CED Digest Vol. 8 No. 26

CED Digest Vol. 8 No. 26 • 6/28/2003
20 Years Ago In CED History:

June 29, 1983:
* Nearly 1,000 people are reported dead or missing following several 
days of monsoon rains in the state of Gujarat, India.

June 30, 1983:
* The signalmen's strike that shut down Philadelphia area commuter 
trains on March 15, 1983 comes to a conclusion.

July 1, 1983:
* A 10 percent cut in U.S. federal income tax, the third phase of the 
Reagan administration's tax reduction plan, goes into effect.
* R. Buckminster Fuller, the American architect, engineer, and author 
dies at the age of 87. Fuller is best known for his invention of the 
geodesic dome.
* Future CED title in widespread theatrical release: Superman III.

* RCA VideoDisc Releases for July 1983:

48 Hrs.**
American Hot Wax
Battlestar Galactica
Beach Girls, The
Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, The
Boxcar Bertha
Comedy Tonight
Crosby, Stills, & Nash: Daylight Again*
Defiance
Divine Madness: Bette Midler**
Flaming Star
Gentleman Jim
Grease 2**
Gunfight at the OK Corral
Harper Valley P.T.A.
High Country, The
I Spit On Your Grave
Jaws 2
Jazz in America*
Kiss Me Goodbye
Matilda
Missing
Nashville (2)**
New Video Aerobics, The
Norseman, The
Pirates of Penzance**
Private Lessons
Reds (2)
Return to Macon County
Roaring Twenties, The
Roman Holiday
Seniors
Separate Ways
Small Town In Texas, A
Sound of Music, The (2)*
Squirm
Star Trek: Vol.6, Amok Time/Journey to Babel
Taking of Pelham One Two Three, The
Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The
Thing, The*** [1982]
Verdict, The (2)

July 2, 1983:
* French and Egyptian divers take the first underwater photographs of 
the remains of the fleet of ships that had carried Napoleon Bonaparte 
and his army to Egypt in 1798. The ill-fated fleet had been sunk by 
the British off the coast of Egypt in the Battle of the Nile.

July 3, 1983:
* The Wimbledon tennis championships conclude in the London suburb of 
Wimbledon. The singles matches are won by Martina Navratilova and 
John McEnroe.
* The UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) concludes a 
month-long session in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, having resolved none of 
the major differences between industrialized and Third World nations.

July 4, 1983:
* West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl arrives in Moscow to discuss
with Soviet officials the proposed NATO deployment in Europe of new
medium-range nuclear missiles.
* The 12 member-nations of the Caribbean Community (Caricom) open a 
five-day summit conference at Port of Spain, Trinidad, with the U.S. 
Caribbean Basin Initiative high on the agenda.
* Uruguay's three opposition political parties withdraw from 
discussions with the military government of Gen. Gregorio Conrado 
Alvarez Armelino over a new constitution when the government insists 
that it should reserve significant powers for the military.
* For the first time since 1941, water pours over the spillways of 
the Hoover Dam in Nevada. In June and July heavy spring snows began 
melting in the Rocky Mountains, and the Colorado River rose to its 
highest levels on record.

July 5, 1983:
* Documents are made public revealing the Dow Chemical Company 
continued to sell herbicides, including Agent Orange, contaminated 
with dioxin for years after it knew that the chemical could cause 
serious health problems and even death.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 18:33:04 +1000
Subject: Bad? styluses
From: Stan <sparkerm>
To: <digest@cedmagic.com>

I have a basket of brand new styluses that I removed from new machines that
did not work until the sylus was replaced. I have looked at the styluses
under a microscope and can see nothing wrong with them, but I hate to throw
them away. Has anyone had a similar experience or have any ideas about what
could be wrong with these styluses?

Stan

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2003 18:05:46 -0800
To: digest@cedmagic.com
From: Tom Howe <tom@cedmagic.com>
Subject: Magnavision Demonstration Disc CED Comparison

>
>>  I have one of these and  a VH-8000 DiscoVision from the FleaZONE, and
these
>>  would make excellent cool "ghetto" appliances for my TV.
>
>  The VH-8000 would be good as a conversation piece, but really nothing
more.
>
>  The Magnavox VH-8000 Magnavision, and it's completely same remote
equipped
>  replacement, the VH-8005, were some of the worst LD players ever made.

A while back, I picked up a still shrink-wrapped demo disc for the 
VH-8000 LaserDisc player titled "Leonard Nimoy Demonstrates the 
Magnavision VideoDisc Player." Side 1 of this disc has Mr. Nimoy 
translating for a beeping and blinking alien rock as he goes over the 
player features, and was intended for customer viewing. The program 
repeats twice, which is good, as the disc would often suffer carrier 
distress on my early 1990's Pioneer CLD-A100 LD player, and it took 
both viewings to hear everything.

A presentation on Side 2 is for sales personnel and goes over selling 
points on the player including strategy for promoting it over CED, 
most noteworthy, the point that CED's wear out with repeated 
viewings. But Magnavox countered their own sales pitch by including a 
letter with the disc on company letterhead that states the following:

"When using part two of side two of this Magnavision Demonstration 
Disc for sales training, please note that there is an error on the 
first point made on the comparison chart between Magnavision and RCA 
SelectaVision. Additional testing since the demo disc was produced 
has shown that the RCA discs do not suffer any wear from continual 
playing. We would appreciate your advising your retail sales 
personnel of this correction."

Does anyone know why Magnavox took the unusual step of including this 
letter with the disc? It sounds like they were trying to cover 
themselves legally. What makes no sense is the fact that their 
selling point is true. We all know that CED's do eventually wear out 
if the discs are repeat played enough times.

Here's a page at Blam LD with more info on the Leonard Nimoy disc:

http://www.blamld.com/DiscoVision/Miscellaneous/07-562.htm

--Tom

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Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2003 21:11:43 -0800
To: digest@cedmagic.com
From: Tom Howe <tom@cedmagic.com>
Subject: Desktop Picture of Katharine Hepburn CED's

Hello All:

Within the span of a couple weeks we have sadly lost another major 
CED star. I put together a desktop and screensaver tribute picture of 
the six CED titles Katharine Hepburn appeared in. A 3 x 2 matrix of 
CED caddies almost perfectly conforms to the 4:3 aspect ratio, so 
they are presented here in the five PC resolutions of 1600 x 1200, 
1280 x 960, 1152 x 864, 1024 x 768, and 800 x 600. Download the image 
that conforms to the resolution set on your computer monitor:

http://www.cedmagic.com/home/hepburn-ced-1600.jpg

http://www.cedmagic.com/home/hepburn-ced-1280.jpg

http://www.cedmagic.com/home/hepburn-ced-1152.jpg

http://www.cedmagic.com/home/hepburn-ced-1024.jpg

http://www.cedmagic.com/home/hepburn-ced-800.jpg

--Tom

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END CED Digest Vol. 8 No. 26
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