- 200 disc capacity
- excellent video and audio

- 16 character title too short - especially for CDs
- Disc stops playing while exploring or entering titles
- Remote has no PIP controls for Sony TV
- DTS decoder redundant for most

I bought this unit to be the core of my new home theater system, along with a 53" Sony XBR TV, Yamaha receiver, Polk Audio speakers, and an old Technics turntable (thanks to the Needle Doctor for the new needle :o). All my music is on vinyl, so the DVD is also my first CD player. I went with the changer unit because of the CDs - I can keep them in the carousel rather than juggling all those jewel cases.

The unit provides excellent video and audio. The remote can control 80% of my TV features and the volume on my receiver. Similar control restrictions exist for the TV and receiver remotes, as well, so the Pronto suggested in other reviews may be the answer here. (My wife gets frustrated trying to get everything to work with the three remotes. She'd like to push a button for her CD selection and hear the music...)

The Disk Explorer title is limited to 16 characters, which is not enough for many DVDs. This is more of a problem for CDs as I would like to enter the artist name AND the album title. Too bad we don't have access to the second line of the explorer title. The disc genre icons are not very useful and slow the Disk Explorer down to the point that I have turned off the genre selections to increase speed

Overall, this is a very nice product and I'm getting my money's worth out of it.

Similar Products Used:

None

Mega capacity, disk explorer, sony quality

HUGE, not customizable enough

Ater much searching I found this player at Best Buy for 399 a great deal!! I like haveing all my DVD's in there at once. But the thing is huge huge huge, I can only imagine what their new 400 is going to be like. The picture and sound quality are excellant like with all sony layers it is also very well built. The remote is complex but fairly easy to use. It has a pletheria of outputs on the back for all applications. The only thing I liked but disliked at the same time was the "disk explorer" the disk storage and filing mode. It is the most refined on the market but dosen't allow for custom programing on disks with CD text. It also has a preprogramed list of genras that are missing a few. No Thriller no Adventure No Music Video but i guess i'll survive that might be a little bit greedy. The carosel moves pretty quickly but auto plays a disk when you turn to it using the remote. That is kind if annoying also. BUT those little things aside the player is great a conveinient way to load everything at once. A great unit I would highly recommend it.
As far as audio Specifics the 5.1 out is very clean and can sounds no different when using the optical or digital coax outputs. The Video is crisp and true to life warm and black blacks even on my old Sony tv. My System is as follows
Denon AVR 3300
Sonus Faber Concertino fronts
Sonus Faber Picalo Solo center
NHT Super Zero rears
Thule Amp
Monster 5000 line conditioner
RCA S-VHS
Technics SL 3300 turntable
Cal Labs
21" Sony tv
Pronto remote
Tara labs cable front
Canare cable interconnects and video cable
Monster cable rear

Similar Products Used:

Pioneer, Marantz

Great audio & video

none yet

I just got into home theater and I have had this unit for two weeks.Awesome video and audio.I purchased this unit from tweeters along with my pioneer elite 37-tx reciever and klipsch reference speakers.I have nothing bad to say, all is good with this unit.The dvd picture is awesome and the sound will blow you away. Give sam a call(713-526-4317).He's a nice guy with a nice price.Sam's the man.

Superb video quality
Excellent features and adjustments
Good collection of inputs/outputs
Built-in decoder
Incredible value !!!

Remote naviagtion button doesn't provide good tactile feedback...too spongy.
Button presses didn't always register on the remote.
Disc Explorer is slow...
What's with the UGLY icons ????

I was originally in the market for an entry-level single/5-disc player, and ended up buying the 850 simply because of it's incredible feature-set and because I came to the realization that a juke-box would have much longer functional longevity.

This is a complicated box to configure and use. The interface is very functional but not very intuitive. It's pretty loud when changing discs - one thing that bothered me initially but could definitely get accustomed to.

The concept of a single juke-box handling both DVD and CDs works well for me since I have a multi-room distribution system for video...now I can use that to play all my CDs as well.

Similar Products Used:

Sony 650, 630

Excellent video and sound reproduction and a great way to keep and to organize DVD's.

A little slow but not a major problem or concern

Excellent product

This Unit has excellent Video and Audio Quality. Sony Seems to have fixed the Video Sync problems. It holds 200 disks and allows on screen organization. Disks are organized using 4 custom folders, a DVD folder, a CD folder, and an all disks folder. Each can be organized by number, memo name, genre, or disk type. This can be done separately for each file. It has a keyboard connector making it easy to enter disk information. It has Coax & optical digital output for DD & DTS. The built in DD decoder has all the options also (I won’t be using it, I have the STR-DB930 DTS & DD). It has dual outputs with S-video and component video also. The remote makes menu navigation easy with the mouse point like button . I have not had any problems or bugs that I have been able to find.

