Well it certainly has been some time since I have written ANYTHING. October to be exact.. The last film reviewed was Logan's Run I believe. So much has happened in life over the last few months, both in everyday life and my film collection. Mostly the time that has passed since the last posting, could be chalked up to laziness, but my new classes have gone into full swing so that has been time consuming as well. But enough about that.. Let's get right into film talk.
This is an RCA SGT-100 Selectavision VideoDisc CED player. What the hell is a CED Player you may ask? Well a lot of friends have asked me the same question over the last few months, so I will explain... CED was a video format created by RCA. CED or Capacitance Electronic Disk, originally began research by RCA as early as 1964. RCA was trying to produce a phonograph-like method to play back video. By 1972 this technology was perfected enough to record and playback about 10 minutes of an episode of Get Smart. The technology was not exactly perfected for commercial use yet. This would not happen until 1981...
Above are CED's in their protective "Caddy" The caddies are what protect the discs from mishandling. The caddy is inserted into a player, when the machine is in a "LOAD" position the caddy is then removed from the player, leaving the disc in the player, ready for you to enjoy. The information on the disc is then read by a diamond tipped stylus and projected on to your screen.
For a variety of different reasons the CED format went the way of the dinosaur completely by about 1986, when the last discs were being manufactured. The players had stopped being produced a few years before. The video above will take you to an intro of a disc called Memories of Videodisc, a parting gift given to those at RCA that were directly involved with the production of players and discs. Why did it fail? A number of reasons. VHS and Betamax for one could record television and playback in a much more reliable manner, and as far as movies on disc at this time...LaserDisc was above and beyond the Heavyweight Champion of the two. Even with the caddies, CED discs could get scratches and dust in the tiny grooves of the record making films skip rendering some unwatchable. But who knows.. maybe if this technology was brought to market a year or so before videotape, it may have prospered for more time.
Enter CED Player #1. This is my RCA SJT-200 Stereo CED Player. It currently does not work. I purchased it on eBay for around $40 shipped, full well knowing that it was not working. I thought I could repair it. My assessment is that the stylus needs to be replaced, and the function motor that loads/unloads the disc needs to be replace as well. Thinking it was only going to be a belt, I am somewhat disappointed that a higher end model such as this is not functioning, but I hope to get it up and running this year.
This second player which was already shown in a previous picture was purchased in a lot with another non-working player with around 40 some odd discs for around $35. My only lament with this player is that it does not have stereo out, so I cannot enjoy the discs that are encoded with stereo or Dolby sound currently. Nevertheless this still makes me happy that I can enjoy the films that I own on the format for now.
Finally... In other news, I was able to pickup a new AV Receiver for the low..low.. price of $12. My friend found it for me at a somewhat local Goodwill and I happily accepted it into my home. This is my first receiver that can decode Dolby Digital and DTS audio tracks. It is a Sony DA3300ES, and was quite high end in its day. It is missing the knobs, but my universal remote works with it just fine. Now I can enjoy my Blu-Rays, DVD's, and Laserdiscs much more than I was ever able to. I'm happy now that I own every commercially used video format other than HD DVD, a quest for another day! Below is a picture of everything hooked up. I hope to continue to write more often. Thanks for reading!
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