Question, why did DVD succeed when earlier RCA CED and Laserdisc bombed?

[wa2ise]

All these formats were pre-recorded video movies. RCA tried to create a market for pre-recorded video "records" with their CED videodiscs. And there was Laserdisc. Laserdisc made a better picture, and RCA's discs were a little cheaper. The presence of 2 formats couldn't have helped either. And of course VHS videotape was also available. And with that, you could record your own tapes, though the image quality was pretty poor. Though one could buy porn tapes... CED was better, but it suffered from skipping (if there was dust on the disc or in the disc material). Both disc formats were rather big, about the size of LP records.

Then comes along DVD, and they were a hit. Maybe it being digital (and full standard def quality) and physically smaller made the difference?

[Electronic M]

CED IIRC only lasted from 1981-~1986. The disc caddies were bulky compared to LD's and the video quality was approximately equal to VHS.

LD lasted from~1981-2003 it won the format war over CED. LD had as good of resolution as the video source was capable of (in japan there were even MUSE format analog HiDef LD's released), and the discs were not in BULKY caddies like CED. There were smaller LD sizes too IIRC 10" and 8". I believe the main reason LD never was as big as DVD and VHS was cost. New players usually were $100+ more expensive than a VCR and lacked recording capability.
LD's had a modest market of videophiles, Home theater enthusiasts, and film junkies that wanted to be able to punch in individual frame numbers, and have max resolution. The only consumer tape format that could compete quality wise was ED-betamax, but it was released so late in the tape format wars game that there were really no adopters, and LD already owned the high quality pre-recorded material market.

In LD's heyday most value minded consumers went for VHS.
DVD started expensive, but got cheap, and it had a major thing going for it: DVD-ROM drives built in to new computers (so computer buyers ended up with a free DVD player even if they did not want one)....When consumers realized their computers could play DVDs they started buying them and came to support the format...Plus LD many videophiles jumped on the DVD band wagon when it was expensive (helping drive costs down). There were LD data discs and LD player/LD-ROM drives too, but they were not normally sold built in to a computer....Nor were LD-rom drives extensively popular.

[Eric H]

Laserdisc was expensive and bulky, that never changed, CED came along after VHS so what was the point, it also suffered from the above mentioned flaws.

Laserdisc was successful in it's own niche Videophile market, the fact that there's so many Discs and players still around proves that it sold in significant quantities. I think it was even more popular in Japan than here.

[dishdude]

DVD players dropped in price quickly so they weren't the big investment LD was. Plus DVRs and On-Demand programming from cable companies became available around the same time so recording was no longer as important. Netflix also helped by mailing out DVDs and saving the trip to the rental store.

[Olorin67]

LD was never more than a niche format, due to price of the discs.. DVD gave good quality, at a cheap price. better quality than VHS, and not having to rewind tapes helped too, plus in the early days of DVD, most people still had a VCR, that could still be used when recording was desired.

[centralradio]

I always thought CED was the 8track of video with their VHS LP video quality with the muddy audio.They are similar like a vinyl record with video on it.

LD would hit better if they were formatted for 2 hours or more play on one side.It probably would of lasted longer then it did.Also I read they have flaking problems like some old DVDs get.More likely people wanted something smaller like the music CD.

[MRX37]

CED had too many flaws.

Laser Discs were the size of frisbees

[Titan1a]

LV disks were the best media for fidelity and included stereo first. Granted there were flaws with "laser rot" but after the bugs were worked out the format was the best there was until digital came out. There would be no CD or DVD disks without the work done on LV. Yes, I still have a player and there are four total players including digital VHS, DVD, HD DVD and multiple format Blu ray here in the house!

[Damnation]

Big part of DVD's success was consumer's adoption of Audio CD, "movies on a CD" with simple ease of use. It was already familiar in a way to the average joe and a definite step-up to VHS. Plus you could play CDs in the players as well right off the bat at launch.

CED was a terrible format, like the 8-Track of Video, and LaserDisc equipment and titles never reached an acceptable price level for mainstream adoption. It remained a rich man's format.

[Ed in Tx]

Originally Posted by MRX37

CED had too many flaws.

Laser Discs were the size of frisbees

Actually they were bigger! 12". Heck of a lot more materials to make a laserdisc than a DVD, essentially two 12" discs laminated together. Laserdiscs were pretty cool when they first came out. I worked on the Pioneer MCA DiscoVision PR7820 industrial players GM bought into for their dealers sales and training presentations. A lot of the appeal was the random access capability that tape formats couldn't do. You can find videos on YouTube of those old GM sales oriented laserdiscs. Mostly '79 thru '81-'82 GM vehicles. Seems a lot of those wound up as the "blank" side of a single or 3 sided album or movie and a lot of people have discovered those.

[Olorin67]

CED would have been an OK format if it had been introduced in the mid 70s before VHS got established., by the time it came out, VCRs were dominant, and the competing LD was better. No wonder CED didn't catch on. The only people I know who bought CED, got them dirt cheap on closeout.

[sweitzel]

There was another reason for the rapid rise and success of DVD: Copy protection. By the mid 90's the studios were getting more and more upset and concerned that no home video releases had any sort of strong copy protection. Sure VHS had Macrovision but there were already many inexpensive ways to defeat that. Once the DVD format was announced, it had everything the studios wanted:
Purely digital content that would not degrade based on the number of plays,
(perceived) higher quality than laserdisc,
copy protection both in the analog realm (Macrovision) and the digital realm (CSS encryption)
easier to manufacture than laserdisc
True on demand access to various bonus content (unlike laserdisc which was limited to chapter stops and still frames only in CAV mode)
smaller footprint meant cheaper distribution
5" standard disc size meant combo players could be designed and sold to the public.
Content could be accessed on a computer with a computer DVD drive.

[dr.ido]

I remember a $699 Playstation 2 was the cheapest DVD player (other than PC DVD drives) at the time. It wasn't until the off brand DVD players dropped to under $200 that the format really took off here.

[Outland]

The PS2 launched at $299 here in the US.

Laserdiscs, though better than VHS, were still limited by '70s era composite video and so always looked pretty fuzzy as TVs got better since the mid '80s. The few people that could afford good TVs/projectors still bought LDs.

DVD was a whole new generation, promising progressive scan on flat TVs. It was inevitable.

[ChrisW6ATV]

As others said, the Laser Disc format did not "bomb", but it was always a niche format. It got closer to mainstream popularity when many Blockbuster stores started selling discs, but that was also just before the DVD format was launched. DVDs were cheaper than Laser Discs right from the start, about 30-35% on average probably, and the players and discs were much smaller. Add in the "no rewind" advantage over video cassettes and the heavy marketing of a format that was far cheaper to manufacture than Laser Discs, and a sweet spot was hit that has still not been equaled or beat by Blu-ray OR online streaming, among others.