Sony DVPCX995V 400-Disc DVD Mega Changer/Player

As in other reviews I found entering disc information less than easy. Then one day all entered info was gone. Re entered disc info again. Now after just 2 years, Mfg date Jan 2008, it won't read dvds. It still plays cds. I found some online forums and others are having the same issue. Something about the laser only lasting so many hrs and also a diode that goes out. Sony is no help big phone bank of "tech" people that read from a list of suggestions and then when they finally are convinced your unit can't be reset they offer you an exchange for $275 you pay shipping one way,and a 90 day warranty. refurbished, not new. The phone calls took hrs. I paid $300 new in Feb 08 for this,the price is up over $400 so I think I will go back to a single unit good quality (not Sony) unit. Think of all the calories I'll burn changing the discs. Next plan will be a server, all digital computer based.

What a piece of junk. Get a 5 disc DVD player instead. Come on Sony, why are you laying a piece of expensive, untested junk on us. Stay away. Too many problems to list. The Sony DVP CX995V is the most user unfriendly piece of equipment I have ever dealt with. And just wait until you have the entire unit full of your DVD's (400 of them) and then the thing breaks down and you have to remove all of those DVD's after fighting to get the stuck DVD door open!!! And then the repair shop has the unit for over three weeks and then you get it back and it works for two days and then breaks down again (of course after putting in the 400 DVD's again). Just imagine the nightmare. You have been warned. DO NOT BUY.

This Machine destroyed over $500 worth of DVD's. I turned on the device and it started making a loud noise, unable to turn it off, I unplugged the unit. I manually removed my disks to find in horror most of them have been irreparable damaged. The damage is caused in the form of arcs across the face of the disk and is caused from stress generated when the carousel motor tries to turn but another internal part is in the way. Rather than shutting down, the carousel pushes to the point of bending the disks and creating stress fractures.

I thought this problem was a fluke incident the week I purchased. It worked correctly for almost 3 months before mowing down more of my DVD's. I blame myself for the second incident. I shouldn't have tried to reuse the product.

I purchased this player a year ago. I am on my 4th one, having returned the first to due to the fact that it was completely broken and would not play at all, and the other 3 for the same problem described below.

This player does work, but the problem is, it doesn't play all DVD's. It will freeze up and take 20 minutes to move 2 frames. The DVD's that I am using are in excellent condition as I am a fanatic when it comes to them. I have had this issue on brand new DVD's as well as older ones.

I do not see the scratches that other owners have complained about, and when I take the DVD's out and use them on other machines they play fine.

I am very disappointed with the quality of Sony at this stage of the game. I'm not looking to do anything special with my DVD player, I am simply looking for what should be a basic function of a player, TO PLAY DVD's.

The "most useful" negative review is based upon the user's lack of knowledge of the unit, as is freely admitted, again and again.

A further example: Set the player (menu option) to NOT play a DVD when the unit is turned on. We simply go to the index to choose our movie.

We have had this unit for about two years, using a keyboard to enter new titles and other information, for those disks that it doesn't read when played. Initially, we did this as a family activity, in small 'bites'. With a large library of DVDs, we have two changers and love having the entire library available, more quickly and on screen, than to dig through a drawer or other manually-sorted retrieval system. While the 995 is slow compared to having everything on flash memory, I simply recall the time it would take for alternative, real world storage/retrieval of disks. We typically pick from the alphabetically arragned movie titles, via page up/down buttons on the remote, or line by line. This is so much more user-friendly than referring to a printout, typing in some disk number, etc.

The sound though our kick-butt home theater system is excellent and the PQ is also; my big plasma showing 1080i through the HDMI cable. The Sony, like other players, is intolerant of many bootleg DVDs, but plays my backup copies just fine.

Using a laptop-programmable Universal Remote Control (URC-850), now all our movies are available with one-button ease, either through the simple TV or with full surround. That puts them in a place that allows us to enjoy this family activity more often, unlike the pre-Sony changer era. These are about the only 400 disk changer available.

One day perhaps, similar quality PQ with quicker play, will be a choice, but now the best choice we found was the Sony changer for the reasons elucidated above.

Adding DVDs is a pain. Although I've had this player for close to a year, I only have twenty or so DVDs loaded in it because it is such a pain in the ass to enter all the information without having a key board. I does have the capacity to read info off the disk but so far I've not had much luck in having DVDs that it is able to read.
Make sure that you place this player where it is going to stay cause you have to remove all disks if you need to move it at a later date.
Picture quality and sound are good. Don't know if you can run the signal through a BluRay player and get better picture/sound.

