The Capacitance Electronic Disc (CED) is an analog video disc playback system developed by Radio Corporation of America (RCA), in which video and audio could be played back on a TV set using a special stylus and high-density groove system similar to phonograph records.

First conceived in 1964, the CED system was widely seen as a technological success which was able to increase the density of a long-playing record by two orders of magnitude.

[3] Despite this achievement, the CED system fell victim to poor planning, various conflicts with RCA management, and several technical difficulties that slowed development and stalled production of the system for 17 years—until 1981, by which time it had already been made obsolete by laser videodisc (DiscoVision, later called LaserVision and LaserDisc) as well as Betamax and VHS video cassette formats.

RCA began developing the videodisc system in 1964, in an attempt to produce a phonograph-like method of reproducing video under the name 'Discpix'.

Research and development was slow in the early years, as the RCA CED team originally consisted of only four men,[8] but by 1972, the CED team had produced a disc capable of holding ten minutes of color video (a portion of the Get Smart episode "A Tale of Two Tails", re-titled "Lum Fong").

Failure to fully solve the stylus/disc wear and manufacturing complexity forced RCA to seek simpler construction of the disc.

CED videodiscs were originally conceived as being housed in jackets and handled by hand similar to LP records, but during testing it was shown that exposure to dust caused skipped grooves.

Thus, an idea was developed in which the disc would be stored and handled in a plastic caddy from which the CED would be extracted by the player so that exposure to dust would be minimized.

The introduction of VCRs and home videotape in the mid 1970s—with their longer storage capacity and recording capabilities—posed a major threat to the system.

[3][13] The extremely long period of development—caused in part by political turmoil and a great deal of turnover in the high management of RCA—also contributed to the demise of the CED system.

Signal degradation was also a problem, as handling the discs was causing them to deteriorate more rapidly than expected, baffling engineers.

Many popular films such as some of the James Bond series, Mary Poppins, Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Return of the Jedi had to be released on two CED discs.

RCA cut the prices of CED players and offered incentives to consumers such as rebates and free discs, but sales only slightly improved.

RCA management realized that the system would never be profitable and on April 4, 1984, announced the discontinuation of production of CED players.

This more sophisticated system, combined with a high revolution rate, is necessary to enable the encoding of video signals with bandwidth of a few megahertz, compared to a maximum of 20 kilohertz for an audio-only signal—a difference of two orders of magnitude.

Furthermore, the achievement of an extremely light tracking force on the CED stylus enables the use of a fine groove pitch (i.e. fine spacing of adjacent revolutions of the spiral), necessary to provide a long playing time at the required high rotational speed, while also limiting the rate of disc and stylus wear.

The inner edges of the opening of the caddy have felt strips designed to catch any dust or other debris that could be on the disc as it is extracted.

CED players, from an early point in their life, appealed to a lower-income market more than VHS, Betamax, and LaserDisc.

Like the LaserDisc and DVD, some CEDs feature random access, allowing users to quickly move to certain parts of the movie.

Novelty discs and CED-based games were produced whereby accessing the chapters in a specified order would string together a different story each time.

[20] By comparison, a clean, laser rot-free LaserDisc could, in theory, be played an unlimited number of times (although repeated or careless handling could still result in damage).

[22] CEDs were also larger than VHS tapes, thicker than LaserDiscs, and considerably heavier due to the plastic caddies.