How Storing Movies on Vinyl Lost RCA $650 Million

[@tjenadonn6158]

TechnologyConnections' five part trilogy on this format is peak KZbin, and an excellent documentation of his descent into madness over RCA's increasingly baffling decisions.

[@murialvoid85]

There is something about a “five part trilogy” that doesn’t quite add up in my head…

[@kurtlindner]

@@murialvoid85 Don't take our word, watch it for yourself. It's some of the best long form content hosted on the site.

[@pisse3000]

@@murialvoid85maybe get did 15 videos in total 🤔

[@MrMac1138]

@@murialvoid85 It will if you watch it.

[@MrMac1138]

Yeah. Also does a good job showing that if RCA had delivered the tech about a decade earlier, it would have had impact but they pushed forward despite VHS and Beta having arrived.

[@simmonsjoe]

Technology connections also taught us that the sideways track encoded channel bias, not a separate channel.

[@Pentium100MHz]

Sideways track on a audio record encodes mono channel. There were formats that used up-and-down movement (cylinder phonograph, Pathe discs, Edison Diamond discs), but they were short lived. In a gramophone record, the groove moves sideways to produce the sound. When they tried to figure out how to put a second channel for stereo, they also wanted to keep backward compatibility (to an extent, you can play a mono record on a stereo player, but playing a stereo record on a mono player can damage the record). So, they came up with using one side of the V shaped groove to record one channel and the other side for the other channel. You can also think of sideways movement being L+R and vertical movement to be L-R. It's a bit similar to how Stereo FM works, by having L+R and L-R signals.

[@Aquatarkus96]

Mid/Side!

[@Pentium100MHz]

@ZaHandle Channel separation isn't that great, but you can have "true stereo", at least on some records of The Beatles the vocals only come from one speaker.

[@romulusnr]

Channel bias is the difference between channels. What really happened is the left of the grooves was one channel and the right of the grooves was the other channel. But that wasn't as easy to determine with a single needle, so instead it took up-down and left-right and combined them with circuits and math to get left wave and and right wave. Up-down plus left-right was one channel and up-down minus left-right was the other channel. The beauty of this system is that it also worked perfectly with mono record players because the up-down on its own was basically both tracks together. See also: color television

[@Pentium100MHz]

@@romulusnr Magnetic cartridges read both channels directly. A small magnet is attached to the stylus (for MM cartridge) and there are two coils inside the cartridge at 90 degrees to each other. Vibrations on one side of the groove create electric signal in one coil (the other coil is at 90 degrees, so it should not be affected in theory) and vibrations on the other side of the groove create electric signal in the other coil. The amplifier does no math, the channels are separate coming from the cartridge. However, mathematically it also turns out that horizontal movement is L+R and vertical movement is L-R. This made it possible to play a mono record on a stereo player and the sound came out of both speakers.. Playing a stereo record on a mono player can damage the record, because the stylus on a mono player does not move up-and-down. Some early stereo records were "mono-compatible" meaning that the difference between channels (and the vertical movement) was small. Some later mono players were made such that the stylus could move vertically. Stereo FM was encoded in a similar way, but there the stereo decoder circuit did add and subtract the difference signal from the mono signal.

[@ryjkon]

I'm honestly not surprised there's a massive overlap in the Technology Connections and HAI audiences lmao

[@EEEEEEEE]

E‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎

[@CptPatch]

You wouldn't believe it, but we also overlap almost completely with the group of people most likely to say "well actually" at a party!

[@hypotheticalaxolotl]

@@CptPatch That venn diagram is almost as circular as the vinyl is!

[@timowagner1329]

Techmoan comes to my mind as well... I love KZbin for digestible and entertaining information videos!

[@thermitebanana]

If you're autistic and not watching these two channels, what are you doing with your life?

[@swumbles]

finally, an audience that appreciated the magic of buying two of them

[@EEEEEEEE]

E‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎

[@andrewgodiy2172]

That's deep

[@ZetaPyro]

I understood that reference

[@michaelmoorrees3585]

I think every other comment, here, references Technology Connections.

[@joaovitormatos8147]

Oh no we're going to Technology Connections territory

[@EEEEEEEE]

‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎E‎‎‎‎‎‎‎

[@DeyRtRu]

​@@EEEEEEEEwhat!

[@Kafj302]

hey imagine a cross over episode, like host here just appears as a cartoon cutout in the Technology connections video. The Technology Connections guy could find a strange portal to an animated world, think the "Jimmy Timmy Power Hour"

[@Hackney_Boy-DoesntReadReplies]

But with stock footage.

[@jortand]

It's the power of buying two of them, it can't be contained!

[@ryanschwartz4959]

6:51 Another advantage VHS tapes had over CEDs: consumers could record their own video onto them. In fact, early VCRs were marketed as video recorders first (for recording TV shows), and the fact they could also play pre-recorded tapes was a neat bonus.