I have always been a fan of Sony products and admit that most of my components are Sony. When I first bought this unit about 2 years ago I was shocked at the negative reviews posted here. Surely Sony didn't make such an inferior product. I was wrong. Yes, the audio and Picture quality are very good. Yes, it is convenient to store all of your DVDs in one unit to supposedly have access to them at "the touch of a button." I was able to load all of my DVDs with ease and the title search function ID'd about 90% of my disks which was fine (although it did take several hours). Here is my issue with the DVPCX995V: The more I used this player the less it worked correctly. Disks that I have watched before suddenly don't work anymore or the player can't read them. These are not bootlegs or copied disks but store-bought. These disks have not been removed to become scratched or dirty. When I remove them to see if they are damaged, they're not. The player simply will not read them. Not only does the player no longer read most of my disk, it will "get stuck" and simply grunt and moan as it tries to decide what its supposed to do. You can't turn it off or change disks. You simply have to wait for it to finish whatever it is trying to do and then either remove the disk or choose another one and hope it will work. This is extremely frustrating especially when you have guests and we're trying to watch a movie. I've actually bought a $49 DVD player that sits next to my nice sony DVPCX995V to play the DVD that the Sony won't. Yes, I am currently researching other alternatives and I strongly suggest that you avoid this unit . . .

The promise of having all your DVD ready for playback is really appealing to me. Well with this machine this only works if you have a separate printed directory with the DVDs in the machine and the slot number they are in.

I bought a refurbished unit. This machine is supposed to recognize the titles of the DVD's, and for the ones it cannot recognize you can plug in a standard Keyboard and type the titles yourself. Well out of 200+ titles in my library it only recognized about 10, so I had to type the names of the rest... not a big deal since you can use a normal keyboard. For 200+ DVD it took me about 3 hours.

After about a month, out of the blue all the typed names were erased. After a search on the internet I found that this is a somewhat common issue. I called Sony and had the unit replaced (by another refurbished unit, ofcourse).

I got the new (refurbished) unit and went ahead and typed all my DVD titles again, and well... after a few weeks everything was erased again.

I gave up and will trash the unit as soon as I find a replacement with similar features.

By the way, Sony customer/technical support is really really bad. I concur with the other posters here saying that each time you call them, you have to explain the whole thing again.

I WOULD HOPE THAT A BIG AND WELL KNOWN COMPANY SUCH AS SONY WOULD HAVE BETTER ENGINEERING AND DESIGN WHEN OFFERING A PRODUCT LIKE THE 400 DISC CD/DVD CHANGER.INSTEAD OF BEING ABLE TO ENTER A DISC # AND DIRECT ACCESS TO THAT DISC,SONY CHOSE TO USE A"SCAN" SYSTEM THAT IS TEDIUS AND TIME CONSUMING BY PUSHING A SINGLE BUTTON TO SEARCH FOR THE DISC NEEDED.....STUPID! GREAT PRICE,GREAT SOUND....DUMB ENGINEERS! MY RATING:5 TERRY LINTON,BULLHEAD CITY,AZ

this product is performing better than I expected. I bought this model for a client of mine a year or two ago and its performance then inspired me to get my own. I am very pleased.

I have a Large collection of DVD's... this is my second Sony 400 changer as the first one is filled and I have 150+ more dvd's to put in the new one. Some reviews said that it takes a long time to load the DVD you want to play but that does not matter to me. I like the ability of access my entire collection with ease. If they came out with a blu-ray version I'd buy that one too.

I have owned this unit for about a month, and have a couple thoughts and two observations.

First, Observation 1, as this may be the most meaningful point if you're considering buying one of these changers. Other reviewers have claimed there's slow access time. I disagree. Access time between disks is quite reasonable. The changer will find and access a new disk in less than the time it would take to change DVDs and access the new disk in a single-disk player [unless you let loose DVDs sit around uncased?]. What does take a little time is reading the DVD once it's in the playing position, and that, it seems to me, is about the same for the 4 or 5 DVD players I own or have owned.

Observation 2: some reviewers state that the unit always goes back to the point in the program material it stopped at. That's true if you simply press the stop button once and turn the player off. However, it puts text on the TV screen saying it will resume play where stopped. However, if you press the stop button twice, not once, it goes back to the beginning of the disk being played. So, on a TV series DVD, if you finish an episode, hit the button twice, and when you turn the changer on again, it'll take you to the start of the disk and you can select the episode you want to see next.

