The $580 Million Vinyl Movie Disaster (Selectavision)

[@Codexionyx101]

We love our Technology Connections over here. Awesome video.

[@Great-Documentaries]

Yes, and Tech Conn tells *this* story *much* better than this guy.

[@guyinmsp]

There’s no comparison. Technology Connections is better and far more entertaining.

[@RemoWilliams1227]

​@@guyinmsphis series on CRTs and analog television was enthralling to me.

[@n0vi]

@@Great-Documentaries Uhhh be nice to vsauce2 thanks

[@markrix]

Idk give me an isometric drawing and a list of dishwasher code paths and i dont really need tech ingredients. What ever happened to the good manuals of the day?

[@rfrover]

I bought a CED player in June of 1981. At the time it was the only way to build a library of films for home viewing at anything resembling a reasonable cost. Most prerecorded VHS tapes were almost $100 in the early ‘80s. The discs were, generally, beautifully produced and worked quite well. Skipping was relatively rare. The discs that are found in thrift stores have been used and abused, accounting for many of the problems with skipping that collectors have problems with today. I still have a functioning machine and most of the discs, purchased over 40 years ago, play well. It’s an ingenious, fun and unfairly maligned format.

[@danieldaniels7571]

I have a substantial collection as well. Most of my discs play great, and my SGT-200 works like new with impressive quality sound. Amazing for a machine made in 1982.

[@mego73]

Many people, including me stored the discs stacked. A no no for this format.

[@danieldaniels7571]

@@mego73 yep. It’s always a gamble buying a disc because you have no way of knowing how its been stored, and most people don’t realize you can’t store them like that.

[@domfjbrown75]

​@@mego73same as with normal vinyl records then :)

[@andybearchan]

Laser Disk lasted into 2000 because the education market used it for intactive lessons.

[@thedoctor3996]

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]

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.

[@vilefly]

Yep. No one actually even owns their cars......because they have catastrophic failure before they are paid for. But I'll make trouble....because I'm geared for it.....and I actually own my car.

[@bryanjk]

AND YOU WILL BE HAPPY

[@renakunisaki]

Back then, they didn't have the means to change the deal after the sale.

[@colindragan9352]

It wasn’t that simple. “Corporations” isn’t just one entity. The corporations that created home video were not the corporations actually making the content. THEY absolutely did not want people owning their media. When home video first started coming out, tv channels and movie studios were demanding the tech get banned. Disney and Universal studios even sued Sony to basically ban home video. It went all the way to the Supreme Court.

[@Paul-uk5mx]

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

[@TommyCrosby]

You can't do a video about obscure media format without seeing Technology Connections or Techmoan popping up nowadays. Good testament of their knowledge. 👍

[@pegcity4eva]

I was thinking of the Techmoan video review he did of this.

[@JoeyLanclos]

They are amongst the Greats. Add Franlab, Shango 66, KILOKATT7 , Brraindead3xl and more. I need to acknowledge all of you. Need to compose comprehensive list of everyone who has helped educate and enlighten me.

[@JoeyLanclos]

Braindead3xl damn typos

[@KRAFTWERK2K6]

naaah they are just some of the few ones actually able to pay the scalper prices for vintage tech to make videos about it xD

[@divergentthinkingproductions]

I can personally say at least in the Washington, DC area in the early 80s there was a window where the CED discs were rented out along with Beta and VHS. They sat in their own meager, LP size rack in the middle of the store, looked down upon by the shelves and shelves of pre-recorded tapes, forlorn and friendless, never to be wanted, never to be loved.

[@JeremyLevi]

Same goes for my hometown in Ontario, Canada. We had a high end A/V store that had a section in the back where they rented out Selectavision players and discs (at least as early as sometime in 1983). For a time this was the only way to rent movies in my small city as the first video tape rental store here wouldn't open until a couple of years later.

[@probably_afk]

When I was a young kid, our family rented both the discs and the player from a place in Muskegon, MI also. And they had hundreds of the things. It was the main business. There were no VHS tapes until a couple years later. My first viewing of films like Empire Strikes Back, the first few Rocky movies, Raiders of the Lost Ark etc were all on RCA VideoDisc (I didn't even know it was called "SelectaVision"). Eventually VHS took over the market and the first few times we rented a player and some movies, our reaction was "This is crap?!" The horizontal distortion lines from the tapes were never present on the discs and having to rewind was an annoyance.

