise I can’t stop Seeing crap like your videos in my Feed and it frustrates me cause you are sooooooo wrong you have no idea
@andydelle4509
June 9, 2024 at 2:30 pm
It’s important to distinguish between RCA CED disc technology and Laser disk. Yes RCA CED failed miserably. But laser was successful into the late 1990s. Laser Disk was a no contact read technology, which greatly helped with the finger print and scratch problem, and the image and sound quality was just a notch under virgin broadcast master tapes. The market was just big enough to make production of Laser discs and players profitable. And there were even a few specialty stores and mail order houses that sold laser discs. Very few video rental stores had Laser Discs, ditto that for places you could buy them. What finally killed laser disc was DVD. The image and sound quality was even better and DVD also had a very broad distribution base, such as Wallmart and Target so the mom and pop laser disc stores could no longer compete on price.
@dunham82
June 9, 2024 at 2:40 pm
I have fond memories of playing CED movies. We were still buying the discs in 1986 when I was four. I watched Lassie’s Rescue Rangers and The Great Space Coaster over and over.
@RirtyDascal
June 9, 2024 at 2:56 pm
My grandparents had a HUGE collection of these. I even stumbled across a Playboy disc my grandpa had lol. Got in trouble when my cousin and I got caught checking it out. Apparently my grandma immediately recognized the intro music, and ran down stairs before we got to see any amazing Playmates, sans vêtements.
I’m pretty sure the player is still in the entertainment stand, in the basement.
Next time I visit I’ll have to check.
@Toosii2times
June 9, 2024 at 4:50 pm
i get that these things are frustrating but bro u really need to calm tf down, ur like visibly pissed
@DelinquentSquirrel
June 9, 2024 at 5:41 pm
A couple of things that lay-people sometimes don’t realise abvideo out early video discs (including Laserdisc):
Laserdiscs were NOT digital video. Many people assume that because the physical media is constructed in a very similar way to a CD that it must be ‘digital’. It isn’t. The disc uses PWM encoding to store an analogue video signal, equivalent to 480i or 576i for NTSC or PAL discs.
Some of the later discs supported PCM digital audio, but this wasn’t part of the standard.
There is also some confusion between CDV (CD Video) and VCD (Video CD). CDV is a 5″ disc with 20 minutes of Red Book audio in the centre (same as a 3″ mini CD), plus 5 minutes of Laserdisc format video at the outside edge. The format was intended for CD singles, you’d get 3 completely standard audio tracks just like a CD single, but pop the disc into a laserdisc player and you’d get the music video. VCD was a CD-ROM disc containing an hour of compressed MPEG1 video and stereo audio, and was the first ‘true’ digital video disc format. The quality was… not great.
It wasn’t until DVD came along that we finally got broadcast quality video (at least for standard def) and near-CD quality audio, with a playing time long enough to store an entire movie without having to flip the disc over or change the disc. This was the real reason that disc-based video formats never caught on; nobody other than absolute hardcore videophiles wanted to get up a third of the way through the film to flip the disc over then again two thirds through to put the second disc in. DVD solved this problem, which is why it became a huge success.
The jump in video quality between VHS and DVD was massive. DVD to Blu-Ray is more of a progressive improvement.
ObTopic: I do love watching these videos about old obsolete or failed formats. I often wish I had the space to set up some sort of working museum of this kit. It’s so much cooler than pressing a couple of buttons on the remote and watching any film you want in seconds, although not as convenient of course!
@KevinFields777
June 9, 2024 at 6:44 pm
Irony that the horse racing game was out in 1982, and here we are in 2024 and race tracks have turned “historic racing” into a new gambling product.
@WhizzBangWhoopee
June 9, 2024 at 6:50 pm
Very good, but there is a hint that VHS gained dominance because of it’s tolerance of “naughty movies.” This isn’t true and is covered by the Technology Connections channel in its posting on VHS Vs Beta.
@toddmiller5046
June 9, 2024 at 7:22 pm
I want one but I don’t know why
@christophershelley9023
June 9, 2024 at 7:43 pm
Good videos
@christophershelley9023
June 9, 2024 at 7:43 pm
😢😢😢😅😅😅😂😅😂😊😂❤😂😮 😮😂😊😂😊😂
@automatedelectronics6062
June 9, 2024 at 9:16 pm
Huh??????????
The introduction by RCA of the CED video disc was brilliant.
If you were around in the 80’s, you would know that VHS and Betamax videotape players were in the stratosphere, pricewise, and the video tapes(pre-recorded movies) were also very expensive, costing sometimes over $100. for a 2 hr. movie. Ask your father about that. Because of the high prices, stores like your father’s were necessary. If he got in early enough, he probably not only rented movies but the machines to play them on.
Along came the RCA CED players. Right off the bat, the CED players were less than half the price of a VCR. Prices of VCR’s began to drop because there was a new kid on the block. Prices of the RCA CED players began to drop, also, always being about half the price of the cheapest VCR. Oh, and how about the media? The pre-recorded VCR tapes were still unaffordable for most. There were the CED discs which for a 2 hr. movie were only $20. or less. People could finally afford to build up a video collection.
While VCR pre-recorded tapes were still unaffordable to buy, for most, people continued to rent them, spending $5. to $10. for one day. The CED video discs rented for $1. to $2.
While there were very few choices for VCR’s, RCA licensed their CED tech and soon there were multiple brands to choose from.
In the meantime, the VCR format war was raging. It was Betamax or VHS and they weren’t compatible with each other. Sony was protective of their Betamax tech and wouldn’t license it to other manufacturers, but when they finally did, it was too late. RCA(JVC) licensed their VHS tech and the format quickly became dominant.
I need to add that Pioneer had introduced the laser disc. These were not digital originally but played the “record” with a laser. The discs were a little less than pre-recorded VCR tapes, but still pricey. The laser discs did well in commercial use, like the arcade video game machines.
So, as VHS became the dominant tape format, prices for machines and tapes plunged, wiping out the video disc market.
The main advantage of the VCR was the “R”, which meant they could RECORD. Initially only one program was recordable at a time, but you could watch one program while recording another. You didn’t have to miss a program. Besides, you could fast-forward through the commercials.
The DVD walked over all other formats because of higher quality AND, most importantly, prices for the media. Machines were up there in price, but most also played CD’s. Remember the machines which had both a VCR and a DVD player built in?
Prices of DVD/Blu-ray players have plummeted, but with DVR’s, online recording and so many on demand cable channels, you don’t have to deal with a physical media anymore. Streaming has replaced it all.
@theexpresidents
June 10, 2024 at 2:05 am
Kubrick approved of his films on vinyl?
@providentpathfinders219
June 10, 2024 at 3:05 am
Can you imangine how many RCA disks you woulda had for Dances with Wolves. We had a Selectavision. we WERE the remotes as 80s kids and were solely responsible for flipping disks
@tobymaxmax658
June 10, 2024 at 3:14 am
I remember these in the early 80s and they were sold at Jordan Marsh. I recall they had a display attached to a tv playing a Bond movie. It see,ed higher quality then VHS tapes. If they were the size of a dvd they would have sold like hot cakes.
@alexatkin
June 10, 2024 at 4:42 am
“every movie and TV show you can think of is on some app” – sadly this is very much not true.
While there is lots of content, inevitably the stuff I want to watch is almost always not available by legitimate means. Some of it due to deals with TV channels, but some down to licensing issues or not wanting to keep less popular (or expensive licensing) content around as it counts as assets for tax purposes.
@snaplash
June 10, 2024 at 8:09 am
I never saw Start Trek during it’s first run on TV because it aired on Friday nights when I was working my part time job. I ended up with a VCR and several different automated recording devices, like Videoguide. When Tivo arrived, I bought it immediately, No more missed shows after that.
@dave882
June 10, 2024 at 8:10 am
Had to stop. Not watching a tech video from a guy who doesn’t own basic tools. 😂
@stormrider8957
June 10, 2024 at 8:44 am
Yes, it was fun, to tech heads like me, sort of. Atari was where most of us went for ‘fun’.
@jaysonl
June 10, 2024 at 9:04 am
This was my tech hipster claim to fame. “I watched the original star wars trilogy on vinyl!”. I remember my folks rending a CED player that we watched those movies on…. they called it a “beta max” but I remembered the comically huge cartridges and looked it up later on in life.
@pryingeyes1551
June 10, 2024 at 10:56 am
My grandmother had one of those players.
@jerrys.9895
June 10, 2024 at 2:06 pm
We had a selectavision and five movies (a charlie brown feature, the Muppet Movie, The Sound of Music, The Bible, and some other movie I can’t remember) when I was maybe 6 or 8 years old. We used it long into the era of VHS. I remember the video quality being very good. If there was a scratch or dust/hair on the disc, it would skip around on it until the needle made its way past the obstruction.
As the really comprehensive Technology Connections and Techmoan videos have noted, it was a really great format, just too early to market. It was prohibitively expensive, the media was expensive (I remember my dad saying they spent about $140 on the Charlton Heston version of The Bible and it was considered a bargain), and there wasn’t much media to purchase. Licensing and compatibility was limited, and no major manufacturers outside of RCA’s production stream would commit to pressing these incredibly specific discs in mass production, so there was no incentive to lower the pricing.
Basically VHS and Betamax were slightly lower quality but otherwise superior in nearly every other conceivable way, but it still feels cool to think I have seen and enjoyed this otherwise really niche piece of tech thanks to my dad’s early adopter addiction in the 70’s and 80’s.
@benjaminwinfrey7727
June 10, 2024 at 2:39 pm
We have a CED player when I was a kid and that same 48 Hours disc. These things were so unreliable. We had one as did all my extended family. They never worked. You could accidentally put multiple discs in the machine. It costs hundreds of dollars for a repairmen to fix them.
@robertgaines-tulsa
June 10, 2024 at 3:36 pm
It turned out that people just wanted to record their programs and watch them later. VHS did that. Laser Disk nor CED could. Prerecorded movies were just secondary to that. We got our first VHS VCR in 1988 because my dad started working the night shift and he wanted to record Days of Our Lives and watch it around 5 o’clock when he woke up. The VCR instantly became our most favorite device in the whole house.
@laurenmp7486
June 10, 2024 at 4:03 pm
It also didn’t help that LaserDisc came out around the same time, and was a lot easier to deal with. No caddies for the discs, the discs didn’t degrade and other stuff.
@seminiferousbuttnoid
June 10, 2024 at 4:33 pm
I can’t believe PS is defiling itself using idiotic clickbait titles and blurbs. “Netflix in 1984?” That doesn’t even make sense. vHS… nEtfliXX N 1977??!!?1?!?!!? KEwL
@monkeyjshow
June 10, 2024 at 4:53 pm
They were pretty cool. I got a pile of them at a garage sale when I was a kid. Loads of 80’s movies with the gazangas. You could pause and watch a short gif-like bit of video repeat over and over and it was clean and steady, unlike pausing VHS.
@FezTheSpaceBiker
June 10, 2024 at 5:15 pm
Love the immediate Space Cop Blu-Ray as the video starts
@matthewchristenson5477
June 10, 2024 at 5:31 pm
Unless you pirate your content you will own nothing. Continue to pay to rent your movies and TV shows. Once your internet goes away you lose everything.
@hondadog-yo2sr
June 10, 2024 at 5:36 pm
Great video, had the original player when I was in high school. You got one thing wrong though, there was video disc rental. The appliance store my mom bought it from turned half their floor into disc rental space. Was a big RCA licensed dealer, I watched most the films ever released on RCA video discs….
@evanlee93
June 10, 2024 at 5:37 pm
Wow. No wonder this thing failed. What an interesting waste of 17 years of R&D lol
@doogie812
June 10, 2024 at 7:00 pm
I had fun with those in 1982. I was an authorized RCA servicer back then.
@shmehfleh3115
June 10, 2024 at 7:20 pm
RCA was already well on its way out by the time CED was released, thanks to Robert Sarnoff being an unmitigated moron and a monumentally greedy bastard.
@jacobm617
June 10, 2024 at 7:41 pm
There were Playboy releases on CED.
@arri275555
June 10, 2024 at 8:49 pm
I got to work with Paul Gleason on a WB show. Many moons ago. He was kind and down to earth. Such a great guy. I love tech and this video was awesome
@Great-Documentaries
June 10, 2024 at 8:57 pm
With regards to not being able to watch movies at home before VHS, someone please explain to him what Cartrivision and 8MM home formats were. LONG before VHS, it was *possible* to watch movies at home, just rare.
@Great-Documentaries
June 10, 2024 at 9:09 pm
11:38: LOL! Like vinyl records ignore dust, etc. You one of those know-it-all hipsters that still believes vinyl is superior?
And let’s be clear, vinyl is NOT one of the most reliable forms of media of the 20th Century. You are acting like popping, scratches, etc., are not destructive or that indeed the very act of having a diamond needle bouncing up and down on a record does not in and of itself slowly destroy the record. Which of course it does! You can play a CD 100,000 times in a row continuously and it will sound the same. You cannot do that to a record. It will no longer have music on it, assuming there is anything left of it!
@LordHasenpfeffer
June 10, 2024 at 11:11 pm
I absolutely remember reading and hearing about this format when I was 17 and 18 years old in 1983 / 1984… and I was very excited about it at the time. I thought it was one of the coolest things ever… but then as soon as it seemed about to break out… it vanished. 4+ years later, the LaserDisc was available and – being optical and “stylus-free”, I realized it had to be the superior format… but I was never happy about never even having an opportunity to experiences the *analog* video disc format of my teenage dreams. 🙂 This is without question the best demonstrative review of the RCA Selectavision format I have ever seen. Thanks! I’ve wondered for the past 40 years what it was like and now I know. And I never knew about the games option. Lea Thompson is one of my favorite 80s actresses so to see her appearance here was, too, a completely unexpected surprise. Thanks for this.