Thoughts: get a decent HDMI cable. Display quality is worth it. The unit is big, and mostly, it needs depth. There's what seems to be a transformer housing poking out of the back of the cabinet. That's odd, but better than making the entire box 3 inches deeper, just to make the back panel flat. But it's still a lot smaller, and a lot more convenient, than 400 DVD cases. One thing this changer will permit that some don't is fast-play through the FBI warning and some other intro material. You can't skip it, but you can at least fast-forward. The front-panel display provides good information while playing a DVD, including scene number and elapsed time.

I intend to get another unit for my DVD movies, as this one is dedicated to my TV series collection.

This is the third Sony carousel we've owned and though they made some nice improvements, there's a couple of things we don't like: the Explorer view with the disc list has miniscule photos of the discs, the remote doesn't have all the features the previous one had but the plus is that's less things to look at! It seems quieter when seeking a disc but it's still slow. All in all, though, with the upscaler, it makes all of it worthwhile. Our discs have never looked so good.

I bought this for my husband for our anniversary gift and he loves it! I'm very happy with this piece of equipment and would recommend it for anyone who has a lot of DVD's and wants to make their life easier!

Although I got this as a Father's day gift, as is normal, the kids get the most use from it. Within a day or two we had all our DVDs collected from around the house, loaded, cataloged, and the empty boxes packed into cold storage. It is wonderful to be able to find any movie in seconds with an on-screen menu. Select PLAY from the catalog and it's movie time. We have really enjoyed watching movies we collected over the years and had forgotten about.

Pros - Price, easy to use, keeps DVDs organized.
Cons - Some catalog entries have disappeared when a DVD was pulled out to play in another player. Not yet sure under which circumstances this happens.

I suppose I'll start with the badnews first. Its a pain typing in your dvds so they can be filed in explorer menus.. But then again, I'd rather make my own titles. The ones that load from disc are all caps and its not the title I want to put. And it can't be changed. And some of the titles seem to disappear over time. I'm not sure why. Perhaps the memory that remembers the name has a glitch.

The best thing about this is the picture quality.. darn near HD with 1080i.

I used a 4 quick menu to classify my dvd's into drama, sci f- comics, love n war, and action. Easy to look up what dvd I want to play. Sure beats cable.

I liked this so much I decided to get another.

Sony put out a new blue ray 400 disc that is $1800. No way!!!! Too rich for my blood to be paying $30 a pop a movie.

Make sure you set your remotes if you have more than one of these otherwise you will turn them both on at the same time.

We've had this model from Sony since Christmas 08. We've noticed few of the problems noted by other reviewers. Our DVDs remain unscratched, it doesn't make a lot of noise, nor is it particularly difficult to set up. The only time we have lost DVD title data has been during prolonged power outages (3+ hours).

Pros: Holds 400 DVDs and accesses them directly with little difficulty. Playback is as sharp and crisp as I have grown used to with other players. Unlike mentioned in an earlier review, it does allow multiple units to be attached through a 3 position switch on the back of the player and in the battery case of the remote.

Cons: Loading is a bit cumbersome. As is getting title data in for most DVDs. It is madness not to connect a PS2 keyboard to this device. Inputting data with the remote for 400 disks would drive the most stable person right over the edge.

I'd buy another, in fact, I probably will within the next 3 months.

I've used this for at least two years now and thought I'd share my opinions.

It's been fine as a storage carousel and player as long as you don't move it. I haven't had problems with damaged discs. It is fairly slow switching between discs. If you move it with the discs loaded they shift out of their slots and jam the carousel. Not a huge problem, I had to take off the cover and put the discs back where they belong.

The cataloging and searching features are so bad that we don't use them. It's easier and less frustrating to keep a seperate list to refer to. Spreadsheets, etc. We just use the low-tech approach - a blank book with the titles written in in pencil.

If you are looking to put 4.7 gigs of music on a DVD. Note this player will not recognize. The players software does not read the id tag of MP3 files nor cover art. The menu on the TV is lacking. The old 400 mega changer was much better.

Not wanting to go the hard drive rout using multiple "tera-bytes" of storage...this product works great. Using a great "back up" program like DVD Fab 5/6, you'll be very happy with the results. With back up copies, you will have to type in the names/descriptions of the movies.