[@artistwithouttalent]

... that movie studios absolutely _hated._ When Sony first came out with Betamax (another tape-based home media format), they got sued by basically everyone in Hollywood that they didn't own. After almost a decade, the studios lost, but they consoled themselves with the millions of dollars they were making by selling pre-recorded tapes, first to video stores, and eventually (thanks to a Diet Pepsi ad in copies of Top Gun,) normal consumers. The studios would take a similar attitude to every home media format that came after: they stifled DVD recorders to prevent them from becoming popular, they bankrupted the manufacturers of an early DVR that had the ability to completely bypass commercials, and thanks to streaming services, they're finally making headway into getting people to stop buying physical media. TL;DR: buy blu-rays and 4k discs if you can. Film studios _hate_ it and deserve to be miserable.

[@FZs1]

VCR literally stands for Video Cassette _Recorder._

[@reddashgames7550]

One thing CEDs had over had over VHS is that that with CED you can make intractive games, think like SpaceAce and stuff, i got an early prototype of one of the videos (1981) on my channel, though some games/compatible players was released, ... back in 1986 literal months before the discontinuation of the system. Also an arcade game (NFL football i think) also used it for videos, they had it working reliably in at least 1983 but due to the cost of the players it was years until they where released. As soon as VHS came out they where trying for something kinda CDI like but overall it was released without any interactive features, so they one big thing the format had wasnt ready until the system was long since dead... :(

[@dean-ph2ww]

I remember those days. I used to record Good Morning America so I could watch it while eating dinner. 😊

[@danielbishop1863]

@@artistwithouttalent : It took a Supreme Court case (Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417 (1984)) to declare that time-shifting constituted "fair use" under copyright law. And Mr. Rogers argued for Sony's side.

[@EriksGarbage]

1:51 The record says "33 1/2", but the standard speed is 33 1/3. I hope someone got fired for THAT blunder.

[@Roxor128]

Eh, it's only out by half a percent. Nobody will notice during playback. I mean, the PAL speedup is 4% and most people don't notice that.

[@johnladuke6475]

You could fire Ben or maybe even Sam but if they fire Amy people are gonna be mad.

[@isbestlizard]

That's what makes it 29.97 fps and not 30

[@arfansthename]

that and how etching records are going up and down (they only go sideways)

[@romansdump]

The Channel would need to be renamed to a third of interesting then tho

[@Gutsquasher]

I literally just finished rewatching Technology Connections' series on the CED. It's some really fascinating stuff

[@puellanivis]

They didn’t wobble up and down, the wiggled side to side. And when stereo was introduced the two waves were cut 45° off. The problem is up and down doesn’t provide good resolution because the needle has to fall, and it can only fall as fast as gravity allows it to. This means every fall of a wave would be distorted. (This was learned via Technology Connections.)

[@bryede]

There were some early phonograph formats that recorded vertically, but they required more tracking force to maintain contact.

[@seed_drill7135]

Edison’s hill and dale records, called Diamond Discs because they used a diamond stylus instead of a steel needle. The records are twice as thick and made out of wood pulp so if they get wet they’re ruined. They were sonically superior but Edison was deaf and an arrogant sob, so he resisted crediting performers or singing stars and lost out to, wait for it, RCA.

[@vinniemorciglio4632]

@@bryede Yes Edison Diamond discs were hill and dale....

[@Kalvinjj]

@@seed_drill7135 The "Edison kinda sucked" list just grows by the minute

[@seed_drill7135]

@@Kalvinjj He also hated jazz and wouldn't record it, but "coon" songs were fine by him.

[@DFWHoppe]

Hey! I recognize this voice. It's the guy that always loses Jet Lag: The Game.

[@mateuszdziewierz2938]

Jet Lag??? you mean like the first platformer mode demon?!?! IS THAT A GEOMETYRY DASH REFRENCE?!?!

[@stray1239]

nah thats the Wendover Productions guy

[@ballsinsurance]

nah that's the half as interesting guy​@@stray1239

[@ballsinsurance]

​@@mateuszdziewierz2938GEOMETRY DASH??? like the hit game geometry dash??? IS THAT A GEOMETRY DASH REFERENCE 😱😱😱😱

[@Milenakos]

Dash??? Is that the one from Madeline Celeste?????

[@sunalwaysshinesonTVs]

To put "didnt work and wasnt marketable" in context, I lived through that time period, and saw, what I thought, was every innovation hit someone's parent's house, and NEVER did I ever hear about or see this admittedly awesome piece of technology.