@robertmartens7839
June 11, 2024 at 12:08 am
it is 12/ 5/8 by 13 7/8. OMG. what the hell is 5/8? DO you mean 32 cm by 33 cm? USA is messed up
@steverogers8163
June 11, 2024 at 12:15 am
Yeah the whole RCA odyssey that Technology Connections covered was just crazy. RCA also played around with the idea of magnetic tape (aka VHS) and lasers (laserdisc) before anyone else. But continuously refused to just commit to one format in some sort of crazed quest for the ultimate media format. Basically they seemed to want to create the UHD Bluray in 1974. Just madness. They finally settled on CED Videodisc, an idea they had abandoned years earlier because of its many flaws but it was cheap to make and they thought much of their LP factories could be converted easily to CED. They had by that point squandered their huge lead. They had to beat both the rumored Laserdisc and VHS to market but in the end came out after both of them with a product that was inferior to both in different ways.
Didn’t help that Japan also started taking giant bites out of their control over the actual TV market as well at the same time. They also missed the boat on the CD, which was just an extension of the basic technology behind Laserdisc, which of course put a bullet in the head of the LP.
@elmariachi5133
June 11, 2024 at 2:08 am
Liar! xD
I have seen ‘A week at the races’ on YT before. Don’t remember whom it was from, maybe Techmoan or a retro gamer channel (yeah, from what remember it most probably wasn’t the video’s title, as it was just a side note, so you could not find it!).
@SlapMehhh
June 11, 2024 at 2:14 am
why would you compare this to netflix LOL this is more similar to a DVD you clickbait f
@tezinho81
June 11, 2024 at 3:46 am
Every technology failure is a brick in the wall of today’s technology too… Can’t knock them for a lack of vision
@paulgleason1
June 11, 2024 at 3:53 am
I approve of this video!
@Tommi-C
June 11, 2024 at 7:27 am
If you like this but also like a more sedate video style. Techmoan covers all the old tech like this and more.
@pttn975
June 11, 2024 at 7:56 am
Growing up we had a couple of VCR games. Commercial Crazies and VCR Football. As a kid in the 80’s it was mind blowing.
@4jp
June 11, 2024 at 8:14 am
this is horrible in every possible way possible.
@erik.reinert
June 11, 2024 at 8:16 am
Oh my god, that remote brings back some memories. We had an RCA television that came with that remote when I was a kid. I always wondered what all those extra buttons were for.
@ErnoSallinen
June 11, 2024 at 8:36 am
Very nice. Thanks.
@mistermac56
June 11, 2024 at 9:27 am
A family friend owned an appliance store from the late 60’s, until they were bought by HH Gregg in the early 90’s. I remember when they started selling the Selectavision players and discs. The store had several demonstration events to attempt to sell the players. The owner of the store didn’t want to sell Selectavision at all, but wanted to sell the Pioneer and Philips Laserdisc system, but RCA threatened to pull the store’s RCA dealership if they did. The owner asked me, a 21 year old at the time “tech nerd”, to do the demos and also teach the salespersons about the system. He even let me borrow one of the units to practice my presentation at home. I knew from the start that Selectavision was a turkey. I asked the owner if thought they were going to sell any of the players during “demo nights” and he said, “maybe one or two at the most, but if someone decides to buy a new VCR or television, it is worth getting people in the store, and since RCA is paying for the demos, we don’t care.” During the life of Selectavision, the store sold 30 players and about 100 discs. As soon as the RCA embargo was over, and RCA allowing their dealers to carry Laserdisc, the store started carrying Pioneer and Philips Laserdisc players and Laserdiscs. They sold OK, but nothing like VHS VCRs.
@FriedAudio
June 11, 2024 at 9:33 am
8:01 That sound would be its Model T engine running…
@rarbiart
June 11, 2024 at 11:47 am
8:00 you can’t just turn on such a device and even feed a precious disc! that’s either a staged enactment, or just irresponsible.
@abegiesbrecht1148
June 11, 2024 at 12:14 pm
15:26 I would’ve used a VCR.
@avasam06
June 11, 2024 at 2:11 pm
4:05 as if most people “own” their media now :/
@purposefulporpoise7963
June 11, 2024 at 2:18 pm
3+ minute unskippable ads, then more ads within minutes? Good lord I did not finish trying to watch this
@donmateoSF
June 11, 2024 at 2:39 pm
give that man a sedative
@matthewgaudet4064
June 11, 2024 at 2:53 pm
Laserdisc is still playable and doesn’t wear out, you have laser rot issues, but I’ll stick with laserdisc over CED.
@stellamcwick8455
June 11, 2024 at 3:15 pm
The CED was just ONE reason RCA failed. There were several others.
@michaelturner2806
June 11, 2024 at 3:23 pm
15:50 “But it didn’t work! The splitter had five inputs and only one output.” Then that’s not a splitter. Do you also pick up spoons and say “This fork is defective, it has no tines!”?
@nickstubbings
June 11, 2024 at 4:03 pm
I managed to watch about 10 minutes before i had to give up. The information is ok but why so hostile and aggressive?
@davidfriedman627
June 11, 2024 at 7:35 pm
Two interesting side notes. First, the musical group DEVO decided to create films for their music because they believed that a market would exist for them on VideoDiscs. Two, RKO Pictures was a not very successful RCA subsidiary.
@darnellgarrison1628
June 11, 2024 at 8:49 pm
Wow! “Page numbers” better yet, just before indexing to the time code was done😂🤷🏾♂️
Also some of us own our own private streaming servers. With that I have a couple thousand movies on a few terabytes of storage as well as my music has been downloaded to the server.
@tomcarlson3913
June 11, 2024 at 9:33 pm
Skipping is usually not permanent. Washing discs is a bad idea, but…Most skipping is from dust particles in the grooves usually 2-20 passes of the stylus dislodges the dirt (those interactive players that have a pesudo-still frame that repeats ~4 frames are great for this). A few of my favorite used CEDs at first skipped in so many places (hundreds) dialog couldn’t be followed, then 2-4 plays in there’d be 2-4 skips and I’d visual search back over the same bad spots repeatedly a hand full of times and next play there’s none.
RCAs end really began with loosing their radio patent racket (Sarnoff “stole them fair and square” decades earlier) after being sued by Zenith. They then sunk 6 million (in 1954 dollars) into the development of a color CRT that was obsolete within 6 months of FCC approved color broadcasting, and had to buy out their competitor to get back control of current color CRT patents, they sunk a fortune into color TV and color TV sales didn’t reach a level where they were profitable until the early 70’s, all the while RCA was shoveling tons of money into a a massive R&D department that didn’t care about making things that were practical to build (the CED would have made it to market sooner if some of the researchers weren’t hung up on holograms and other borderline impossible scifi nonsense) or they came up with a revolutionary idea (LCD TV technology in 1969) that could be manufactured with some refinement, and shelved it until the patents expired because it would cut into a successful business division of theirs. RCA was built around patent royalties and once those dried up they were a slowly floundering giant.
@eS._Te
June 11, 2024 at 9:34 pm
if you could talk in a normal manner and not scream at me, i would have enjoyed the video
@braedan51
June 11, 2024 at 9:53 pm
I would love to see a rip of those murder mystery games…sounds like awesome cheesy fun!
@dennisschnobrich9288
June 11, 2024 at 10:51 pm
I always preferred laser disc over CED. Back in the 90’s there were stores that rented laser disc, I always rented them instead of VHS tapes because the video quality of laser disc were much better, but in 1997 DVD’S replaced laser disc and they soon became obsolete.
@9hundred67
June 11, 2024 at 11:03 pm
isn’t this called laser disc?
@dirtrider88
June 11, 2024 at 11:27 pm
7:07 and you paid $700 for it!!!!😲
@jess_n_atx
June 12, 2024 at 12:58 am
How does popsci only have less than 100k subs?
@pazsion
June 12, 2024 at 2:14 am
we would have enjoyed this… then we shared a pc… then we each got our own pc…
i loved playing vhs games and interactive stories to this day.
this thing would be like a comador 64 all the game consoles would have had to port a version of mario cart… missle command and movies… before a playstation…
right now i got an rca viking pro 🥰 mediatek hardware
@tonberryhunter
June 12, 2024 at 2:53 am
Good piece but your over the top frantic intensity kind of tires me. I feel like I’m getting yelled at not educated. All the zoom cuts dont help either.
@cthulpiss
June 12, 2024 at 3:25 am
Conclusion: go metric.
@Alan_Hans__
June 12, 2024 at 5:42 am
If RCA was still going I could see them working on Hyperloop.
@johndemetro8184
June 12, 2024 at 5:49 am
Bring back Bluetooth dog back
@mrjameshendry
June 12, 2024 at 8:24 am
Yooo Vsauce 2, how you doing my man?
@Jasontyo
June 12, 2024 at 8:30 am
Back in about 2010 I stumbled upon a garage sale with a few dozen CEDs, many of which were horror movies.
I will never forgive myself for not taking them all. All I wanted was a Friday the 13th CED.
@JesterEric
June 12, 2024 at 8:34 am
The JVC VHD system was a far better vinyl video disc system that had a little success in Japan. It had proper interactive active games you could play when the VHD was linked to an MSX computer
@TheGMWorldShow
June 12, 2024 at 10:35 am
It connects me to the past 😂 but can you predict what future tech will look like in five years?
@lerneninverschiedenenforme7513
June 12, 2024 at 11:28 am
please stop using non-international units 🙁
@quantumleap359
June 12, 2024 at 12:31 pm
My brother in law was an engineer at RCA during the computer fiasco AND Selectavision TOTAL fiasco. At family gatherings, he would just shake his head at the total idiocy of RCA’s leadership. He was a member of the computer tape drive engineering team, but (in his words) thankfully had no part of the videodisc. He heard about the concept early on, laughed out loud, said this HAD to be a joke. And that was in 1976!
@barry7733
June 12, 2024 at 1:02 pm
The restriction against renting is interesting, because we rented these video discs from a local store that had a huge selection of discs. We lived in Canada — perhaps the restriction was only in the US? No idea … but it was a legit store that were licensed dealers of the machines and discs, so either the restriction was not universal or they were ignoring it.
@SilverFoxGaming-jc5vn
June 12, 2024 at 2:22 pm
My family invested heavily into this technology. We all loved the system. Granted it wasn’t perfect but it did offer a variety of content. There were some titles on CED that were more complete than their VHS cousins. To correct your statement, the disk in the caddy is the same size as a laserdisc.
@TymexComputing
June 12, 2024 at 3:23 pm
“the blob” was great!
@no_one_from_nowhere
June 12, 2024 at 8:07 pm
Finally the CED is getting some love!
@SuburbanBeard
June 12, 2024 at 9:18 pm
i have 400 movies still!!! well vinyl discs lol
@Madness832
June 12, 2024 at 9:24 pm
Now look up the VHD, a completely incompatible, JDM-only, videodisc, invented by JVC.
@rizzlerazzleuno4733
June 13, 2024 at 12:15 am
What a ride. What a ride. Let’s go again. Faster! Faster! Pussycat. 😺😺
@John-vj3xc
June 13, 2024 at 12:27 am
Come on man it’s not colored television it’s television of color.
@michaelmartin4552
June 13, 2024 at 3:30 am
I actually owned a CED deck, and it was in regular use until it was killed by a falling bookcase in an earthquake in 1994. I bought mine in 1984, and by 1985 the disks had become amazingly cheap. And as a parent, they were great as my kids had no problem in using them. Never a worry about rewinding, just hit play again. And even a 4 year old could easily use them as there were only a couple of controls. And unusual for that era, many of them were in letterbox format.
But the biggest problem with this was that it came 5-10 years too late. If it had beaten the VCR it might have been entrenched well enough to survive. But by the time it came out VHS and Beta were already entrenched so there was not much room left for a play only system.
@GreenAppelPie
June 13, 2024 at 5:05 am
Op has a long way to go to watchable quality
@RemoWilliams1227
June 13, 2024 at 7:52 am
10:33 oh I’m so glad he involved Tech Connections. Your personal experience was entertaining as well.
@JLAvey
June 13, 2024 at 9:56 am
Let it be said that no company is ever too big to fail. Sears, PanAm, K-Mart, AOL, Yahoo, all of them were at that point once. So if anyone worries about similar monolithic organization of today will last forever, their time will come sooner or later. All it takes is one massive misstep.
@albear972
June 13, 2024 at 1:05 pm
I remember watching Terminator on the CED player at our friends home back in 1985 as an impressionable 9-year-old. I thought that that was the coolest thing. Not so much anymore for decades. Still, very fascinating technology that RCA obviously didn’t know about the sunk-cost fallacy and contributed to the company’s bankruptcy.
@ultraali453
June 13, 2024 at 1:46 pm
That was an excellent video essay.
@wirebrushofenlightenment1545
June 13, 2024 at 8:48 pm
I enjoyed your epic story of trying to get the thing to work!
@winstonchurchill8300
June 13, 2024 at 10:45 pm
tltw
@judenihal
June 13, 2024 at 11:40 pm
Calling this “Netflix” is just stupid. Not everyone was born after 2010, because 2009 feels like yesterday when Netflix was unwatchable due to its vast amount of pixelated content, something which DVDs never had.
@rvolkanurcanli7840
June 14, 2024 at 6:11 am
Can anyone tell the name of the music starting from 24:52
@destructoblog
June 14, 2024 at 9:28 am
Space Cop is a movie, yes.
@larrytaylor2692
June 14, 2024 at 9:32 am
My grandpa owned one of these and I would watch air plane and all kinds of movies he had when I was little
@Paul-uk5mx
June 14, 2024 at 9:36 am
This was actually a wonderful format to own at the time.New discs ran $19 to $49.95 while VHS and Beta would drain you at $89 per title.
Ironically,the discs picture quality vastly improved a year before its demise.
I owned about 70 titles before I sold it in 1986
@stevelittle1885
June 14, 2024 at 10:12 am
YO! Pinkman you Rock!
@joshpayne4015
June 14, 2024 at 10:26 am
Dude, there are decaf brands that are just as tasty as the real thing. You should try some.
