Good picture & smooth operation

Abominable interface and the typical terrible service

I am on my second week with this changer. So far I am impressed with picture and sound quality only. Other than that it is exactly as described below. Plus I have some additional quirks to report.

The big problems: 1) what kind of boneheaded loony designed this information system? Love how it erases all prior titles when you ask it to look up the titles again. Love how it can read 1 in 100 DVD titles and has covers for none. Love how it requires both the remote AND a keyboard to record title names. It is as though Sony forgot everything it learned in its years of CD carousel design. 2) it doesn't have any real A-1 power. I have it connected to my TA-E9000ES controller preamp, which can download CD names to its super-duper remote from any Sony CD carousel. Brilliantly, Sony didn't design any A-1 compatibility between these devices, though there is an obvious market overlap. In fact the A-1 doesn't appear to do much of ANYTHING and the Sony customer service morons have no information. 3) Can you believe the heft of this thing? 4) DTS must be manually selected EACH TIME you play a DTS or DTS ES dvd.

Sony needs to figure out a way to upgrade this before you buy it. Unless all you care about is a place to store your DVDs and a good pic.

It is a good value for me because I got tons of discounts via 800.com. Overall I think not a great value.

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First DVD changer for me

Looks nice, 200 discs, great menu features

Large
13-character titles (no editable artist field)

I have had this unit for over 6 months and I think it is fantastic. It has not given me any problem.

The menu options are extensive and very useful. I love the navigator screen that can show you your discs by type (ALL, CD, DVD, or the custom ones).

I also like the extensive set of inputs and outputs on the back. This makes it quite useful to me.

The only complaint I have is that I have not yet recieved my free disc from Sony that is supposed to supply "pictures" for a lot of DVDs. I am not really sure I will use them all (since using the pictures to identify your DVDs does seem to slow down navigation), but I want my promised disc anyway!

Excellent component!

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Various single DVD players

Large capacity, consistent Sony aestehics, wide array of options.

Enter button for the remote is clumsy, carousel could be a tad quieter.

I originally purchased the Sony 5 disc, which was extremely problematic. After returning it, I acquired this unit for a good price from a local audio retailer. $800 originally, they misquoted me $700 and honored the price (1/20/00).

I love the unit. I use the player almost daily, and have had NONE of the disc jams, poor quality video, or lip synch problems. Perhaps the lip synch is due to a slow internal decoder? I use my ES-555 receiver for decoding via optical cable- haven't seen a problem yet with over 100 unique DVD's viewed.

I will say that loading the DVDs can be tricky at first, and I suspect improperly loaded discs could be the cause of many jamming problems. Have seen a few friends toying with it that put discs in crooked.

Labeling the discs is no sweat *IF* you use a keyboard. Don't even dream of doing this with the remote. Standard PC-AT keyboards work great, and Sony had enough insight to allow navigation through the menus using a keyboard as well- not just for alpha numberic data entry. I plug my remote keyboard in and can walk through menus equally as efficient as my remote once you get used to it. When you get it down, you can crank out those labels at a few per minute.

The remote is "OK", but a major gripe is the arrow / enter button. Sony provided a joypad style interface where you depress the directional button for "ENTER." If you are not really paying attention, you will never depress the button evenly and inevitably will select the directional buttons instead.

As for video quality, this unit has MANY video configuration options, including their video EQ stabilization (?). They are hidden in a sub menu only shown while movies are playing, but you can really tweak out your image quality- I would encourage some of you that are unhappy with the image to track down this menu.

Speaking of menus, the book fails to mention that most of the useful commands are only visible WHILE playing a CD or DVD. If you have never hit DISPLAY button while watching a movie, you will be in for a real shock. TONS of controls, in two complete menus. At frist glance, you would fear that many features were omitted since all of these options are not visible on the remote or in non-playing mode.

Incidentally, I CAN play CD-R's on my player, but you need to buy the high quality discs. $4.00 gold blanks seem to play ok. Seems to be the thickness of the discs that the player cares about.