[@cento13]

I did - my father bought one. He managed to buy every technology that ended being on the losing side. He bought a Pioneer Laserdisc player in 1980 (fun fact it had no fuse to protect its most expensive component - the laser - from any kind of power surge at all). He bought one of these video disc players in the early 80s, before finally admitting defeat on it and buying a Betamax tape player. :P

[@whaduzitmatr]

@@cento13 Laserdisc didn't lose, it lurked in the shadows for 22 years

[@tristan6509]

@@cento13 laserdisc never lost in my country, infact LD was the top home video format until Video CDs took over as a cheaper alternative. they sold them into the early 2000s

[@trekkiejunk]

I had one as a kid, too. It was my grandfather's, that we got when he died. I had Star Wars. My brain still inserts the pause after the Falcon ges captured by the Death Star, as that's where we had to turn the disc over. The label on all the casings would bubble up a bit, and there would be this wonderful crackly sound when you would run your hand over the bubbled-up label.

[@MrRedacto]

I do remember them. In my early memories we used to rent these discs (and the player) for a year or two before VHS took over.

[@Wolfsbane1974]

Error in the “Smokey and the Bandit III” joke. It was THE BANDIT that wasn’t in the movie (actually he does make an appearance at the end). The movie is actually all about Smokey taking the challenge while Snowman tries to thwart him.

[@JohnnyCoulthard]

Good! Someone caught the error! @halfasinteresting I expect this to be addressed in the next error video.

[@shashankmahalingam5254]

It seems like that's what he meant said it wrong, because he mentions smokey in the next line.

[@scottpaul7427]

Smokey is the bandit

[@awgybop1]

@@scottpaul7427Smokey is not the bandit. You can even hear in the original movie, he calls Buford a “Smokey” to frog. Smokey is a CB radio term for police/highway patrol, so Smokey is actually Buford T. Justice.

[@scottpaul7427]

@@awgybop1 What you say is true... except that is misses the original concept for "Smokey and the Bandit III", in which Smokey is the Bandit.

[@nehukybis]

I dimly remember these in department stores when I was a kid in the early 80s. I think they did serve one useful purpose for retailers, which was to lure people into the color TV showroom. There was still some novelty to seeing a movie on a television screen and knowing it was coming from the disc in the machine, rather than being broadcast from the local TV station. I can imagine the store manager saying "we're never going to sell any of this crap, but it's here, so we might as well play the discs until they're unusable."

[@maxmyzer9172]

Feels like a Technology Connections video haha (I think he did a video on it?), He also explained why 2:38 is wrong, you actually don't do purely up/down and left/right, you rotate them for compatibility.

[@teh-maxh]

If by "a video" you mean five, yes.

[@danielbishop1863]

Yeah, on stereo vinyl records, the two audio tracks are cut at +45 and -45 degree angles. That way, if you play it on a mono player (with the stylus having only one dimension of motion instead of two), it just averages the two signals.

[@singletona082]

Edit: Dear God I needed that. 'Hey didn't technology connec-' Then this line of 'hey technology connections did a five part series on this.' thanks guys that helped. In fairness the technology could have been commercially viable and useful if it had released a few years sooner. As is? by the time it released better had already hit the market and so there was no incentive to ever try improving the players, mastering techniques, disc materials, or any of it. Technology Connections did a really nice multi-part deep dive into Disco/Selectravision/CED technology.

[@rzeqdw]

2:35 minor correction It is not true that "back and forth creates one sound wave and up and down creates a different one", because the bandwidth of those two channels is not the same. The side-to-side wiggling is much more constrained than the up-and-down wiggling, and so if you did it that way, the audio quality on one channel would be much worse than the other To get around this, the way phonographs work is that the two channel pickups are at 45 degrees to the horizontal, and still perpendicular to each other. So one channel will be like up-right/down-left and the other will be up-left/down-right. This way, the limitation of the side-to-side wiggling is shared between both channels

[@bryede]

Most modulation actually happens side to side on an LP because the channels are both encoded at 45 degrees and anything that exists in both groove walls (mono or centered sounds) will cause side to side motion. Out of phase information causes vertical modulations as the walls move closer and then further apart in unison. Too much out-of-phase information is generally avoided because it requires more tracking force to keep the stylus in groove contact because the groove can only push on the stylus one way, up.

[@fattiger6957]

Though it wasn't the only factor, this was one of the contributing things that killed RCA. It is remarkable how RCA used to be one of the biggest consumer electronics companies, now barely anyone remembers them. Only the name lives on, only as something for Chinese OEMs to license for their generic microwaves or ACs.

[@supermoneyball420]

Sony owns RCA Records now I had to Google it they’re still kicking too though decent roster honestly 🧐

[@fattiger6957]

@@supermoneyball420 I was more referring to the consumer electronics division. But Sony owning RCA Records just reinforces my point. Whatever of value was sold off when the company went under.

[@hedgehog3180]

IBM almost went the same way, it almost seems like an inevitability that big consumer electronics companies will do this.

[@fredrickcampbell8198]

​@@hedgehog3180Hmm. Time to observe Apple.