@MikeHarris1984
June 14, 2024 at 12:38 pm
Technology connections!!!
@jefferyholcombe5189
June 14, 2024 at 12:52 pm
Democratizing Video and Audio! LOL These machines were developed by a bunch of pompous A-Holes that had inside knowledge on how to make these things that are poupous built to deliver propaganda right to your living room for your viewing pleasure! Before TV it was radio that they used to deliver propaganda and before that it was the local preacher in church. The elite class has been using these type of means to deliver these narratives as it helped them convince you that things were happening just by pure chance and it is just your bad luck why you can’t seem to succeed no matter how hard you try! Thats why there is all the change recently is because they are loosing face at lightspeed because the propaganda isn’t working again! Yes again. this goes back to Ancient Rome that fell in a day, wonder why it feel’s like they are pushing us towards bankruptcy. Back to Egypt, and many more thigs that relate fully to what is going on now a days! There is a certain class of people or individuals that has been controlling the narrative for a long time and got to greedy and showed their true colors accidently. Now they are scared AF that people want accountability for their actions that they know the people won’t stop until they get it as the corrupt operated for years under the guise that they were an integral part of keeping our positive progress of people’s freedom’s and right’s!
@clintonneuhaus1818
June 14, 2024 at 2:03 pm
I wonder if an indie game developer could use the footage from those games to create something more playable.
@le01jack
June 14, 2024 at 2:35 pm
Great video. I’m going to spread the word. Way more people should be subscribed to this channel
@noway8233
June 14, 2024 at 3:36 pm
I remember thats times , abd that magazine , nice memories😊
@bobdobalina838
June 14, 2024 at 6:18 pm
5/64ths hex? The US is so backwards in not using the metric system. How much better does 5mm sound
@paulj0557tonehead
June 14, 2024 at 7:01 pm
In 1987 in Hollywood I trash picked a Selectavision. I was blown away by the sheer number of 8-pin op-amps!! It was soooo analog! VHS first run movies were $59 not the hundreds you claim.
@SuicV
June 14, 2024 at 7:45 pm
Now I want to play the murder mystery
@paulj0557tonehead
June 14, 2024 at 7:59 pm
@Popular Science , Hey now we had major video tech in the 70’s. You might do a piece on Warner Qube. In 1977 Warner Cable of America and Pioneer of Japan started the very first interactive TV in Columbus, Ohio called QUBE. So we were really in the digital age in 1977. I grew up in the Columbus suburb Hilliard, Ohio where the first Qube customer received their Qube box a week or so before everyone else to be sure everything worked. New computer systems gave Qube headquarters on Olentangy Road ( near Battelle Research Labs as a matter of fact) the customers exact location for billing, instant programing, poll demographics, etc.
There were 5 response buttons, QUBE one off productions and community programming. You could even bid on live auctions with your response buttons. 10 Premium movie and special events ( Like Led Zeppelin Song Remains the Same), 10 Community TV of network stations from Columbus, Cleveland, Chicago, and oldies TV show channel (commercial free), and 10 local channels with the first ever digital bulletin boards which was TV schedule, grocery store prices, weather channel.
Qube’s weakness? Theft. Upon the first wave of customers it was figured out that if you held down all five response buttons at once it would trick the Premium (pay per view) 10 channels from getting billed. Once fixed the major theft hack lasted for years. They HAD to know! The hack was in the key hole on top of the corded remote channel changer Qube box.
HOW WARNER QUBE LOST MILLIONS…but come on they had to know. [Look up an image of Warner Qube box 1977. btw great Qube vids of ‘opening day’ and a guy also came down from Cleveland and did a little Qube review. He’s got the purple flowery shirt on in the thumbnail].
So anyway, the hack that ended(??) Warner Qube:
With the magnetic parental key removed there was a visible tiny hole at the bottom of the key hole. Being that the switch array was low voltage this hack never burned anything out. The hack was to outstretch a paperclip, hook a rubber band at one end and tightly hook around the rubber band so you had a long outstretched paperclip and a rubber band attached. The trick was to stick the paperclip into the hole and fish it around with any ‘P’ 1-10 channel button depressed. The red LED below the ‘P’ indicated you were in premium mode. Invariably there was always a free ‘P’ channel like P1 “sneak peaks” trailers or what have you. So you’d put it on “P1”. Next you fish around the paperclip and as soon as that ‘P’ LED goes out and the channel doesn’t change, but the ‘C’ LED comes on ( below the 10 “Community” non premium buttons) you stretch your rubber band down and hook it onto any of the buttons to anchor that paperclip where it is at shorting the circuit board. Now you can press any ‘P’ 1 through 10 channels and you don’t get charged because it registers as C 1-10 channels.
Columbus was chosen because we are the test market capital of the United States. It also showed America that if you are stupid enough to know you’re being ripped off and do nothing about it. Well, I was only age 11 to 14 while we had Qube so I plead the 5th. lol
@Dave__f
June 14, 2024 at 8:41 pm
I got a stack of these ob my ebay
@stellamcwick8455
June 14, 2024 at 9:23 pm
I know of at least one dealer that did in fact rent out selectavision disks. It was the only way he could sell the machines because no one wanted to buy the movies. The rational was it was better to be stuck with just a machine rather than a machine and a bunch of movies tied to a dead format.
The dealer told my dad that the main reasoning he was given by customers was that they had been sold on the 8-track cassette and when it petered out, they were stuck with hardware and a collection of content that once the player died, they had to find another player in a market that wasn’t making new ones, in order to play their cassettes.
@institutakustikisputnika
June 14, 2024 at 9:40 pm
I have Murder Anyone? on LaserDisc.
@Watcher3223
June 15, 2024 at 12:25 am
_”(CED) was a catastrophic revolution in home entertainment that brought down one of the twentieth century’s biggest tech empires.”_
Well, yes and no.
CED was a massive failure for RCA, which certainly didn’t help them to avert their collapse as a company … but CED’s failure wasn’t the sole reason for RCA’s fall.
The problem was that RCA was, for all intents and purposes, lost as a company when good leadership … specifically David Sarnoff … was no longer at the helm.
After David Sarnoff’s retirement, RCA Corporation wound up becoming a terribly mismanaged company that GE would eventually buy out and break up.
@mediawarrior5957
June 15, 2024 at 2:43 am
PORN is the harbinger of all trends of mainstream media. First to Embrace VHS and not only that determines what new format becomes industry standard. first to get on the internet, first to deal with piracy, death of studio star system and to see audience fragmentation and the death of theatres.
@charlesknowlton7198
June 15, 2024 at 8:13 am
THIS is annoying. THIS video lasted all but 5 seconds.
@ThriftyAV
June 15, 2024 at 10:34 am
My RCA SFT100 that I found at Goodwill doesn’t have a remote, and never did according to CEDMagic. How am I supposed to play the interactive games? Great vid about this retro tech. Liked and subscribed.
@Idelia412
June 15, 2024 at 2:48 pm
Even Netflix no longer allows you to rent a movie disc of a movie you want to watch. They only have a limited number of movies to watch on their website. This really sucks!
@blackryan5291
June 15, 2024 at 6:37 pm
9:41 – Weirdly I am kinda disappointed that you didn’t use Powerade
@orbitalblimp
June 15, 2024 at 6:39 pm
So, the placed that I rented the CED player from must have been breaking the law if they weren’t supposed to be renting them out to consumers! This was in the early 80s. This video was so funny and entertaining the I subscribed. Great job!
@Studeb
June 15, 2024 at 7:46 pm
I had no idea what these were when I bought three of the discs on Ebay for about ten quid in total in the early 2000s, Taxi Driver, Poltergeist and The Exorcist. I just loved the way they look, so I had them framed behind glass, Taxi Driver in the middle. Love the knowledge here.
@markmarkofkane8167
June 16, 2024 at 12:13 am
My father bought a player in 1982. We have dozens of discs.
It was cheaper than laser disc players at the time, and had more movie titles available. We watched 100’s of hours of CED discs. We rented discs, also.
Then we got a VCR in 1984. That changed everything. We copied movies from CED discs, and I recorded Friday night videos and stuff.
@BrickTamlandOfficial
June 16, 2024 at 12:59 am
i thought “im staying in tonight” meant they werent gonna pull out.
@subzerosystemx
June 16, 2024 at 1:22 am
pain in the a$$ to play these games on these weird discs😂
@TimChuma
June 16, 2024 at 1:32 am
Some people collect the same movie on different formats. They are up to about 14 now. Finding a laserdisc is cheap these days but the players are $400
@majestyk3337
June 16, 2024 at 5:43 am
I’m amazed you never heard of it back in the day. The small Canadian city I grew in was big into this and laserdisc. Fortunately, more people had LD than SV.
@majestyk3337
June 16, 2024 at 5:47 am
Ok, I might have aggregated that the locals were big into SV, but I knew people who had them. I actually knew a guy who accidentally put a second disc in the machine and it gladly accepted it…and thus broke itself. Back then LD’s were available at a few video stores and you could even rent the machines.
@kcgunesq
June 16, 2024 at 10:14 am
I remember a friend having one of these and a VCR. The selectavision was relegated to the small secondary TV. The VCR was for the “large” 27 inch TV. I don’t recall the selectavision having any real world advantage, except possibly not having to rewind.
@McAllen07
June 16, 2024 at 12:05 pm
I could be the channel’s 100,000th subscriber, or close to it. You’re going Silver soon!
@mybigfatpolishlife
June 16, 2024 at 12:23 pm
CED was too little too late
@vacationboyvideos
June 16, 2024 at 2:49 pm
Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare
@ThisSteveGuy
June 16, 2024 at 2:50 pm
How does this channel not have 100k subs yet?
@scottlarson1548
June 16, 2024 at 3:51 pm
Right after this disaster, RCA proceeded to try to develop the future of television broadcasting called ACTV. It would be totally compatible with existing televisions but the ACTV televisions would see a _slightly_ wider image on their _slightly_ wider television screens. They did this by cramming the extra sides of the video into parts of the video signal that normally carried nothing. RCA admitted that it wasn’t anything like the HDTV that the Japanese were developing but it was totally compatible with regular television sets and who needed a really wide sharp image? Maybe in another decade they could broadcast ACTV on two television channels for real high definition. No rush, right?
The initial public demonstrations of ACTV showed the new sides of the wider image were visibly more blurry than the center part seen on regular televisions. RCA said don’t worry, they were still working on it and they’d get the bugs out of it soon enough. As interest shifted to actual high definition television, they gave up and threw their slightly wider ACTV screens and equipment into the same dusty warehouse next to the stacks of unsold SelectaVision players and discs.
@TonysMusic1974
June 16, 2024 at 5:12 pm
14:45 this cheesy dance number was actually pretty typical stylistically of broadway musicals of the late 70’s and early 80’s so its understandable why they would use it. Just check out this commercial from 1985 that aired thousands of times when I was a kid –
@TonysMusic1974
June 16, 2024 at 5:23 pm
The exasperation in your speaking cadence sorta gets old after a while
@istankimjong-unbutcantstan3398
June 17, 2024 at 6:04 pm
I find it better then other narrators on YouTube that end their sentences by stressing the last word, thus sounding like they had to repeat the sentence for the umpteenth time and are frustrated.
@Cornel1001
June 16, 2024 at 6:38 pm
Never seen !
@anthonygallo3576
June 16, 2024 at 7:32 pm
The problem with the video disk was simple. Consumers didn’t want to invest in the machine unless there was a large selection of movies,and the companies didn’t want to put movies on disks until the machines started selling. Similar to the catastrophic release of the Polaroid camera
@istankimjong-unbutcantstan3398
June 17, 2024 at 5:21 pm
I think that Halsey video may be giving the Polaroid camera some good publicity. I’ve seen people starting to used those conventional cameras again. Some are practically tanks.
@comatose3788
June 16, 2024 at 7:52 pm
Let’s go back and hate on anything we can find in the past … you must have run out of things to hate on now. I had one of these and OMG you had to a just something. Hope you never get a flat tire don’t sound like you’re going to be able to handle it. Worest part is you don’t even really know why this failed. You just found something to hate on and made a video. What a joke.
@ericsaresky6246
June 16, 2024 at 11:02 pm
After him explaining how to play the interactive Murder, Anyone? game, I believe it’s easier to launch a missile.
@istankimjong-unbutcantstan3398
June 17, 2024 at 6:20 pm
…or play Clue.
@hwertz10
June 17, 2024 at 3:20 am
I never saw one of these but read about them — I think I may have those very Popular Sciences you showed. I was completely unaware of the rental prohibition on these discs. They introduced it far too late, and indeed (as Sony did with Beta) underestimated the impact that, like, you’re spending big bucks to watch movies at home, at that point you might as well get the format that lets you get ALL movies, not just a limited subset (i.e. VHS allowed porn, while these other formats didn’t.)
RCA really thought they had a friggin’ goldmine, they could press these discs on modified record equipment so the production costs for discs (apparently even including that giant caddy) was apparently FAR lower than tape formats and lower than laserdisc. This didn’t help either — they were so fixated on making it work using production methods that’d let them use pressed discs, it likely blinded them to methods that would have resulted in a more reliable format and player. The metal styluses that had to be regularly replaced would get old too I imagine.I assume the delay in releasing players was to try to solve the skipping problem — then realized they better just ship players and discs anyway since laserdisc (with the most cheesily named player ever, discovision), Beta, and VHS all coming out or out on the market.
My parents go their first VCR in the mid 1980s as far as I recall (I was pretty young); they did more recording their own stuff to watch a bit later (or if two shows were on at once, record one) than they did renting tapes to watch. And, other than blanks as their re-re-re-reused tapes eventually wore out, I’m not sure they ever bought any tapes until like the late 1990s when they cost almost nothing due to DVD already being out.
