The $580 Million Vinyl Movie Disaster (Selectavision) 

We love our Technology Connections over here. Awesome video.

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.

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.

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.

Oh dip. Now that's a real Conn-extra.

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.

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.

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.

While over in Germany, Grundig gambled almost everything on a long forgotten video cassette format called Super Video Cassette. Only one model of machine was ever made. Then they gambled what was left on another video cassette format in partnership with Philips, called V2000. Then Grundig was finished, just like RCA.

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.

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.

Liked. *Sent from my RCA Selectavision.*

Technology Communications!? The crossover of the century.

Ok I’m confused is this a Technology Connections or a Vsauce video?

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

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!

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).

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.

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

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

I find it strange a gen X'er never heard about laserdisc.

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

That was an extremely well done and very comprehensive review and synopsis of the RCA Selectavision CED system. Bravo! In my opinion the interactive DisneyDisc of Mystery and Magic was easier to play than the 3 you reviewed. Of course, like all of the interactive CED's the play was basically just one or two sessions and done. BTW, I have the "Thanks for the Memories..." disc, catalog no. 62786 that was produced for RCA employees when the Rockville Road CED pressing plant ceased regular operations on June 27, 1986. I have way more discs than I'd care to admit to, but I haven't powered up my SKT-400 in over 15 years.

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.

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.

I have a whole two crates full of CED movies and I've never watched a single one of them because it's nearly impossible to find a working machine for a decent price.

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.

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

Was never expecting this collaboration

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

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.

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

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

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.

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...

Ah Yes the RCA saga Technology Connections

A couple of things that lay-people sometimes don't realise about early video discs (including Laserdisc): Laserdiscs were NOT digital video. Many people assume that because the physical media is constructed in a very similar way to a CD that it must be 'digital'. It isn't. The disc uses PWM encoding to store an analogue video signal, equivalent to 480i or 576i for NTSC or PAL discs. Some of the later discs supported PCM digital audio, but this wasn't part of the standard. There is also some confusion between CDV (CD Video) and VCD (Video CD). CDV is a 5" disc with 20 minutes of Red Book audio in the centre (same as a 3" mini CD), plus 5 minutes of Laserdisc format video at the outside edge. The format was intended for CD singles, you'd get 3 completely standard audio tracks just like a CD single, but pop the disc into a laserdisc player and you'd get the music video. VCD was a CD-ROM disc containing an hour of compressed MPEG1 video and stereo audio, and was the first 'true' digital video disc format. The quality was... not great. It wasn't until DVD came along that we finally got broadcast quality video (at least for standard def) and near-CD quality audio, with a playing time long enough to store an entire movie without having to flip the disc over or change the disc. This was the real reason that disc-based video formats never caught on; nobody other than absolute hardcore videophiles wanted to get up a third of the way through the film to flip the disc over then again two thirds through to put the second disc in. DVD solved this problem, which is why it became a huge success. The jump in video quality between VHS and DVD was massive. DVD to Blu-Ray is more of a progressive improvement. ObTopic: I do love watching these videos about old obsolete or failed formats. I often wish I had the space to set up some sort of working museum of this kit. It's so much cooler than pressing a couple of buttons on the remote and watching any film you want in seconds, although not as convenient of course!

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.

This is a goldmine, Lightning Fast -VCR- repair boys should get on this gig.

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.

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

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

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!

I know of at least one dealer that did in fact rent out selectavision disks. It was the only way he could sell the machines because no one wanted to buy the movies. The rational was it was better to be stuck with just a machine rather than a machine and a bunch of movies tied to a dead format. The dealer told my dad that the main reasoning he was given by customers was that they had been sold on the 8-track cassette and when it petered out, they were stuck with hardware and a collection of content that once the player died, they had to find another player in a market that wasn’t making new ones, in order to play their cassettes.

This should be part of a series called "Un-Popular Science" ;)

The 1980s VHS home video explosion made any new format looks promising. A random access video format, (similar to how music CDs were more convenient than cassette tapes) was the holy grail for video. Laserdiscs had a brief but impressive run, offering a better image than videotape, and unlimited views (plus freeze farming on higher end models) and that random access. I still have my Pioneer laserdisc player and 200 discs, and I need to see if I can get it to work better with a belt replacement.

Love the presentation. Please keep making these!

I absolutely remember reading and hearing about this format when I was 17 and 18 years old in 1983 / 1984... and I was very excited about it at the time. I thought it was one of the coolest things ever... but then as soon as it seemed about to break out... it vanished. 4+ years later, the LaserDisc was available and - being optical and "stylus-free", I realized it had to be the superior format... but I was never happy about never even having an opportunity to experiences the *analog* video disc format of my teenage dreams. :-) This is without question the best demonstrative review of the RCA Selectavision format I have ever seen. Thanks! I've wondered for the past 40 years what it was like and now I know. And I never knew about the games option. Lea Thompson is one of my favorite 80s actresses so to see her appearance here was, too, a completely unexpected surprise. Thanks for this.

