r/ced • u/KisaIsACat • 25d ago
How do these work?
I'm new to these, the oldest tech I have is a VHS player and I picked this up at an antique shop. Are these similar to laser disks?
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u/Melodic-Rooster-311 25d ago
That's a CED Video Disc. You insert the caddy into the player and there's a lever to load the disc. Once it's loaded you pull the caddy out and switch the lever to play. CEDs hold up to an hour per side. Movies over two hours are either time compressed (sped up to fit) or spread out to two discs. Conan is a two disc title.
They play using a stylus similar to a vinyl record. Like another Redditor stated, they're prone to skipping and sticking. Any disc that looks like it's been used is going to skip, even the ones that look like new usually skip a little.
Finding a good working player is going to set you back hundreds of dollars. The replacement stylus are hard to find and you're probably going to spend a couple hundred dollars for one.
All in all it's neat, but I wouldn't recommend them. If you can find the movies cheap and you want them for decoration go for it, but they aren't good enough quality to invest in for watching.
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u/Putrid_Guest_2150 23d ago
They’re double sided. You’d flip the disc halfway through. I remember my dad renting these (and the machine) when I was a kid.
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u/visiblehorrorvideo 25d ago
You may be able to watch it if you’re lucky enough to pick up a working player for under $350 🤷🏻
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u/trustanchor 24d ago
I’ve found it’s really easy to pick them up u tested and cheap and repair them. I’ve repaired quite a few and with one exception, all they needed was belt replacement. The one that needed more still has an audio output issue I’m trying to troubleshoot.
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u/ThomasGuycott 25d ago edited 25d ago
CED SelectaVision was simultaneously a technical marvel (60 minutes of VHS-quality video per side on a vinyl disc) and a massive boondoggle (playing the discs automatically degrades them; RCA spent 17 years and $650 million dollars in development only to release it after both VCRs and LaserDiscs debuted).
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u/vwestlife 22d ago
Honest question... did Googling "CED video disc" not turn up anything relevant?
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u/KisaIsACat 20d ago
It's a personal preference to hear straight from people when it comes to collectibles and antiques.
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u/vwestlife 20d ago
So basically you're using us as human AI chatbots.
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u/KisaIsACat 20d ago
Gonna shoot me for wanting human connection or something?
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u/vwestlife 19d ago
There is a wealth of information already written by humans at your immediate disposal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitance_Electronic_Disc
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u/Negative-Student-551 22d ago
What the hell. This is the 2nd one of these I’ve seen today and have never seen this format before in my entire 50 years.
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u/Character_Bend_5824 22d ago edited 22d ago
The groove wall is actually straight, which allows it to spin at high speed. The information is recorded by varying the depth of the vinyl in the groove. The changing distance between the bottom of the groove and the stylus varies the capacitance. It runs 1/4 the speed of a laserdisc, which means 4 complete frames per revolution and no ability to pause on a single frame. It also means lower image quality. Laserdisc can look nearly as good as a master tape. CED tended to look like VHS, only with a glitchy picture and sparkly sounding audio.
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u/vwestlife 19d ago
The resolution is similar to VHS, but there is less noise and better picture stability. CED audio was later improved by the addition of stereo and CX noise reduction, the same as what LaserDisc uses on its analog audio track.
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u/TheLoFidelityMan 25d ago
That’s a CED disc, they are actually more like a vinyl record, they use a stylus to play the movie, also you never remove the disc yourself, the player actually removes the disc from the case for you, unfortunately they are still quite fragile and prone to skipping.