I think this is overlooked somewhat in the modern era — it’s like, if you were going to spend $100s, would you rather get a box you can watch movies on? Or one that does that AND is a crude DVR? (Some you had to tune to the right channel, wait for the time, hit record, then stop it at the end. Some had timer record, so you could set a channel and time ahead of time or even multiple, although usually not used unless someone was going to be out of town for a while. Much much later on… we never had a VCR that supported this… there were these like 5 or 6 or so digit codes in the tv listings you could just type in to the VCR to record a show rather than having to set time and channel yourself. I assume the number just encoded a time, channel #, and show length.)
@LatitudeSky
June 17, 2024 at 4:12 am
There actually were Selectavision rentals, after a fashion. My local public library would lend out the players and the movies, for free, but they did ask for a deposit which would be refunded. My family borrowed the machine and movies multiple times. In an era when cable TV had not even wired the neighborhood, it was pretty neat to have that machine. But still not entirely new. They had also been lending out movie projectors, screens and reels of movies on actual film. You could literally bring home the whole movie experience, film reels and all, for free, and perhaps make some JiffyPop to snack on. Anyway, RCA bet hard and lost big on Selectavision but they had no choice. If they went all-in and succeeded, they had a future. It failed. But RCA had nothing else. They were doomed to fail if they hadn’t gone with Selectavision. Sure they had VHS but so did hundreds of competitors. RCA had one shot to stay relevant. If they did nothing, they were done. If they tried and failed, they were done. But if they tried and it somehow became a hit, they had a future. One shot. One chance. It didn’t work out.
@Billblom
June 17, 2024 at 10:07 am
I was working in TV as an enginner at the local NBC affiliate when Selectavision finally arrived at the local “High end” shop. You had to be a “special” long term customer to actually get a demo. At the time, I was far from impressed. (I was used to seeing the quad tapes of the period.) They never sold one that I’m aware of. The fragility of the disks was the biggie. Even brand new disks were not perfect. That said, they were a lot better than VHS, and approached super beta. But Sony, with their lack of vision had only one partner… Zenith. And VHS was coming from every manufacturer other than Sony at that point. Had they done the laser disk it would have succeeded. The high end store sold LOTS of those… and had those demos for everyone…and sold them to all the home theater folk at the time. The RCA computers (Sigma 7 and 8) had their problems as well, but NASA used the Sigma systems at NASA and others…. One of the new models got delivered to their sales office (I think in Palm Beach) and during their monthly inventory they reported that. New Jersey called and said “You don’t have that. It was shipped to California.” — the local office there said “We do… It is here… in a multitude of racks.” — but Camden said “No you don’t. Get rid of it.” So they scrapped the whole computer by orders from the home office. 2 months later they got a call saying “Where is serial number X?” “We don’t have it.” — Apparently they were running their business on a system and had people that would not listen… so they lost a multi million dollar mainframe. Sheesh. (The report I got was backed up by seeing box upon box of ttl filled cards that came from the machine that they were told to scrap…) RCA was totally lost at the top, and the Selectavision was just one of the pieces that pushed them over the cliff…
@athrunzala75
June 17, 2024 at 10:57 am
I saw one of these machines, completely working, and a decent collection of discs (including one of the Peanuts specials!) at a flea market years ago and I still regret not buying it.
@bigginsmcsauce
June 17, 2024 at 1:49 pm
27:31 Everyone should listen to some *Tycho* every now and then. PBS is an AMAZINGLY chill song to start with. Got to meet him (Scott Hansen) once in St. Augustine Florida, in little hole-in-the-wall type venue–Nice dude, great musician and even a very talented graphical designer/photographer under the moniker ISO50! Check him out!
@RickDrew
June 17, 2024 at 3:28 pm
RCA was going downhill for ages at this time. Had one of their top-end TVs. It broke 9 times in a year. They kept servicing it under a three year warranty. By the 2nd year it was sitting in the shop for three months – no parts available. No solution. No working TV. Lot’s of people had the same problem. They’re customer service was abysmal.
@istankimjong-unbutcantstan3398
June 17, 2024 at 5:02 pm
I remember those. I remember somebody in a store showing me how it worked where she slid the entire case into the player’s slot and a few seconds later, it would slide back out but with the disk now inside the machine. I never heard whether or not it was a success but I never saw the player in other stores. In the 2000s I remember buying a video disc that came in a similar case but you could open the case to retrieve the disk. I figured it was the same technology but that you didn’t have to slid in the entire case. Those never took off either.
@ja-is2lf
June 17, 2024 at 6:21 pm
Those units we’re junk, even back then. They were the video equivalent of 8- track tapes. Nobody I ever knew had one. If you wanted to watch one of the movies in that format, you had to rent the unit with the movie at the video store. Loud, slow, crappy picture where you could actually see the video quality degrade after just a few plays of the titIe.
@kjm-ch7jc
June 17, 2024 at 7:03 pm
Metric please for your international viewers, LOL
@DaveCobbIdeaguy
June 17, 2024 at 7:36 pm
I played the murder mystery ones in 1982. It was super awesome then, if only for the novelty.
@tooleyheadbang4239
June 18, 2024 at 2:21 pm
I had one of these, years later, and only today found out there was an interactive element.
I still have a Philips CDi, which was a later interactive format.
Not quite as clunky as Selectavision, but still dire.
@AdamsOlympia
June 17, 2024 at 7:43 pm
Fellow 80s kid whose dad also co-owned a VHS rental store, called “Movie Magic” 😉 .. We were lucky to get out of the business just before Blockbuster ruined it for the mom and pops a couple years later.
Spent many hours of my childhood watching all the classics in the employee lounge, circa 1983-1988, or bringing 8-10 movies home every other week. Plus the local dollar movie theater owner gave us free tickets in exchange for free movie rentals. Good times!
@dead_formats
June 17, 2024 at 9:51 pm
Why are you coming across in your video as if youre really stressed or angry..???
@zigzagtoes
June 17, 2024 at 10:16 pm
No disrespect intended here. Did you seriously not hear about this before flipping through an old mag? I only ask due to your content being old tech, and as an old tech emthusist, I would have thought you may have seen plenty of techmoan vids, where he has also covered this.
Anyhoos, keep doing what you’re doing. The more videos available on a topic/system, helps to keep historical tech from vanishing from archive records. (tired so hope this made sense).
@Beaula2
June 18, 2024 at 2:45 am
I hate how the camera zooms forward and backward all the time, even in the same shot.
And this dudes overexperessiveness reminds me of a buzz feed video.
Yuck.
Barely tolerable.
What is this for? 7 year olds?
@Beaula2
June 18, 2024 at 2:49 am
Edit:
OMG the editor is now zoom jumping Technology Connections section of the video.
It is now untolorable.
@Edricofifrit
June 18, 2024 at 2:51 am
Dear sweet Jesus my grandpa had that huge remote
@ghos7bear
June 18, 2024 at 3:19 am
Interesting topic, but soy host ruins it
@ManuFortis
June 18, 2024 at 4:16 am
“For most people, movies just don’t work that way” 24:45 ~
Yeah. I watch a movie once. Maybe twice. If I am watching it more than twice, it’s a really damn good movie. The kind where you have to watch it more than once, because of just how much is going on in it.
Those are very rare.
@brianpaulison9745
June 18, 2024 at 11:09 am
I am Generation X and 80s baby most people stayed away from these kind of weird systems everybody liked simple and fast
@Janusz-ze5sh
June 18, 2024 at 11:49 am
Perfect Example of death end technology.
@glennjames7107
June 18, 2024 at 12:47 pm
In the early 80’s I was a young kid and I vividly remember a friend of my parents that we used to visit once or twice a week had one of these things. I think my father had already bought our first VCR/Camcorder, which was a monster. My dad was always into new tech. and we were the first family in our community of friends and neighbors that had one. It consisted of two separate units that worked together. One unit was the video player/recorder, and the other part was, I’m assuming the brains. The camcorder was another another apparatus that consisted of the camera, a separate huge battery pack, and you combined the video player/recorder unit with them, and you had one of the first camcorders. Needless to say, you’d better have a strong back to use it, as everything hung on straps from your shoulders while you held the camera up with your hands !
Anyway, we borrowed our friends Selectravision machine for a month or so because video stores were non-existent at the time, and they had literally like three shelves in a bookcase full of these movies on this format. From what I remember, it worked well. I don’t remember having any issues with it. I’ve wondered my entire life what these things were, and where they went, now I know !
It wasn’t long before video stores started popping up everywhere and we were off to the races !
@larrytan73
June 18, 2024 at 12:58 pm
When he stated, “I have no ideal/I was not born,”Video Disc where before my time.” Thats when I knew that this video was doomed. The were arounf since the 70’s well into the 90’s Thats great run!
@theodanielwollff
June 18, 2024 at 1:35 pm
Wow you have a new channel???
@SuperTrainStationH
June 18, 2024 at 8:41 pm
Being in my later middle thirties, I’m probably among the younger people around to have grown up with this in their house WITHOUT the context of it being “vintage tech”, it’s just what we had in the house because my grandma had a huge library of disks. This is how I watched Indiana Jones and Star Wars as a kid.
@looneyburgmusic
June 18, 2024 at 9:28 pm
Funny thing is, for those of us who bought CED players and movies back then, it lasted just as long as any other format – tape, DVD, BR… about a decade, (give or take), before being retired.
@rkmklz7562
June 19, 2024 at 1:01 am
I remember selsct a vision….this was the first dvd player…it failed because of VHS recorders…since people were recording their own shows 😮
@LethalBubbles
June 19, 2024 at 2:58 am
why are you comparing CED to netflix? CED is physical media. CED is real. Netflix is a scam.
@bobstevenson3130
June 19, 2024 at 5:19 am
One small thing, JVC didn’t “allow” adult content to be released on VHS. The reason adult content was available on VHS but not CED was because the CED was created to sell prerecorded content while the VHS was only created to record live TV, so RCA had an interest in controlling the media available for the CED but JVC didn’t have any interest because that was never the intention.
@kjaxky
June 19, 2024 at 7:03 am
100+gb of data wow Based on it was 200 times capacity of a record (which the sound on a. Record generaly fits onto a compact disc (700mb in wav format) 200x is 140,000mb OR over 100gb of data ??? Boy did Steve Jobs miss tbe boat on stealing and re-branding that tech. Apple 2c could have had todays storage capacity .
@kjaxky
June 19, 2024 at 7:13 am
These rca people claim to be geniuses, though they did steal the color tv , from it’s inventor. It never occurrd to them to hard plastic coat or even glass coat the disc itself ? Before you say it’s capacitance based not laser , so is the screen you’re swiping to read this on. Which is glass coated and many people add an extra glass protector. Too bad David Sarnoff the chairman of rca tv was a scoundrel and not a true inventor or genius. ALEXA said he’s the orignial steve jobs, sounds about right, rebranded other peoples tech , mass marketed it and took the credit. Hmm more or less the FElon Musk story. Scum don’t succeed forever , learned that from Star Wars , in the 80s haha
@azynkron
June 19, 2024 at 10:14 am
Excuse me.. but wtf is 5/64? What kind of deranged measurement is that?
@WhippingBrady
June 19, 2024 at 2:10 pm
I know you said the movies were not able to be rented but there must have been some way around that. Back in the early 80s, I remember my parents renting a player and a couple of movies. That was the first time I saw “Airplane”. So while we may have not rented the movies, we rented the player and it came with some movies.
@jessilaurn
June 19, 2024 at 2:36 pm
We had not one but two Selectavision players when I was growing up. The first was belt-driven (with the problems that came with that); the second was gear-driven. That said, we *did* have a local shop that rented out Selectavision discs (licensing be damned).
@markrix
June 19, 2024 at 3:59 pm
Anyone else have a distaste for tech connections? Alot about nothing imo. The pandemic ended, back to life.
@markrix
June 19, 2024 at 4:12 pm
The entire thing can be summed up 22:00. Its just like those books where you make one choice and go to a different page. Its not ‘endless’ and with any index card, instructions and way to fwd to different points you get the same result. Wow i wasted way to much time on this, i thought he was going to discuss the capacive disk and the compression texh and how rhe tracking head worked… Guess not, again alot out of nothing..
@AnglophobiaIsevil7
June 19, 2024 at 4:13 pm
Are those the giant disks my teacher’s always played lame educational stuff from? Anyone remember that?
@markrix
June 19, 2024 at 4:14 pm
I can see a multi choice porno disk with endless possibilities hahahaha
@Tony-rz4ks
June 19, 2024 at 4:33 pm
I remember this
@cobra02411
June 19, 2024 at 4:41 pm
There was also 8mm and 16mm bootlegs. I heard some people had the full size 32mm stuff but that seemed really rare. I had a friend who’s father was into the 16mm stuff and yeah, he had gotten raided by the feds once or twice. But he also was pretty crafty about hiding his movies… The outlaw nature of it was kind of thrilling as a kid.
But it wasn’t anywhere as easy as VHS, DVD, etc. It takes a few reels for a 16mm movie and you have to change them. There’s a “bug” that shows when the reel needs to be swapped. So you really need two projectors so you can cut from one to the other. Then you can load the next real and get ready to switch back in 30 minutes or so…
@AnglophobiaIsevil7
June 19, 2024 at 4:43 pm
Technology wizards: “what would you like?”
Humans: “boobs”
Technology wizards: “..uh how about clue only more confusing”
Humans: “..can I .”
Technology wizards: “no, no you cannot pause it on Lea’s scenes, we distinctly built it to not be able to do that”
Humans: “😡”
@jcallen21
June 19, 2024 at 5:52 pm
I still have One in storage lol. With stars wars , raiders of the lost ark, Friday the 13th and a couple of more movies
@justinhorn2864
June 19, 2024 at 5:58 pm
There was a video store of these when I was a kid in Ohio don’t remember what it was called. A mom and pop place I seen Back to the future on this. Not sure how all that was. My step dad had Patton, jaws don’t remember what else
@davidpoole5595
June 19, 2024 at 6:32 pm
Had one
It was awesome
One store in my mid sized city rented them
@douro20
June 19, 2024 at 7:45 pm
Video High Density was superior to CED in many ways but it didn’t do much better, even in Japan where it was developed. Thorn EMI licensed the technology in the UK.
