Well... not entirely. The idea behind CED was sound enough when it was conceived -- find a way to manufacture and sell movies on home video more quickly, and less-expensively, than VHS tapes.

At the time CED was in development, no one had yet figured out how to do high-speed mass duplication of helical-scan videotape (i.e. VHS or Beta). So, in order to make 100 copies of a 2-hour movie, you needed 100 video recorders loaded with blank cassettes, plus one more containing the master copy, and two hours of time plus whatever additional time was involved in loading the blanks, rewinding them after recording, and unloading the finished tapes. This meant that manufacturing large quantities (tens of thousands) for the retail market was a lengthy and labor-intensive process, which was a big part of why movies on VHS cost upwards of $80 back then.

CEDs, on the other hand, could be manufactured via a more refined and precisely-controlled version of the same hot-press stamping process that vinyl records were made (in fact, it basically is a vinyl record), so the discs could be produced in retail quantities much more quickly and inexpensively, and sold for about $20 - $25.

CED's (and RCA's) real problem was that they took a little too long to get it to market, and before it could really establish a solid foothold, some bright group of engineers at Sony cracked the problem of how to do high-speed duplication of helical-scan videotapes, and within a year or so the price of movies on videocassette dropped dramatically until they were selling at that $25 price point, too.

CED's competitor, LaserDisc, survived it because LD had superior picture and sound quality to VHS or Beta, so the then-nascent "home theater" market embraced it. But CED's quality was no better than videotape, at best, so once it lost its pricing advantage, that just cut the legs right out from under it.

you basically said what I said just differently. at the end of the day who cares it was D.O.A. Just like HDDVD it was too little to late had they released it in 1970 or earlier it might have been the precursor to Laserdisc and there for it's Existence would make sense but it was too Late by 1984 Beta,VHS,Laserdisc already existed and were in more people's homes. at this point. So yeah.

Laserdisc was the true Success. Because of Laserdisc We Have CD's and because of CD's we have DVD's and so on. Laserdisc lasted from 1978 to 2009. and if you want to get literal with it they still make Laserdiscs Just in the Form of Blu rays and DVD's. because both of there lineage can be traced back to Laserdisc.