Usability.

We have been so disappointed with this unit. Bought it because of the 400 disc carousel, thinking we'd be able to use the library to bring up CDs or DVDs. Unfortunately, was never able to get the NetNamer software to actually save the titles to the unit (I was able to see them in a list in the software, but couldn't transfer them.) It always seemed noisy and slow and tempermental, but OK, big deal. Then we noticed it started skipping here and there. But was that the discs? After a while it got worse and worse until it was unusable. I hear the mechanism that holds so many CDs is too heavy to stay aligned or something. Luckily we had bought the service plan through Good Guys. They were out of business, but sold the plan to GE. Found a shop to repair it. They didn't have the part. Sent it to Kenwood. It was damaged in shipping. Kenwood wouldn't touch it until the casing was repaired. Weeks and weeks go by. Finally Kenwood get it. They don't have the part, but will 'rig something'. Months and months later, they send it back. I pick it up. It doesn't work. Doesn't even pretend to try to play any DVD I put in. On two different TVs. I take it back to the shop, they send it back to KW. Weeks and weeks go by and finally they say they have 'the part'. We put this thing in November of 2005 and have just today 4/28/2007 brought it home (after making the store plug into a TV and test.) I tried to ask them to get KW to fix the naming thing. They said KW said the connection had been tested and passed diagnostics. Meaning you can plug the cable into the back of the unit. By then I had read reviews of another KW model (5050) about how ridiculous the NetNamer software is, no bugs had ever been fixed, no emails to tech support had ever been returned. So I'm thinking we will either type all the titles in, or just continue to use the rental slots like before. We would have been better off saving the money and buying a $40 player at Walmart. You can get them with VHS combo, too. More cabapility than this thing for a fraction of the cost. I could have bought 35 DVD player for the price of this thing. Even the store had a hard time getting anyone at Kenwood to answer the phone or return calls. I went to the website and couldn't even find where to download the software. The contact page says to 'use this page to contact' after you've read the FAQ. There are only 5 questions in the FAQ. A search on the keyword netnamer comes up with nothing. I would strongly urge anyone considering buying anything from Kenwood to think twice. The other reviews on this model talk about the superior audio quality. Our audio was nil for the year and a half they had the unit.

Customer Service

Non existant. They must have all been laid off in budget cuts or permanently out to lunch. Couldn't be worse if they were trying to annoy people.

Great Picture Great Sound

No SACD support Is more sensitive to fingerprints/scratches then normal players

I've had this product a little over a year and have had a chance to play around with it and my other Sovereign components quite a bit. I extensively researched this unit before purchase, including this site, and hope this review will help guide some others. Overall, I found my experience to be in line with my expectations. The unit is a great unit. To take full advantage of its capabilities however, you need to be prepared to spend some time with it. The picture quality on DVD’s is fantastic and I’ve never experienced a problem with the auto-flip feature for 2-sided disks. The audio is equally impressive. I was disappointed the unit does not support SACD but, this is a small complaint give the other features. I’m surprised to read so many complaints about the speed and noise of the unit. The speed to find the next disk will depend on where sequentially it sits next to the disk that is playing. In the worst case, this is no longer then 30 seconds from start to finish…..very reasonable in my opinion. The noise is louder then it could be but by no mean a major issue. Anyone with concerns on these points should try and see a live demo before purchasing. I do agree with one reviewer that the naming functionality could be significantly improved. Newer CD’s and DVD’s are now coming pre-coded with title info that passes directly to the unit. This means the disk and track description, including artist name, will appear in the DVD display window. If you have a connected Kenwood Encore Hub, most of your disks will be recognized via the Internet link, but unfortunately this is not passed automatically to the DVD display window. I did find out from Kenwood that you can download software from their site that allows you to input all your disk data on your PC and then upload this to your machine. This is a good option as it creates a backup as well. Tighter integration and information passing would be appreciated but overall I’m very happy with the unit. I have used Kenwood’s tech support on a number of occasions and have never had a problem. Biggest issue is that the specialized Sovereign support group is only available during normal pacific coast business hours.

Holds a lot of disks but so does a vinyl wallet at a significant savings in space and $.

Slow, noisy, unreliable, expensive.

