Comments on: There’s always something great on the RCA VideoDisc System.

By: Hirudinea

Hirudinea — Fri, 22 May 2009 04:07:13 +0000

I got one of these players for $10 at the Sally Anne, but I have no discs, but they might still show up in a Goodwill somewhere.

By: Scott B.

Scott B. — Sat, 16 May 2009 04:14:51 +0000

My son and I found one of these disks — Casablanca? — at the local Goodwill store the other day. I had no idea what it was!

By: JMyint

JMyint — Fri, 15 May 2009 01:47:40 +0000

In a commercial setting I was replacing the pick-ups in these players about every six weeks but then that was over 650 hours of play time. The 12 inch laser disc players were far more reliable.

By: Torgo

Torgo — Wed, 13 May 2009 04:17:03 +0000

Interestingly, the VideoDisk project was begun in the 60’s, and was intended to be a replacement to the LP. But the project kept snowballing and being delayed, and was finally released as the VideoDisk when it was too late to make an impact.

Interesting technology. It had a needle and a groove, but it didn’t work like a normal record. The needle floated over the groove and picked up an electric charge off the disk. Or something like that.

And as a side note — LaserDisk was not digital, it was FM.

By: fred

fred — Tue, 12 May 2009 19:07:30 +0000

whens the last time you seen consumer electronics that were woodgrained?

By: Al Bear

Al Bear — Tue, 12 May 2009 18:56:07 +0000

Man! I remember being so impressed by the RCA Videodisc system my neighbors had back in 83′ but then again I was 10 now I know better.

By: Mitch

Mitch — Tue, 12 May 2009 17:29:56 +0000

We had one of these players when I was a kid. They were dead simple to operate – open the door, stick the cartridge in, yank it back out. When you closed the door, it started playing automatically. Very easy for kids to operate. It was also cheaper and more durable than a VCR.

But, as Casandro noted, it couldn’t record, though that never really bothered us – we had no idea what we were missing.

Worst part of these was that they had a stylus, just like a record player, and they had to be replaced every so often, just like a record player. Unlike a record player, they cost $100. Ouch!

By: Stephen

Stephen — Tue, 12 May 2009 10:45:16 +0000

This seems to be the RCA capacitative electronic disc system, which you can read about here:
http://www.totalrewind.org/disc/disc_cap.htm
The system wasn’t recordable, and it wasn’t able to compete with video tape. It lasted just three years.

By: fluffy

fluffy — Tue, 12 May 2009 05:47:32 +0000

The DVD also benefited from being small, reasonably cheap with ubiquitous players (computers and video game consoles which did double-duty), and so on. Regarding recording, DVD-Rs came out pretty early on in the product lifecycle, and it didn’t take long for set-top DVD recorders to become affordable.

I seriously doubt VCD/SVCD had anything to do with DVD’s success, at least not in the US. My first DVD player couldn’t play VCD at all, raw MPEG2 files weren’t supported until many years down the road, and most Americans still have never heard of VCD. I know they’re very common in China and Japan, but in America they were basically only used by pirates.

By: Casandro

Casandro — Tue, 12 May 2009 05:02:37 +0000

Ohh it had the same problem as the DVD had. You cannot record on it. The DVD only took off because players could play back VCDs and later S-VCDs and MPEG2-files on DVDs. Otherwise it would still be like Laserdisk.