[@nickpalance3622]

@@hedgehog3180the 5150 “PC” Personal Computer (and subsequent iterations) notwithstanding, I never thought of IBM as “consumer electronics”. I never knew what stores I could go to in my childhood to get my hands on one or even (but unlikely) buy one. Not until the 90s and PS/1 and Aptiva and Prodigy and some deal with Sears did I see one at consumer retail. I’d see them in my high school classrooms (late 80s) first. And even then they were bare bones 5150s … the hood stuff used in computer science classes were the Tandy 1000’s (!). Borland Turbo Pascal R. I. P.

[@stevenfair3992]

I’m thrilled that you covered this. About a decade ago I went to a garage sale and bought a video disk player and 10 video disks. It needed some restoration but the unit did work. It’s a fascinating piece of old tech. Unfortunately I don’t have it anymore because it was too big to include in my move to a new state.

[@gabrielfraser2109]

I'm so happy to see all the TechnologyConnections love over here.

[@3Cr15w311]

Not to mention that Laserdisc was also out there and was a far better option for owning movies. I still have 2 LD players and every time I've tried any of my 70 or so Laserdiscs, they still work. 12 years ago I digitized a lot of things from them that weren't on DVD.

[@haweater1555]

The real competition for the RCA "CED" (Capacitance Electronic Disc) was the MCA "Disc-o-Vision" , later marketed as the LaserDisc. Far superior technically, it had its advantages and adherents but was very expensive. It survived well enough to keep its specialized product niche. In 1978, it was the first consumer grade device to incorporate a bulky laser tube. (The CD format had to wait a few years yet until tiny semiconductor lasers were feasible). While the RCA players and discs represented the lowest cost option to buying a movie to watch at home, the extra cost of a VCR was an undeniably better value with the home taping and reusable time shifting functions. (And the video was right, Smokey and the Bandit THREE was an absolute stinkfest of a movie. I would be surprised if this ever was released on CED.)

[@drewgehringer7813]

there was also a japanese competitor, VHD disc, made by JVC. Sort of a splitting the middle between discovision/laserdisc and CED, VHD was a vinyl record like CED, but very flat with no grooves: the 'needle' was also flat and skims the surface following the signal track electronically. The discs did wear out since there is physical contact while reading, but they appear to have worn out less quickly than CED did.

[@haweater1555]

@@drewgehringer7813 Techmoan did a number of videos about VHD. Demoed in the US, and on the verge of a major UK launch, but just didn't make it. Europe was already wrestling with three competing video tape formats.

[@SeralyneYT]

And through the magic of buying two of them, I've got a disassembled SelectaVision tape player right here! *decidedly smooth jazz plays*

[@austinclark2378]

We came across one of these at my TV repair shop in the early 2000's. Noticing there wasn't any photos on the Wikipedia page, we took some and added them. They're still there, and I totally forgotten about them. Thanks, HAI!

[@uss_04]

Time to revisit the Technology Connections channel after this

[@MuchWhittering]

Wait, this isn't Techmoan.

[@MaximNightFury]

Wait this isn't Technology Connections

[@Bob-1802]

@@MaximNightFury Wait this is Half As Interesting 😏

[@D.S.handle]

@@Bob-1802hey, wait a second-

[@singletona082]

Hey wait this isn't Oddity Archive...

[@enisra_bowman]

@@Bob-1802 wait, this isn't about bricks 🤨

[@puffnpluky76]

Vinyl records dont contain one channel in up-down and another in left-right, they contain two channels cut at 45 degrees, and both are 90 degrees opposite each other.

[@Fredrik-iz4ou]

Exactly, I don't know how this guy got away with that misinformation. How does he not know this fact? Maybe, if he is thinking of CD-4 (four discreet channels vinyl records) he'd be closer to the mark, where channels 3 and 4 would be the "surface" channels. But most people don't know about those either.

[@gFamWeb]

Note, from my understanding SelecaVision was NOT a response to VHS. As Technology Connections has discussed, VHS was originally for recording, not watching pre-recorded media.

[@bryede]

When it was first envisioned, there was no other known way to make an affordable player. It just took too long to work the bugs out.

[@trickvro]

Someone was watching Technology Connections.

[@brianwilson2546]

Slight correction: when Selectavision came to market, it did have another leg up on VHS, which was it launched with a library of films on the format. Movies on VHS didn’t come later, as VHS was exclusively for “time shifting,” or recording tv programs.

[@fracturedfingers]

Also sometimes what they did to get the movies to fit the 120 minutes, they would cut out lots of single frames here and there throughout the movie, and slightly speed up scenes, or sometimes the entire movie. If it's sped up just a little bit, most people wouldn't really notice it and at the time there wasn't really much of a way to compare it to another copy of the movie to tell if it was anyway.