@shaider1982
June 19, 2024 at 9:19 pm
Yup, Tech Connections video series on the CED was awesome.
@trivalentclan-mizar9591
June 19, 2024 at 10:22 pm
I got brand new DVDs that skip like those discs
@johnwalko1483
June 20, 2024 at 4:39 am
A vey well put together documentary on the history of the RCA Video Disc Player and Disc. Very informative. Thanks.
@synergy021
June 20, 2024 at 4:41 am
Lol the “internet is for porn” or before that “recorded media is for porn” haha.
@J.Wick.
June 20, 2024 at 9:34 am
I miss RCA/Victor/JVC. Especially JVC. They were always my first choice for most things. Features at or beyond Sony, usually for less $.
@AltimusPrimeG1
June 20, 2024 at 3:23 pm
What a nostalgia trip that was. We had one of these back in the 80’s. We had Wrath of Khan, War Games, a Disney cartoon video disk and 2 others I cannot remember. I do not remember any issues with it but then again I was very young back then.
@Stinktierchen
June 20, 2024 at 3:51 pm
Can you please talk in a normal way and act in a normal way. I mean, not this over the top fake hollywood style of a clown.
@djpoonjahjah
June 20, 2024 at 3:59 pm
Grew up with CED’s, loved them! Still do, but I used to too. Fun video, thank you for it! Salute!
@willmar3212
June 20, 2024 at 5:45 pm
It was a causality of the format wars. It lost because it could not record programs, only replay movies.
@nwerd7584
June 20, 2024 at 6:23 pm
I wish WHY it was so late was covered. To do what it did couldnt have taken so long imo, sounds like bad management or bad engineering multiple times over. Now its pretty well known porn absolutely controls the major technology of present and past times
@tstahler5420
June 20, 2024 at 6:34 pm
It didn’t happen because people in the industry didn’t it to happen. Technology has been held back for decades, cell phones are a great example. Ma Bell had a lock on the telephone industry and they made the most out of it.
@loumendez5371
June 20, 2024 at 6:55 pm
Wow! The very first laserdisc.
@robertcasey2490
June 20, 2024 at 8:27 pm
At 1:15 I used to work for RCA at their R&D Lab (Sarnoff Labs) in the early 1980’s and I knew the guy who was trying to develop this video disc game platform. We never got that far when RCA shjtcanned the videodisc and then GE shjtcanned RCA.
@robertcasey2490
June 20, 2024 at 8:53 pm
At 25:18 had RCA made pornographic discs, they player could have been called a “Pornograph” 🙂
@FloridaGeekScene
June 20, 2024 at 11:00 pm
I still have a few of these discs. Mostly horror movies.
@clok1966
June 20, 2024 at 11:16 pm
Grew up during these. saw them new and when they failed. Picked up a player for $100 and 50-60 discs for $1.99 each. We had it out and played some movies a year to two ago and it worked fine. These things get a pretty bad rap. When they came out they were pretty interesting and worked fine. None of my disc seem to have any issues, but to be fair I don’t use them. I used them a lot in the 80’s but since VHS and other formats came out I have had it out and played it a handful of times in the last 30 years. it came out before VHS and like many technologies, it was the pinnacle for price till something better came along, unfortunately, it came out pretty quickly, and well prices for VHS dropped quickly. Where I lived they rented players and disc for the same price as a movie ticket. an RCA /appliance store so I’m not sure how they rented them since this video says it couldn’t. They had a very busy rental business right up till VHS tapes were in rental stores. If i would have anything bad to say, you had to flip the disc in the middle, and long movies came on two discs ( but many did on VHS too). Skipping was rare for me.. I would get one (rent) and if it skipped you could pull it out of the case and see damage.. so it was to abuse.. you could not scratch one without using it the wrong way since they were mostly rental discs. in my opinion.
@fucker4166
June 21, 2024 at 1:10 am
Just some great content here thank you for making this great video ❤️
@hitmixhyepock9405
June 21, 2024 at 2:05 am
All the formats we have had in video is based on the porn industry……vhs over betamax and ced, dvd over vhs, bluray over hd-dvd, internet over physical media.
@scotttait2197
June 21, 2024 at 3:17 am
I lovw old tech, but man I glazed over as soon as you started going through how to do the murder mystery lol
@nin1ten1do
June 21, 2024 at 1:06 pm
RCA basicly rip and tear any N.Tesla patent to calim it as theyr work EWTF” shame on you you dont mention that..
@SoundOfYourDestiny
June 21, 2024 at 4:39 pm
This was never a “revolution.” CED discs were junk from day one, and every informed person knew it. LaserDisc, on the other hand, is one of the best consumer-electronics products ever. As in most “format wars,” a shitty product damaged the entire industry. Pioneer deserves praise for soldiering on as long as it did.
@ShaunChristopulos
June 21, 2024 at 6:53 pm
I’m 45. We had 2 of those when I was a kid.
@bmobert
June 21, 2024 at 8:58 pm
I always think about using the JVC VHD digital capacitance technology combined with the Tefifon vinyl tape.
It would have been an interesting bit of kit.
@matthewotremba9230
June 22, 2024 at 12:24 am
33/45/78 RPM
@matthewotremba9230
June 22, 2024 at 12:25 am
The Moni Disc was Quite Valid
Used it for all band recordings
@matthewotremba9230
June 22, 2024 at 12:30 am
Elmhurst Electronics
On Broadway in Queens , 1970s
My Dads Repair shop
@jaysheck88
June 22, 2024 at 3:04 am
My dad had one when I was a kid
@trollzone1
June 22, 2024 at 4:20 am
Crazy how this worked as it’s a fully analog totally non digital format
@seancooney8799
June 22, 2024 at 5:29 am
I was born in 81 and my parents owned a video disk player that is actually still in the garage ( found it cleaning out the garage last summer) I remember watching Horton hears a who and the Grinch who stole Christmas on the the video disk player when I was 3 or 4.
@IncognitoChild
June 22, 2024 at 7:06 am
I do have to love people who have an obsession collecting old tech and being prepared to spend $699 on a whim.
Yet when you read most YouTube content, the average American doesn’t want to spend more than $400 on a 4K Blu-ray player 🤔
@mullinsjm1
June 22, 2024 at 7:16 am
If this is what I think it is: we dabbled with this a little in the early 80s when I was a kid. I remember you had to flip it over to change sides around halfway through the movie. We rented or borrowed (I don’t remember) a player and movies and would record them to vhs.
@stefanluthi6399
June 22, 2024 at 9:47 am
😆
@PaulJohn283
June 22, 2024 at 10:08 am
50 dollars a week, man that butler was really playing hard ball.
@dwaiting883
June 22, 2024 at 11:23 am
I was raised on one of these. We still have the library but our player doesnt work. We got it when they were producing so many popular 80’s films: never ending story, back to the future, star wars, etc.
@norwegianblue2017
June 22, 2024 at 6:50 pm
My grandfather had one of these! It was a terrible format, especially for rentals. It would get dust in it and skip around and have snowy image quality. Half the movies he rented were almost unwatchable. Laser discs were far superior.
@bendeleted9155
June 22, 2024 at 7:42 pm
Oh,man. I could have had RED milk crates?!
@johnviera3884
June 22, 2024 at 9:43 pm
you have to remember that phones only had dial tone and calls.
@markarca6360
June 23, 2024 at 7:18 am
As of the present, DVDs and Blu-rays can do the exact same thing.
@YouTubeOdyssey
June 23, 2024 at 10:57 am
I want to see Nick Nolte selling this machine, circa 2015 or so!
@wymonwatson1309
June 23, 2024 at 3:34 pm
We had one of these when i was a kid. I watched it in my teens in the 90’s even. The video quality was far betrer than vhs. We had probably 30-40 disks for it.
@luckyleo787
June 23, 2024 at 4:28 pm
There was one video rental store in my small hometown in Oklahoma, where could rent the RCA Selectavision/VCD’s. Maybe they weren’t supposed to, but they definitely did. Those huge cartridge things were displayed on shelves, and you would walk to the counter with a few, like you were delivering flat pizzas or something. They switched to VHS pretty quickly, though.
@Walt_Xander94
June 23, 2024 at 6:22 pm
Those vinyl movies were basically early Blu-Rays? All these old 70s/80s tech is fascinating.
@omegaman1409
June 23, 2024 at 8:44 pm
tbh never heard of selectavision. Did hear about the laser discs. All I ever knew was the vhs. Great humor by the way.
@Steven_Will
June 24, 2024 at 12:22 am
This story is similar to the Panasonic 3do gaming console
@kylewarren5268
June 24, 2024 at 2:58 am
I think it’s a cool media. We’ll see who is laughing when the world ends and internet is gone but people with these can watch movies all day long.
@kylewarren5268
June 24, 2024 at 3:20 am
Sounds to me like they designed it that way to give EVERYONE playing something to do if u basically needed to assign tasks to players so it all goes smooth. They once called it “family time.”
@adonian
June 24, 2024 at 10:36 am
My cousin had one of these. I had laserdisc.
@davidholder1192
June 24, 2024 at 2:15 pm
When I was a graduate student at UNT in Denton, we had a ‘media’ cart leftover from some research in the 80’s that had a computer, laserdisc player, and touch screen monitor. It was part of some research on building interactive video learning systems. This research was canceled because of the prevalence of the Internet as it evolved into interactive websites.
@kameljoe21
June 24, 2024 at 3:05 pm
Question: Has someone downloaded the entire game and converted it in to something we can use on modern stuff?
@TheRoidemortetfleur
June 24, 2024 at 5:47 pm
“own”
I think that is reversing. You own nothing. Even media.
@jimbotron70
June 24, 2024 at 8:10 pm
Clever technology, sadly overshadowed by the upcoming Laserdisc.
@paulwarner5395
June 24, 2024 at 9:47 pm
Thanx for the history lesson. I remember back in 1963 in my physics class suggesting that it was possible to record video on to a disk like a LP and was nearly bood out of the class. Boy were they wrong. Selectavision proves I was right years before it happened.
@zmbdog
June 25, 2024 at 4:12 am
25:13 Thank you for explicitly stating this. There is a recent trend of trying to downplay the influence of adult films on these formats. As a film researcher, and someone who grew up at the time, it’s really annoying.
@majicboxstudios3996
June 25, 2024 at 5:03 am
As someone who is around during this time and understand the history of technology in relation to home computers video games and consumer electronics on the high end… This channel’s personality is complete goober. I never want to watch any of your videos again.
30 minutes of time wasted. Good luck in the future
@djresource717
June 25, 2024 at 6:57 am
I remember Laser disc..a major breakthrough in 1980s..
@johnmorgan4405
June 25, 2024 at 8:12 am
Loved you in Breaking Bad.
@rudolphguarnacci197
June 25, 2024 at 9:18 am
My living room was covered with shag lime.
@peanutmansemporiumofrandom7472
June 25, 2024 at 11:09 am
27:28 WRONG. There are so many shows and movies that you have to buy bootleg copies of just to watch them. 27:34 wrong again. There are some songs that are just impossible to find or certain versions of a song that are now lost.
@Sthunderrocker
June 25, 2024 at 12:03 pm
2-XL and Omni also do quizes…
@Sthunderrocker
June 25, 2024 at 12:03 pm
Still have my CED player.
@zelvadrian
June 25, 2024 at 1:05 pm
I heard it was 600 million; I guess they rounded off. But anyway, 600 million from 1985 in an inflation calculator for this year, is 2.26 BILLION!
@zelvadrian
June 25, 2024 at 1:16 pm
Hey guys! Just for a random rant! These CED movies make great novelty retro gifts, when you get them from ebay! I’ve given a few for gifts to loved ones who had a favorite movie, but in CED format! I bought the CED of 1975’s Rollerball for myself! There is a dude from the UK on youtube with the channel “TechMoan”, who bought 3 players, PLUS made a stylus from scratch from a 3D printer, to mix and match, to make a functioning one! Cool stuff! They say around 1997 Circuit CIty’s mistake of Divx cost them $340 million! $140 million to create and market it; $200 million to yank it off the shelves! Some say the E.T. 2600 game, brought down Atari! Bill Gates cited in his 1995 book “The Road Ahead” that he was very paranoid about young Microsoft going under, because all he saw around him, in his young days, was the big giants crashing down, like the dinosaur, because they couldn’t adapt to swift sharp turns, like a 90 degree sudden turn!
@HisNameIsRobertPaulson01
June 25, 2024 at 1:36 pm
That sounds like one great seller on eBay.
@maiconvengrzennunesbusolog4864
June 25, 2024 at 3:10 pm
👏👏
@honkytonkinson9787
June 25, 2024 at 3:29 pm
A daycare my parents took me to in the 1980s had one of these. I didn’t know what it was at the time and later I thought it was some kind of failed laser disc format. I remember watching the transformers movie on it
@johnwhite9218
June 25, 2024 at 5:11 pm
I had one growing up
@alexg9790
June 25, 2024 at 6:08 pm
My mom bought one of these back in the day. I was 9 at the time and did not understand how this was a thing. Did the execs not see Beta or VHS?
@enochpeter
June 25, 2024 at 6:59 pm
I was amazed that so many people bought them. I saw demo machines in electronic stores. The disk image would to deteriorate very quickly. So every store where I saw one running had played the same disk over and over until the picture looked like a damages VHS tape. They also made strange mechanical noises, got jammed and eventually just sat there unplugged. It was obvious how delicate and wonky the thing was. I saw a Laserdisc demo in the mid-‘70s and was blown away. It was revolutionary. The Selectavision was bewildering.
@Minalkra
June 25, 2024 at 10:10 pm
The thumbnail is highly misleading … there is nothing noteworthy about how CED was to be distributed when it was launched. Netflix was always intended as a delivery system that used then-current technology (DVD, Blu-ray, streaming, etc.) to provide the service. CED was a FORMAT first and foremost.
