The RCA SelectaVision?!

A tale of ambition, innovation, and maybe just a bit of hubris.

Back in [the '60s!!], the folks at RCA were cooking up something very unique.

Their vision?

To bring the magic of movies right into the living room.

We take that for granted now, but back then, it was quite a thought.

The development of SelectaVision wasn't exactly a sprint.

Starting in 1964, RCA's engineers toiled away for nearly two decades before finally unveiling their brainchild to the world.

In March 1981, RCA basically said:

"Hey, remember how much you love records? Well, what if your records could SHOW YOU MOVIES?"

It was a bold move.

The problem with an eventual launch in 1981 though, was that there was already a bunch of competition in the form of LaserDisc, Betamax and VHS formats.

RCA gave it their best shot anyway.

SelectaVision was just the marketing name for the CED, or Capacitance Electronic Disc.

These weren't really like DVDs or Blu-rays, they were more like vinyl records on steroids.

A grooved disc similar to a phonograph record.

These discs were coated with a conductive material, packed with tiny grooves – about 10,000 per inch, and were read by a tiny diamond stylus.

How'd the release go?

"Bring the Magic Home on RCA" was one of their taglines for it.

They planned for 100 titles at launch.

According to CEDMagic.com,

RCA began building an inventory of CED titles at the Indianapolis Plant in 1980 so the company would have sufficient stock for the March 1981 nationwide introduction. The first title to be inventoried in the warehouse was Race For Your Life, Charlie Brown. RCA planned to have 100 titles available for the CED launch, but only about half that many were available nationwide in March 1981.

CEDMagic also has a pretty comprehensive list of titles that were released on the VideoDisc format.

Josh Gibson (who seems to be the CED format expert on Youtube) goes through a bunch of the titles he owns here in this video too.

Game Discs?

This format wasn't really made for games (think of the wear and tear on multiple plays), but interestingly Bally/Midway did release an NFL arcade cabinet game in 1983.

There wasn't a lot of actual gameplay though.

It was mainly footage from a San Diego Chargers vs. the Los Angeles Raiders game.

Others looked to have been considering games for this format though, with this unreleased Lazon title that Josh Gibson previews here:

How'd the public respond?

Well, the SelectaVision definitely had a few things going against it.

For starters, the system used a stylus to read the discs, so you had to frequently change the stylus in the player to avoid damaging to the discs.

Each disc would eventually just wear out.

You can see an example of what happened to the quality when it started to wear or had scratches here at about 4:32:

A comment on that video above explains it well:

Towards the end when mom gives the little girl her cartoon disc to put in (4:32), you'll start seeing the characteristic slip-skip that all CED discs seemed to develop over time. Every single one of my discs would start doing that sooner or later. And once a disc started doing it, the skip would get worse and worse, jumping around more and for longer, each time you played the disc. It's really what killed CED for me. But tape had it's issues too. None of those early formats were foolproof.

The playback quality wasn't as good as LaserDisc.

And then the limited recording time.

Each side of a CED could hold about an hour of video. That means for a typical movie, you'd have to get up and flip the disc halfway through.

According to Wikipedia,

RCA had projected annual sales of between five and six million players and 200 to 500 million videodiscs. The company had expected to sell 200,000 players by the end of 1981, but only about half that number had been sold, and there was little improvement in sales throughout 1982 and 1983.

It wasn't in stereo sound at first either but they released an updated version with stereo towards the end:

So they weren't in nearly as many households as they hoped for but that doesn't necessarily mean it was hated.

It was a little glimpse into the future for many people.

It was a lower barrier to entry for home movie entertainment with many of the VideoDiscs costing between $14.98 and $19.98. (Although some of the newest releases were over $20)

The author of this article at Paleotronic gives us an idea of what it was like back then:

My family bought a Toshiba CED player on sale in 1982 or 83. We weren’t the only ones we knew, either – we lived in a less-affluent part of our city and there were several neighbours that took advantage of the low-cost of the CED system. After all, it was the early 1980s and the ability to play video at home was a novelty previously only afforded to those in much higher tax brackets!

By '83 they were giving away two free discs when you purchased a SelectaVision unit.

Apparently the last movie released on this format was the absolute classic, Jewel of the Nile.

Going out with a bang. (Seriously, go watch it if you haven't seen it!)

They gave it a good effort but they just couldn't keep up with the competition.

After hundreds of millions in losses, RCA called it quits on this endeavor in April of 1984, and General Electric went on to acquire RCA in 1986.