1970 June 24

The quest for home video
TeD video disc
Page 2: Moving to the market

Source: Telefunken/Teldec/Decca 1972, Terra Media Archives

By autumn 1972, the system was looking more marketable. The name of the system had just been changed to TeD (for Television Disc) and the playing time of the eight-inch disc had been doubled to 10 minutes; the autochange option was still seen, at least in public pronouncements, as the preferable route for development.
    TeD players were finally introduced on the West German market on 17 March 1975. The retail price was just under DM1,500 (£265) and discs—still with a maximum playing time of 10 minutes—cost from DM10 (£1.75) each. Six labels offered programmes: Decca, Teldec Intertel, Telefunken, Ufa/ATB, Ullstein AV and Videophon. Within the first three months 6,000 players had been shipped to 2,500 dealers and 50,000 discs were in the shops.
    Japan's Sanyo Electric, which had been conducting similar research itself (but was by now also developing the V-Cord videocassette recorder), was granted a licence to produce a version that would play out in the NTSC television format and by the end of 1976 had devised a long-awaited autochanger that took 12 10-minute discs. Also in Japan, General Corporation took a manufacturing licence in July 1976 with an expectation of coming to market in April 1977. A software consortium, Nippon Video Systems, was formed around the same time.
    Exactly when TeD died is hard to pinpoint: its demise was denied at the 1977 Berlin Radio Show, which was predictably dominated by VHS and Betamax videocassette recorders. And by the end of 1978 Telefunken itself had adopted VHS.

Page 1: Early development.

1970
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