Rating: 
Summary: -sob- my poor, poor DVDs
Review: It's true. It's ALL true. Then menu is too slow like veryone says, but I decided to live with it do to the amount of discs it holds. But the unacceptable part is that this player has a defect that destroys discs! I have over 300 DVDs in mine and I've lost at least 1/3 of them to deep scratchs that occur INSIDE the player during use. When I say deep, I mean they came out with curled plastic hanging off the end of the grooved that was cut by the Sony demon. My advice is suffer with a changer that holds fewer discs. This one will only destroy your property!
Rating: 
Summary: Don't blame the machine ...
Review: ... blame the dvd/cd manufacturers who don't put any information on their products' menus so these machines can read them! I own a Kenwood 200-disc CD player, a Sony 400-disc CD player, an Onkyo 300+1 DVD/CD player, and recently acquired a Sony ES 400-disc DVD/SACD/CD player (the upgraded ES version -- in a silver cabinet w/a 5-year warranty), and am now researching a DVD megachanger (300 or more discs) which also plays DVD-Audio. The Kenwood 200 player holds my classical music CDs while the Sony 400 handles the rest. The Sony ES 400 player replaces a Sony single disc DVD/SACD player while a new DVD/DVD-Audio player will replace a JVC 7-disc player. By now, it must be clear that I'm hooked on megachangers--all have performed admirably thus far (the oldest is the Onkyo which I purchased more than four years ago). What I have discovered in my experience with these mahcines is that the disc manufacturers are not putting much menu material on their products. Of the almost 400 CDs in the Sony player, only about three or four have menus which are automatically recorded! As with each of the players I own (from various manufacturers) most of the DVDs and CDs have to be plugged in manually. I have noticed on rental DVD's the newer films always have their titles stored in their menu which all my machines read easily, while the older films which I buy rarely do. This further convinces me it's a disc thing, not the machine. The new Sony ES player has a nice feature whereby (if the disc manufacturer has put it there) will show a picture of the DVD, usually the title frame. If it's not there, one just has to go to any scene in the film, press the picture memory button, and, voila! that picture is now in your list where you may or may not need to plug in the title if you recognize the scene! In any event, maybe if enough of us complain to the manufacturers who put out the software, they will get their acts together.
Rating: 
Summary: The positives outweigh the negatives - with another remote.
Review: After reading numerous reviews regarding the Sony DVP-CX985V, it became obvious that Sony's interface needed to be avoided altogether. Since I also happened to be looking for a way to avoid another remote in the living room (I'm embarrassed to say I've collected over a dozen somehow) I found the Harmony SST-659 universal remote can catalog all 400 slots and display them on the backlit LCD. In short, you look at the remote to choose the movie, not the painfully slow and inaccurate Sony "Explorer" mode... which does a great job at making you feel as if you are truly exploring some vast, unknown and mostly empty wasteland. You might not like the idea of buying a new DVD player and a fairly pricy remote just to make it all work. But if you're like me, and were ready to get rid of some remotes anyway... it's a winning combo. What's the catch? The remote itself requires patience and an internet connection to program it... remember, it can control all of your systems. The silver lining? I shopped around and bought both for a little more than the retail price of the DVD player alone. So I actually love the DVD player now. The quality of the picture is superb. The sound decoding is faultless. It plays every rewritable disc I've thrown at it, and finally, it's just too cool. Watching the blue backlit carousel spin your library around gives my 3 year-old the giggles every time. And I LOVE the door locking feature. We can keep his DVDs out of his hands and locked in the carousel. This has actually saved us money, since he's been able to find several of his discs in the past and frisbee them to death. Bad kid. Good player.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding unit, usable menu
Review: Expectations are everything. My experience with the incompetence of the consumer A/V industry must lower mine. I've heard the complaints about the speed and clumsiness of this unit but I have no major complaints about it. I must admit that I place a higher priority on picture and audio quality, and this unit is awesome on both counts. In addition, the transport is well designed, quiet and well balanced. For those of you shopping for one of these, make sure you read the dimensions. This sucker is HUGE. It's much deeper than any of my other equipment, including my Sony ES receiver. I had to cut the back out of my A/V cabinet in order for it to fit. Again, no biggie. I'd have bought a new piece of furniture for it. The time required to set up this unit is nothing when compared with the nightmare of displaying, storing, and handling 350 DVDs. My wife and I spent about three hours inserting the discs and entering the titles, using a keyboard and a spreadsheet of our movies. It took me another hour to divide the DVDs into the four included groups in the Disc Explorer. I