From: (Neil Wagner) - CED Magic

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Date: Sun, 18 May 1997 06:52:22 -0700
From: Ted Dudziak
Organization: Home Copy
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: Tom Howe
Subject: Re: CED Digest Vol. 2 No. 20
This issue has a couple of topics that bring back some memories.
Regarding the breaks. My recollection is that there was great emphasis
on getting as much programming on one side as possible, regardless of
the "wierdness" of the break. We all had players and as you might
imagine we had a plethora of titles. As a matter of fact, we usually
got a stack of discs a day from DISC Manufacturing. Anyway, we always
complained about the breaks to no avail as the Mastering Process was
very time consuming and expensive. To redo the master was not possible
as the emphasis was on getting titles available and not necessarily
making the breaks look good. Also as I recall the Mastering was done
essentially by engineering and not by a more esthethiclly aware group.
Again the emphasis was on getting as much on the disc as possible.
It was a perception at RCA that one of the disadvantages with VideoDisc,
CED and LD, was that the programming on a side was a disadvantage. Also,
it was thought that to put as much material on one side, regardless of
the total time of the programming, was important to maximize the "time
to flip" for the customer. In my opinion, esthetics should have been
used first.
Also, the limited playback time per side was an issue for RCA. The Star
Wars CED pushed the limit for programming by having more than one hour
on a side. By the way I recall finding the hanging dice in the
Millenium Falcon during one of my system evaluations. Everyone thought
it was pretty cool. Video players did not do freeze frame very well
back then. The parody "Hardware Wars" showed the dice, highly magnified
of course, and low and behold there they were in the real movie only for
one scene.
It was also interesting about the many comparisons that were made
between CED and LD especially the technical ones. It was surprising to
us that LD had "skips" just like CED. It was a preception then that the
LD should not have had the problem since it was not a mechnaical pickup
like CED. We also thought that there was more robust signal processing
on the front end than we had. Not the case. Their skip problems were,
in our opinion greater than ours. Also their recovery mechanism was very
poor. Many times the LD would not recover. The CED players have a
"kicker" circuit so that if there is a skip or a locked groove the
uProcessor would kick the stylus to a groove that was clear. The DAXI
code was used to determine the location of the stylus. Recall that
there are (I hope I get this right) four frames or eight fields per