I love this DVD player. I thought set up was rather straight forward, thought it does help to have a key board to set the titles. You have to be patient when loading new discs, as the LOAD function takes a while. I think searching for a title and playing the discs is very easy. Overall, I think this is a great product.

I am very satisfied with the Sony products, but this little beauty makes choosing a movie or music much more convenient. No more having to bend down and look into dark cases with stacks and stacks of cd and movie cases. I was supprised at how many titles I had to put into memory though. If you use a keyboard (plugs right in the front)it sure makes it easier to label everything. Ample outputs for versatility and a menu to locate which disc to play. I'm in heaven, and might need another one soon.

While researching this DVD changer I saw allot of good and not so good reviews and was a little bit hesitant about ordering it,but...for only $269.00 I figured if was no good it wouldn't be that much of a loss.
Well..all I can say is..what a great product.I've had it for over a month and not had a single glitch.
Picture quality is fine for SDVD,loading the disks was quick and easy
I highly recommend this product for anyone wanting a decent upscaling DVD player and needing to get rid of shelves full of DVDs :)

I just purchased our second unit. The remote has a selector behind the battery that allows you to switch up to three frequency settings (3 units). We bought our first unit when it first appeared in the 400 disk model (about 4 yrs ago). I have read complaints of all the Dvd titles disappearing from the menu program list (displaying a ?) however I have not had that problem with exception of an occasional title or two which may be the disk manufactures problem, SOME DVDS automatically display the titles (no programming or typing) but only after you play and the unit reads the information from the Dvd!
I only use it for Dvds I agree cd change time would be too slow.

Down side:
1). No blu-ray models
2). will NOT read two sided disks. (must remove and turn around).
3). Not enough categories in the title menu. *
4). must read Dvd before you can stop play.*
5). the Remote control frequency selector not readily accessible. Therefore 1 remote for each unit is needed.

Positive side:
6). Great way to store your movies (no touching + less barrowing)
7). Complete library menu easy to select and play (page 11 at a time)
8). upconverts 1080i (not P)
9).Zoom, pos, slow mo, sometimes restarts at last played point.

Complaints: The problems I had over the years are miner and we use it almost every day. it's more of a design gripe I have.
1#. When the unit is first turned on it begins to play what ever movie was last played when the unit was turned off or if you accidentally select the wrong movie. there is no way to stop the reading of the disk before the disk is done reading. #There is supposed to be a way to stop the unit from reading the disk at power up but don't believe that function works#.
2). The library index has a limited category system and is arranged numerically (within that category). Thereby the arrangement may be out of order unless you remove disks and reload them in numerical sequence in order to group them together. I wish you could create and edit category names. Example: Home movies, Classics or Educational...
3). I do fear the Sony support and warranty issues and until that improves I will or can not recommend buying any Sony product!

Great Product. Exactly as described. It's almost full already. Didn't realize I had so many movies.

This is the 2nd of these I bought. First has been working perfectly for more than 5 years, even after the movers brought it halfway across the country in a box with other components. Don't misunderstand, the first one is great! This one is going to be thrown away and replaced with a 300 disc Pioneer. After loading approximately 300 discs in this one, I started burning some CDA format discs using iTunes. Machine would display "Reading TOC" and then move to the next disc. Burn MP3 to the disc with iTunes or Nero 9 and the same thing happens. All the same discs work perfectly in the old machine. Try a commercially produced disc and sometime they read and sometime they don't. Go to the Sonystyle website and they only give you the option of sending it in and getting a refurbished unit in return. They have a web based return process and after filling in serial number, model number, purchase date, reading the disclaimer, and clicking on "Submit" you get a page telling you that the site isn't working (now 5 days of this). Wish I had done my research a little better and read ALL the reviews. Didn't see the Pioneer until too late. Could that have anything to do with Amazon NOT selling the Pioneer changer? AVOID this unstable piece of junk!

I HAVE THE SONY 5 DISC AND THE 5 DISC SONY CD WHEN IT WENT OUT NOW I BOUGHT THE 400 DISC AND IT PLAYS EVERYTHING THAT I OWN CDS MP3 MOVIES BOOTLEG AND ALL THE DRAWBACK IS I DONT LIKE INPUTING THE DISC WHEN YOU TAKE IT OUT AND IT COULD BE MORE FASTER LOADING BUT OTHERWISE IT IS AWESOME

I bought this dvd changer to store my cds and dvds. I'm happy with my purchase, but I've encountered an aggravating glitch.The problem I've run into is trying to shuffle "all" of the cds without including the dvds. When I push shuffle play, it wants to shuffle all the discs in the changer...including the dvds. I can't seem to find the option to shuffle cds only. I've tried going into the folder mode, but when I do this, shuffle play is automatically cancelled, and I can't find an option in the folder mode to return to shuffle play. [...]