[@minivanracer]

Indianapolis IN probably has the most selectavision players per capita. The plant was located here and when RCA closed and sold the assets to GE the employees were allowed to take a player and any discs they wanted with them. I've seen several of them.

[@edd17sp74]

Well, there’s one for the next “everything we got wrong” video… The *Bandit* doesn’t show up in Smokey and the Bandit Part 3, not “Smokey.” My grandparents still have one of those players and a whole stack of those big plastic case thingies to go with it. (They always called it the laser disc player?) I’m sure nobody will have any desire to have it when they pass, so I hope to claim it just because I think it’s cool. Besides, they have Raiders of the Lost Ark, Airplane, and Race for Your Life Charlie Brown on those discs.

[@negirno]

If I'm not mistaken, CED was the failed format with the most titles available for it, most likely due to RCA having connections in the film industry.

[@Knightmessenger]

Friends don't let friends call CED laserdiscs

[@thermitebanana]

This video needs more "Magic of buying two of them"

[@fracturedfingers]

We had a CED player and a bunch of CEDs when I was little. Betting my dad got it all on clearance because this was the 80's and CED didn't last long. That's how I originally watched Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back. I wish someone would convert those to digital and upload them. I'd love to see the CED versions again without having to get all the stuff to do it!

[@aadidevkuttisseri985]

First time a video has explained something like this so interestingly! Sam is actually very multi-talented. Came here from jetlag btw

[@JamesTM]

"The depth up and down represents one sound wave, and the sway back and forth represents the other sound wave." That's not quite how this works. That would result in very different quality in each channel, which would sound terrible. So it's actually quite a bit more complicated, and a lot more interesting. (Maybe even twice as interesting.)

[@circuit10]

I heard they recorded them diagonally in a way that means if you use a non-stereo player it will mix both channels together

[@ShowRyuKen]

Wow, your production values look amazing nowadays. It's been a little while since I last watched one of your videos but all these bespoke cutaways are awesome to see.

[@TerribleStormer]

I appreciate that you put a metric conversion in the video, really helpful for us non-Americans.

[@bagofclothes7360]

Hey this isn't the christmas light guy!

[@brianlorsung1964]

In the late 80s, I worked for a small company that made chemicals for photo finishing. I visited General Dynamics because they were working on a video system that used 12 inch disks of black and white film, and they were using our processing chemicals. It was an analog system that produced a B&W video image. The system would be sold to companies to create training videos. Once the master disk was created, it could be used to make cheap copies. I saw it demonstrated, but I don't know if the system was ever produced.

[@bryede]

2:13 A few details on audio records. For early mono phonographs, there were both vertical and lateral modulation systems with lateral (side to side modulations) winning out in the end. When stereo came along, each groove wall (cut at 45 deg. from vertical and 90 degrees from each other) contained a separate channel, so that information contained in both channels and in-phase resulted in lateral movement, and flipping one channel out of phase would cause vertical movement. The actual path taken by the stylus on a stereo record is complex, but the 2 coils in a stereo cartridge are mounted in alignment with each 45 wall and thus are able reproduce the channels with decent isolation from the other (usually about 25-30dB of separation).

[@alm5992]

This guy: "Here's a video I made on vinyl movi-" Everyone: "HEY! Technology connections made this too!", "TC mentioned *extra tidbit here*", "TC has a 5 part series on it."

[@wigwagstudios2474]

Yyyup. I opened the comments and sat there with my mouth agape.

[@olenbrown]

Love the editing here. The combination of the HAI themed demos with the found footage it great!

[@PrebleStreetRecords]

I’m glad some of RCA’s weirder adventures are getting attention. My uncle worked with them for years, and lead development on this capacitive video idea. I should see if he’d ever want to record an interview about it.

[@theromanorder]

I love how he used his own voice waves for the exsplanation

[@jhmcd2]

OOoh, I had a friend who actually had one of these. It was the fact that playing them continuously made it wear out that reminded me of them. He didn't actually watch them though, he just collected them. But I remember those big plastic covers and how he said there was a record inside. Yes, life when you were five.

[@neskey]

alec is gonna watch this video like that PTSD soldier with the tank behind him

[@alexcrouse]

My first thought - because this is KZbin - was Alec needs to watch this to plagiarism check it. lol

[@WyvernYT]

Through the magic of having two content creators, we can hear from both of them.

[@Mrshoujo]

Japan had their own similar video disc format called VHD. It was much better than CED. Most people know laserdiscs. VHD was not laser based. The earliest TV on a record was Phonovision based on the Baird 30 line vertical TV.

[@darkfool2000]

The cycle of industry is fascinating. RCA died to Blockbuster, Blockbuster died to Netflix, and every miracle solution has a dead-end alternative that was exceedingly difficult to predict when the initial investment was made.