One item I have not been able to figure out: Is there a way to make the unit default to "ON" when power is restored? My ES-555 receiver powers all my other Sony products on and off when I place it in standby mode, but I always have to manually power on the DVD changer.

All in all, as a diehard Sony fan I can easily overlook some of the feature improvements in the Pioneer unit for the consistency and (IMO) better interface / look of the Sony player. This unit is not PERFECT, but certainly met all of my expectations- especially for a first generation DVD changer.

BOTTOM LINE:

If you are like me, where each component you own is Sony- this is your player. If you are more like my friend that must have the "ultimate" brand for each component- perhaps look at Pioneer.

Personally, the thought of 14 different face plates and 4 different LED colors on a "frankenstein of equipment du jour" home entertainment system scares me far more than any minor variance.

To each their own.

Similar Products Used:

None

Component Video w/ Digital Coax results in phenominal video and sound.

Manual entry of DVD/CD info, slow changer, remote lacking important buttons, can't play and update the disc explorer database

When using the component video out to a TV capible of 16:9 480p component video input, the video quality from this unit is second to none. You see the pores on people's skin, the texture on grass and leaves, etc... It is simply amazing.

I also experimented with the analog 5.1 out, optical out, and digital coax out, and I can say that the digital coax is without question the best. The quality of the sound between analog 5.1 -vs- digital coax is like the difference between 5.1 and Pro-Logic. There's just no comparision. Once you've heard the best, you can't go back.

I also wouldn't waste your money on the optical connection, since the coax is an improvement (albeit minor) over the optical. If you already have a optical cable, or don't have digital coax input on your reciever, then you'll still be very pleased with the sound quality from the optical. If you don't have optical or coax, then get it. It's worth it.

The cd audio quality is phenomial as well.

I am very pleased with the performance of this unit, and the features offered. However, I wish many of the features only available on the display menu were available on the remote (like a-b repeat). With that said, you won't be lacking for features with this unit because it comes with nearly everything available.

With respect to the Disc Explorer, it is clear that this is a version 1.0 product. The UI sucks, you can't play & edit the database, nearly nothing has jacket pictures and the defaults are childish, you only have a measly 16 characters (hey what about artist & title for CD's??!!) , your forced to pick the built-in categories, and you can't build listening lists from individual songs on multiple CD's. I could go on for hours about how this thing sucks and how it would be much better if it had a web connection (or at least a cd updated quaterly) to get the data instead of forcing you to type it in for every cd/dvd. However, this feature is still usable and better than those units which offer nothing. I only wish that Sony would have taken cues from the PC Software industry on how to write CD cataloging software, and not tried to do something lame on their own.

It takes a while to get up to speed on this system, but overall I'd highly recommend it. The picture and sound quality are superb, and the price is excellent for what you get.

I have only had one problem this unit where it froze on disc 9 after I pushed the load button. I powered off, then back on and all has been well ever since. I haven't had any problems with DVD's/CD's getting bent or scratched as mentioned earlier, so that must have been a problem with early production models.

BEWARE: This unit is DTS ready, not a DTS decoder. You'll need a seperate decoder to view DTS movies.

NOTE: I haven't used this unit to play video cd's or DTS DVD's yet.

My system includes the following:
Sony ES STR-DA777ES
Sony DVP-CX850D 200 DVD Changer
Sony KP-53XBR300 Projection TV
Polk RT2000i
Polk CS400i
Polk f/x 500i

Final recommendation: Don't buy from Crutchfield because they charge too much for this unit. Shop around at places like onecall.com, your local Good Guys, etc... and you'll get a much better deal.

looked great at the store

not sure yet

I bought my Changer last night. It looked cool, i have approx 130 dvd's and thought.. what a great idea.

I plan to play with this guy when i get home tonight. Most of these reviews have just about scared the hell of me. I want Sony, I want a dvd changer and most of these reviews are telling me it sucks.

My only hope is that some of the problems you folks have had have been addressed since last year. I hope they do update their hardware from year to year even within the same model.

I'm crossing my fingers and attempting to keep an open mind when i get home.

