Passed up a CED player at GW
 

The Goodwill in Riverside had a Toshiba branded CED Video Disc player last Saturday for $10.
I considered getting it but when I tried it with a disc (Star Trek II) it was pretty noisy (spindle bearing?) also it didn't appear to work because the counter stayed blank.

You could see something slide back and forth in the top window, I assume it was the pick up assembly but I don't think it was supposed to slide back and forth like that, didn't look right.

I'm glad it was junk, I don't need any more "stuff" :no:

Were they made in Japan or were all CED machines built in the US? A Toshiba has to be rare.

Most of that player was Japan made, but the needles were made by RCA.

I would imagine, that if CED discs were a successful format, someone would have developed recordable blanks and a burner, like CD/R.

Quite possibly, the thing you saw sliding back and forth actually *was* the "counter".

On at least some of the Toshiba-made CED players, instead of a digital time display, the stylus position is indicated by a sliding index on a scale (looking sort of like a radio dial). This was super-easy to design/produce, since the pickup arm already moves horizontally across the disc; they just attached an index pointer to it and made it visible though a little bezel in the front panel.

[updated: Actually, now that I go back and look, it seems it was the Hitachi players that had the sliding index, not the Toshibas-- never mind...]

One low-end Pioneer Laser Disc player (the LD660) had a similar position scale instead of the on-screen time/frame display used in higher-end players.