[@oldmoviesinbwwithsubtitles3501]

The 1980s I worked at one of the largest video rental stores in Illinois we had five stores and we sold the RCA CED players. A major malfunction with this was skipping also the needle cartridge had to replace constantly I was always taking these into the shop and they'd have to put a new needle cartridge all the time.

[@Malkmusianful]

ah nice i love this sped-up version of Technology Connections' video cannot wait for Half as Interesting to lose their mind over Cascade dishwasher pods

[@oleo007]

Techmoan and technology connections make a excellent video about this forgotten video format.

[@TheMediaHoarder]

Right when you say they cut movies that ran over 2 hours to fit on one disc, you show a picture of TWO 2-disc movies. A very small number of movies were run at a faster speed to fit on one disc but most were split onto 2 discs.

[@JeffreyLWhitledge]

We had one of these players and dozens of movies and we watched it all the time and loved it. Occasionally, there would be a scratch on the disk that would mess up a few seconds of a movie, but we didn’t mind it all that much. To this day there are scenes in movies that just don’t seem right to me when they play with no issues. I think the negatives of these are way overblown. I have nothing but fond memories of these things.

[@Argelius1]

Your narration style and voice are SO good ! Thank you for not resorting to a computer voice!

[@erfquake1]

One advantage that was not mentioned is that disks are inherently random access memory, or at least the fast-spinny-disc equivalent. You could skip to any chapter of the movie more or less instantaneously. So one never had to "be kind, rewind."

[@fishcadet]

I remember the first time my family and I saw affordable VHS tapes at a weird discount store. They had Peggy Sue Got Married and Crocodile Dundee. We watched a lot of Peggy Sue Got Married and Crocodile Dundee.

[@HerrBjork]

It was technically impressive, and probably worked better back in the day when the silicone lubricant was fresh, but it was still a case of DOA if I ever saw it. It's worth bringing up LaserDisc too, the grandfather of optical disc media, that could store nearly DVD quality video and stereo audio in the 1970s and didn't degrade with every play (disc rot was and is a problem though). Even that came to market years before the CED, only a year after the VHS, and while it failed at becoming the home video standard, it remained on sale into the 2000s and became the format of choice for enthusiasts until one of its children, the DVD, took the torch. It was also often used in any setting where frequent play was expected: Karaoke, certain arcades that used video, in-store videos, the BBC's Domesday Project, and education. A related format, MUSE Hi-Vision, could do 1135i video in 1993. And yes I watch Technology Connections too. He has a great series on LaserDisc too

[@fearlessfreep]

"Smokey doesn't even show up in this one." You mean THE BANDIT doesn't show up. Except for a very brief scene at the end.

[@trekkiejunk]

I had one of these when i was a kid. Only had a few movies...Star Wars, For Your Eyes Only, and a few more. I always had to flip the disc as soon as the Millennium Falcon entered the Death Star. Whenever i've seen the movie since then, my brain still adds in the break. It's still weird seeing the scene continue uninterrupted. We used to rent them, too. In fact, the same place that rented VHS and BETA rented these, too. They failed a lot though. They also had a weird chemical smell. And the labels always bubbled up, and then made this cool crackly noise when you ran your hand across the bubbled label. They sucked, but i still have warm memories.

[@t-mar9275]

On demand home video goes back to the 1920s when general public could rent or buy movies on film, though mail order companies. Their heyday started in the late 1940s when post-war affluence, combined with decreasing film and camera costs, made home movies a popular pastime with middle class consumers. Once they had maxed out on shooting the kids and vacations, many started renting and buying commercial films to show on their projectors. Of course, the industry took a dive with arrival of commercial movies on video tape in the late 1970s and the proliferation of the ubiquitous video rental stores in the 1980s.

[@sammarks9146]

That first minute made me realize just how much my experience as a child in the 90's was closer to the 60's than to today.

[@rcknbob1]

Thanks, Sam. Between you and Alec, I now know why I had only a job at RCA when I thought I had a career.

[@benx2230]

My old man bought into these (and bought multiple models). And he bought well over 100 movies. The first time I watched Star Wars at home was on an RCA video disc. From my own experience, SelectaVision was actually better than VHS, as there was no rewinding required.

[@alzeNL]

Wow, this would make a perfect research case in innovation management. I'm sure its happened more than once with other mediums as well! Fascinating and enjoyable video to watch.

[@wmbauer2]

About vinyl records (audio): Left/Right and Up/Down doesn't represent the two stereo channels. That wouldn't work very well. Left/Right is the actual audio signal, and Up/Down represents where on our "stage" from very left to very right it is being located. This way, stereo records could also be played on mono systems as they are backwards compatible. Otherwise you would not hear the information of one channel at all playing on a mono only player.

[@nleanba]

i have to say, i love the style of the illustrations/animations in this video. very vibey

[@Knightmessenger]

By the time RCA brought the format out, laserdisc had already been around for a few years. That format was similar (didnt need to rewind but could only store 60 min per side) but it actually turned out pretty good.

