1982 RCA SELECTA VISION VIDEO DISC

I still have my copy. For the high school age film lover in the early 80's, the RCA selecavision videodisc system was the only thing I could afford. The CED system used a diamond tipped stylus to read the micro grooves of a hard plastic disc which had a lubricating coat of silicon. The packaging caddy was designed so that you never touched or saw the disc in normal usage. You would insert the caddy in the player and the player would grab the top tab disc frame and the disc and reinstall it in the caddy once you were done playing.

I had a player with stereo sound. Titles with a monoual soundtrack would have a white plastic caddy package. Titles with stereo sound would have a blue plastic caddy. But when CED discs were discontinued and they were trying to unload excess inventory, the color coding was disregarded and stereo discs also came in white caddys and vice verca. The Exorcist disc did not have stereo sound.

The quality was better than videotape but not better than laseridisc. And since, unlike laserdiscs which read the grooves with a laser, the disc would wear out, much like an old LP record would.

The wearing out would manifest itself in picture noise, audio noise and skipping. Opening up the disc caddys on your own (I learned how) subjected the microgrooves on the record to dust and fingerprints which also hindered quality and caused skips.

The Exorcist was one of the first discs I got. Side one ends with Lt. Kinderman telling Karras he looks like Sal Mineo.

I still have a couple non working machines. Believe it or not, there is a following for these and other defunct video formats and working machines do pop up on Ebay.