GE CEO, Jack Welch, who raped and pillaged RCA, dead at 84.
 

I read that CED cost RCA $500,000,000. A big hit for sure.

With respect to CED, I’m sorry, and no disrespect to the hard working engineers at RCA, (my problem is with the suits) but the rankest of the rank would see that you don’t put up a 100 year old tech against a contactless laser system. It was doomed to failure before it got off the ground.

The problem in America is short term profits and lack of vision. America relishes corporate take overs and destruction of competition and it continues. Look at what AT&T is doing right now and so many good American companies in the past. The commonality, short term profits and lack of vision. Take over and destroy. Japan fosters competition which in the long run benefits their society. I acknowledge in an ever increasing global society, it’s harder to compete, so a company can’t rest on its laurels and admire their work, because if they do, they become a “Jonny come lately.” Gone, poof.

The CED was in development since the 60s. If the politics between different divisions working on it had been more cooperative and a fire had been properly lit under them such that it came to market before Betamax it likely would have been commercially successful.

Laser vision was being developed in the 70’s by Philips. RCA had to known this. Every time you play a record with a stylus, the tremendous forces of a diamond on plastic at 33 rpm deteriorates the record. The public was ripe for new innovation, and contactless tech, not some recooked 100 year old idea. RCA was marketing CED against Laservision, and again, the lack of vision was their downfall. IIRC, LASERVISION had hit the market first, another disadvantage.

Some folks complained of laser rot. I never experienced it.

As for CED, there's a pretty good history of it here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnpX8d8zRIA&t=64s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSFwyM2L5h4&t=493s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpwL...LZ7SOU&index=3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1dD...LZ7SOU&index=4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASuo...LZ7SOU&index=5

I heard that RCA dropped 2/3 of a billion dollars on this thing.

I had a player and some discs, the video resolution was about 3 MHz, vs VHS which did about 2 MHz. However, and this was a big one, any impurities on or in the disc plastic would cause skipping severe enough to ruin playback.

Yes, if CED had been launched in 1972, or 1973, it would have been a success. As Beta and VHS, not to mention LaserDiscs were not on the market. And RCA was then still a strong company behind it.

I have never forgiven Neutron Jack either. He also helped not only kill off RCA, but also the USA TV industry. He gutted GE, and GE's on the skids too. Hated the SOB's mentality just as much, and he also helped kill off the USA TV service industry too. Good riddance!!!!

One thing I was surprised to learn is that RCA originally started as a spinoff of GE.

RCA was such a success because it was always on the cusp of the "next big thing". Superheterodyne, TV, Color TV, solid state TV. I guess young Sarnoff wasn't enough like his father. They developed LED's and video tape systems, computer systems, in the 60s then got rid of them all and brought out the CED and had to sell rebadged Japanese VCR's. The company really needed to be the one who came out with VHS, and then the CD, then the DVD, then the flatscreen. The old RCA would have done that.

I suspect if GE hadn't come along Thomson might have just bought RCA directly at some point, unless GE made them a better deal to buy their standalone consumer electronics division. I really can't imagine GE staying in that business for very much longer than they did.

RCA would now be Radio Corporation of Asia.

When I worked there in the 1980's, we called ourselves the "Relabeling Corp of America" as we relabeled VCRs from Japan.

What about the damage that Robert Sarnoff did to RCA?

This is true for a lot of corporations: Without getting the next big thing, they wither and die. Apple did this with the iphone, ipad, and getting into media sales (app store). They missed the boat with media streaming services and were late to the party.

Apple has a "Reality Distortion Field" mentality to their userbase which allows them for the most part to survive unsuccessful product launches. The last time around it took them over a decade of really awful consecutive product debuts before they nearly went bankrupt.

I don't think RCA had the same userbase that could of backed them up on a flopped product. In a way that's a good thing because it means RCA's primary customers were not licking windows.