This VideoDisk Player does not have a laser!

[Shadetree Engineer]

Ok, I'm only posting all this just in case somebody like me is looking at getting a VideoDisk Player just like this one for a laser tube. I got this from a second hand store, there's no return or exchange...

When it says 'Capacitance Electronic Disc System', that is not another tricky term for some funky laser tech, darnit! But taking a chance, I bring this thing home and proceed to photograph what could have been a beautiful experience.

Photos are for those so inclined to read further, I repeat - no laser inside! I can only blame my own wishful thinking.

I guess it's still good for some miscellaneous parts...

 

[Pontiacg5]

Apparently it reads data written in varying capacitances based on grooves pressed into a carbonized disk.
I've never heard of such a thing...

The ones with lasers are always called Laserdisks as far as I know.

You might not want to take that completely apart yet though, apparently they are pretty rare. It might actually be worth something! Either way, hopefully you didn't loose out on too much!

 

[Shadetree Engineer]

Apparently it reads data written in varying capacitances based on grooves pressed into a carbonized disk.
I've never heard of such a thing...

The ones with lasers are always called Laserdisks as far as I know.

You might not want to take that completely apart yet though, apparently they are pretty rare. It might actually be worth something! Either way, hopefully you didn't loose out on too much!

Well at the moment, I just have to get the screws back out of the garbagecan. It's still basically intact.

There were a bunch of disks at the store too, they were all a package deal, but I told them I wouldn't be needing those so they're throwing them away for me...

The disks are in a case that doesn't look like it opens, like a cartridge. But one disk was out of it's case. It has a rainbow sheen to it, I thought that was a lot like a cd. But the disk is black.

If someone wants to pay me more than the $50 I spent, plus shipping - I'm not really that excited about getting some old switches out of this.

 

[aryntha]

Yes, this is CED. It was actually invented AFTER LaserDisc, and has a rather "storied" history.

To put it shortly -- these are essentially video on vinyl. They used a high density grooved disc and were read by a needle and stylus. Physically. The variations in the needle/stylus were picked up capacitively.

There are a lot of collectors of these machines, and the movies.

You can learn about them and the history here.

CED Magic - The RCA SelectaVision VideoDisc Web Site

Actual LaserDisc players will always say LaserDisc, LaserVision, or in some cases, "DiscoVision".

Note that NOT ALL laserdisc players have HeNe tubes in them -- you generally want to look for ones that have the "pop open tops", kind of looking like a giant discman. MOST units with "slide out drawers" (think a big CD rom drive) do NOT have HeNe tubes in them, but generic CD-style laser diodes. (There are SOME exceptions to this but theya re not the rule.)

Any Pioneer-branded player that's black-colored with yellow/amber VFL display and has a slide-open drawer will NOT have a HeNe tube in it. None in the "CLD" series will. No Sony branded players (MDP) will. You want to look for early *top loader* Pioneer or Magnavox.

Stuff like this.

The one I had back in the day had woodgrain on the sides, was made by Pioneer, and had an off-white top cover that popped open like that.

Keep in mind a lot of the tubes in them also were soft-seal and didn't keep forever. (Though some of the Pioneer ones did.)

 

[Benm]

I have no idea if these devices have much collectors value, but they are interesting pieces of technology.

The main reason they never got any serious market share is bad/late timing of their public release in the early 80s. At that time vhs and betamax came to market, and those could record and copy, and provided better image quality as well.

Laserdisks came along around the same time period, but those were only popular in asia - mainly as rental discs.

I reckon the ability to record and better form factor of video tapes just outweighed the sole benefit of fast seeking the discs had to offer at the time.

 

[Shadetree Engineer]

Yes, this is CED. It was actually invented AFTER LaserDisc, and has a rather "storied" history.

To put it shortly -- these are essentially video on vinyl. They used a high density grooved disc and were read by a needle and stylus. Physically. The variations in the needle/stylus were picked up capacitively.

There are a lot of collectors of these machines, and the movies.

You can learn about them and the history here.

CED Magic - The RCA SelectaVision VideoDisc Web Site

Actual LaserDisc players will always say LaserDisc, LaserVision, or in some cases, "DiscoVision".

Note that NOT ALL laserdisc players have HeNe tubes in them -- you generally want to look for ones that have the "pop open tops", kind of looking like a giant discman. MOST units with "slide out drawers" (think a big CD rom drive) do NOT have HeNe tubes in them, but generic CD-style laser diodes. (There are SOME exceptions to this but theya re not the rule.)

Any Pioneer-branded player that's black-colored with yellow/amber VFL display and has a slide-open drawer will NOT have a HeNe tube in it. None in the "CLD" series will. No Sony branded players (MDP) will. You want to look for early *top loader* Pioneer or Magnavox.

Stuff like this.

The one I had back in the day had woodgrain on the sides, was made by Pioneer, and had an off-white top cover that popped open like that.

Keep in mind a lot of the tubes in them also were soft-seal and didn't keep forever. (Though some of the Pioneer ones did.)

Thanks, I still can't remember what that player was like, the one I got my HeNe out of. Now the capacitive thing makes sense. I was trying to figure out how a disk could store charges on it's surface. This would've been a killer technology during the last years of vinyl, too bad it came late to the party!

I'll take a look at that fan site, or any other like that. Maybe one of them will take this thing off my hands. I went & found the case screws and put it back together. No internal disturbance occurred as yet...