[@raymondramirez9177]

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.

[@lucasrem]

Laserdisc was better, even bigger in Japan VHS was crab, and only big in the US.

[@michaelturner4457]

It should be noted that it was the Japanese branch only until the 1930s, as part of the Victor Talking Machine Co. After WW2, Japan Victor Co was completely separate from RCA.

[@scottgfx]

@@michaelturner4457 Also, while RCA made broadcast videotape machines for professional use, all of their consumer videotape machines were either OEMed from Hitachi or Matsushita (Panasonic). The NBC network would by around 1985-86, have a very close relationship with Panasonic for providing professional videotape machines. (Panasonic M-II) RCA's last attempts to bring out professional videotape machines in the 1970s were not successful. Look up the RCA TR-600 and TR-800. On the other hand, they had tremendous success with the professional camera business. Their last big studio camera was the TK-47 in the early 1980s. Some of the RCA camera people migrated over to Sony.

[@JesterEric]

JVC has its own vinyl video disc system in Japan called VHD

[@peacearchwa5103]

@@michaelturner4457 Correct. At some point after WWII, Victor Company of Japan (JVC) entered into a business agreement with its onetime parent company Radio Corporation of America (RCA) to distribute (RCA) Victor recordings in Japan and some other Asian markets, and later to jointly develop and market some home entertainment technologies. JVC and RCA jointly developed and marketed an early-1970s surround sound (quadraphonic) vinyl LP playback system known as CD-4. Starting in 1977, JVC and RCA also jointly marketed the Video Home System (VHS) videotape format.

[@fictionalmediabully9830]

If you thought the CED was a failure in North America, you haven't seen the United Kingdom. It was released over here in 1983 and was on the market for only SIX MONTHS! In total, we only got 272 titles released on it. One of which, funnily enough, is a '70s sex comedy.

[@Sashazur]

I worked at RCA after Selectavision was cancelled. Lots of people there said that it would have been a huge success if RCA had allowed porn videos.

[@JordanDilla]

@@Sashazur​​⁠ Yeah Porn, the true driver of industries since the invention of the printing press.

[@notthatyouasked6656]

Yes, and there were a bunch of discs issued in the UK that weren't issued in the US. Of course , you can't just pop a UK disc into a US player...

[@jimbotron70]

"Only" 272 titles a failure? 😅

[@lasskinn474]

272 doesn't seem really that bad, as far as failed formats go.

[@quantumleap359]

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!

[@hwertz10]

Yeah, my understanding is RCA management was just HOOKED on the idea of being able to use lightly modified production equipment for records to produce video discs; the cost to produce a disc was apparently QUITE low. But the R&D spent on the technology to get that much information on a disk, being read off by a *metal stylus* ? Yeah they spent way too much and way too long developing the tech; and my understanding is the delays in shipping were to try to work out the skipping issue (which, basically, they never did.)

[@Lurch-Bot]

Sounds like RCA mainly failed due to the lack of hiring enough forward thinking people. Otherwise, they could have got the product to market a lot sooner.

[@TheCreth808]

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.

[@Here_is_Waldo]

Get someone to copy them and upload them to the internet before any unique videos or games are lost forever.

[@PatLund]

Technology Communications!? The crossover of the century.

[@jasonblalock4429]

Seems like it would be worthwhile to rip the video from those mystery discs and stick it on the Internet Archive, just to preserve those early performances from Lea Thompson and Paul Gleason.

[@gojikranz]

They are both available on laserdisc for a slightly easier way to experience them though laserdisc players are getting harder to find too.

[@GeoffreyMorrison-xh2eo]

Why not?! People would be fascinated!

[@javierortiz82]

the original masters are probably rotten in some GE warehouse, it might be the best option we have.

[@ralphmerridew]

The mysteries were also released on laserdisc. Fel_Temp_Reparatio put one of the stories on youtube.

[@TheMediaHoarder]

The Mysterydiscs were actually made for the laserdisc format and adopted for CED a couple years later. The laserdiscs would be better archival quality.

[@AdamsOlympia]

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!

