"You'll have to bring your own popcorn. Why? So you can eat to the beat with Blondie."

Set the scence; Imagine it's the early 1980's. In many average income homes, there are still only small black and white TV's 19" or less! Rabbit ear antennas, 3, maybe 4 channels if you were lucky and if you were really fortunate, the tinfoil your wrapped on your bunny ears, cleared up the majority of the snowy picture! Then comes THIS!......



This one doesn't embed but it's longer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2v6Wy59t68




It's sooooooo easy to grab an old player and few discs off ebay to check out the system today, and scoff at it with it's worn out stylus and overplayed videodiscs, but do you do the same with the Atari 2600 video games from the same era?
The CED system was magical for those of us who had it at the time. What kid could play a little pixelated stick man on the screen, when they have PlayStation to play?
The CED system needs to be viewed for it's charm and it for it's time, if it's too be understood. Compared to a snowy picture and single output mono tv speaker, a little light jitter from time to time and an occasional skip here and there, really was no big deal. You really didn't even notice it because overall it was so superior to the rabbit eras anyway.

To some of us, this system was FAR from being a failure. It was a magical time. Especially to us 80's kids!

If the CED system is to be understood, it must be appreciated for what it is and for what it is. The odd light jitter and skip here and there wasn't a huge concern when compared to a snowy picture and a single output mono TV speaker. Overall, it was so much better than the rabbit periods that you really didn't notice it.

A jump from UHF on a mono speaker but…how many people with that setup bought any players at all? We were not wealthy in 1982 but my house had 12 channels of cable TV with perfect reception. Buying movies on a regular basis was WAY more expensive. I don’t think CED was for poor people…until it went on clearance and the movies were $1 anyway. Any home video release back then was $20 or more, many were over $100. A month of cable was like $14. HBO was like another $7 on top.

To make full use of CED one would need to combo their TV and their stereo, as we did at my place with VHS.

So the question is: why this and not-VHS, Beta, or LD? In period, I mean. Obviously the reason we should care in 2025 is that we are the Collectardation Generation and we should be constantly hoarding everything old because we have lost total faith in the future and the present.

I think the 2600 comparison is way off. Video game machines *make* the graphics. They don’t play a copy of it. When you buy a movie player…there are no actors and sets inside the thing. It’s just playing a film that already existed previously in some other format and it’s always going to be a step down from that original format.

So…Star Wars is worse on CED than VHS, Beta, or LD, all of which preexisted CED. Why pick CED?

If you want an authentic 2600 experience you just need a 2600. It’s not an inferior copy of a thing, it IS the thing.

Many people still fall for the idea that, to be a "proper" supporter of one thing, you -have to- disparage, dismiss, or denigrate others. Some video disc fans are no different with that behavior.

I have been at football games when they announced that the "other team" in the same area has lost, and lots of people cheered. That just seems stupid to me now. (But I had my own prejudices in the past, too.)

Love the technology, appreciate the work of the engineers, and remember the joy of your experiences, then and now. Any technology you choose. There is room for all of us.

Why would anyone be a supporter of a video format? What a hollow cause.

VHS killed CED, but VHS didn't kill LD, DVD killed off the LD due to cost and ease of manufacturing.

CED never lived, was a terrible format.

CED in 1985 was better than VHS/Beta in 1980-81 (when each format had been on the market for four years). But, why do people waste their (and our) time with the silly denouncing? Oh yeah, I forgot:

The format was long dead by 1985 and nobody in large cities were selling it at all.

Beta was gone like the wind and VHS was king no matter what.

LD is the best of all older formats but VHS was the winner period.
You can pull out a VHS from an old barn and it will still look better than a CED when playing back on equipment.

This guy sure has everything figured out. What a philosopher. We should definitely be going out of our way to be politically neutral about antique hardware that failed 40 years ago. Someone might hurt CED’s feelings. We should never use judgement of any kind and just say nice things all day nonstop because everything is great and nothing sucks. There are no downsides to this. Those brilliantly original emoji pretty much prove it.

“There are so such things as failures, only success you can’t understand because you have sort of undefinable problem.”


People don’t start threads called “CED sucks”. Not very often anyway. People are responding to a very recent boosting of CED with “yeah, but it sucks”. If people don’t want to hear how bad the worst format ever was they should should stop bringing it up over and over. It’s like a bad tattoo. It’s more sad than anything else.