This is a slow, noisy player. Additionally, it developed the annoying habit of deciding in the middle of a disk that "This kind of disk can not be played in this player. Please change the disk." Sometimes this can be overcome by moving the disk to a different slot, but in most instances, I have to move the disk to a different player such as the Sony 9000ES or Denon 3800 in order to view the rest of the DVD. Sent it in for service, but the problem, which is intermittent did not occur for the service department so they did nothing. (It happened again for me with the first disk I tried to play when I got it back.) I strongly urge people to avoid this player like the plague. Pioneer megachangers have a much better user interface, are quieter, faster and, most importantly, will play an entire DVD at one attempt.

Similar Products Used:

Pioneer 301 disk megachanger. Sony 9000ES DVD/SACD player. Denon 3800 DVD-Video/Audio player.

Picture Quality is the best that I have seen from a DVD Player. Excellent Sound and good build quality. DVD audio is excellent.

A little slow but what do you expect from a DVD player that holds 400 discs.

Great unit for holding DVDs, CDs, DVD Audio. Looks great.

Similar Products Used:

Sony 300 disc player, Denon 2800

Sound and Picture.

Slow loading, Loud, Dics stick in loader 50% of the time. Quality control may be an issue.

Great ability to hold 400 Discs and have 3-rental slots. The unit is a bit loud and slow to load discs. Poor menu system. Good picture and sound.

Similar Products Used:

Pioneer Elite DV-37

This thing holds 500 discs! All the discs that I like are accessible without loading and unloading. MP3 playback! DVD audio playback!

I would rate audio playback at 9 out of 10, however dvd playback is not very good at all and I would rate it a disappointing 6 out of 10. My Sony 9000ES beats this unit big time with every dvd I have ever tested. The on screen cataloging and searching system is poorly designed as well. It takes almost 1 minute to warm up when you turn it on and 1 minute to change a cd. It is supposed to flip dual sided dvds but fails on that 90% of the time.

This unit hold an incredible amount of dvds and cds, it plays mp3s, dvd audio (requires special inputs in your amp!), as well as pc authored cds and most dvd-r and dvd+r but not luck with dvd+rw.

1. Picture and sound are outstanding! 2. DVD collection in one mega-changer.

1. Slow and clumsy user interface 2. CDs can be automatically titled via Internet but DVDs have to be manually input (This is a DVD player so it should have auto-titles for DVDs right?) 3. Noisy and slow disc change

The 400 disc capacity, Faroudja progressive scan, and DVD-Audio features enticed me to buy this product. The picture and sound are excellent; however, actual use has noted several flaws in operation. This is the first progressive scan mega-changer. Perhaps I''d be happier with the next generation but then I wouldn''t have my DVD library loaded in one machine.

Similar Products Used:

DVD players from Apex, Toshiba, Panasonic and Pioneer. DVDO line doubler.

Outstanding DVD Video output

Poor Manual Poor User Interface Cheap Cables come with unit Ho-Hum DACs Horrible Navigation and Control Control Software is HORRIBLE. Buggy at times

Grades: Video: "A+" Superb Video. Best I''ve seen for a unit under $10K Audio: "B" Better than most DVD players. Built in bass management is a super plus. Unfortunately it has rather ho-hum DACs. Control: "D” Replaced the standard DVD remote design with propriety design. Navigation is "Difficult and confusing". PC-DVD control software seriously flawed. Manual: "F" Quite possibly the WORST manual I have ever seen in my entire life. Physical Design/Interface: "C” Cheap feeling and look for such an expensive unit. The front of the unit was plastic. I would have preferred machined aluminum for a unit of this cost, but that''s no biggie in my book. I opened the unit up and started inserting my collection of 204 CD''s, 3 DVD-Audio disc, and 45 DVD''s. The plastic separator fin that holds the DVD upright in place is extremely small. These low fins make it easy to improperly insert a DVD/CD and then have it fall over inside the unit. The fins also felt like they would crack or break with a little bit of pressure. Problems Problems Problems: After one day of use, I discovered I couldn''t access one of my disc. It had simply disappeared from the player. After some investigation I found the disc was returned to the wrong slot! When one has 400 DVD''s and CD''s stacked into a changer, easy navigation is essential. Unfortunately the Kenwood lacks in this area as well. Bringing up the on screen display brings up a title bar with disc/track selections: You access these menu items by using the arrow pad and pressing enter. Once you press enter, the menu creates a drop list of numbered selections. My first reaction was "What the?!? Where''s the titles? Where''s the track names?" Bad news: There is no disc, title, or track information in the on screen selection menus. My Final Verdict: It’s not worth it for DVD-Audio or CD-Audio. Next year, units will appear that implement the new DVD-Audio digital out format via two fire-wire ports. If audio is important to you, then wait for a better unit which implements this important upgrade. However if you’re a video nut, this is the unit to have. I had written a really large review to post here to warn people to stay away from this unit. Unfortunately I couldn''t post a 10th of it due to size limitations. If you want the full article, feel free to email me.