[@mojojojo6400]

Man you had it good. Seriously. No sarcasm. I know those memories must be there forever.

[@Lurch-Bot]

Spent my High School years in the UK, where, although they did have Blockbuster, there weren't enough to put the mom and pop stores out of business. During the summers, I would go and rent cheap older films by the basket full.

[@haweater1555]

The first home video format with licensed Hollywood film releases was the Cartrivision system in 1972. Rented movies came on tapes that could not be rewound by home machines - only the dealer's in the first "Pay-per-View" system. The manufacturer went bust the next year, making this format innovative and pioneering failure. Later come other cassette formats with very limited market penetration: Phillips "VCR" [stacked reel], Panasonic/Quasar "VX" format, and Sanyo "V-Cord" tape systemn to further confuse the mid-70s early adopters. VHS, Betamax, V2000, and CVC were just more subsequent efforts to try again and again.

[@glennjames7107]

Wow, I'd never heard of that. Only the rental stores could rewind the tape, it's no small miracle that they didn't figure out a way to do that with VHS cassettes. As a matter of fact it seems like I remember that you had a tab or button that had to be depressed on VHS cassettes to wind them by hand. I'm assuming it was designed like that in order to prevent the tape from unwinding, and making a mess during transit.

[@Lurch-Bot]

Actually, it was possible to buy Hollywood films on 16mm format even before this. They were very expensive though.

[@NatePrawdzik]

Liked. *Sent from my RCA Selectavision.*

[@enochpeter]

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.

[@struckfire3337]

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]

You sound like that one bit coin guy who threw his harddisk worth billions away to the trash.

[@struckfire3337]

@@c.jishnu378 pathetic

[@petergibson2318]

@@c.jishnu378 The guy tried to "GoFundMe" for a few million dollars to get all the trash in the landfill dug up again?

[@AdamsOlympia]

We bought an RCA VD player and a couple crates of movies at a garage sale back in the 90s.. It was worth having for the period, considering VHS wasn't really any better quality .. It just took up a lot of space, so we got rid of it a few years later and probably broke even. I have fond memories of it as a teen, considering it was my first soft prn collection with titles like "Emily" ;)

[@lasskinn474]

the trick to useless crap making money is waiting for long enough for it to become quirky. applies even to big iron mini computers.

[@argentlupin]

Loved this video I am also an 80's kid and missed this. Absolutely amazing video and product review very informative and entertaining. Love the Tech Connect cameo.

[@jameslocke1416]

My family had the lower end model with the manually operated lever to load/unload the disc, while my aunt & uncle bought the fully automatic version which had motors that did all the work. Both machines needed their stylus replaced fairly regularly, but never actually broke. We did have a video store nearby in Tustin, CA which had a section with discs for rent, but just a small selection (usually new releases),. They were just a mom & pop shop, though, and didn’t advertise much. They had a mailing list for the regulars, and would send out single sheets folded into thirds, stapled shut, with a small version of the poster of their latest offering and a list of other videodiscs for rent. When the machines went OOP and you couldn’t buy replacement stylus cartridges, they just became doorstops, sadly

[@danieldaniels7571]

Replacement stilli are still available today.

[@AlekAuto]

08:01 - It's literally a Honda. It makes horrific banging noises that make you think it's dead, and the solution is to adjust a tiny, difficult to reach screw, then it'll work fine.

[@javierortiz82]

Of all the honda bikes I've had, I've never experienced such a thing, I just sell them to get a bigger honda and ride it for four years or more. Those things are undestructible.

[@AlekAuto]

@@javierortiz82 Oh yeah no, Honda bikes are a totally different beast. Their inline 4 engines are the ones that're notorious for this sorta stuff. The amount of times H and K series engines sound like they have lifter tick or even a knock and a valve lash adjustment+oil change solve the problem is crazy.

[@glennjames7107]

It used to be that if you wanted anything with an engine, that was almost indestructible, and would crank, first try, every time, you bought a Honda. This went for everything from their small (Briggs&Stratton type) engines, to motorbikes, all the way to their cars. You literally could not go wrong with a Honda product in the 80'S.