Returned the Sony DVPCX995V 400-Disc DVD Mega Changer/Player because it skipped scenes on many of my dvd's. I could put the dvd in another player and it would play fine.
I liked the organization of my movies and would repurchase this player if Sony worked out the bugs!

I am fully satisfied. This product can be improved by Sony further. I am looking forward to Blue Ray version of this product.

My purchase of the Sony DVPCX995V 400-disk dvd changer from Amazon make a total of 3 Sony 400-disk changers that I own. The other 2 still work like new. I would recomend this to anyone that likes movies, and did to one of my bestfriends. He and his brother both bought one, and love it. Now some of the negative things that you'll see in other reviews.

1. That it's too bulky- Yes its a large player, but remember that it holds 400 disks.
2. That the load time to play a disk is to slow- It is slower then single disk players, but once again it holds 400 not 1.
3. That the DVD title do not load on most disks- Yes this is true, BUT that is the disk manufacture's fault not Sony's. The player can not read something that is not on the disk.

Well I hope this helps you decide weather on not to buy this player.

I'm not the pro that most of the other writers are. Having purchased a unit before Xmas I find the return policy reads something like - "just return the item - we may return half of what you paid".
Now the problem! Page 7 of Sony manul # 2-592-134-13(2) should be part of the advertisment. This one page INFORMS you of whats acceptable and not acceptable when coping DVD's. I have a great number of events/pic copied from our TV and a large VSH collect thats been tranfered to DVD. I'm too darn old to start this project over. Thank You Sony and Amazon for all the time and money spent on the project.Sony DVPCX995V 400-Disc DVD Mega Changer/Player

I recently bought my second player hoping that sony might have resolved earlier problems with this machine. No such luck. The interface is the worst imaginable in this day and age. Disc selection remains time consuming. There can be no excuse for the players inability to read any format. The functions and the remote are not intuitive at all. It seems that Sony has forgotten everything that they learned on the setup and functioning of remote controls. My first unit lasted about 18 months and then would not read anything. Thankfully i had purchased an extended warranty which covered the problem. I was sent my purchase price and was told to ditch the machine. I highly recommend extended warranty for this machine as the cost, maybe 20 dollars is well worth it given the units propensity to fail one way or another before too long. I bought the second unit (with another extended warranty) because I like the fact that the unit can hold 400 discs, and in this regard, it is the only game in town. The price, now around 250, is reasonable. I would pay more for a quality, well thought out unit, however.

I recently purchased this Sony 400 disc changer and so far I am fairly pleased. The only irritating thing that's really come up isn't the fault of the machine but of the DVD publishers that don't put disc information on their discs.

I found that any disc that doesn't pull up information in Windows Media Player will not pull up information on this changer. That's okay, I can type fairly quickly and I have the discs loaded by the order I have them listed in my IMDB record. No biggie. I had read the reviews discussing the clunky remote, so I was aware that I was in for a challenge.

Of the two annoyances I found with operation, were that to get to the Disc Explorer one must A) stop the current playing disc and B) manually switch the remote to Disc Explorer mode. It'd be nice to be able to access the explorer as maybe a pop-up without having to go through all the motions, but I'm hoping that maybe that can be rectified with a change of remotes.

The other annoyance is that sometimes I can't stop a DVD playing if it's in one of the "previews" that they put on the discs. In fact, on some discs, it's almost militant in denying me the ability to do anything until these previews pass. This was not a problem on my old DVD changer (a five disc Philips unit).

Otherwise, I'm very happy with the system. The picture is actually much cleaner on this unit than on my old DVD player. I can't wait to hook it up to my new Sony A/V receiver and the new TV when they arrive!

If anyone has a recommendation for a universal remote, please let me know. I've been looking at the Logitech Harmony series, especially the touchscreen one. Are they worth the price?

I bought this a year ago and it just stopped playing DVDs. It says it cannot read any DVD I have anymore...and it just started doing that in the middle of a movie. CD's still work. Of course w/ Sony's support it is cheaper to buy a new one than have one repaired.

