The CED: RCA's Very Late, Very Weird Video Gamble (Pt. 1)

What people said

puranjay · 2019-10 · Strong recommendation

Seconded. Their exploration of failed technology is particularly interesting. This two part video on CEDs - which I didn't even know were a thing - is absolutely fascinating. The depth of research rivals any educational program on TV. [VIDEO]

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MrRadar · 2025-05 · Reference

The Technology Connections video series on RCA's Selectavision CED home video system touches on this quite a lot (it was a horribly mismanaged project which took more than a decade to commercialize, by which time it had already been superceded by VHS/Betamax and Laserdisc)[1]. His main source for the information on the development of the CED system was the book "The Business of Research: RCA and the VideoDisc" by Margaret B. W. Graham. [1] [VIDEO]

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waselighis · 2023-04 · Reference

There's an interesting history behind the RCA CED (Capacitance Electronic Disk), an attempt to put video on vinyl. While the full history behind it's failure is complicated, a large factor was the differing priorities between research and other departments that delayed the product by several years. [LINK] [VIDEO] Considering some of the other comments about merging two AI departments together (DeepMind and Brain) and injecting more bureaucracy into DeepMind, it seems to have some parallels with the story of the RCA CED. You can't just let researchers do research. There needs to be a clear goal/priority that this research can eventually be converted into a profitable product or service. Otherwise, the researchers will continue to work on "cool projects" and publishing papers with their name on them, with little consideration given to how to monetize this research. Personally, I'm not a fan of this AI gold rush trying to inject AI into everything. It's just interesting to ponder.

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