[@AlekAuto]

@@glennjames7107 Pretty sure that's still true of Honda as long as you get a manual. What I was referring to was the fact that everything on Honda engines is manually adjusted, and the adjustment screws aren't always easy to get to. So, for example, valves being out of lash can sound like lifter tick and make the uninitiated worry, but after doing the adjustment, the engine'll run much better. I'm more of a Toyota person, myself. They found a great middle ground between reliably simple mechanisms and systems that don't require manual adjustment.

[@Triggernlfrl]

@@AlekAuto Both has now learned to make crapy engines to...

[@vwestlife]

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]

Popular Science ain't what it used to be, I'm sad to say.

[@hymefly]

Super vhs is still great

[@GeoffreyMorrison-xh2eo]

​@@hymeflyPractically never existed

[@GeoNeilUK]

@@hymefly "Super vhs is still great" Not according to Oddity Archive. Ben's opinion is that it's like the D2MAC of VHS standards. Slightly better than regular PAL (or SECAM or NTSC) but you'd never notice it on consumer gear of the day, not good enough for actual professional use and also, not backwards compatible with regular VHS decks (unlike BetaMax's equivalent) To play S-VHS tapes, you need an S-VHS player and the professional already had better tape formats including Betacam. Another interesting story that probably has echoes of RCA (and D2MAC) was the story of the Great British Satellite TV War of 1990 between Sky and British Satellite Broadcasting (BSB) BSB: Government regulated, closed satellite service that they had to build and launch themselves and whose channels were ran like BBC and ITV, commissioning original programming for all five channels, those five channels being the only channels on the satellite and government mandated to use the new D2MAC standard that was still in development. Sky: Rented four channels on a Luxembourg satellite that at the time had 16 channels available, the other twelve available to all comers from all over Europe and included over broadcasters from the UK and sticking to good old reliable PAL, the same format used by the TVs in customer's homes. Guess who won.

[@danieldaniels7571]

@@GeoffreyMorrison-xh2eodunno what you’re talking about. Many SVHS VCRs were made, and they made them for nearly 20 years.

[@markstirton]

This is all very familiar, only with less tweed...

[@youdontknowme5969]

...and brown 😉

[@opraiderman904]

Murder Anyone sounds like the name of a soon to be banned steam game

[@Studeb]

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.

[@n1xp1n]

This video is just WOW. Technology breakdown, live demo, business model decomposition - everything is top notch. I can't thank you enough.

[@jpreale]

Worth it all for the Lea Thompson footage. What a beauty!

[@StoneyRerootkit]

❤Lea T... What a Babe😊👅 Howard The Duck😮🎉🦆What a Great Movie📀🎥📈 And Such a Great Bit of IP for Marvel Comics💵🔥🎇

[@LordHasenpfeffer]

You got that right! Somehow she always seems to be so overlooked... but those who know... know!

[@KennethScharf]

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).

[@Lurch-Bot]

My rich uncle had a two tray model that could read both sides (putting 4 lasers in a device in the mid '80s wasn't cheap, lol). He projected movies onto a wall that had been specially painted to function as well as a screen. It was about 9 or 10 ft diagonal in 4:3 aspect ratio. But it could also do widescreen without borders. I also played video games on this setup. It wasn't as awesome as it sounds and Mario was like 3 feet tall. Mainly was just a way to get a sore neck.

[@digitalblunt]

@@Lurch-Bot That's awesome, haha. My family only had a single-tray single-laser player on a 27" TV.

[@Scotter1971]

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.

[@mego73]

CEDs had some rocking cover art.

[@MrMegaManFan]

You found the way to get me to watch - you had Alec on! Fun fact - my local library used to rent this player out for a few days at a time. I watched Tron on it over, and over, and over, and over...

[@Cybermtl666]

I can tell you're a man of taste by the Space Cop film showed in the opening

[@TubbyJ420]

I clapped! I clapped when i saw it!

[@liberatumplox625]

Space Cop, as in RLM?

[@I_am_Mister_Y]

*I KNOW WHAT THAT IS!*

[@joshuajgrillot]

My Aunt had one of these back in the 80s, I remember it well. You had to insert it twice, front for the beginning of the movie and then at some point You needed to insert it on the other side for the rest of the movie. She had a ton of movies for it as well, Good times.

[@ledgema7686]

I remember back in the day of Selectavision that there were places where you could rent the player and the CEDs.

