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Date: 2009-12-07 Failed after setup - no component or video output Well, I should have tested with one disk before putting my entire library into this thing. I have three of the Sony 400 disk DVD changers, so I was excited to see them finally release a Blu-ray changer. I ordered mine immediately upon discovering it, received it, hooked it up to my component input HDTV and went through the setup process with no problems. Then I loaded up all my disks and tried playing the first one only to discover I had nothing but a black screen. I started by trying to reset to the lowest resolution (hold stop button for more than ten seconds) as described in the manual, with no luck. I then switched to NTSC video output only to discover a sideways scrolling mess that I could almost read if I tried hard enough. Trying to feed the same signal into another TV just gave a blue screen (no input). I went to the Sony website only to discover their tech support page doesn't even know this exists yet. I eventually managed to get to the reset menu and reset to factory defaults and no change. After an hour with the chat tech support (Did you try different cables? Different TV? Is your TV a Sony?) they finally decided the unit was defective and I should take it to a repair shop. Fat chance! Back it goes. Given the flaky Blu-ray copyright implementations I've seen, I suspect what really happened is that security on one of the disks made the thing disable the component output as "insecure" and that was that. You'd think Sony could get it right since it's their format, but I guess not. Back to my old single disk player. As an update, after disconnecting everything last night and leaving the unit unplugged, I decided to try it on another TV today. The NTSC output worked fine, so I moved back to the original TV and tested -- still worked. Hooked everything back up to the component video and it worked fine. Adjusted to 1080i output and everything still worked. Started going through the menus and about 5 minutes after power-up the video went out again; same symptoms as last night. Looks like after just a few minutes of warm-up something is failing in the unit. Hopefully this is an isolated failure, but it doesn't bode well for the longevity of these players if they've used weak components for critical functions. Date: 2009-12-06 Destroyed 17 dvds I have very mixed reviews about this product. First of all, the delivery: This player arrived in its own sony box - no additional packaging, just a UPS label stuck on the side. They also didn't require a signature. Had I not have been home when it arrived I'm wondering if this would have still been sitting prominently on my front porch when I got home. It is massive - will not fit in a cabinet. I had enough height but not enough depth in my cabinet to fit it so we put this on top of a cabinet. Connecting the player to our system was quick and easy - we already had ethernet available. We loaded a couple discs initially just to see if it would work and how easily it would be able to receive the Gracenote info. Of the 3 we loaded it only was able to get one title. The other 2 were "Ka" a cirque de soleil disc (which we really didn't expect it to be able to find), but the other one was a brand new release "The Ugly Truth". So with a 33% success rate we decided what the heck and loaded 311 discs into the player and then let it load. We watched tv and went to bed. In the morning it said that 110 discs had not loaded. I think this was probably due to our shutting off the tv. We had programmed our harmony remote to control all of our components and I think when we shut everything down to go to bed it inadvertently shut off the player (even though we had covered the ir). So - we started the load process again on just the missing ones. Towards the end of the load the player started making a terrible noise but then it subsided. After successfully loading data for the dvds that didn't get data the previous night it said that all of the dvds but 17 of the last 20 did not load - which seemed weird (especially since they were all in row in the player). We let it finish the process and took a look at the dvds that did not load. Each one of them had a massive scratch across them in the same place. They were not scratched when we put them in. We moved a disc that had been successfully loaded previoudly and put it into one of the slots that had scratched the dvds. That dvd proceeded to get gouged when we tried to load the data. I have no idea why it happened in just a small section but there was something wrong with the player. We did try a couple more dvds in the same slots and this time got them to load fine. I am very nervous about putting more in but I do have some dvds I would feel comfortable testing with. I wonder if one of the dvds didn't load right and threw the ones next to it off but I'm not really sure how that could happen. Loading dvds is pretty easy - it's not like you could do anything wrong other then putting them in with the label side the wrong way. However, ours weren't - we definitely checked and all of the previously 285 dvds had loaded fine. In fact, a number of the scratched dvds were 2 sided widescreen/standard discs so it doesn't matter which way you put them in. One was even a blu-ray. Most were recently released dvds. Massacre of my dvds aside (they were ones that weren't really our faves). I am tryinng to remain positive after all the work of loading and time to get the data from Gracenote. The player works perfectly for the rest of the dvds. Picture is amazing and the sound is great with our 5:1 sound system. In the end almost of the