I'm not really looking to get another HeNe, but I thought that's what this was and didn't want to pass it up. I'm more interested in higher-powered lasers for a serious project. My HeNe & low-power diodes are just for fun.

 

[Shadetree Engineer]

I have no idea if these devices have much collectors value, but they are interesting pieces of technology.

The main reason they never got any serious market share is bad/late timing of their public release in the early 80s. At that time vhs and betamax came to market, and those could record and copy, and provided better image quality as well.

Laserdisks came along around the same time period, but those were only popular in asia - mainly as rental discs.

I reckon the ability to record and better form factor of video tapes just outweighed the sole benefit of fast seeking the discs had to offer at the time.

I would've killed the CED too. Being able to record at will, DRM-free is one of my pet peeves!:eg:

But in the 70's I might not have known any better...That reminds me of a dumb idea I once had. I used to have an 8-track recorder, and for a while I was trying to find a good car deck so I could play my mp3 collection on the road using that plug-n-play approach. Then I learned what the recording length is for a fully-packed cartridge and decided the hit in sound quality wasn't worth the cool factor, if there really is such a factor! Now I'm seeing car decks that take CF cards & remote USB drives, so I'm looking for something that'll autoplay without messing around with dumb interfaces, as I'd rather be driving than fumbling with under-sized/multi-function buttons. The media itself should be the playlist, just like those old-time 8-Track cartridges.

 

[james1095]

Ah the Selectavision, those are actually very rare units, I don't know how collectible they are but this is the first time I've seen actual pictures of one, much less seen one in person. The discs are even harder to find than the players.

As someone else said, this thing may well be worth something to the right person, it's certainly a fascinating technological artifact. The lasers in laserdisc players aren't very interesting anyway, even the old HeNe ones are only 2mW or so.

 

[james1095]

Laserdisks came along around the same time period, but those were only popular in asia - mainly as rental discs.
time.

They were popular in the US too. Never anywhere near the foothold that VHS had, but I knew several people who had Laserdisc players back in the 90s and most video stores had a good selection of rental movies.

The lack of recording and the need to flip the disc in the middle of the movie prevented them from doing better, but the picture, being uncompressed analog was unmatched unti Blu Ray came along.

 

[james1095]

But in the 70's I might not have known any better...That reminds me of a dumb idea I once had. I used to have an 8-track recorder, and for a while I was trying to find a good car deck so I could play my mp3 collection on the road using that plug-n-play approach. Then I learned what the recording length is for a fully-packed cartridge and decided the hit in sound quality wasn't worth the cool factor, if there really is such a factor! Now I'm seeing car decks that take CF cards & remote USB drives, so I'm looking for something that'll autoplay without messing around with dumb interfaces, as I'd rather be driving than fumbling with under-sized/multi-function buttons. The media itself should be the playlist, just like those old-time 8-Track cartridges.

8 track was great when the alternative was an open reel tape deck. You think fumbling with buttons is bad, try loading a 7" reel and threading the tape while driving down the road

The CD player in my car has a USB jack on the front, I load up a cheapo thumb drive with a few gigs of music and let it play. A nice bonus is how easily I can toss new stuff on there.

 

[Shadetree Engineer]

8 track was great when the alternative was an open reel tape deck. You think fumbling with buttons is bad, try loading a 7" reel and threading the tape while driving down the road

The CD player in my car has a USB jack on the front, I load up a cheapo thumb drive with a few gigs of music and let it play. A nice bonus is how easily I can toss new stuff on there.

I was just talking to someone at work about 8-tracks and usb drives. To me, the thumb drive is a modern evolution of the 8-track, and I intend to use them that way.

I want a radio that autoplays when you plug a thumb drive in, with a random selection of everything on the drive. I don't want playlists, or album art. I don't want to have to push a tiny button that looks like the rest of the radio to switch to the drive, it should just start playing as soon as the drive is detected. I want to have a collection of thumb drives, each one will be the playlist itself. The drives will be labeled for the mood or genre or whatever. Just grab one and plug it in, just like the 8-tracks. I can make do with a box of one-gig drives that way.

I've heard of tuners that have usb slots in the rear, so you could put a hub in the glovebox or somewhere out of the way. Having a drive sticking out of the face of the tuner makes me nervous. Some tuners also have flash card slots, which is a neater solution.

 

[james1095]

I was just talking to someone at work about 8-tracks and usb drives. To me, the thumb drive is a modern evolution of the 8-track, and I intend to use them that way.

I want a radio that autoplays when you plug a thumb drive in, with a random selection of everything on the drive. I don't want playlists, or album art. I don't want to have to push a tiny button that looks like the rest of the radio to switch to the drive, it should just start playing as soon as the drive is detected. I want to have a collection of thumb drives, each one will be the playlist itself. The drives will be labeled for the mood or genre or whatever. Just grab one and plug it in, just like the 8-tracks. I can make do with a box of one-gig drives that way.

I've heard of tuners that have usb slots in the rear, so you could put a hub in the glovebox or somewhere out of the way. Having a drive sticking out of the face of the tuner makes me nervous. Some tuners also have flash card slots, which is a neater solution.

I'm pretty sure mine does that, I can try later to find out for sure though. It's nothing special, I think I only paid $160 for it new but it works pretty well. I would have liked to have a USB jack on the back too but there was something about those models that didn't meet my criteria at the time, I don't recall what it was.