Shop for a better quality player.

This product was easy to install and works great so far. Basically, I have a huge DVD collection (600+) and needed to free up some valuable space in my living room. I bought this unit to get 400 of those discs off the shelf. So I ordered it, and over the course of waiting for it to arrive, I went through my DVD's one by one, setting select titles aside and creating a paper list adding up to 400 of the discs that I wanted to put into the DVD jukebox (please note that I added up the discs, not the titles, as many DVD purchases come with a bonus disc, and that counts as two discs for a single title). The hardest part was putting part of a movie series like Superman into the jukebox. See, Superman one is two sided with bonus material, where as 2-4 are one sided in the boxed set. But I kept Superman 1 out and put the rest in. This happened with a few series. Nothing is perfect. Also consider what you are going to do with the empty cases for storage. I opted to put them in a giant Big Lots storage bin and store them away in the shed.

Pros-
Works great from what I have used of it sor far.
I used an HDMI cable and it looks great on my 46" Sony HDTV. No problems yet.
Size is good, very similar to my 300 CD Sony Jukebox that I have had for 10 years or so and still works like a charm. This 400 DVD jukebox fit perfectly on my entertainment center.
Easy to load discs.

Cons-
Deciding what you are going to put in it and sorting through all your collection, prepping them for arrival day.
Some say the laser wears out eventually. That will really suck, as it will have to be replaced and DVDs moved over. (note- I have had the CD Jukebox for 10 years plus and that laser has never worn out, even though it has been used a lot)
Cannot daisy chain more than one, like you could with the Sony CD jukeboxes.

Final thoughts-
I am seriously considering getting a second one of these units while they last. There will always be DVD sets you don't want or cannot put in there, but I have many more I could load up beyond the current capacity. One more unit should do the trick. I'm only buying Bluray now when I can, so my DVD collection shouldn't grow too much more beyond that.

I can't review this product because it was never received. Now, I can't even get a refund of my money which has been held for a month now without the submission of a claim through the A-Z warranty program. The refund may or may not be approved. I'm totally disgusted.

I have had this unit for 2 years this Christmas 2008. My wife and I are movie freaks and have almost 350 movies. This is perfect for going through the catalog of movies and selecting what you want. You can sort by disk number, alphabetical listing of movies or type of movie. But the setup is very time consuming. It took me almost 6 hours to enter all of the movies. If this thing were able to access the internet somehow and enter the info for you, it would be great! Now that everything is entered, it's a breeze now. Once we buy new movies, I run down and enter this. I keep a keyboard connected at all times. It's much easier. There are some flukes I do not understand. Some of the movie titles will disappear completely. Movie number one will not remain in the titles. It keeps disappearing. We also keep an excel spreadsheet as a registry. Since we have so many movies, my kid's friends and some relatives get sticky fingers and some are removed and we can tell which movie was removed. It also helps us figure out who might have taken it by the movies that was removed.
With all the flukes, we really like it and will wait and see what comes out next.
Enhancement recommendations for Sony:
1. Internet recognition and auto fill out
2. Easy key in disk selection. (Takes too long to flip through movies)
3. Fix the fluke that makes titles disappear.
4. Create an automatic downloadable register.
5. Create a favorites list
6. I have not located a security lock yet, but would like to lock the "door open" feature
7. I have not figured out movies such as 'Titanic" which have the second half of the movie on the flip side. So far, I have had to buy the movie twice and select the second disc to complete the movie.

We are also big into karaoake and wish Sony would do the same thing for karaoke disks since we have almost 300 of those.

I purchased this to store our DVD collection, as well as CD's. The HDMI is great - DVD's look fantastic! BUT....the loading of DVD's and CD's is time-consuming, involving a long loading process that will ONLY auto read the titles of a few DVD's, not all. So you have to either through the remote, or with a keyboard with a PS2 connection. It is not USB connection. Then, after you enter them all in, you have to, through the TV, scroll and search for the movie or CD you want. Even after you get it all set up, it takes a while for the unit to power up and allow you to search for what you want. However, one MAJOR drawback is that if there's a power outage, or the unit is unplugged, it wipes out all your input data. That's a pain. Now I have to manually enter in all the 300+ DVD's and CD's that took me several hours to enter in initially.

First let me preface my review by describing how my unit was used and taken care of.

My unit is just under 3 years old, has less than 175 DVDs in it, and has been very lightly used. Sometimes, I don't use the unit for several weeks at a time.