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none

picture to die for, sound quality that rivals DVP-S7000, good price, excellent hardware design. Good remote

primitive operating software

I think this a great time to get of this because of the drop in price. This is well made mega changer with a pack of refinements and sophisticated features that only can be found on high end units that are much more expensive. Best of all, it delivers what is supposed to do well. It performs like a charm. I would be surprised if any DVD player or CD player can outperform this one. Unless you are an Audi/videophile nit picker this one should suffice. I replaced my DVP-S7000, a Reference Standard Player (very good player indeed), with this one and I am not disappointed. The images it puts up is actually a tad sharper and audio is the same to my picky ears. From stand point of software, I know it cannot do individual song programming, but then again, it is a DVD player. Obviously Sony should have done a better job with the software. I originally bought the Toshiba SD-5109 and later SD-6200 progressive. I was disappointed with their sound quality. Sort of "in your face" character to the Toshiba. This mega changer combined with my Sony 61HS10 and TAE-9000ES rock. Highly recommended without reservation. One note- the coaxial connection will provide a smoother response than the optical. I guess it all depends on what DAC you are using.

Similar Products Used:

Sony DVP-S7000, Toshiba SD-6200 & 5109

Capacity

Jams, software sucks

I'll be short and to the point. I've owned my unit for 10 months now and wish these reviews were available when I purchased my unit as I would not have.

The best thing I can say about this is that it holds 200 CD/DVDs, and the audio is very good.

I HATE THE FIRMWARE AND USER INTERFACE. This unit is very user unfriendly and I wish I never bought it. I highly recommend that anyone wishing to buy something like this wait until something better comes along.

My unit is in the shop right now. I had numerous jams from beginning. The last jam caused something burn out and the unit went completely dead.

It has problems reading many of the DVDs I rented. At first I attributed this to the fact that they were rental DVDs. But after having so may with problems, I pulled out my old JVC 501 and it had no problem reading the same DVDs.

When changing CD/DVDs, it is very noisy and clunky.

As far as I'm concerned, Sony had good intentions, but honestly, it's a piece of junk. Don't buy it

Similar Products Used:

JVC 501

capacity, picture, sound

title length

I have used this unit for over 1 year. Several months ago my 1 yr old opened it and rearranged my collection. It was jammed and I had to remove the cover to extricate the cd's & dvd's causing the jam. They were undamaged except for some finger prints. The changer has performed w/out flaw since. It is very convenient to use (no searching for cd's or dvd's in the wrong case). The picture and sound quality are excellent! My wife can't be bothered learning how to use it, but my ten year old has no problem navigating the disc explorer. If you can set the clock on a VCR you will have no trouble using this changer.

Its a Sony...
Price, Ease of use, Great quality of sound and picture.
Everything.

None found yet. (It is big though. 200 CD/DVD need space)

What should I say.... A MAN has needs... This baby will fulfill it. 200 DVD/CD/VCD, Dolby Digital, Disk Explorer. 5.1 channel out put. etc. etc..I would say read all the reviews with 5 stars and forget about anyone else saying bad about this baby. Altogether I paid $325 for this and it comes with all cables and even batteries for the remote. At work we do make videos for all kind of products and we already had a video made for this one. I saw the video before I bought it. you can check out too. www.seeitwork.com
All I have to say that anyone who lookaround before shop and keep an eye on the market value of the product should know that for this price this product is a steal. Ofcourse you are not going to buy a DVD every other year.

Similar Products Used:

none

200 discs, superb audio and video quality

disc explorer UI is a dog

i have to echo the better reviews here so far. i love the
unit, hate the disc explorer. i don't like the fact that
you can't override an icon/title loaded from the disc (for
example, one of my james bond DVDs which has a tiny little
icon and NO title at all). i would just clear the memory
and type in all the titles myself save for the unreasonably
short title length allowed. i hope the next version of
this thing shows more polish.

thanks to everyone whos reported some success playing
CD-Rs on their unit. i'll have to try making copies of
theones i'm having problems with on better quality discs,
i guess.