From what I read, ABC had the first, if not one of the earliest, Quantel boxes back in 1976. I don't want to say right off the bat that "Feud" used it for Fast Money, though, since they could have used a rectangle transition and positioned it over the other side of the board.
>> Face The Music's "flip" intro may have been done with a DVE too, hence no budget for anything else on the show.
The flip effect can probably be done as a regular transition on a switcher, but I'm not 100% sure. In addition, I'd think that if there was a DVE box anywhere at KTLA or KTTV, it was in their news studio. As for the lack of budget, I'd blame it on the "Sandy Frank Presents" animation at the beginning...
Those old-school computer graphics had to have cost big bucks back then.
>> I imagine those syndie Match Game promos famous for switching the celeb's faces around were done with DVE as well?
Nope. They just stopped in the middle of a diamond transition [similar to the one seen in the CS 78 opening] so that we just saw the other celebrity's mouth.