The unit is also on a battery backup with surge protection, so it is well insulated from any issues from power outages, spikes, etc.; plus the battery backup was to help resolve the issue of the unit losing DVD information during a prolonged outage.

Finally, the unit is positioned so that there is plenty of room around the unit for air flow, including plenty of space at the back.

So, I was watching a movie, stopped it, and then came back to play it the next morning, and the unit seemed to freeze. I powered it on and off, and it refused to not only read that disc, but any other disc. I disconnected the power for over an hour, then restarted that unit, and nothing. I am going to try 24 hours of no power(turn the battery off), but I suspect it will make little difference.

I also took the discs to another DVD player in the house(much older, cheaper, and heavily used) and the discs loaded and played fine(at least I did not experience the disc damage problem that some have reported).

Having reasonable determined that the problem was not the discs or operator error, I contacted Sony to see what my options were, and here is what they told me:

1. For $129 they would fix the unit; plus I pay to ship it to them. And, to be fair, it does cover the cost of shipping it back to me. But, I still think that is too much, I as expect they will just swap out one or two components, and the problem will be fixed(my guess it is just the reader).

2. For $277 I could exchange the unit for a refurbished model; you can buy it new on Amazon for less. Yes, this is down right insulting.

Now, I don't expect any piece of electronics to last forever(though I have had some that have last a very long time until I simply replaced them), but something as lightly used and well taken care of as this player should not fail so easily.

I did enjoy the convenience of being able to store all of my DVDs in a single unit. The interface was slow and bit annoying at times, and the remote was not the most ergonomic of designs, but the unit did work reasonable well until this unacceptable failure.

My next unit(not a Sony) will be single disc and I will use those pop-up DVD/CD organizers to reduce DVD case clutter; I have one of the organizers now, which I use to store the extra discs that come with some sets.

Don't get me wrong, I want to love this unit, but I cannot endorse a unit the fails so easily, nor a company that wants to profit from that failure.

I may attempt to purchase the part that I think I need on my own, assuming I can find it. I will also attempt to clean the unit(vacuum), though, upon initial inspection, it does not look dirty inside(the case is well sealed with very tiny holes for ventilation). If I am able to find the part or repair the unit, I will update my review accordingly.

This is my second one. After having one of these babies in the living room for about 18 months now (Hooked up to my Sony KDS-60A3000 Display) I bought one for my daughters room. Like almost everything, there are limitations. Nothing is perfect or pretends to be. I agree it is a bit slow, entering disc data is slow and tedious, and when you remove a disc to play on another DVD player or lend it to a friend the disc data is erased when you turn off the player. The reasons I was attracted to this unit was because it upgrades to 1080i through the HDMI connection (On my TV And My Daughters) and it stores and organizes a large amout of DVD's (Over 700) in one area without ever having to touch the discs. To me the picture quality is excellent on mine and my daughters TV (Toshiba Regza 42in LCD) but we have them both hooked up through the HDMI connections. We are both very, very happy with this unit.

CONS: Have owned one of these for the past three years and over the past 6 months the unit started to have progressive failure. Firstly the player started to have intermittent problems reading discs, these problems started as the player failing to read discs during playing and freezing for a short time on an image on the screen on occasional discs. I thought the player was laser may have been dirty and ran a cleaning disc through the system and no difference. Then the frequency of problems picked up and the player would freeze for prolonged periods. Towards the end it was not possible to watch a movie without the unit freezing up completely. the piece-de-resistance came when trying to unfreeze a disc that the unit erased the 400 titles that I had entered into the player (say 350, because it actually identified the titles on about 50 of the discs that I entered).

PROs: In spite of the above I replaced the original unit with a new one. Why? Firstly the price was right and we have little kids and it is so easy to be able to pick a movie that they want to watch while sitting in the couch - no need to have discs hidden away from prying little hands. Also in the three years that we had the previous unit, and in spite of power outages, we never lost the details of all the discs that we had entered into the unit, unlike other reviewers here.

One word of caution it is a lot easier to enter the movie titles when using a keyboard (PS2 connection, not USB). However I had to try three different keyboards until I found one that had the relatively low wattage requirements needed for the player to pick up my keystrokes.

The disc sorting by title, number or genre makes it easy to find a movie.

The picture is beautiful when attached to a 50 inch plasma screen via component output.