[@danieldaniels7571]

There were. As a kid my parents rented that, and I dubbed them to VHS. It worked really well, much better than dubbing from another VHS tape.

[@B_Van_Glorious]

I saw the title and was like...meh, then it autoplayed on my feed amd the thumbnail flashed to Kevin Immediate click. And, as always, it was awesome. Give this man a raise!

[@kumohara_319]

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

[@Quietruck]

If you don't plan on resurrecting your player and watching the movies you have , maybe you'd be willing to sell what you have. If so I'd be willing to buy.

[@danieldaniels7571]

As long as the needle is in good shape, usually all it takes to revive a player is new belts, cleaning, and lube.

[@porkins74]

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.

[@RyanAumiller]

ya know.... there are still CED collectors and enthusiasts out there that were actually around during the SelectaVision heyday and input from ANY one of them would have been nice for this video. (e.g. your comment at 19:49 in the video... I could already tell LONG before you made that statement that you weren't around for it or even had previous exposure to it) These days, the discs go for INSANE money between collectors and replacement stylus assemblies (the actual fix for skipping) are still available. The format is not "dead" just yet.

[@tim3172]

"I could tell you weren't around for it." Congrats(?) on determining he's not at least the what 48? Years old he'd need to be to have been around for it? Why would we want the biased opinion of an "enthusiast" of something that is, objectively, a terrible product? "the discs go for INSANE money"

[@RyanAumiller]

​@@tim3172 Well, for starters it didn't touch on ANY of the technical superiorities it possessed or any of the science behind how it actually worked because that right there is the most interesting part of this technology. VHS didn't win out the "format wars" because of superior audio/video quality, in fact it was the worst quality one out of all the formats available in the 80s. The biggest problem with the CED format was it needed to be handled with some care and handled more often than ALL the others. half a million units would never have sold if it was objectively garbage to begin with. You're forgetting the perspective of "wait, this thing can let me choose exactly what I watch whenever I want instead of just 20-30 cable channels to choose from?" Compared to the tape formats, this was the best picture and sound money could buy for home use at the time. You just had to maintain the equipment and store the media properly. Most people didn't do that. I can attest to that just from the amount of Dog/Cat hair and cigarette tar I've cleaned out of both players and videodisc carts over the years and yes you can clean the discs but it's solvent + compressed air only and if you haven't built a cleaning fixture out of a gutted player, don't even try. Never wipe it in any way with anything. I grew up reading the PopSci magazine this channel is named after (and Popular Mechanics too) and I guess the use of some primary source material and hard technical facts in direct comparison to other available formats at the time instead of the deep dive into the business end of it was an overexpectation on my part? My bad for expecting something more like a Popular Science article and not some clickbaity story that made a sharp turn away from science/technology into a corporate exposé while never addressing the fact that a technologically superior playback/distribution format lost out because of laziness, no ability to record and of course expense.

[@danieldaniels7571]

Most discs are worth very little. Good working players on the other hand can fetch a pretty good price. But my RCA SGT-200 won’t be for sale until after I die.

[@mojojojo6400]

There's always a snobby know it all Simpsons comic book store guy gatekeeper in every KZbin comment section

[@RyanAumiller]

@@mojojojo6400 I'm a gatekeeper because I called out Popular SCIENCE for skipping the SCIENCE behind CED Technology and how much of it evolved into the LaserDisc and instead presenting us with mostly fluff discourse on marketing? How about you stop simping for a century old media outlet that's clearly lost their way?

[@daveruthmusic]

I just picked up a Zenith player this week. It's a ton of fun despite its flaws.

[@Rakadis]

Love the presentation. Please keep making these!

[@mego73]

Brings back so many memories. CED disc was the only thing this high school student lover of movies could afford. 48Hrs was one of my often played titles. I had a pretty good size collection. By the way, you could get a freeze frame "page" by pressing the visual fast forward and reverse together. It would freeze and repeat 4 frames from one groove of the disc. Also, 2 mom and pop video stores in the area did rent CED discs.

[@LeftyPem]

Before we got our first VCR in the mid 80s, we rented a CED player and a few movies from a local department store several times. Good times, even when the movies skipped like crazy.