The Unit is huge, larger then Sony’s 300 disk changers. It makes more noise when changing disks and takes a little longer then Sony’s CD changers. The genre list is limited and you cannot edit it. The memo field is only 16 characters long. You cannot search for a title (It does file them in alphabetical or numerical order). When you try to scan through the list quickly by holding the arrow button down, all memo, graphic, and disk type data disappears until you stop scrolling making it more difficult to quickly find what you are looking for. It will not play most CD-R's. I could not get it to display CD Text CD's track names.

I am happy with this unit as a DVD player, I will be using a separate CD changer for CD's. It Video quality is better then most DVD, however some high end units costing more, are of better video quality. The sound quality is excellent. I found it easy to use and it is my first choice for a DVD player because of its unique features. I will give it 5 because it is overall the best unit currently available in my opinion. I want my DVD’s to last and having them loaded prevents damage to the disks (as I have learned from my CD’s). I paid $640.00 for my unit but local stores sell it for $799, so I give it a 4 for value.

Similar Products Used:

Panasonic DVD, Zenith DVD, Sony DVP-C650, Sony 330, JVC 701.

* Lots of surround sound set-up features if you are using the built in DD/DTS decoders
* 200 discs playable on command

* Blurred image
* Continuous video noise
* Carousel mechanism aggravates video noise
* DVD explorer interface very rough around the edges.

I just received my Sony DVP-CX850D. I was entranced by the possibility of having up to 200 DVD's or CD's playable on command. Unfortunately it seems that Sony sacrificed some of the more important fundamentals in
order to get this neat-o gadget out the door.

My reference unit was the Panasonic DVD-A120 which has served me well for the past year. Compared to the DVD-A120, the DVP-CX850D's image quality is, in a word, poor. The image is less sharp, color saturation seems decreased, and worst of all the image is marred by continuous video noise (waviness and the like). I originally thought that the noise only affected the image when the changer's carousel mechanism was in operation, which might have been acceptable, but this was not the case. The noise is always there, it just gets even more noticeable when the carousel is moving. Lots of artifacting. On-screen text (FBI warnings and the like) significantly blurrier.

The DVD explorer interface is pretty weak. The way it works is that you load all your DVD's into the player and hit the "Load" button on the remote, at which point the player reads each disc, determines whether it is a DVD or CD, reads any DVD or CD text, and stores the entry in the list. If a DVD has jacket information (i.e. a stored image of the DVD case's cover) on the DVD, it is displayed next to the title. The explorer interface allows you to associate a genre (comedy, drama, etc.) with each DVD, but this information must be entered manually (i.e. it doesn't seem to ever be gleaned from anything encoded on the DVD).

I loaded 45 DVD's (no CD's) into the player and clicked "Load". It took
about 20 minutes for the unit to read all of them. When it was done, I was disappointed to find that, out of all of these discs, only about 4 had any DVD text or jacket image information. The rest of the entries were blank, which meant that in order to associate a title with them, I would have had to manually choose each disc, play enough of it to figure out what movie it was, and then enter its title/genre information into the player. Doing this for 5 DVD's made me realize this wasn't any fun, even with a PC keyboard plugged in. Admittedly, the lack of DVD text on current discs is not a fault of the player, but the player could have been more accomodating. Additionally, the DVD
explorer only lets you enter 16 characters of title for each disc, which
prohibits you from using proper spacing (let alone full names) in most cases
("There's Something About Mary" had to be stored as "SomethinBoutMary"). When associating a genre, you must pick from a hard-coded list, which is something of an annoyance for DVD's that don't fall under any of their supplied genres (where does "Super Speedway" go?)

I did not critically evaluate the audio section or any of the myriad other features the DVP-CX850D offers. To its credit, it's got a ton of them,
including a pretty over-engineered surround-sound set-up menu with many
bells and whistles for users taking advantage of the built-in DD/DTS processors. The unit also features bit rate and layer meters/indicators and the like.

Bottom line: A neat-o gadget for about 5 minutes. Not a replacement for your existing tried-and-true single-disc unit .
Relevant set-up info:
* Monster Power HTS2000 line conditioner
* Sony DVP-CX850D
* Monster Video 3 component video cables
* Toshiba TW65H80 TV (calibrated by Busch Home Theater)

Similar Products Used:

* Panasonic DVD-A120 (reference player)

Yes, but do you own one? Have you actually tested it???

what do you work for sony or something, we want to know about your experience with the player not its features!!! i have own this player for a week now and so far i am happy with it.

STILL WAITING FOR SONY TO SEND CD FOR JACKETS.

I have owned this unit for 4 months, and have had zero problems with it. I purchased it to protect my cd's and dvd'd from my kids. Since purchasing this unit I bought the 200 SONY cd player, and maintain the 850 for movies only. I run this thru a yamaha rx-v995 and NHT speakers. the quality of the product, and price cant be matched. Many of the complaints i read on the review section appear to be due to lack of understanding of the unit. you do not need any combination keyboard, and remote contol inputs, all data for the cd'd (memo) od DVD ( memo) is stored in the player. you do not have to load all disc thru explorer. This unit makes it easy to return my movies to the programmed slots, and protects my cd's and dvd'd from my kids prints,& scratches.