Why don't more people own 400 DVD changer? (1 Viewer)

[Chris Cash]

I don't understand what people are talking about when they say they would have trouble finding movies in a mega changer. All of them and alot of mega CD changer have onscreen selection.:frowning:

~C.C.~

 

[CurtisC]

There seems to be a lot of confusion on mega changers,I think its the best way to store 100's of dvds.I have a 200 disc Sony for 3yrs and never had any problem.I do have a Denon 2900 for audio and for the occasional single disc.I would buy the 400 disc today if it played dvda and sacd,Sony is making a mistake here,imo.The first one with a mega/multi format is gonna sell plenty.

 

[Sheldon C]

Agreed Curtis. I keep checking this forum to see if someone is going to finally make a universal dvd audio/sacd megachanger but I am losing faith that it will happen. :frowning:

 

[Joe Tilley]

I have the 985V 400 disk, & its a love hate kinda thing.
Good points are my disks never get handled anymore, once they go in they don't come out. Wich also makes it easy to turn down people wonting to borrow movies as I don't like to lend them out. It's also nice to be able to just set back & turn on any movie in my collection without ever getting up, or switching from movie to movie without the need to get out keep cases & handle disks ext.
But than there are the bad points. First off disk explorer just plain sucks. Its slow, & pain in the ass to get it to come on, due to the resume playback or disk load feature Sony uses. If you get rentals its kinda a pain, but that should be expected somewhat with this type of changer. The front display dose not stay on long enough if you set it for auto off. I think Sony should have made it user selectable for like 5 through 30 sec in 5 sec increments. And why the hell did they leave off the control link on this one (stupid idea Sony)that drives me nuts. My remote controls everything on the changer but there has ben quite a few times it dosent come on with everything else like it would with the control link. Loadind disks is a big time pain in the butt. I wish they would have made it like the CD changers to where you can load a disk & type in the disk name with the door open. those of you that have the Mega CD changers should know what I mean.
Over all I really like the convinece of the changer but the little things add up. I really think if Sony put just a little more thought into it it could have been so much better than it is.
And just a couple last little things I've moved twice with my mega changers fully loaded & never had the slighest problem. It says your not supposed to but if your careful you shouldn't have anything to worry about. And just something I thought was interesting if you take apart the 985V almost all of the circuit boards are marked for use in the 985V & 777ES models. I know the build of everything is not going to be the same I was just suprised to see that the boards have both model numbers on them.

 

[Eric F]

I've owned the 985V for a few days and agree with most of the things Joe has said.

A few other notes- PQ is very good. I ran the Faraoudja test patterns through it and it passed almost all of them (even the Flag jaggy test). Rumor has it that the 777 and this one might use Faroudja components. I'm not sure, but for $350 it looks damn good.

Sound is excellent. The SACD features is cool, and the bass mgt functions work really well. If my receiver didn't have MCACC I would be using the Sony's built in decoder.

Overall I'm pretty happy with it. If Sony fixed the navigator (sucks) and the auto-load feature, it would be perfect.

 

[Joe Tilley]

Eric brought up another good point on the 985V. SACD play back. I never thought I would get into SACD but having the capability I absolutely love it. I have never listened to SACD on anything other than on a Sony dream system (wich sucked IMO) but having heard it on my system I just fell in love with it. Now if Sony will just get on the wagon & get out some more titles (or rather some good ones I'll listen too)

 

[Chester II]

Dude,

Kids are so lame

 

[dougW]

I have dual Pioneer Elite 301 disc DVD changers. These were introduced fairly early on really. I bought one, almost filled it up, and just happened to come across a deal on a second one. Since they communicate with each other as "slave" and "master" to give you 1 menu of 602 DVDs, it is a nice DVD storage method. Unfortunately, they are not progressive scan. I had a DVDO Iscan, but unfortunately, it quit working. So, for now, I either watch them on a small plasma that has a built in doubler, or use the system as a "file system". Find what I want, fetch it out, and play on my best player, a Samsung DVD-HD1000 that is my reference player now. Unfortunately, they weren't cheap though.

So, what I do, is, when a DVD is opened and I watch it first, it's in the Samsung, it may hit the rack in the case, maybe I watch it again, but someday, I "archive" and put more in the changers. Thus, my older movies are in the changer. Eventually, a culling process would start where I get rid of ones I don't like that much. with a rack designed to hold around 300. that puts me close to 1000 capacity without having a dedicated DVD room, lol. That's about enough DVDs for anyone I think.

I chop down paper boxes so they are 1 DVD high and put the keep cases in those after they go in the changer. That way I pop the top off and can find any keep case I want as easily as you can look through close to 400 DVDs, lol. Of course, I am up to about 4 paper boxes so far filled.