I mean, come on …
@RoyCyberPunk
June 25, 2024 at 10:18 pm
The patience of a Tibetan lamah 😂 that just made me chuckle 😅
@lobsterwhisperer7932
June 26, 2024 at 2:31 am
You’re far too animated for me.
@TheMpo1986
June 26, 2024 at 7:57 pm
No cap that put me off too bruh. Skibidi.
@menocu87
June 26, 2024 at 3:16 am
VHD is much better, I have a working player to this day.
@uzetaab
June 26, 2024 at 6:56 am
12 and five eighths? Such a silly measuring system.
@1ring2rule3pigs
June 26, 2024 at 12:05 pm
Sorry, I LOVE owning my movies and music.
I don’t pay for streaming services. 🎉
@myadventuresinthenewworld1660
June 26, 2024 at 5:11 pm
It’s so cute when millennials “discover” something old and act like they are the first person to ever see it.
@Progger11
June 27, 2024 at 8:08 am
Okay, boomer. Nobody said this was completely unknown. Just obscure.
@vonier13
June 26, 2024 at 5:14 pm
We had a vcr in ’76. They cost about 1200$ and there was NO video stores, then.YOU HAD to BUY what you wanted to watch.shitty movie ? To bad .you own it.
@chriszajac8818
June 26, 2024 at 6:41 pm
Such a sad story but very well done! It’s funny, but I never even heard of any discs before laser disks and I lived back then lol
@friendlyfire7861
June 26, 2024 at 6:55 pm
Just when you thought you knew everything.
@TheMpo1986
June 26, 2024 at 7:55 pm
Yo mr white we can watch star wars and shit! 😂
@mghc7
June 26, 2024 at 8:15 pm
Have 2 players and a bunch of discs..the machine starts right up and was made in 1984.I have a microwave for a yr and a half and the fucking thing is breaking down..I loved this technology but I’m a movie media guy
@shawnj1843
June 26, 2024 at 11:16 pm
I enjoyed Lazer Disc, grown up in the 80’s we would go over to my uncle’s, who had the only Lazer Disc player, I saw Rambo first blood, karate kid, Tommy, Friday 13th, Nightmare on elm Street for the first time. And now today I’m collecting them just for the memories.
And it did bring in DVD and CD. But it’s still cool 😎😎
@Eternyl_bliss-nj9se
June 26, 2024 at 11:56 pm
I own one of these – I own the stereo version with rca inputs. These are really hard to find that work. If you buy one make don’t pay a lot becauase it will probably need some tinkering done on it. I buy horror movies whenever I see them – just a closet nerd. I thought the concept of audio and video running off a stylus is super cool. If you are a cinephile you gotta own one of these a long with a laserdisc player.
@SuperHaunts
June 27, 2024 at 6:21 am
A REALLY *animated* production! (Pun *intended* … Seriously well done video.
@crankychris2
June 27, 2024 at 8:55 am
It was called ‘needlevision’ and competed with Pioneer’s Laservision, VHS and Betamax VCR’s all competing for your 1980 tv budget.
@jamesroviezzo7924
June 27, 2024 at 9:35 am
Is crazy that something that was made a long time ago is worth so much money now
@AndrewAHayes
June 27, 2024 at 10:35 am
I vaguely remember this, I might have seen it on a UK tv show called Tommorows World!
@Windom138
June 27, 2024 at 11:47 am
Hell yeah about being traumatized by the Blob cover on the video store shelf in the 80s.
@ChrisRoth1972
June 27, 2024 at 5:28 pm
I remember when I stayed at the Ronald McDonald House in Virginia,in the living room was a CED Player & had Splash,must have watched it several times.I don’t remember the other Discs.
It didn’t take long to figure out how to operate it.I wasn’t a fan of flipping over a Disc though.
Splash holds a special place in my Heart.
@alm5992
June 27, 2024 at 8:37 pm
Are you a bird or a kid? You are mimicking TC’s voice constantly, especially at 7:10.
@Beatslager
June 27, 2024 at 11:27 pm
I never ever ever heard of this!!!
@Jonathanest90s
June 28, 2024 at 3:53 am
Glad to see someone remembering Adventures in Babysitting.
@marckremers
June 28, 2024 at 10:42 am
2012 called, wants it’s vsauce back.
@spladam3845
June 28, 2024 at 11:41 am
I like it, carry on.
@kjrehberg
June 28, 2024 at 1:02 pm
The Business of Research is a great book that really details the abject failure of the RCA VideoDisc. So much wasted time. So late to market. So unreliable and fragile. RCA really cut off its nose to spite its face.
Btw, I recognized the font from the current edition of the book from Amazon which is a scanned reprint.
@matthewhibbard9807
June 28, 2024 at 2:01 pm
I’m blackmailing you
No, please. I have kids
For $50 a week
Oh, ok. Cool. That’s no problem.
@radionoakmont7756
June 28, 2024 at 3:57 pm
you forgot beta max in the 70’s some of the first video recordable cassettes, i was 6 in 82 i actually knew how to operate my neighbors select a vision he could not even figure it out i watched and read the booklet and started using the controller like you would use a cel phone now days to send text i was a natural, i played a Disney disc that chip n dale on it, i just figured things way faster than others but spent most of my time gardening with my mom when it came to electronics i was a true natural mr b i cannot use his full name cause of identity they had a beta max player as well and a large projection screen tv and cause of jealous people i did not get the break i really needed back then but glad i didn’t though i was happier being home, but cause of select a visions failure it forced others to keep trying to work harder and eventually we got dvd’s then blu-rays and full on streaming and who knows what is next, but this thing is a rope a dope tactic make something meant to fail so the better yet more attractive come more into view easy to figure out, it was meant to be they did a write off it was on purpose and easily to take over a company a cheap tactic one way to own it all, i can not find all the movies and music i want cause of a copyright issue or not available in my country so that is fake as well, i have over 200,00 songs i still want and cannot even acquire and movie my family sued to own on vhs can not even find anywhere i tried every single streaming and buying service to date and still can not find the entire series of 5 mile creek it is a extremely obscure series that Disney made in 1980, i have damaged vhs’s of the series but still waiting also there is about 460 big band songs and alternate takes i want mostly from benny goodman and Glenn miller band that most people go huh who, it pays to be 48 years and have an identic memory as well also can not find Eureeka stockade not even on Disney plus yet and they are the ones who made the series in 84, and i want all 26 alternate takes of the beach boys song good vibrations only one available anywhere not remixes or anything like that and deleted videos of classic 90’s techno that are pretty much gone some by prodigy long before THE PRODIGY made Firestarter in 96 like i said i have 200,000 songs i want to find and 5k movies and series i want to hunt down, at one time they did have Alienator but cause of a copyright issue and new laws it is gone off of everything it came out in 1991, it took me 14 years to even find the lost Thames version of sir Gawain and the green knight i hope it is still on there.
@cannibalbananas
June 28, 2024 at 6:50 pm
Loved that the VCR let you record live tv. It was DVR long before DVR was a thing.
Also, as someone whose was stationed overseas as a kid, VCRs were great. We watched a ton of movies & family mailed us tv shows from the states.
@kelli217
June 28, 2024 at 7:20 pm
That bit about RCA pulling out of the computer industry… before they did that and while they _were_ in the industry, they were one of the originators of barcode technology.
@recreationalplutonium
June 29, 2024 at 6:11 am
could go out and enjoy life. nah. rather look through some old shitty mags at what shitty tech people used to consume their goyslop in 1984. peak consoomerism millenial trash
@drakkenmensch
June 29, 2024 at 8:52 am
If RCA had built an internet browser, it would require you to have an internet phonebook of every website’s IP address that you would then need to enter manually.
@johnq4951
June 29, 2024 at 1:17 pm
This is like Techmoan for idiots.
@dkast5
June 29, 2024 at 1:53 pm
RCA thinking being 5 years late to market with a hard to use technology competing against something smaller and more intuitive was going to make them 9 billion into the 90s is peak Boomer Americans and they deserved to go bankrupt.
@Lurch-Bot
June 29, 2024 at 5:02 pm
My ex wife’s grandpa had one of these so I’ve actually watched a movie or two on this format. I had no idea it could do games.
Adventures in Babysitting, lol. Just watched it on VHS a couple of weeks ago. Reminded me that I used to have a massive crush on Anthony Rapp. And here, I thought it was a new thing, with ST Discovery.
7:39 The savory gelatin mold was just a poor man’s terine.
Pretty sad you have to explain RCA for gen Z and gen Alpha.
If you think Selectavision had pricey films, you should see what a prior generation paid to have feature length films on 16mm film…
The RCA buyout was hardly the end of RCA. I have an RCA enthusiast grade powered sub that was made in Indianapolis in 2001. Because they were smart enough to use a JBL driver, it is an awesome sub that still works great today. As a kid, I grew up with a couple of RCA TVs.
@Tim_3100
June 29, 2024 at 5:09 pm
So if i want to play this game will i need to set a week aside 😂
@sw99-nm9mu
June 29, 2024 at 5:23 pm
My Dad was a tech junkie. We had the RCA disc player, a Beta machine and a VHS player. Then in the ’90s it was all about laserdisc…
@johnprudent3216
June 29, 2024 at 10:00 pm
Interesting video. I think once heard of Selectavision in passing a few years ago. Ahead of its time? Yeah you can say that. Very intricate and/or complicated to use? Sounds that way. But man pretty fascinating how this led to some of the tech that would follow. This thing is basically the forerunner to the Sega CD and it’s full motion video games. I’m sure even though Selectavision died, many later things I’m sure perfected the ideas it tried to push.
@Mario_N64
June 30, 2024 at 1:52 am
Lets keep in mind that this technology started its development in the 60s, but was mired in development hell. If it had come out in the early 70s, as planned, it would have been a huge success.
@robfriedrich2822
June 30, 2024 at 2:25 am
After the failure of TED, they thought, a running time of 2 x 1 hour would make a huge difference.
Beside the fact, that in a world, where video was introduced as recordable medium in the market, a video disc, that is only a video disc, has low acceptance, they used yesterday’s technology instead a laser disc.
TED harmed Telefunken and Decca, the other video disc did it with RCA.
@susangurnoe9611
June 30, 2024 at 3:00 am
My dad gave me one of those as a kid. Ended up thinking it was useless and took out the discs to throw at haybails with some friends. Well I’ve lost everything I’ve ever owned so not like I would still have it
@MAGNETAR-187
June 30, 2024 at 6:15 am
Thank god for making the BLU-RAY disc player with DVD support!
@johnclavis
June 30, 2024 at 9:20 am
Lmao we had that exact gigantic remote control growing up! The whole left side was normally covered with a black plastic cover. We had this gigantic monstrosity and only ever used the right side to control the TV! 😂
@meneerjansen00
June 30, 2024 at 9:50 am
You asked: “Who want to own his own collection of movies?”. Hmmmmm. Remember the biggest disk-succes of the 21st century: the DVD? I think they were too much ahead of time. 😉
@TheCatBilbo
June 30, 2024 at 10:21 am
Wow, the idea was brilliant & insane! The engineering to get this working is mind-blowing. Hard disks & CD/DVDs are clever enough.
I’ve learnt two things today: what RCA & JVC actually stand for! Every day is a school day 😊
@NoNameNo.5
June 30, 2024 at 10:59 am
I just found one of these in my great uncles basement, had two crates of films….i threw them in the garbage.
@bredmaster
June 30, 2024 at 12:09 pm
Back to the Future really was the first “curtains-drawn”, kind of movie for those into mother-boy. In a way. Leah Thompson was at the forefront in a lot of ways.
@tomsawyer5736
June 30, 2024 at 12:30 pm
My best friend at the time’s,his mom had one circa 1979ish
@MrEvlerni
June 30, 2024 at 1:12 pm
You are incorrect about the rental thing for video discs. I had distant family that I met as a child when we went on vacation. It was in Tennessee, I think. They owned and ran a TV shop and had a small corner of rental video discs. So…
@user-sj3po6lx5k
June 30, 2024 at 1:51 pm
I really want one of those so badly but il probaly never own one or il be in debt
@artkingofwholefoods74
June 30, 2024 at 4:15 pm
It was fun. At that time it was cutting edge technology. It was like MAGIC to us. Immediately after every path we took, we would all look at each other and giggle. Those were the days….
@ajworden
June 30, 2024 at 4:33 pm
My father was an RCA dealer and I was 10 when these came out. I begged him to get us one, but he refused. He told me they were a pain in the a** to operate and maintain and that they would disappear quickly. Funny enough, my older cousin bought one from him and I remember going over to his house and watching the Poseidon Adventure. The disc was only a few weeks old and it was already skipping. I walked home thinking “damn, Dad was right”😂😂😂
@thedddemon
June 30, 2024 at 8:13 pm
Dude, your constant expression of tense frustration is exhausting to watch. @14:20 is where I checked out. Good work otherwise.
@StreetPreacherr
June 30, 2024 at 8:55 pm
My dad rented one of these units for a weekend movie night WAY back in the day! Luckily he wasn’t stupid enough to actually BUY one though! lol
@Chalk0073
June 30, 2024 at 8:58 pm
I think my brain leaked out of my nose after hearing how to play that mystery game.
@anchorpoint3631
July 1, 2024 at 5:12 am
lame video….
@psubond
July 1, 2024 at 7:24 am
I am watching this in the old RCA labs building. It’s a small world…weird.
@ztothepunk
July 1, 2024 at 9:07 am
I saw some CEDs at a goodwill yesterday and while I was tempted to own a piece or two of media history I didn’t have a player naturally and I didn’t need it
@82jp
July 1, 2024 at 1:46 pm
Crazy to think that public libraries don’t even accept vhs tapes as donations bc they can’t sell them in booksales
@onepcwhiz6847
July 1, 2024 at 4:35 pm
Why do you keep jumping back and forth between interactive and video? Are there any interactive blu rays/movies now? Why don’t you talk about these.?
