Archived from groups: alt.video.laserdisc,pdx.forsale,seattle.forsale.misc (
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In article <LPYke.993$gk3.407@trndny07>, NJM1 <vze34wdv@verizon.net> wrote:
>Actually, VHD was a victim of.....the cold!!!! Shipping was a problem
>because the discs had a narrow temperature range before they became damaged.
>So, shipping via boat or plane from Japan was out of the question. And by
>the time they DID start to figure it out, Beta was dying and LD had become
>the disc format of choice, not to mention MUSE hitting the Japan
>marketplace.
That's interesting information. I saw the VHD, an intresting quad
audio, and a digital cassette recorder using the standard cassette
size shell in a room JVC had at an AES show in NYC in the late
1970s [or thereabouts].
It was interesting technology. A frined of mine worked at the JVC
1/2 spped master lab in LA [designed to master the RCA quad LP
discs and converted to high-end audio, and I remember him telling
me that JVC had tons of money in VHD and it almost had to succeed
if JVC was to survive.
And Beta died in the US but stayed quite large in other countries.
When there were almost no Beta blanks in local stores all you had
to was visit Sea World or Disney, and there were Beta blanks
everywhere as most of the SA tourists were using Beta Camcorders.
Very few VHS from the SA tourists.
LD was the format of choice for collectors/film-buffs, while the
media selection for CED was more equivalent of the VHS tape
librarys. When LD had about 400 titles in it's category one store
here had at least twice that many on display on their shelves, with
titles running down one wall and around the end of the room, and
many bays standing alone with hundreds of titles.
I do miss the great collectors selections we used to see on LD and
only now are we starting to see some on DVD.
Bill
>
>"Bill Vermillion" <bv@wjv.com> wrote in message news:IH0HH5.1unt@wjv.com...
>> In article <FaJje.7544$tX5.1034@newssvr33.news.prodigy.com>,
>> Doc <dochifi@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>In article <uj0ie.5119$_f7.1337@trndny01>,
>>> "NJM1" <vze34wdv@verizon.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> >
>>>> > And CED is essentially a pressed paper disk, specifically designed so
>>>> > that
>>>> > it *will* wear out with repeated plays.
>>>> >
>>>> > For once, superior technology won out in the marketplace.
>>>> >
>>>> To the contrary, it was a highly specilaized vinyl to inhibit static
>>>> electricity. And the more you played the discs, the better they actually
>>>> looked. As the stylus worn down the special coating on the discs, it
>>>> gave a
>>>> more accurate rendering of the pressing, as wel as make the notorious
>>>> "skips" go away.
>>
>>>Just curious: I sold LD in the "olden" days, but never played around
>>>w/CED. What kind of picture/sound quality did it have compared to LD?
>>
>> CED was better than VHS. Better than standard Beta, but on
>> pretty much even footing with SuperBeta based upon my viewing.
>> Not as good as SB-1 however - which had a full 6Mhz BW.
>>
>> It had it's own visual 'eye-print'. Given three video sources,
>> Beta, VHS, CED and switching between them you could identify each
>> by it's visual signature.
>>
>> Beta was fairly accurate. Color in VHS tended to look like pastel
>> painting - eg there were boundaries on the colors with jumps where
>> Beta was smooth. Almost like one of the chalk drawings.
>>
>> CED had a slight vertical line going from upper right to lower left
>> at about 3-5 degrees from vertical. It was not like the vertical
>> black lines you would see occaisionally on some Beta Cams used
>> for ENG.
>>
>> It was not as good as LD in bandwidth. My LDs seemed to be around
>> 400-425 lines. I never had a test disk but it looked to me like
>> standard b'cast resolution - same at SuperBeta - just over 300
>> lines. Nothing except DVD ever came close to ED-Beta where I
>> could see the wedges on the 500 line circles of the standard test
>> charts that sort of faded away about half-way to the 550 line
>> resolution.
>>
>> The only real difference I saw between ED-Beta and the first
>> [non-anamorphic DVDs] was the chroma noise in tape. That's
>> something you can never get rid of in analog media. Typical copy
>> always adds about 3db noise for each generation. It took a good
>> set and trained eyes to see the problem in ED [which used the same
>> tapes at SP Beta in the studios - but at 1/3 speed].
>>
>> CED had films that were never on VHS or LD because exclusive
>> license arangements RCA made when they first introduced the format.
>> It looked like a strong consumer format and at that time RCA's name
>> was a bit shinnier than it became in later years - so that's why
>> the exclusive contracts. However it meant that many things would
>> not become availabe on VHS or LD until about 6 or 7 after the CED
>> system was dropped.
>>
>> When CED was a viable format all the consumers benefitted as RCA
>> used $24.95 - and later $19.95 as the main title price. That mean
>> the LD prices dropped to about $5 more per title. As soon as
>> RCA stopped making the machines new LD titles went up almost
>> immediately by $5 to $20 title.
>>
>> Competition always helps the consumer. Sometimes as the expense of
>> the vendor. The competition was so strong between the CED and the
>> LD that JVC decided NOT to introduce the VHD in the US, keepin it
>> only in Japan. It was a far better capacitance system than CED,
>> and use more electronics and didn't depend so much upon mechanical
>> devies, such as the mechanical servo emulaton and belt drive
>> turntrables as the CED units. Later CED players went to direct
>> drive turntables and the pictures looked much better on those
>> machines - the 400 series.
>>
>> Bill
>>
>> --
>> Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com
>
>
--
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com
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