[@pancudowny]

Found a CED Videodisc title from Playboy--one of several released... so there goes the "no porn" argument.

[@danieldaniels7571]

I have three of them.

[@TheMediaHoarder]

The Playboy stuff was softcore, and was distributed by Fox back then. The hardcore stuff (with actual sex) wouldn’t be touched by any big companies. Closest that ever got to mainstream was Image Entertainment which started out releasing porn on laserdisc before branching out into more conventional stuff.

[@danieldaniels7571]

@@TheMediaHoarder that doesn’t make it not porn

[@istankimjong-unbutcantstan3398]

Maybe they were bootlegs......

[@Lurch-Bot]

@@danieldaniels7571 Yeah, I defy you to watch one and get turned on. Certainly wouldn't do it for me as a middle aged adult. I used to watch content like that on USA Up All Night when I was in grade school.

[@BrickTamlandOfficial]

i thought "im staying in tonight" meant they werent gonna pull out.

[@davidfriedman627]

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.

[@Jasontyo]

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.

[@noahkirkpatrick8912]

The adjusters on the bottom. It sounds like an apple product.

[@SilverFoxGaming-jc5vn]

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.

[@blampfno]

There's one thing I miss about the fixed broadcast schedule prior to the rise of home recorded media; The fact that you had to be in a place with a tv, at the right time, and anyone who wanted to see it had to as well. It was a pretty reliable anchor for next-day socializing. I knew some folks who would alter their shifts at work so they could go watch their favorite show. There's one thing I don't really miss about the fixed broadcast schedule prior to the rise of home recorded media; The fact that you had to be in a place with a tv, at the right time, and anyone who wanted to see it had to as well. It was a pretty reliable way to lose track of your favorite show if you had a flexible work schedule. I knew some folks who would alter their shifts at work so they could go watch their favorite show.

[@emitindustries8304]

Around 2007, I had an RCA branded digital audio recorder. I used it to download music from my Serius XM radio. The unit worked great for 5 months. The only control on it was a tiny joystick, which did all the functions. The joystick started getting loose, then took more poking and wiggling, then very hard pressing. Finally, it broke off, and I had to use a paper clip jammed in the hole to operate it. That worked for 2 months. Then nothing, and I finally tossed it, happy to see it go. Why did they make a device with a weak piece of plastic, poorly attached to the electronics, responsible for ALL the operations? That's the $580 million question.

[@ajworden]

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”😂😂😂

[@automatedelectronics6062]

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.

[@martymccafferty7510]

I watched tron on this type of device period and a few other movies. Our local library allowed you to check out the device and disks, and it was a great experience at the time.

[@monkeyjshow]

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.

[@visibletoallusersonyoutube096]

How are we 58 mins in and this vid had less than 500 views!? If factual: this was really good!

[@istankimjong-unbutcantstan3398]

How can we be 58 minutes into a 28+ minute video?

[@visibletoallusersonyoutube096]

@@istankimjong-unbutcantstan3398 58 mins since upload.

[@jschap712]

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.

[@doogie812]

I had fun with those in 1982. I was an authorized RCA servicer back then.

[@valley_robot]

My friend used to record onto cassette tape the audio from his brothers laser discs, those tapes were awsome on a Walkman, yeah you couldn't see the picture but your imagination filled in the blanks

[@norwegianblue2017]

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.

[@psubond]

I am watching this in the old RCA labs building. It's a small world...weird.

[@megan_alnico]

This would have been a very interesting companion technology to go along with the 8-Bit computers of the day. With just a little CPU power, the seeking stuff could have been resolved completely with an interactive menu.

[@cannibalbananas]

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.

[@MrSupro]

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.

[@GeoffreyMorrison-xh2eo]

I sympathize: Before, you had to wait for a TV media mogul to lift his little finger--to get your favorite films to play, yet again. This was especially true if it wasn't, "Gone With The Wind," "The Ten Commandments," "Cleopatra," or Disney.....

[@tonberryhunter]

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.

[@johnviera3884]

you have to remember that phones only had dial tone and calls.

[@spyczech]

How is this like netflix in 1984? Not like it was delivered. Clickbait thumbnail and what a youtuber voice intro too

[@CarrieHall]

My uncles both worked at Circuit City in the 80s and i enjoyed a childhood with them competing to get my grandparents the newest and best technology. I would love to know what happened to the huge disk library.

