I just watched that about 1/2 an hour ago. I had no idea that was what killed RCA.

Seems like a classic sunk cost fallacy to me. They had a decent idea. But as it got harder and harder do they never pulled the plug. Adding bandwidth for color must have been a big issue.

VHS had been out for 4 years in the US by the time CED came out. Betamax for 6.

Time shifting was the original killer app until movies became affordable, and CED didn’t have it. Tapes were much hardier and held more video without interruption. Both tape formats already had an install base and were competing so adding a third option was never going to be easy.

And yet they never pulled the plug.