My guess is that the previous owner left a disc in, and then someone who didn't know what they hell they were doing (maybe at the Goodwill) opened it up, saw the disc in there, and tried to manually remove it without having an actual CED cartridge. They ended up just yanking the carrier frame out and leaving the CED itself lodged in there.

We've been trying to reach you about your CEDs extended warranty

I see the damaged disk has a new home on the wall under the 8086 and MS DOS license plates.

I expected at least one brittle plastic gear to be cracked apart, that's in surprisingly good condition.

Funniest moment: "The display says 'UL' now; this a UL-Listed device."

We've all been there, seen something, know you should not buy it, walk around the store a few times... look at it a few times, pace around the store a few times, and then buy the thing that is entirely useless and self destructing in the long run. Cursing yourself in the car ride home since you can't take it back.

I grew up with an uncles family who had a RCA Videodisc player. His family still has it. And, we watched so many movies on it through the 80’s. Such great memories!

CED is a fantastic format with all the disadvantages of a LaserDisc plus the video quality of a VHS including the progressive degradation with each replay.

I have the OG Star Wars on the format.
I only bought the lot of discs for them.
This is ANALOG video, no digital. The actual scan lines are recorded on the discs. They are limited to 30mins a side so many films are multi-disc and sides.

You are wandering into techmoan territory and I love it.

There are markings on the damaged disc that I believe that can be searched on the existing CED database to find out which movie/video program it's from

Despite the not great cover on that disc The African Queen is a very highly regarded movie and a very important one.

You fool,  "African Queen" is the name of a river boat.   This was a good movie

About four years ago, I very nearly bought a CED player to restore.

But then I remembered that VCRs and Laserdisc players exist, and even those are generally more reliable than CED. lol

The technology, and the effort some companies went to for storing movies, will always facinate me, though.

even more rare than a good CED player, a movie on CED you actually want to watch.

I found one upside down covered in dirt at the goodwill bins buried under a pile of microwaves and other junk and it worked after I manually pressed the disc platter down the first time. Animated movies and cartoons look really good in this format

The pickup technology is based on an analogue video and audio RF envelope derived from the capacitive coupling of the record stylus, and lots of amplification and sync generation.

the thing I love about CED and Laserdiscs are the cases, they make great for great art to hang on the walls. plus they make for great unique things to get signed by actors, directors ect.

Hit me in the nostalgia.  My family used to rent a CED player on the weekends when I was a kid, our go-to disks were compilations of Looney Tunes, and it was how I first saw the animated Lord of the Rings.  I never understood how it worked until Technology Connections' video on it.  Congrats on having a working player for one of the most funky home video formats.

Groovy. Literally and figuratively.