This piece of equipment is a beast! I love it! It may not be perfect, but it upconverts to 1080, plays DVD-R and +R and DL DVDs. It gets rid of all those DVD cases and looks sexy in the cabinet. This is my 3rd one and I have hooked up in a series and it puts a great pictures on a Sony 60in screen. I know there is a move out there to put video on DVD, but if that fails you lose all the video. Here I have it all at the ready, protected in the case.

Pros- easy hookup, sharp looking, great performer, online updates for firmware from Sony, great upconversion
Cons- Big unit, remote functions not great manual is average -

I love this 400 disc changer, sure it takes time to load a disc, but it keeps the discs safe and scratch free, I might buy another one or 2 I collect TV shows onto DVD much better to have them where they are safe and usable. Don't let the negative reviews put you off this is the thing I have been dreaming about and at a price that is great.

This device seems to work pretty well. The things I don't like are that its a real time consuming hassle entering DVD information. Few of my disks even autoload the title. I plugged in a keyboard and it helped getting titles in for a little while. Then the keyboard connection quit working and I was back to using the remote. It retrospect I would spend a little more and get a friendlier product...

I've had mine for a couple of years.... Loved it until recently I realized it scratched over 40 of my DVDs making them unplayable. What a nightmare.

I bought this to keep my DVDs from gettting scratched - Ironically it ruined a good chunk of my collection.

Sony Support would do nothing for me, except for "Sorry" and "you can pay for a repair!

I would advise you consider something else.

This product is a fine product, a dream come true, until one of two things happen:

*All Titles Dissappear - Yes thats right, after spending hours entering all your DVD titles into the system, you will lose all that data. Not a question of if, only when. Fortunately, if you are willing to give up a Saturday every couple of months, thats not too terrible.

*Eventually Stops Reading All DVDs - Yes this is the killer, the death rattle. This will happen, again not a matter of if, only when. So far I've owned two of these, (and two is enough for me) each time, months out of the year warranty, they simply stopped reading DVDs. This will happen and you will have to replace the product.

Bottom Line - Holds a ton of DVDs and displays titles which is wonderful. However you have to basically pay $300 / yr to operate this thing because you will have to replace it just about every year.

This is my 2nd one and I love'm. If you're looking for a 400 disk dvd player this is the ticket. the only down side (i don't really think so)is the on screen search. once you get more than 100 disk the on screen is way to slow. I keep written record and use that to search for movies. Oh yeah, the remote control have 3 different operating channels, this means you can have 3 of these with out the remotes conflicting.

I'm on my third and last Sony disc explorer! (Sony DVPCX995V 400-Disc DVD Mega Changer/Player)
This four hundred DVD carousel player, though not perfect, is a great way to
Organize and play a large DVD collection. Up to three of these massive
players can be controlled by a single (included) remote. Through the HDMI
output these units will up-convert standard DVDs to HDTV and will do
progressive scan. Over all I am very pleased with my Sony carousel players
for ease of access and not searching some sort of filing system to find a
show then move it to a single DVD player.
I only wish I could get something like this for Blu-ray!

I feel your pain, Mr. S. Reid. I haven't had the best of luck with Sony's after-sale service for my daughter's Viao laptop. But I learned almost 10 years ago that products as complex as these mega changers need insurance. I have owned two Pioneer 300+1 CD changer, the second was given to me within the a week after the first one cratered on me. Best Buy didn't quibble over the upgrade I got because the model they carried was a newer version and cost more. Anyway, about 5 year ago a bought the Sony DVP-CX870D 301-Disc DVD/CD/Video-CD Player with a 5-year extended warranty; the predecessor of the Sony 400 DVD changers. I bought the same unit for my folks about a year later with a warranty. Are you seeing a pattern here? Both units have since been upgraded. Mine was due to a disc being jammed, which knocked all the other discs down inside the changer, locking it up. After recovering all my disc, I basically did as I had done before with the Pioneer changer and upgraded to the Sony DVPCX 985V 400-Disc DVD changer. My folk's 301 Sony changer started misplacing discs and generally acting like an Alzheimer victim. After a visit with the Best Buy's repair facility, it too was upgraded to the same 400 changer. That's 6 units over a cumulative operational life span of 21 years. Not a great record to be sure, but then again, three are still working fine after 9, 4, and 3 years, respectively. I guess my point is, BUY THE WARRANTY! These things have moving parts, circuits, and firmware that can fail. Otherwise, they're terrific machines.