CED - Another pioneering design

[Channel Hopper]

Reading the thread from John T reminded me that I have one of these (Hitachi) things sitting in the back room, along with about 100 discs. Plays OK, but the stylus is now getting worn.

In a different league to tape (recordable), and film, so much money was put into this design, but the plug was pulled once lasers were found to be far more profitable.

The discs weigh more than the player. Simple design, and quite a few of the films are unavailable in any other format.

http://www.totalrewind.org/disc/disc_cap/D_201P.htm

Other links

www.cedmagic.com

http://www.rhunt.f9.co.uk/Museum/CED_Player/Museum_CED_Page1.htm

 

[spiney]

Interestingly, I can remember Studio Sound magazine reporting a demo of the Soundstream optical digital audio card player, about the time CD first came out. The journalist was impressed, and suggested it might compete with CD. But, nothing more was ever heard.

The (credit card sized) audio card was supposedly just photographic film, which could be mass-copied photographically, but there's some theoretical problems with this approach! Unlike CD pressing, quality control is problematical, and you can only copy photographically one-at-a-time (although, you could have a large film sheet with many cards on!). Also, film grain size is too large to allow the recording density needed. Never mind the problem of laser "tracking" at the card edges.

The Internet mentions the Soundstream company, and especially Thomas Stockham as a digital audio pioneer, but no mention at all of his digital optical card!

Years ago, when I saw this, I never checked the magazine date, so was this an April Fool joke, does anyone know?