Posted by Bill Vermillion on 01/15/00 11:44

In article <14qa32la5aoetv3tjapsmmj165p5cnmh3k@4ax.com>,
Roy L. Fuchs <roylfuchs@urfargingicehole.org> wrote:
>On Thu, 06 Apr 2006 13:18:32 -0400, Kimba W. Lion <kimbawlion@aol.com>
>Gave us:
>
>>On 6 Apr 2006 08:39:56 -0700, "rjn" <email4rjn@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>>HD-DVD v. BR may be more like CED v. LaserDisc,
>>>with a DIVX frosting to sour the tast.

>>>LD "won", but what it won was the videophile market (1%).
>>>Barely enough for life support.

>>You have a point, and I've been wondering along those lines, too.

> The "videophile" market segment is much larger than 1% these days.

>>There are other variables besides consumer acceptance. CED beat LD in
>>terms of sales,

> Bullshit. CED was so bad that it never even hit the market. Show
>me an E-bay auction of a CED player.

There are probably man there that you have not noticed. I'm on a
CED mailing list and regularly someone points out E-bay auctions.

I started with a model ??-100. And took it back after 6 weeks.
But later I got one of the CJ-400s - which did away with the drive
belt and used a direct drive platter - which stabilized the
picture - though it still had a visual 'eyeprint'. I could tell
whether I was watching Beta, VHS, CED, or LD just by the artifacts
that each presented.

I don't know what the total number of CED disks releases were, but
there were about 4 times as many CED's in print than LDs when RCA
pulled the plug. [RCA was going through revolving CEO's about every
two years, and each one pulled the plug on the previous CEO's pet
project].

>> but still did not meet RCA's projections, and so they
>>killed it while sales were still growing.

> They killed it because it was degradable contact read technology.
>They killed it because they knew that non-contact technologies were
>going to be the CLEAR winner.

It was not contact like most people assume. The groove was
for moving the arm - as if it were a mechanical servo - and that
was probably RCA's biggest mistake in design. The should have gone
for an electronic servo as the JVC VHD capactive system did. The
information was beneath the grove in the RCA, while the JVC had an
embedded servo track and information track, and were also read by a
contact 'sled'. The nice thing about the VHD was that they were
10" disks. And they also had 4-channels which could be allocated
in production to video, 3 track audio [if they wished], or do
something like the slide shows that were popular then, having
3 videos - like the multi-projector slide shows - and one audio
track.

What I got a kick out of was when RCA dropped the CED. They did
this about a month or so after their arch rival CBS/Columbia
announced they were starting to press CEDs. I bet the RCA
management really enjoyed that final kick at CBS.

>>Will the industry kill the goose that lays golden eggs (DVD)
>>just so they can push the market into the new formats' DRM?

> Laser Disc lasted more than twenty years. You can bet that DVD will
>last just as long, if not longer.


>> Or will they bail out early
>>if sales don't meet their projections?

> You can bet that if they sell at the same rate that fullscreen DVD
>releases did, they will kill it.

And you can never tell about the public. Remember the DCC -
Digital Compact Cassette. It was going after Sony's mini-disk.

The big push behind it was that it was compatible with older style
cassettes and also you could record digital tapes. People put up
with cassettes and their problems, breaking, stretching, jamming,
because they were portable. But no matter how hard the consortium
in DCC pushed, about 18 months after the introduction you could buy
brand new DCC decks for 1/4 the list price or less as they were
dumped.

I've seen so many innovative designs over the years that companies
pushed and they never made it. It seems so many got involved with
their idea of a hot new product they didn't do sufficient market
research to see if the public really wanted them.

DVD and CD were revolutionary products. The new products are
evolutionary. And the former have advantages that are apparent to
virtually anyone - while the latter are often only apparent to
those who are most technically oriented.

Bill

--
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com

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