@onepcwhiz6847
July 1, 2024 at 4:39 pm
It’s called an Allen wrench.
@GoldenfoxxPrime
July 1, 2024 at 5:00 pm
We got ours sometime around ’81 or ’82. _The Legend of the Lone Ranger_ was one of the first CED discs we bought, off the rack at a furniture store where our next-door-neighbor worked. Superman – The Movie, Superman II, Star Wars, Raiders, WarGames, The Muppet Movie, Starman, The Last Starfighter…we had a nice collection by the time we finally got a VHS machine around ’84 or ’85. Used to rent He-Man CEDs from local rental stores (so…whoever told you they didn’t do that was just wrong, as there were several stores here that did), and I mean this was here in Birmingham, AL, which was usually like 7 to 20 years behind the rest of the country back then, technologically. Main thing I remember is the damn thing used to skip at 44min, regardless of the disc, and that I used to lay awake as a kid wishing they’d hurry up and release Temple of Doom, E.T., and Empire Strikes Back, because it took them a hot minute to finally get those out.
Edit: 23:04. After getting our VHS machine, the first full-on movie we ever bought was our copy of The Transformers – The Movie. I still remember, it was $80, and omitted two of the less family-friendly scenes. Still watched it over and over again.
@10percent4DaBigGuy
July 1, 2024 at 5:33 pm
13:00 why is star trek so fitting for these disc lol
@passiton3801
July 1, 2024 at 5:52 pm
I grew up in the 50s. I have never heard of CED.
Vinyl Discs, tapes, cassettes, 8 track, vhs, cd /dvds an memory sticks, But not CED’s…
@passiton3801
July 1, 2024 at 6:18 pm
The guy sounds positively manic in his presentation style..
@frankesposito2182
July 1, 2024 at 8:18 pm
I had Selectavision.. It was fun …I used my Conformation money to buy one ….THEN….PUFF !!! IT WAS GONE !!! !!! !!!
@madimakes
July 1, 2024 at 9:30 pm
i LOVED the selectavision! my cousin who worked for RCA had the player and i loved loading these dics
@magusxxx
July 2, 2024 at 12:59 am
My university library had one of those they’d let students use. I watched the last episode of The Mary Tyler Moore show. 😀
@HelloKittyFanMan
July 2, 2024 at 1:09 am
If you bought that machine _off_ ebay, then which website did you buy it *ON?*
@magusxxx
July 2, 2024 at 1:19 am
And now my Goodwill store sells Blu-ray Discs for $2.50. And only a month ago someone donated some Japanese laserdiscs of Disney movies which I bought for the same $2.50. And no, one was not Song of the South. ;D
@HelloKittyFanMan
July 2, 2024 at 1:20 am
Alec: “…what they called…”
Not just the _actual term?_
@HelloKittyFanMan
July 2, 2024 at 1:28 am
Haha, “remote jockey”!
@HelloKittyFanMan
July 2, 2024 at 1:38 am
LOL, no, I’ve seen enough videos debunking that VHS/porn myth to know it’s not true. With all the great research you’ve done, how was that not part of it enough to know the same thing? Wait, doesn’t even Alec have a video explaining that?
@HelloKittyFanMan
July 2, 2024 at 1:49 am
Cool video!
@Manata1983
July 2, 2024 at 1:49 am
Good Video … I Like your Humor! Abo.😂
@21cElectronicsMaster
July 2, 2024 at 4:05 am
Is this Not a Laser Video Disc??
@jakovasaur
July 3, 2024 at 10:19 am
No, apparently these discs are read with a needle instead of a laser. 😅
@slomo1010
July 2, 2024 at 5:30 am
Blah Blah Blah
@supme7558
July 2, 2024 at 10:13 am
In the 80s we hated records becouse they all scratch way too easy
@c1ph3rpunk
July 2, 2024 at 10:28 am
“I was an 80’s kid whose dad co-owned a video store”.
Meanwhile “did anyone like this in 1982? I don’t know, I wasn’t born yet”.
@uchidaoginome
July 2, 2024 at 10:58 am
Nice Technology Connection reference! Love that guy!
@detroitredwings7130
July 2, 2024 at 3:13 pm
I heard this Selectavision just debuted in North Korea.
@SD-cf3tj
July 2, 2024 at 6:58 pm
either “dramatic” aspects of this video are just that, for dramatic effect, or….. face-slap… someone needs to reevaluate basic common sense….
@SlowPCGaming1
July 2, 2024 at 11:12 pm
I’m pretty sure that TechMoan has addressed these machines on his YouTube channel. Complexity of use is still a common thing among the development of new technologies. It would have taken time to make revisions until a standard could be reached that the public could use with as little difficulty as possible. It isn’t like they had several decades to develop something better before…um well.
On your closing remarks, I do own my own media library of CDs and DVDs. I sometimes use streaming services to see if something is worth buying on disc. But in general, I don’t have the money to waste on rentals aka streaming services. When they have free trials, I sign up for those. Then cancel before the rental fees kick in.
@n1xp1n
July 3, 2024 at 1:19 am
This video is just WOW.
Technology breakdown, live demo, business model decomposition – everything is top notch.
I can’t thank you enough.
@michwashington
July 3, 2024 at 4:23 am
I remember CED ❤
@dean-ph2ww
July 3, 2024 at 12:40 pm
90 percent of movies are only worth a single viewing. Thete’s no reason to own a most films..How many times would you watch “The Hunt For Red October?”
@vcvortex6356
July 3, 2024 at 6:45 pm
k
@EverScrolls
July 3, 2024 at 1:33 pm
Blurays or death.
@johnevans9751
July 3, 2024 at 5:01 pm
In 1928, Bell Labs was predicting movies on discs.
@FrankC76
July 3, 2024 at 5:02 pm
at 4:07 watch a record and needle be destroyed for no reason
@davidbarr707
July 3, 2024 at 5:39 pm
I remember those. We used to rent the players and the movies on the weekends. Sometimes they would freeze up or skip. My dad would take the disk out carefully and clean it with alcohol and a super soft rag and fix it.
@ebridgewater
July 3, 2024 at 6:04 pm
Why is your voice so high pitch? Calm down. You’re an annoying narrator.
@NoBodysGamer
July 3, 2024 at 6:52 pm
This guy Over Emoting to EXTREME, whats wrong with him? Imagine hes like this everywhere , in super “GIVE mE SOME milK”
@digitalprisoner
July 3, 2024 at 8:24 pm
Great investigation, congrats for the in depth analisis.
@snugj5957
July 3, 2024 at 9:38 pm
I had one in 1982. Bought it at the PX when I was stationed at Knox. It did not do any of the negative things mentioned here. It worked perfectly. But I am sure over time it would have worn out. I never had more than three movies because they cost too much. $40-$50 each. (Big Red One, Fast Times at Ridgemont High and one other one), but they were less expansive than VHS tapes would cost a year later. First VHS I bought was The Right Stuff and it cost over $80. Not too long ago I cleaned out my storage barn and threw away an RCA SJT 100 CED. The $20 – $25 disks were not the top movies. Those were Laurel and Hardy, Harold Lloyd, that kind of thing. Top movies were in the $40-$50 range. Ad you could rent them, there were VHS/CED rental places all over the place in the 80;s.
@Vector_Ze
July 3, 2024 at 10:55 pm
I’m older, and was a Popular Science subscriber from the 1960s-70s. I do recall the name SelectaVision. But, that’s about it, just name recognition.
@DarwinsChihuahua
July 4, 2024 at 12:30 am
Yeah! Technology Connections!
@RetroView66
July 4, 2024 at 2:21 am
Screw tabs are totally common in record players so Science.
@porkins74
July 4, 2024 at 2:45 pm
I’ll never forget the day my dad surprised my brother and I as we walked into the house after our day at school with the CED of Star Wars. He timed it so as soon as the door shut and we were all inside, the next thing that happened was hearing the Main Title blaring from the living room.
Also, the discs that had the dark blue cases indicated that they were in Stereo.
@jasongermany5786
July 4, 2024 at 3:50 pm
The host is so good damn irritating it’s like he’s trying to sell a used car while telling me about the truck pull on Sunday Sunday Sunday. Calm down and just speak like a normal person.
@carlrasmussen1282
July 4, 2024 at 7:54 pm
I was there. I haven’t watched your video, it’s on watch later so I’ll get to it..BUT…the 4 selling points for this player (for me) was
#1 It had stereo RCA outputs which was rare for home video at the time. (you could buy a VCR with stereo, but they were *very expensive.
#2 The barrier to entry as a rental store was much much lower than a VCR/Videotape rental store (you could buy 2, even 3 movies for the price of one video tape.
#3 VCR Video tapes were dragging their heels on widescreen. RCA had widescreen titles more widely available.
#4 You could FF or RW much quicker (be kind rewind) wasn’t something you had to worry about.
It was better quality video, and sustained that quality for longer., and the stereo sound was much better than what contemporary VCR stereo could reproduce.
I hated fullscreen (old TV aspect ratio of 4:3) was fine for everything BUT movies at the time. You had an extra editor between you and the movie’s editor. It made a huge, often poor impact.
So, luckily for me, the small town I lived in at the time had a rental store, and I watched every single movie they ever purchased for rental.
It really was a saving technology that bridged that quality gap until VCR’s had another 5 years of advancement and were better.
@tylerthompson1842
July 4, 2024 at 11:03 pm
Why is Dave Attell just hanging out to the right in that picture with your dad lol
@Col_Eddington
July 4, 2024 at 11:17 pm
My grandfather was heavily invested in the format.
@x0rn312
July 5, 2024 at 6:13 am
Space Cop! it took 12 years to make!!!
@billgates3699
July 5, 2024 at 8:32 am
‼️Soy host is a Soylent little boy 🫃🏻
@MK-of7qw
July 5, 2024 at 11:40 am
may parents ussd to have one of these damned machines. I swear we had some of the most unpopular things in my house.
@S0l1dZ3r0
July 5, 2024 at 4:49 pm
Ninja Scroll, nice. If you know you know 🥷
@xxxfreshman
July 5, 2024 at 4:58 pm
How was the Video quality vs VHS vs LD vs Laservision?
@cryptogaming9935
July 5, 2024 at 7:44 pm
Vinyl movie? Isnt this called Laserdisk?
@markfostercrtgamer3201
July 5, 2024 at 9:59 pm
I found one about 2 months ago and replaced the function belt. It working well now. Really interesting medium.
@MavenCree
July 6, 2024 at 12:52 am
OMG! I had that EXACT Ninja Scroll VHS tape! 😁 (Probably still in my basement in a box somewhere.)
@ultraderek
July 6, 2024 at 3:08 am
Based Ninja Scroll VHS
@CurtisMPT
July 6, 2024 at 12:41 pm
I grew up with one of these machines in the 80’s. My grandparents also had one and we bought discs and would swap them back and forth from our respective collections. It’s interesting to learn that rentals were not allowed because there was a store in my hometown that existed and the only thing it rented were these discs. I remember so clearly walking into this store and seeing the walls covered with narrow shelves of one copy of all the different movies. I had no idea that they were technically breaking the law by existing.
@miriamw.
July 6, 2024 at 6:18 pm
We had one of these when I was a kid. Watched Superman II everyday after school for months with my siblings then realized it was a giant record on the inside and actually played it on the record player. 😂
Fun times.
@infasis
July 6, 2024 at 11:52 pm
Lol I somehow saw that version of The Blob when I was maybe 4 or 5 years old and had reoccurring nightmares from it, where I remember it always being in my house and trying to kill my family in my dreams.
I don’t remember the movie at all and thought it was kinda silly that I’d be afraid of a “blob” even as a really young child, but maybe I need to watch it again. It might be interesting since it’s some of my first memories, and that cover shot does look kinda freaky.
@TheDying1
July 7, 2024 at 1:16 am
My Grandmothers husband bought one of these RCA video disc players in ‘82 I think. Once he bought his first VCR I inherited the video disc player. I went to the video store that sold these things and picked up Pink Floyd Live At Pompeii plus a few more disc movies Uncommon Valor, Star Chamber and Breakin’…at quite a discounted price for all of them ! I know quite a selection eh?! I never had an issue with the player. Playing these thru a 26” Zenith Stereo Space Phone television only enhanced the experience. Actually the audio and picture quality was phenomenal! I wore out that Pink Floyd disc! Now I have no idea what I ever did with the discs or the player…but I’m sure when I was able to afford a VCR, the video disc player was a lost option…stupid stupid me!!! 😞
@markdavis1358
July 7, 2024 at 2:00 am
Really great video. Fascinating story.
@Midaswhale531
July 7, 2024 at 10:22 am
I had one of these
@_nom_
July 7, 2024 at 10:40 am
No, not every tv show and movie is on some app.
@SajtosNokedli
July 7, 2024 at 9:37 pm
torrent
@dadevi
July 7, 2024 at 2:09 pm
The laserdisc was the same size as a vinyl record back then. It’s not as ungainly as millenial reviewers are making it out to be.
@NDF1138
July 7, 2024 at 2:27 pm
Actually it wasn’t RCA that pioneered the television industry. They stole it…
Electronic television was first successfully demonstrated in San Francisco on Sept. 7, 1927.
The system was designed by Philo Taylor Farnsworth, who had been working on it since 1920.
Electronic television is a type of television that uses electronic signals to produce images on a video screen.
Philo Taylor Farnsworth conceived the world’s first all-electronic television, at the age of 15.
Let’s just say the story behind the television deserves to be a movie.
So, anyone interested, research the history about it all.
To sum it up, very quickly, RCA had a spy (a man named Zworykin) go to visit Farnsworth at his home, under an assumed name, Zworykin (the spy) got what he needed:
“CORPORATE ESPIONAGE AND THE PATENT WAR:
Zworykin claimed to Farnsworth that he was from Westinghouse and they might want to license the Farnsworth system, so Philo showed Zworykin all his secrets.
