TOD: I, too, bought an RCA Selectavision VCR, and it served me well for a few years. It certainly had some snazzy features, and it's slo-mo feature was the best I've ever seen.
Unfortunately, I was also an investor in RCA's Capacitance Electronic Disc system. It was going to be that or laserdisc, but I was assured by the salesman (whose commission would have been larger had I gone with laser) that the laser system was fraught with software problems...many laserdiscs were being returned because they would not play.
On the other hand, he told me, the new CED system (this was circa 1982) was selling and performing beautifully...AND, many titles were being issued on CED discs before being issued on laser, PLUS they were priced better on CED than they were on VHS tapes.
So....I paid my $300 and bought loads and loads of CED discs. I had "Laura" before it was ever issued on laser or VHS. I bought "Star Wars" when it was first issued...and it was at a very nice price. I bought all the MGM musicals, "The Sound of Music" and "Ben-Hur" as they were issued. Then came "South Pacific". And on and on. And I loved them. They played very nicely.
And then CED died. Miserably. Even faster than Beta. Of course, I invested in laser. And just as things were going great guns and my colleciton was growing nicely, someone dreamed up DivX, or whatever it was....a disc that would give you limited rental plays. The consumer could see a film three times but NOT own it. Hollywood loved the idea. Happily the public did not. And then came the DVD...and...oh, well.
Flash forward to two years ago. A high-def format war was underway. HD DVD was affordable at the time and Blu-ray was not. Warner Brothers was issuing on both formats. Universal was exclusively HD-DVD. Fox and Columbia were exclusively BD. And then Paramount, which had been BD, switched sides and declared for HD-DVD. And it all made perfect sense. The quality was THE SAME, but the price tag was much lower for both player and discs. Sales of both formats were sluggish. WB was expected to make an announcement at a convention that would seal the deal for HD-DVD. Before that happened, however, WB's chief HD-DVD proponent announced she was leaving the company but that everything was still on track. And then the announcement that NO ONE expected...WB was throwing in exclusively with BD.
Happily, today, WB has been the one honorable studio in the whole brouhaha with its red2blu exchange program, giving those of us who bought its HD-DVD product the opportunity to swap it (figuratively) for the BD versions. For a nominal fee and the cover art on the HD-DVD discs, WB would replace up to 25 discs. I've gotten 24 replacements and feel somewhat happier about it.
My HD-DVD player is still a top-of-the line upconverting DVD player and my HD-DVDs continue to play beautifully, as well.
Still....it has left me somewhat bemused that the more expensive formats have tended to win out over the less expensive, but equally good formats.