[@polishdon7547]

My late parents owned two players and about 100-150 movies. Couple of corrections. One- If the movie was longer then 60 minutes, they offered it on two disks. I remember my parents having Gandi on two discs, for example. Also, the CED disc quality was better then VHS/Beta. What really killed CED was the inability to record TV/Movies and a limited selection of films.

[@Altoclarinets]

You know that Smokey was the state trooper and Burt Reynolds' character that you erased was the Bandit, right? Have I fallen for engagement bait here?

[@organfairy]

The video disc had one more advantage: It was much faster to jump over a part of the disc or jump back to see a part of it again. VHS had to wind the tape while the CED could just lift the pick-up and put it down in another part of the disc.

[@CraigHuckabee]

My dad was infamous for betting on the wrong technology- we had one of these and he bought a bunch of discs for it. We also briefly had a Betamax and a Laserdisc. We eventually got a VCR after the local video shop stopped carrying anything other than VHS tapes.

[@cidercreekranch]

Our first color tv was an RCA with illuminated push buttons for changing the channel. This was in the early 70s.

[@gamecubeplayer]

were the push buttons numbers or arrows?

[@couruu]

2:51 the tracklist here is HAI's 10 most watched videos, with the exception of #2 - The Secret Protocol for When the Queen Dies. Wonder why that was left out?

[@FranklyPeetoons]

Such memories. A weird era it was. A local TV station in my region touted in its print ads "Friday Night Laser Disc" movies. That station invested in a collection of RCA poop-discs and hardware. Its premier was an airing of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. Of course it was broadcast from a spinning RCA disc. Things were okay until a scene of the monolith in space appeared. The single employee of the station had wandered off. The disc skipped. And skipped. And skipped for 20 minutes or more in a 2-second loop. Viewers of the 80s (not too many at the time) were confused. The following Monday morning the failure was mentioned in the local "news paper" (another dead thing). It was the cave man days of space and time. Now we know not to expect anything ever of new tech.

[@johnwang9914]

Keep in mind that the gold record on the Voyager space probes had video clips recorded on it. Printing video on vinyl existed for a very long time. One of the reasons why a gold record was chosen for the probe was that how to read it, required very basic physics and manufacturing ability and could be easily communicated through engraved images...

[@montana_patriot]

I remember we had one of these back in the 80's. I remember having to flip the movie over half way through. The quality was pretty good.

[@Nooticus]

nah this wasn't half as interesting, this was insanely interesting. this is a better explanation of vinyl records than any ive ever seen before. and the fact that you actually used real vinyls in the video was so cool

[@JonathanPaz]

I truly hope that this is basically a collab with Technology Connections! Two of my favorite channels together.

[@Tenajeh]

I think, the idea is pretty great! And with modern technology, we can even improve it! Like, instead of cutting groves into vinyl with a needle and then reading them with another needle through physical contact, we could burn much finer and smaller groves with the help of laser. Those could then be read by shining another laser on them and measuring the reflection. The groves could also be protected by a layer of transparent polymer that the laser would just shine through, so nothing needs to be touched physically and the discs would hold decades before the materials themselves start breaking down. I'm pretty sure, there will even be enough space for redundancies that can compensate for fine scratches and dirt on the discs. And since modern data is quite digital, we could apply that there too. Instead of just sounds and video, the digitality of the storage format would make those discs so much more versatile ...

[@jonas1015119]

Some absolutely phenomenal animations in this

[@MishaG4mer]

i like these much longer format videos with nonstock footage :3

[@StuckInProgrammers]

We had one of these when I was in elementary school! I still have the machine and a couple of the discs because it's just so weird I can't throw it away. I hooked it up to a TV a few years ago, and it still works! Nobody ever knows what the hell I'm talking about when I try to describe it, though.

[@sct913]

A friend of mine bought a RCA CED player shortly after they came out, despite my trying to convince him that buying a VCR instead was the more practical option. About a year after he purchased it, it started having problems with the picture "skipping". Took it to the local service center, and they determined it needed a new "needle". The replacement "needle" cost about $350 for the part. So my friend scrapped the CED player and bought a VCR instead. That VCR lasted almost twenty years before the capstan rollers finally failed.

[@dummptyhummpty]

For some reason the summer camp I went to in the mid 90s had these for us to watch movies on. I had always wondered what they were until a few years ago.

[@aaronbasham6554]

I will say these things are amazing to collect, because they often have custom sized art for their cases of famous movies

[@wulfrunian]

Baird developed a method of recording in the late 1920s which also used gramophone records, which he called Phonovision. However, the pictures recorded were of his 30 line system and there was no way of playing back these recordings. Some of the discs have survived and the images converted to more modern format.