Similar Products Used:

Sony DVD Mega changers Toshiba DVD S2002 Sony CDM-90ES CD player

Several noted elsewhere and by other reviewers.

The unit won''t play a DTS audio disc without problems. Specifically, the unit is dropping the DTS signal and then screetching static (ever played a DTS disc on a non-DTS player? that''s the sound I''m talking about), or simply loosing 1 second of sound randomly in the middle of a song. (Note, it is not a problem with the disc itself, this happened on all 5 DTS encoded audio discs in my collection. The problem occurs randomly during playback, not at the same spot on the disc.) Note - in my limited testing the problem doesn''t appear to happen with DTS encoded DVD videos, only DTS encoded audio CDs (which are pretty cool, check them out). I have noticed a DVD-DTS encoded video will pause briefly, then resume. But this could be a layer change and unrelated to the DTS problem, I''m not sure on this point. My serial number is under 200 (SN11000xxx). I''ve tested the DTS audio discs on a Denon 2800 player with my receiver and had no problems with DTS thereby isolating the problem to Kenwood. The DTS problem also appeared on other DV-5900M and the Kenwood 5 disc player in the dealers inventory. Without a doubt, this is a Kenwood problem, and it may be present in all of the DTS "capab

Ahh, promising in so many ways. Faroudja, 400 disc capacity, DVD-A, stores disc/track names, more. Flawed by bug in DTS processing, there''s no way to save programed disc info outside of the DV5900M (like to your PC), and absolutely *no* support from Kenwood (not even a reply).

sound and picture great value for the moeny

Kenwood has lousy customer service Huge unit

I purchase the entire line of the new 5000 series kenwood soverign system. I am very happy with this dvd player as it plays about everything dvd, cd, cdr, the new super cd's and dvd audio, it also plays all curent sound processing and is of course upgrade-able. It holds 400 disks so it was able to hold my entire disk collection. With the entre I was able to go online and download most of the titles and cover art to go with the disks and find them in a cool pull down menu by genre. The disks that is was not able to read I input manually with the supplied wireless keyboard. I purchased the unit with the faroudja chip and use this player with my Zentih 900prox front project (which rocks). I also have the pro dvdo version 3 and the faroudja chip is lousy in comparison (I should not have been suprised I used to own the faroudja DVP 2200 and upgraded to the dvdo). I would not recomend spending the extra money on the chip except that use also loose the dvd audio with the cheaper version. Also a quick note if you are planning on purchasing the entre with this dvd player it is first generation technology and has bugs and issues and will require professional help to set up the system and the touch screen remote to control the macro's and blend everything together. So if you want the entre my advice would be to buy from a local dealer and not save a few bucks by getting it online. This is mainly due to a complete lack of customer service offered by kenwood. I called there tech support line and sat on hold for 75 minutes never speaking to a tech. I called back on a Wendsday thinking it would be slower I gave up after 45 minutes. So I e-mailed them, twice... 4 business days later no response. I finally called my local retailer and conned them out of the phone number for their sales rep. I called him and would not let him off the phone until he help me. A real nightmare. In summary the dvd player is very good and being able to hold 403 disk is great. The entre is a best inovation since B & O back in the seventies but the next generation should be even better with less flaws and maybe even a little simpler to operate. The reciever in my opinion it is the best of the line.