[@sithlordbilly4206]

My family still has that video disk player. As well as some of the movies. I actually have a couple movies myself of them.

[@JackLalane-yt4iu]

The agitated voice every 3 sentences isnt the most annoying sound to everyone else here?

[@munroborisenko7278]

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.

[@mht5875]

I clearly remember these video discs, even though Dad never had the player - he went with VHS back in the 1980's - but as someone interested in film archiving/restoration, video discs are an interesting anomaly in the world of modern physical media.

[@cprm]

This is fucking pathetic. Popular Science used to be the leading edge of consumer information about upcoming tech. Now they are making videos about retro-tech that was covered years ago by youtubers with better and more genuine personalities. Maybe Techmoan or Technology Connections will do a deep dive int the Rise and Fall or Popular Science, but that would also cut into another youtubers schtick.

[@CurtisMPT]

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.

[@Vector_Ze]

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.

[@3Storms]

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.

[@erik.reinert]

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.

[@sugarjoe50]

I worked in a NY video store chain in 1983/84. We sold whatever CEDs were left in stock for $5 each.

[@trollzone1]

Crazy how this worked as it’s a fully analog totally non digital format

[@Lurch-Bot]

Laser Disc was also an analog format. I suppose CDs could have been also but it was far easier to digitize sound than video in the late '70s.

[@trollzone1]

@@Lurch-BotI’m aware of that. The mechanism of how they work is totally different.

[@albear972]

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.

[@glennjames7107]

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 !

[@SpOculus33]

My grandma had a laser disc player she gave me back in 1997ish… it worked just fine… I should’ve kept it! In 2012; I found out that my pack rat friend had 100s of laser discs in his old warehouse and had the original StarWars movies with them! I asked for them and he said no… too bad because they just sat there collecting dust, through hot summers and subzero winters, until ultimately started to disintegrate; WHY????? 🤦‍♂️

[@MissMTurner]

I, too, never heard of it back in the day. But my husband's family had one when they were kids.

[@PRSRECORDS]

Vidmax produced "Murder Anyone?" - The First Videodisc Mystery Game V-MD 82-001 for LaserDisc. Very easy to play on Laser. Single sided.

[@tubejay1]

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.

[@nic_nuc]

I didn’t have the Selectavision, but we definitely had that remote for another product.

[@PS-hv7on]

I remember slow dancing to "Stayin' in tonight" at my senior prom. She was beautiful in a red dress and we truly believed that night would last forever. After graduation we went our own ways. I heard she married an investment banker, has two children and holidays in the Cape. Sometimes, late at night, I play "Stayin' in tonight" and dream about what might have been....

[@marcusdamberger]

Hopefully the discs were stored vertically. The microscopic grooves get smashed if more than 10 discs are stacked atop each other. i.e. the weight of the discs on top press down on the lower discs and the caddy presses into the next caddy smashing down on the disc inside.

[@AltimusPrimeG1]

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.

[@dwaiting883]

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.

[@SlowPCGaming1]

I'm pretty sure that TechMoan has addressed these machines on his KZbin 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.

[@hwertz10]

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.)

[@zmbdog]

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.

[@raphdroidt692]

Your way of presenting is very entertaining. Loved it

[@bb-gc2tx]

20:21 is that steve guttenberg as the cop 3 years before he starred in police academy?

[@johnwalko1483]

A vey well put together documentary on the history of the RCA Video Disc Player and Disc. Very informative. Thanks.

[@cobra02411]

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...

[@walmartsuxhard]

Amazing work from an outstanding channel.

[@bmobert]

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.

[@JohnJones-oy3md]

19:58 - Must have been a bit nippy on filming day.

[@LatitudeSky]

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.

[@colubrinedeucecreative]

I just realized this thing gave me PTSD I have never recovered from. I had some favorite movies on those disks, still have them. But once they start skipping you miss chunks of the movie. Always at the same time. Had no idea about the issues behind it. But I just wanted to watch start wars!

[@ThriftyAV]

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.

[@cursethemountain]

We had the star wars trilogy on these discs and like a dozen players that my dad would cannibalize for working parts