Lex

 

[Edward_B]

I am a new 400 disk changer user. Since last weekend I've had a Sony CDP-CX455 perched atop my component rack. I've read a lot about it being to slow to find disks in a changer. Here's my perspective.

Before I bought the changer I had a 150 cd rack all filled up and smaller stacks of cd's all over the place. I found myself listening to the same 10-15 cd's. It was just to hard to 1) remember the old ones 2) find the old ones 3) remember to properly put away the cd that I was taking out of my 6 disk changer.

Sunday afternoon I fed my cd collection to my new Sony. I took the cd jackets and put them in a CaseLogic 264 disk wallet. For ease I used a Sharpie to write the megachanger slot number on the plastic holding the cd jacket.

Now in a post megachanger world I sit in my comfortable chair and flip through the cd wallet. I see a cd that I would have never thought to pick out of cd rack or stack somewhere. A few clicks on the remote and I'm listening to a cd before I can get the folder back on the desk and the bourbon and coke to my lips!

There are likely hi-rez (sacd/dvd-a/96-24) cd's that I would rather use one at a time in an expensive single disk player. Jimmy Buffett and my other normal cd's work fine in a changer.

 

[EricRWem]

I usually find that megachangers like these give up quality in other areas that are far more important to me. It's really not any big deal to me to get up every so often and change a disc. If I'm going to spend x amount of dollars, it's going to performance and quality first.

 

[Nick Jablome]

Yes its obvious that the best place to hit to get some free electronics would be in the ghetto. Why would anyone want to go to steal from people who own high-end speakers, dvd players, tv's etc. That's just pure nonsense!

I should know this because i've been in law enforment for 15 years.

 

[Chris Cash]

I don't see where the 400 disk Sony gives anything up in the way of quality or performance. True there are a lot of people that like to think that because there expensive dvd player is single disk that it means it is a step above. But all don't feel this way. And so far, all of the reasons that have been put against large mega changers has been complete nonsense.

~C.C.~

 

[Andrew Pratt]

I've got the 300 disc CD changer and 400 disc DVD changer stacked on top of each to house my media collection and I couldn't see going back now. Those two items combined with SuperNudelist in my pronto make getting access to any disc exceptionally easy and I know they're now safe from my young daughters hands. It also allows me to hide the cases that she loves to play with and given that I'm feeding my pre amp a digital feed the CD quality is fantastic and I haven't found fault with the DVD jukebox's image on my projector other then the slow layer change. If anything the sony jukebox has made life easier as it can output a progressive image to the projector via the component cables as well as sending an interlaced image out of the s-video cable without having to change a menu option. For me this is essential as I sometimes watch movies on the wega TV which isn't HD so not having to switch a button on the player to view the movie means far fewer calls from my wife asking what's wrong with the TV etc.

 

[Chris Cash]

This is also why I have a separate DVD,DVD-A,SACD player. I only use my changer for my library. DVD-A, SACD, and movie rentals are kept separate for convenience.

~C.C.~

 

[Grant B]

I am waiting for my 777ES to show up on my doorstep and I can't wait!
It will join his little bro, the 865 so now I will have space for 700 along with 500 cd spaces.
The older 865 gets moved to the bedroom for space but I have everything distributed all over the house so the location is not a problem.
I will keep Full framed movies(mostly silent and from the 30s) and My TV collection in the older one which will do those fine.
Movies SACD and DTS CDs in the ES and plenty of room for expansion.

Neither do I, those are some pretty impressive numbers.

Face it you either like them or not. I have a limited amount of room to store the DVDs & boxes so the changers are ideal.
But I do have to say 1 thing. Since my changer ran out of room I have noticed how easy for discs to start stacking up on piles etc.
Never had that problem when I could fit my whole collection inside the changer.

If anyone is interested, I will give my thoughts on the 2 changers when I have time to compare the 2.
Grant

 

[Hank_P]

I would love to hear your thoughts on the players. My collection is sitting at 560, and I'd like to put half my collection into a mega-changer. I'm on the fence between the 777ES & CX985. I would also keep my current 5 disc changer for rentals,etc. What kind of price did you get on the 777ES?

I wanted one for Christmas, but it looks like it will be post-xmas.

 

[Andrew Pratt]

Apperntly the internals are very much the same btn the 985 and the 777. Its the DAC's, the RS232 port and the warrenty that seperate them.

 

[Grant B]

I have read conflicting info on it. Do you know if it is active or "functionality to be added later". Usually about when hell freezes over

 

[Brandon:W]

I recently bought a Kenwood DV-5900 off of eBay for about $400. I have not played with it much yet, but it sure seems to have a great picture.

I'm going to distribute the video from this to the entire house - so every room will have access to the entire DVD collection.

The only negative so far is that a couple of my home-made DVDs don't play. But some do.

But that's another topic.

Brandon

 

[Chris Cash]

One of the differences in the 985 and the 777 is the video processor.

~C.C.~