data was able to be retrieved from Gracenote (just 2 additional new dvds didn't get info). We tried to contact Sony about this but it is Sunday. I will be adding an update to the review once I am able to talk to Sony and see what they have to say about the scratching. I will update this review after that. Had we not had 17 dvds ruined I would have given this 5 stars. Would I buy it again? Not sure. I am going to keep it and see what happens... Date: 2009-12-03 Almost perfect! I've had mine for about a week and so far, so good. Reading comments on here I was prepared with some limitations of the unit. That gave me time to develop work arounds and continue to integrate this into my home theater system. I can say up front that the image quality and audio quality blow me away (just like they do on my JVC XV-BP1). I honestly see no glaring differences between the two players. Also the Sony plays BD-R discs without any problems. I've not tried BD-RW yet, but I do not expect a problem. I initially loaded the player up with about 40 discs and had it do a "load all" to get titles and jacket covers. Of these about 8 came back without an ID or had an ID, but no jacket image. For example, disc 1 of Star Trek (2009) was recognized, but had no image. Disc 2 was both properly identified and had an image. I later discovered that if you reload each individual disc (including the ones that are returned as unknown) they will access Gracenotes and have both a jacket cover and proper ID. Obviously your home BD-R discs will not be on Gracenotes, but you can enter the title you want. As everyone comments, the manual entry of titles is tedious. It would be cool if you could load your personal jacket cover on a thumbdrive. I put in Terminator Salvation on the day of release and it was immediately recognized. That tells me that they are at least currently keeping up with mainstream releases in their database. The only thing I do not like is not being able to directly access a disc of my choice. I use an MX-3000 remote (which had no problems learning the Sony's control codes) along with other software (DVD Profiler & DMX-3000) that generates jacket covers on my remote's screen. I select what DVD I want and the remote sends the proper codes to the TV, receiver & Sony DVD megachangers to load and play the DVD I want. I think the best I'll be able to do is have the remote so I can select a blu-ray jacket cover and have the player go to "Home" where I scroll up/down and manually select the title from the screen. It's annoying, but I can easily use it. The worst part may be having other viewers who see another title while scrolling and we end up watching an unintended title (it's already happened). Overall, I'm very pleased with buying this blu-ray megachanger. It's a great way for a disorganized person to keep their Blu-ray collection organized in a single location. Update: Discovered that should one or more of your discs become unslotted inside the machine, you can easily remove the cover and manually retrieve the unslotted discs. I decided to move the player from one room to another and in doing so tilted the machine too much when placing it on a shelf. I was not even aware that they had come out of their slots. As soon as I power up the machine, it starts grinding and grinding while it is initializing. Neither the Stop nor the power buttons work. I had to unplug the unit. So I popped the cover (screws on the top, both sides and back of the unit) and discovered about 20 of the discs had come unslotted. I reached in (plenty of room for even large hands)and easily extracted the unslotted discs. Where the unit had continuously tried to turn the carousel, it had caused scratches on a couple of discs. I removed all the discs since it was going to be put back on the shelf and replaced the cover. I moved the unit, booted up and reloaded all the discs. To my surprise even the two badly scratched discs loaded and began playing just fine. I'll have to watch the whole movie to make sure the scratches have not ruined the movies. The take home is remove all discs before you move the unit (like the manual says) and if one or more discs do come out of their slots, you can easily remove the cover and fix the problem. Date: 2009-12-02 Great product I've had the Sony DVP-CX995V for several years and was very impressed with it, but when I got the Sony BDP-CX960, I was very pleased with the improvements. I no longer have to go to the unit to select a new movie. Now I have the ability to scroll through all my movies. A side note about my DVP-CX995V, it stopped playing and I was unable to find anyone to repair it my area. I contacted Sony and ended up sending it to their repair shop in Laredo, TX. It was back to me in a week and working perfectly. I found Sony to be very helpful. I now have two 400 players. Date: 2009-11-30 better than my PC! I was tired of manually ripping my cd and DVDs to my desktop and bought this to be able to organize my 250 DVD/Blu Ray collection. The unit is big but not heavy and compared to my PS3 very quiet! The interface reminds me of my PS3 (Which I will sell shortly). It can process data/photo DVD/CD as well! As to the Gracenote Database; I inserted about 300 DVD & CDs and it failed to recognize 5 of them - strangely enough one of them was a blu-ray disk (Talladega Nights) but that came bundled with my PS3 and was a special edition.. the other 4 were older titles such as A Clockwork Orange.. Inputing the titles does not take long. Overall I am very happy with the purchase and finally getting rid of the hundreds of DVDs lying around my apartment.. * Price is subject to change. |
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