divided them into Family, Action, CDM (Comedy Drama Musical) and Other (special features, yoga, documentaries). Seems to work so far for me. Is the Disc Explorer the greatest thing in the world? Nope, but it works fine if you are too lazy to have a printout of your movies nearby. The best part is that it's not required in order to use the unit, which gives you lots of flexibility. If you are serious about your video system, use DVDlobby and you'll never use Disk Explorer again. I've heard complaints about the speed of the transport on this unit. Again, expectations are everything. How long does it take to look through the movies in your media cabinet, decide which one you want, open the sometimes bizzarre packaging, load the disc into your player, take the old one out, and put it away? With this unit, it takes 18 seconds to load and play a disk on the opposite side of the platter. It takes 9 seconds to go from viewing a movie to viewing the Disk Explorer. It takes about 4 minutes to navigate through all 400 disks with the Disk Explorer. It's faster if you don't add pictures to the disc names, and some of the names from the disk manufacturers are just wrong, so you might be better off not letting the unit detect your disks. The only movie I had a real problem creating a title for was Confessions of a Dangerous Mind since there was only room for "Conf/Dangerous M". I settled for "Dangerous Mind". I know my movies well enough that I don't require an entire paragraph to remind me. If you are interested in using this unit for SACD, remember that you must have a 5.1 channel input on your receiver. If you have more CDs than DVDs, don't expect this thing to be a good CD player. It isn't, but I've never seen a DVD player that was. Buy a megaCD changer and save yourself the trouble.
Rating: 
Summary: Nice features, but POOR error tracking
Review: Have had this unit for a couple of weeks now. It is loaded with some nice features, but it is REALLY pathetic when it comes to playing less than 100% perfect disks. I mean, C'mon, can't Sony get ANYTHING right??? For the money, it's a nice unit. Holds 400 disks, plays DVD and CD, has all the audio and video features you would want, but it's REALLY pathetic when half the disks you play, that have NO problem playing on any other machine, skip or don't play at all because of the slightest dust speck or fingerprint. How long has Sony been making CD players now??? There always seems to be problems with anything Sony. They just will never be anything more than a mid-grade manufacturer. Also not thrilled that most of the menus and screens are only visible on the TV, so you can't set many of the CD features without using your television. Also, unlike their 300 CD changer, the Text only displays the Disk Title, not the tracks.
Rating: 
Summary: Not kidding about the interface
Review: Have to echo the other reviews. I had myself convinced this would be a great unit, only to find that Sony really missed the boat. User interface is terrible. Not enough characters to label disks without using somekind of shorthand. Got so disgusted I sent it back.
Rating:
Summary: Big Promise - No Deliver
Review: I anxiously awaited the sweet promise of having all of my DVD's online (like a movie-TIVO), so I wouldn't even have to move to watch 8 hours of movies. Unfortunately, this like so many other dreams of mine, has been dashed on the rocks of despair. Now I can't find my movies, because the title's do not auto-load, nor do the pictures, and the title's won't sort correctly. And as an added bonus, in Progressive scan mode, the picture randomly blanks out for 3-10 seconds at the most interesting parts of movies. I am sending this back and settling for getting up off the couch.
Rating:
Summary: Great For DVD's, NOT CD's
Review: I bought this unit to replace 2 Sony 200 cd only disc players. This model was only $125 more than the 400 cd player, so i went with it. The menu funtions are terrible!!!! They are way over complicated and irritating. And if you just wanna play cd's you have to enter th cd# and then wait for the player to recognize the cd before you can select a track. It is a time consuming annoyance. If you want to use the shuffle or program features you have to use the menu on you TV. You can't just push a button and go. This player is a huge disapointment, but i'm too lazy to remove all my cd's and take it back.
Rating:
Summary: Cost effective, if nothing else.
Review: I got caught up in the television series box sets, to the point of needing one of these. I need another one now. Although a bit slow and time consuming to finish typing in the titles that the dvd player didn't recognize, still a good deal. And a great deal for the amount of dvds it holds. Enough that I now turned of my satellite dish subscription. The tiny buttons on the remote seem neccessary for the amount of things it needs to do. The folder button could be more comfortably located. Would love to find a 1000 disc dvd player now.. :D
Rating:
Summary: Good Option
Review: I have been using this player for the last 6 months. I agree that the remote lag is noticable but eventually you get used to it. The pay off is accesing your entire collection without leaving your seat. The picture is incredible and the sound is the same. If you are in a hurry don't buy this unit. If you wan't to keep your DVD's in one place and veiw on demand then this is for you.
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