STAR WARS on RCA SelectaVision!

[blhagstrom]

The latest pile turned up an RCA SelectaVision and a bunch of discs.

What a blast from the past!

I remember renting one of these "back in the day"

 

[GuyK]

Is that one of the CED machines? As in analog video?

 

[mars_volta]

Cool! We used to rent those once in a while when I was a kid.

 

[bryblob]

does it play laserdiscs or....idk, never heard heard of it, but i'm interested to know.

 

[blhagstrom]

Yes, CED.

Google Selectavision, the wiki page explains it.
It's really out there.

No laser.

 

[jcamero]

I had one of those when they first came out. I bought numerous music videos. I took it to many parties, it was a big hit. I may still have the movies somewhere.

 

[tonebells]

Video by the needle.

 

[Lavane]

I have a freind who bought one of these when they came out. I always wondered why it was even made when VHS was already the standard. After a few plays the picture degrades, color bloom and loss of focus. We did rent discs for it though. Getting one that skipped kind of sucked. You knew someone popped it open just to see what was in the cartridge. My friend still has it along with a working Quasar top loading VHS machine.

 

[Gazdatronik]

I have a freind who bought one of these when they came out. I always wondered why it was even made when VHS was already the standard. After a few plays the picture degrades, color bloom and loss of focus. We did rent discs for it though. Getting one that skipped kind of sucked. You knew someone popped it open just to see what was in the cartridge. My friend still has it along with a working Quasar top loading VHS machine.

RCA put so much into it they had no choice but to try to recoup the loss. The system would have been "ready" by the end of the 60's had they actually went forward with some effort perfecting the prototypes. If they could have released it then, it would have been a hit because there was no competition.

They still thought they had a fighting chance in '81 since the level of precision to build a CED player was less than that of a VCR, meaning it could be cheaper to manufacture, and cheaper for the end user, about $100 less than the cheapest VHS deck. The movies themselves were cheaper to make too, and roughly a third of the price of a VHS pre-recorded, since they could use existing record stamping tooling. Too little too late, though.

 

[GuyK]

i was just a kid when these came out, and only heard of them at the time; I never had opportunity to see one before everyone was talking about getting laser disks.

 

[Lavane]

RCA put so much into it they had no choice but to try to recoup the loss. The system would have been "ready" by the end of the 60's had they actually went forward with some effort perfecting the prototypes. If they could have released it then, it would have been a hit because there was no competition.

They still thought they had a fighting chance in '81 since the level of precision to build a CED player was less than that of a VCR, meaning it could be cheaper to manufacture, and cheaper for the end user, about $100 less than the cheapest VHS deck. The movies themselves were cheaper to make too, and roughly a third of the price of a VHS pre-recorded, since they could use existing record stamping tooling. Too little too late, though.

Sort of like the giant cassette tapes. Putting RTR quality recordings on a large cassette. It died a quick death also and was revived in a smaller, cheaper lower fidelity version.

 

[Hajidub]

Never heard of these until this thread, now I found (2) for sale locally on C's List. They come with spare stylus' and everything.

 

[Wolverine]

I have come across tons of CED discs in thrifts but never a player. I guess I'll just have to settle for all of my Star Wars movies on laser disc.

 

[zebra03]

I would say that Star Wars disc would be the original version of the movie and not the "remixed" version that is out now . I would think highly collectable .

https://www.polygon.com/2014/8/18/6030725/star-wars-hd-despecialized-edition

 

[dewdude]

So the way these worked is quite interesting. The stylus of the thing was actually an electrode and the disc was electrically conductive. The groove was essentially vertically cut with an FM signal to form a different groove depth, which was read by the stylus-electrode as a varying capacitance. I don't know all the details...but long story short; this varying capacitance alters the frequency of a resonant circuit...which recreates the FM signal for demodulation. It was still a physical contact medium and would wear out. You also only had 3MHz of bandwidth to play with.

*took me over a week to realize I accidentally typed lateral*

 

[Wildcat]

We had a nearby independent video store that rented both Laserdiscs and CED discs. I had a Pioneer LD-660 top loader LD player at the time, but I had always wondered how the picture of the CEDs compared, and if anyone local ever rented them. Back then, too, it was easy to copy a LD to VHS.

 

[Dude111]

Is that one of the CED machines? As in analog video?

Yes analog audio also... I have been looking for one for along time and cant find one..... Looking for a good MONO unit

All people seem to have on ebay are ones that dont work. (For parts for other ones)

Ill look again maybe sometime....

 

[blhagstrom]

Yes analog audio also... I have been looking for one for along time and cant find one..... Looking for a good MONO unit

All people seem to have on ebay are ones that dont work. (For parts for other ones)

Ill look again maybe sometime....

From the little I looked into these, the "stylus" is the wear part.
I have a feeling that "not working" means the pickup stylus is probably bad.

So, if someone was to be serious about fooling with these, I would think finding and collecting NOS stylus would be a smart move.
I think I saw NOS stylus floating through eBay back when I posted this.

 

[Dude111]

I hear ya buddy............ Ya im sure the needles go thru alot when playing these.....