Space Cop most definitely is not a movie

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

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

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.

If it would have made it market in 69 it would have been revolutionary

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.

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

i swear these old obscure video formats just spawn out of nowhere

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!

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.

I have a videodisc player and a number of discs. I've sold players before including the type that you have that automatically removes the disc from the caddy. The first viewing on a videodisc can and will look all choppy and jittery since the disc has dust on it from storage. But if you let the stylus play all the way through the side, the picture will be clearer on the next viewings because the dirt in the grooves has been cleaned away. Great stuff! Love me some videodiscs.

Oh wow didn't expect to see you on this channel!

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

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.

I remember renting a player and those discs in the 80s. I picked one up at Goodwill in the 90s with a bunch of movies. I still have a couple of movies on disc but sold the player with a few movies years ago. I still have the Godfather on two discs and Tootsie. I remember that it was so cool to be able to freeze the frame anywhere you wanted to and it was so clear...and being able to rewind to see the action over and over.

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

Well thank you CEDs for ruining RCA and allowing me to get a full surround sound set up from eBay for $60

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

10:33 oh I'm so glad he involved Tech Connections. Your personal experience was entertaining as well.

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.

Amazing work from an outstanding channel.

When I was a graduate student at UNT in Denton, we had a 'media' cart leftover from some research in the 80's that had a computer, laserdisc player, and touch screen monitor. It was part of some research on building interactive video learning systems. This research was canceled because of the prevalence of the Internet as it evolved into interactive websites.

That bit about RCA pulling out of the computer industry... before they did that and while they _were_ in the industry, they were one of the originators of barcode technology.

V sauce! Good to see you back, I’ve always been curious about what happened to the v sauce channels. You Tube really messed up those channels

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.

I remember a friend having one of these and a VCR. The selectavision was relegated to the small secondary TV. The VCR was for the "large" 27 inch TV. I don't recall the selectavision having any real world advantage, except possibly not having to rewind.

That giant remote brings back memories, that style was used on several rca devices as my grandparents had one and certainly didn’t have one of these guys. It’s fascinating how many times interactive movies have been tried from laser disc to pc games to Sega cd to Netflix. It’s a dream that won’t die and I’m sure staring down some AI deepfake monstrosities in the future.

Great video, had the original player when I was in high school. You got one thing wrong though, there was video disc rental. The appliance store my mom bought it from turned half their floor into disc rental space. Was a big RCA licensed dealer, I watched most the films ever released on RCA video discs....

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Grew up with CED’s, loved them! Still do, but I used to too. Fun video, thank you for it! Salute!

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....

I have memories of a vinyl version of Empire Strikes Back I saw at a friend’s house when I was a kid. Glad I wasn’t misremembering!

I saw one of these at a thrift shot like 5 years ago with a stack of the movies. Wish I had put an offer in on it then.

That thing sounded like my old 63 VW bug running on three cylinders before I rebuilt the motor.

That TechConn rep is a dependable fella!

15:50 "But it didn't work! The splitter had five inputs and only one output." Then that's not a splitter. Do you also pick up spoons and say "This fork is defective, it has no tines!"?

With regards to not being able to watch movies at home before VHS, someone please explain to him what Cartrivision and 8MM home formats were. LONG before VHS, it was *possible* to watch movies at home, just rare.

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.

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

I actually owned a CED deck, and it was in regular use until it was killed by a falling bookcase in an earthquake in 1994. I bought mine in 1984, and by 1985 the disks had become amazingly cheap. And as a parent, they were great as my kids had no problem in using them. Never a worry about rewinding, just hit play again. And even a 4 year old could easily use them as there were only a couple of controls. And unusual for that era, many of them were in letterbox format. But the biggest problem with this was that it came 5-10 years too late. If it had beaten the VCR it might have been entrenched well enough to survive. But by the time it came out VHS and Beta were already entrenched so there was not much room left for a play only system.

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.

It’s so cool that those people got to dance on a one-to-one scale version of the Selectavision! Good thing 1970s station wagons were so big! BTW there does appear to be a “Murder, Anyone?” Play-through posted 4 years ago.

I still have several of these players and over a hundred discs, including the Races and Murder, Anyone. I also have the laserdisc players and hundreds of discs for that as well. LOVE these older techs. I really enjoyed this video.

12:01 the world’s first YTP. It’s beautiful

I didn't expect to see to see a Ninja Scroll VHS in the first 2 seconds, good stuff

Shout out to technology connections

I SO want one of these 😂😂 What a great piece of history. Thanks for a great video.

Well done sir, very captivating.