[@chobies5383]

2:52 Left ear - HAI Right ear - Wendover Productions

[@adriancressy8363]

The technology was amazing....really!! The little stylus in the "cartridge" was able to pick up that video and audio

[@counterfit5]

Selectavision is how I first watched Star Wars, Ghostbusters, and quite a few other classics of the 70s and 80s, plus a bunch of Disney shorts.

[@hifijohn]

Had one back then and the video quality was far better than tape but it was too expensive and it would stutter too much. having it only one hour per side was also a big negative. the technology was incredible, you have the pix all the color information all the sync signals and two channels of sound all in one groove!

[@fortwoods]

Ok, this can't stand. Smokey was in S&B Part 3. I never thought I'd have to school HAI but Smokey means cop. In the S&B movies, that's the character played by Jackie Gleason. The movie focused on the Smokey. Who wasn't in the movie? The Bandit played by Burt Reynolds. The younger generation........"what the hell is world comin' to?" --Buford T. Justice

[@Wolfsbane1974]

Not to mention Bandit DOES make an appearance in the movie…

[@delusionnnnn]

I prefer using the term CED (Capacitance Electronic Disc), which is a lot less ambiguous than Slectavision, which was used by several unrelated RCA products. I own one, which I only bought to photograph in detail. They're quite pretty, with a lot of iridescence due to the fineness of the grooves. I didn't buy a player. Those things are expensive, will almost always require a bit of expert repair - belt replacement at minimum - and I didn't need to play back the disc, just take pretty pictures.

[@andrewgodiy2172]

2:50 I feel like this Easter egg is vastly underappreciated

[@Iamthelolrus]

Burt was the bandit, smokey was the cop.

[@themoviemaniac8416]

You oversimplified the issue of the CED videodisc marketing flop and also incorrectly stated some things in your zeal to snidely dismiss this format. The science of this format is actually pretty amazing. The transformation of the variation in capacitance between a electrically charged disc and the stylus that reads this, and transforms it into color video and multi-channel sound deserves a better appraisal than what you give it. The format is not prone to failure any more than any other format and it did work. If you doubt this, I can show you about 20 players that I have right now that work perfectly that are from the 1980s, my friend. They don't fail if a dust particle happens to get on the disc, the stylus was designed to kick away particles and self-clean. The discs had a silicone oil protectant layer that extended their life and reduced wear. They last for as many plays as any videotape. They don't get stretched or eaten by the players like tapes, and your picture showing a broken disc ejecting from a player is dishonest. They generally operate with less complexity than do videotapes. They were not a little bit cheaper than tapes, but a lot cheaper, as were the players, like about 30%-40% the cost, and were as easily pressed as vinyl audio records are. The fact that you used a case to insert them into a player is no different than a videotape, right? They also had sound and video quality basically equivalent to Betamax videotape, and even had stereo and Dolby 5.1 on some movies. The format was a fine format, as good as any other of the time, except for laserdisc. It wasn't a matter of "nobody" wanting the format, but the fact that the videotape format allowed time-shift recording of TV programs, and that the courts ruled in Sony's favor on this issue. RCA's failure was not in the format itself, as that actually was a scientific success, it was in not developing the format in a timely manner. They put it on hold for too long of a period before deciding to move on it and get it to market, when it could have actually been made available about 8-10 years earlier, before videotapes and laserdiscs. That would have made a big difference in the marketability. RCA's problems were not only due to this one format, but many other issues that caused all American electronics manufacturers to stagnate. Instead of dismissing the format for RCA's marketing failures, maybe we should look at it as the eventual end product of one of Edison's finest inventions. I'm sure he would see it that way.

[@bryede]

I agree that they really weren't that bad. They just were a lot less compelling because they were delayed until other formats were making it to market. Five years earlier they would have been unstoppable.

[@themoviemaniac8416]

@@bryede That was my point as well. My Dad worked at RCA in Indiana on these units and other things. He made it clear they could have been ready a few years before videotapes had the top execs not hesitated and slow-walked them. He also clearly stated the CED did not cause the demise of RCA because RCA then went whole hog into VHS machines and made all their losses back with them, while Sony Betamax floundered. Dad also had a repair shop where I learned to repair these things, laserdiscs and videotape machines. I'm probably one of the few left who knows how to do this. THX for some backup on this!

[@Dragondude2525]

If you wanna watch a more detailed and much longer video on this subject, I highly recommend the Techmoan video on The RCA CED videodisc and also his video on the VHD.

[@jasongoldtrap1114]

Burt Reynolds played the Bandit. Jackie Gleason played Smokey.

[@cedfan1]

I have a CED PLAYER & several discs. Had it serviced & it works very well. The video quality is just slightly better than VHS. I have it still as more of a curiousity.

[@ChromeDestiny]

One thing that might have saved this might have been if it could have doubled as a linear tracking turntable for standard audio records, call it Select-A-Song or something.