That night Zworykin sent RCA a telegram stealing the ideas. Once RCA had a working tube, they claimed they had invented the television and challenged the Farnsworth patents in court.”
RCA LOST!!!
TIME MAGAZINE ARTICLE:
Philo Taylor Farnsworth was later named in TIME MAGAZINES list of “Top 20 Inventors of all time.”
@JimmyLem
July 7, 2024 at 7:47 pm
The RCA Mark II Sound Synthesizer
@bangdollarsign
July 7, 2024 at 11:56 pm
The navigation is just insane
@vortex_1336
July 8, 2024 at 12:00 am
My sister’s husband had one of those things when I was a kid.
@munroborisenko7278
July 8, 2024 at 2:31 am
Way back in 1979-80 they were selling (trying to sell) these in Ontario where I live. I was 19 and I remember vividly standing in the department store watching the demo unit play “The Planet of the Apes”. Now it did look pretty good but the size of these giant things was crazy. I thought video tape was better because it’s so much smaller. haha…I was right. And it was expensive. I can’t remember if it was RCA or Philips ? They never caught on. And when they came out they only had a small selection of old movies. By 1983 my family could afford a VHS player and it records as well. These disk things only played back what was on them. Not impressive tech, even for the time.
@munroborisenko7278
July 8, 2024 at 2:54 am
And in 1984 a small store was renting these disk movies out of Union Station in Toronto. I recall thinking, OMG. It lasted about 6 months to a year and then it was gone. So for some reason in Canada we were allowed to rent video disk movies.
@MrJayArt
July 8, 2024 at 6:52 am
Vsauce2?
@stray88
July 8, 2024 at 8:12 pm
My grandpa watched these well into the 90s. He might have had the whole library. I would ask to watch Clash of the Titans a lot.
@kthx1138
July 8, 2024 at 9:45 pm
We’re so spoiled now with our 4K UHD disc players.
@christianleeabracadabraaci4526
July 8, 2024 at 11:52 pm
Well im in my 50s now, but my parents got a video disk player, until getting a beta machine, and then a vcr in 1986.
We rented video disks before we rented vhs tapes,,,i remember the first star wars my dad bought the disk for 115$ back then,,,the fast forward feature was awsome,,,I believe ours was a quasar model
@williamtownsend9393
July 9, 2024 at 2:06 am
GE screwed over people in the 80s
@PopPo-zh9up
July 9, 2024 at 3:49 am
Good lord
Get on with it
@ramonrichie9683
July 9, 2024 at 5:41 am
My dad worked at Philips and we got the laserdisc with Jaws… took ages to spin up and had to flip the disc… The idea was you could choose different “viewing” angles… but really never… took off…
@Ewokuno
July 9, 2024 at 10:19 am
It’s like a giant psp game
@Windrave
July 9, 2024 at 3:49 pm
My aunt had one of these during this time and I have very vague memories of it in use. Mostly when we visited Rocky III was usually playing and even though they had a number of these discs/movies I could never figure out how to use it (I wanted to watch the Looney Tunes one they had) yet in the same year and being 5 I was able to program my family’s first VCR to my parent’s shock.
@PAPPADASH
July 10, 2024 at 12:42 am
When you hit pause the screen goes blank? I guess films like Basic Instinct are completely wasted on this technology…
@mathewbailey6718
July 10, 2024 at 1:51 am
I believe that Telefunken made a similar video disc format that also used a stylus to play the discs besides RCA
@Miodowy
July 10, 2024 at 5:01 am
You left out one of the most important points why the VCR was winner and such a great success – because this device was created not to own or rent movies on cassettes, but to record TV programs when you are not at home. VCR – Video Cassette Recorder – even its purpose is included in the name. Not the player.
@David0gden
July 10, 2024 at 5:06 am
“So I got all three, to play at the dinner parties, I don’t have.”Hahahahaha
@ThreeToesofFury
July 10, 2024 at 8:19 am
this is amazing. new subscriber here!!!!
@AnonymousFreakYT
July 10, 2024 at 12:58 pm
0:34 – Hey, our shag carpet wasn’t mustard, or in the living room. It was pea soup green, and in the family room! (We kids were never allowed in the actual living room except on special occasions.)
@KentuckyRanger
July 10, 2024 at 9:45 pm
These stupid things, are what caused the Laser Disc to fail as well, because people connected these with the Laser Disc…
@thephantomarse
July 10, 2024 at 10:21 pm
Tech moan covered all of this tech years ago do we really need another video spouting the same info
@darkxceed
July 11, 2024 at 2:19 am
Man you can nag like an old women….
@antiWhiteism777
July 11, 2024 at 12:41 pm
@popularscience — RCA should have used laser stylus like ELP.
And a better caddy, also an automatic caddy flipper.
@johnpirkey5152
July 11, 2024 at 12:50 pm
These were awesome. Followed by the very short lived laserdisc.
@jacktorrance2633
July 11, 2024 at 4:12 pm
The Laserdisc didn’t follow “Discovision” it came out first in 1978 and was in production until the year 2000. 22 years isn’t a very long time but it’s not a “short lived” period for a mass production product either.
@benjaminmanchett1507
July 11, 2024 at 6:33 pm
Congratulations on actually getting it to work, I love 80s tec the ideas were great… just didn’t always work that being said I still have a top loading 1980s JVC VCR still works I don’t use it,
I still watch VHS on a newer player with a scart to hdmi converter
@segads
July 12, 2024 at 1:14 am
great videos, came from the butler on a box video that was really good haha I even watch the videos from that dude that dont have the pin
@gosimons
July 12, 2024 at 3:47 am
what software do you use for capturing when you do google searches and zoom into pages on adverts
@johnharris6655
July 12, 2024 at 9:06 am
A good idea where the technology was not available to make it happen.
@jamesrowden303
July 12, 2024 at 9:45 am
All this sounds like instructions for a karaoke maestro. I don’t think it’s reasonable to consumers to expect them to actually work to get things done. After all, people want electronics to work for them, not the other way round.
@McHaro0079
July 12, 2024 at 11:16 am
Hey you didn’t play “Many Roads to Murder”, did you?
Edit: Base on 20:17 – 20:34, nope. 😅
@Brian-qn7fn
July 12, 2024 at 2:18 pm
My cousins had one of these machines when I was going up.
@tubejay1
July 12, 2024 at 3:21 pm
Oh wow, that RCA remote! We had one like that for an old RCA TV. Man that brings back memories. I loved that remote as a kid. I had no clue what anything did except channel and volume. Ha! Now I know what all those other buttons were for. I always assumed it was for a VCR.
@Fifty1stState.
July 12, 2024 at 5:26 pm
17:34 Is that Margaret Kidder, Lois Lane In Superman The Movie? Hmmm further on it looks like B2TF actor.
@aldomir
July 13, 2024 at 7:21 am
Pounds? Inches? This video is from the ’80s!
@christophernewhouse5832
July 13, 2024 at 10:58 am
libraries have cds & dvds no1 else has due 2 call backs licensing agreement problems so u cant get some music through the internet unless some1 preserves it like vhs my birth is on vhs unless i record it the vhs tape will deteriorate & be gone 4ever good video very interesting
@Reverend11dMEOW
July 13, 2024 at 6:52 pm
Robert Gannon is one of the real people that treated LSD-25 with the respect it deserves.
If not for his article in the 1967 article.
Unbiased, non-opinionated, he set an example for a very important part of my youth on the journey living a life inundated and assaulted by insane propaganda mills, streaming “Truth ARE LIES” & “LIES IS Truth” 24/7/365.25
Thank You, Robert Gannon
My step-dad used my room for his floor-to-ceiling Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, Road & Track, Car & Driver, restored a Jaguar X-something sedan and several Triumph TR-3 automobiles, but even though he was instrumental in Seattle’s Civil Rights era, those pesky warped other-ways-other-trhinking warped his brain during his tenure as Executive Director of several community services toward a mind-set that I will never comprehend.
At an A&P, some alleged so-called hippies crossed our path.
“Do you smell that?”
what
That smell those hippies reek of.
whayt?
If you smell that anywhere, LEAVE! Thatr’s marijuana.
well, fine, never did figure that crap out.
There is a quarter ounce of “Green Crack” sitting within arm’s reach right this second.
The Sativa is the Opposite of what was falsely broadcast tro the entire planet, by both sides.
“Couch Potato” has everything to do with Indica’s tendency to simulate SOMA.
❤😂❤
@jschap712
July 14, 2024 at 12:27 am
I remember (at least in Canada) videodiscs sharing space with VHS tapes at video rental places — I was a bit of a movie junky, but our family had no players and was too cheap to rent them, but I liked looking at the poster art and window shopping, and videodiscs made for more impressive displays. I got to experience videodiscs only once, while I was still in elementary school. This was at a friend’s birthday party back in 1983 or 84. His family rented both the player and a couple of films (I’m 90% certain it was Westworld and Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone). I remember not understanding why they removed the discs after inserting them, and my assumption back then was that the player somehow almost instantly downloaded the movie into its memory (I had a TRS-80 by then, so I was certainly impressed if that’s how it worked). I think it was my first experience with film rentals outside of sometimes getting to watch 8mm films borrowed from the public library. So that experience was memorable for me, and I enjoyed both films as a not yet cynical kid. Jump forward about 15 years, and I recall that one of the big impediments to marketing laserdiscs was that people confused them with the similarly sized and shaped videodiscs. The clearance sales of laserdiscs reminded me of clearance sales of videodiscs the previous decade, but I didn’t go on a buying frenzy since I was once again witnessing the coming extinction of a media. At any rate, I personally think movies have gone downhill with the ascension of VOD. They’re waaaay too disposable now, and even majors like Disney are more concerned with pumping them out then caring about things like plots or quality or making magic.
@Citrakite
July 14, 2024 at 1:38 am
16:30 Whoa, that’s Heavy.
@dpastor6631
July 14, 2024 at 2:32 am
When video disks came out, nobody was interested in the games, only the movies.
@Couvrs
July 14, 2024 at 8:09 am
VHS tapes was a great invention
@RealButFake
July 14, 2024 at 3:03 pm
RCA had a great vision with Selectavision, but sadly the way the media was delivered was just not up to par. I give them all the credit in the world for the solid effort.
@NeverlandSystemZor
July 15, 2024 at 12:37 am
The concept was interesting, even if kind of trash implementation.
@oblivicus8644
July 15, 2024 at 3:17 am
Am I watching Malcom?
@mishmashmedley
July 15, 2024 at 9:57 am
“all you had…” except you avoided TechMoan’s video on it, eh?
@adambailes8241
July 15, 2024 at 6:30 pm
I saw Never Ending Story on select a vision when I was 5 or 6.
@skk3940
July 17, 2024 at 3:39 am
LD is about 425 lines of resolution… what about CED?
@curtreis9558
July 17, 2024 at 3:03 pm
Play at 1.50 speed. Thank me later.
@JoshShelby
July 17, 2024 at 5:10 pm
My grandfather had 2 of those machines and 2 of pretty much every one of the movies that were available. I watched Star Wars, Bladerunner and numerous other 70s/80s classics on them.
@morganahoff2242
July 17, 2024 at 7:12 pm
RCA predicted the coming digital age. 1= Success, 0 = Failure
@ChronicViper
July 18, 2024 at 12:33 pm
“48 fun” is by far my favorite part of the video 😂
@willisyoung7518
July 18, 2024 at 2:09 pm
Breh
You da troof
@jamesbennett5189
July 18, 2024 at 8:43 pm
I have one if these player AND it works ! I have about 60-70 movies for it too!!!
@3Storms
July 19, 2024 at 11:57 am
We had one when I was a kid. It was cool space-age tech at the time. We didn’t have any of the problems you described, and quite the opposite ours was reliable. We only got rid of it when the selection of movies dried up.
@3Storms
July 19, 2024 at 11:59 am
A lot of people don’t know this, but the laserdisc was actually invented in the late 1950s. For real. Look it up.
@blueg8731
July 19, 2024 at 12:32 pm
A good example of suits and nerds alike not knowing what is marketable.
@JackLalane-yt4iu
July 19, 2024 at 5:33 pm
The agitated voice every 3 sentences isnt the most annoying sound to everyone else here?
@imagographics5096
July 20, 2024 at 3:07 am
What set of wrenches doesn’t have a 1/16″?
@CoreDreamStudios
July 20, 2024 at 12:09 pm
It’s a shame. I got 2 SelectaVision videos in my closet but don’t know what to do with them.
@Carighan
July 21, 2024 at 5:07 am
The issue was that you used a 5/64 Bald Eagles Allan Who key, not a 13/127th Freedom Fries Bajingamagick. It’s simple, really! Imperial units make sense, yeah!
@sithlordbilly4206
July 21, 2024 at 9:38 am
My family still has that video disk player. As well as some of the movies. I actually have a couple movies myself of them.
@salaufer
July 21, 2024 at 1:35 pm
fyi, most turntables also have transport bolts that serve the same purpose
@VonMagXL
July 21, 2024 at 7:29 pm
Nonsense is in this story. I had a VHS VCR in 1978 and recorded commercial free movies right off Star Channel (became the The Movie Channel later on) and HBO. I had Star Wars in 1980 that way. Later on, I got a laserdisc player in 1989 and owned over 100 movies in 425i, the highest quality you could get until DVD in the USA.
@MrDan11422
July 22, 2024 at 2:43 am
Please be kind and rewind.
@user-qf6yt3id3w
July 23, 2024 at 7:28 am
You have to use Powerade bottles. The electrolytes stabilise the warp field inside the machine that levitates the disk.
@MichaelWaisJr
July 23, 2024 at 9:34 am
I really would love to have Jack Nicholson’s huge face looking at me like that.
@nathanpeachs2704
July 23, 2024 at 4:03 pm
😂 They were the Kodak of media players.😂
@bestprice1776
July 23, 2024 at 9:22 pm
I opened my own video/music store in 1980 and I never seen one of these and they were never promoted by the wholesale suppliers.