Capacitance Electronic Disc - Disadvantages of CEDs

Disadvantages of CEDs

In comparison to laserdisc technology, CEDs suffered from the fact that they were a phonograph-like contact medium. RCA estimated that the number of times a CED could be played back, under ideal conditions, was 500. By comparison, a clean, laser rot-free laserdisc could, at least in theory, be played an unlimited number of times (although, repeated handling might still result in damage). Since the system used a stylus to read the discs, it was necessary to regularly change the stylus in the player to avoid damage to the videodiscs.

Worn and damaged discs also caused problems for consumers. When a disc began to wear, video and audio quality would severely decline, and the disc would begin to skip more. Several discs suffered from a condition called "video virus", where a CED would skip a great deal due to dust particles stuck in the grooves of the disc. However, playing the disc several times would generally solve this problem.

Unlike VHS tapes, CEDs required a disc flip at some point during the course of almost all films, because only sixty minutes of video could be stored per side. If a feature ran over two hours, it was necessary to insert another disc. (In some cases, if a movie's theatrical running time was only slightly longer than two hours—from 120 minutes and a few seconds to 122 minutes—studios would often trim short scenes throughout the movie in order to avoid the expense of issuing two discs.) This problem was not unique to CEDs, as Laserdiscs presented the same difficulty, and some longer features, such as The Ten Commandments (1956), still required more than one tape or disc in the VHS, Beta, and LaserDisc formats.

Less significant disadvantages include lack of support for freeze-frame during pause since CEDs scanned four frames in one rotation versus one frame per rotation on CAV LaserDisc, nor was computer technology advanced enough at the time to outfit the player with a framebuffer affordably. However, a 'page mode' was available on many players that would allow for those four frames to be repeated in an endless loop.

CEDs were also larger than VHS tapes, thicker than laserdiscs and considerably heavier due to the plastic caddies.