Rating: 
Summary: Close, but could be better
Review: I just purchased this unit yesterday, and have almost completed the loading of my media into the player. First let me mention the things that I do like about it. I like that it holds 400 disks, and how the motor transport transitions from disk to disk. I am pleased with the audio quality from either the Digital Fiber connection or the 6-channel direct connection. I like that it plays so many media formats, and I'm glad it has a keyboard interface. It would take even longer to program without it. This brings me to one of the worst designed menu systems, and disk recognition systems that I have seen. Only twenty of my sixty two DVD's were automatically recognized and populated in the menu, the rest I had to manually enter into the 16 character space, even though there is another blank line below, you cannot select it to edit the contents to have one line for the Artist and the other for the title. The ratio of recognized CD titles is even worse. It recognized five out of one hundred and seventy eight CD's, one of which was the SACD demo CD of Bob Dylan that comes with the player. It would be better if there were a couple of customizable genre categories as well. Although the menu system stinks, I am still glad that I made the purchase. It eliminates the need for a media rack in my living room, and I have re-discovered some of my forgotten about CD's while loading them into the player.
Rating: 
Summary: Fantastic Player
Review: I liked this player so much I bought another one. This player plays DVDs that were unplayable on my other players (Panasonic, Sony, RCA). I have never tried the disc explorer because other reviewers complain about it and I lose power occasionally. I use a spreadsheet as my DVD guide so I can sort by Title and have a great custom "TV Guide" including episode names on the TV show DVDs. I bought my first CX985V 6 months ago and I have had no problems so far.
Rating: 
Summary: It could be perfect
Review: I purchased Sony DVP-CX985V 400 Disc Progressive DVD / SACD Player with only one thing in mind, ORGANIZATION. I have over 300 DVD movies and it has become a head ache to keep them all in their own boxes, more often than not I would have to go through my entire collection to find the DVD I was looking for. That was not only time consuming but bad for the DVDs themselves, since they get scratched more often that way. I know there are a lot of people out there who are taking much better care for their DVDs and would not have the same problem that I had but you would still have to handle your DVDs every time you want to watch it. That still increases your chances of scratching the disc. I also discovered an unexpected benefit of having the 400 DVD changer. How many times a close friend of yours asked you to borrow one of your DVDs with a promise to return it the very next day and never to see the movie again? It is not like they are trying to steal it from you but simply they forget about it ... including you. Now I do not let them borrow my DVDs without making myself looking like a jerk. I simply tell them that if I take out any of my DVDs from the machine I have to re-catalog all my DVDs and it takes hours to do that, so once a movie is in ... it stays in. :) It is not the case of course but gives me such a good excuse, they feel ashamed to insist on it knowing that borrowing a DVD would cause me a lot of work. If they don't care about it, you don't care in return. I have not lost a single DVD to "I will bring it back tomorrow" friends since I purchased the unit. That by itself paid for DVP-CX985V. The unit is easy to operate and has good picture and sound quality, it takes full advantage of the TV and sound system I have. It plays burned cds like mp3s, svcds. Mechanically it does everything I would like it to do. However DVP-CX985V is not perfect BUT I can be. The processor they used to display your DVDs on the screen is slow and out dated. It displays 5 titles at a time and scrolling up or down is pretty slow considering you can store up to 400 DVDs in there. It might take you 15-20 minutes to go through all the movies. It forces you to make a decision before going through them all, since you really do not want to repeat the process. You can separate your listing in to 4 different categories like comedy, action, drama, and else. This would narrow your options and speed up your search, but you have to enter each title manually into those categories, it is not automatic. It is not hard to do that but I long since forgot how to do it. The manual is somewhere in the house which I am usually too lazy to look for it. The folder can get the DVD information from the DVD and put the name and picture of the DVD automatically, BUT it happens only if you are lucky, I'd say 25% of the time I get the DVD information automatically, the rest of the time I plug the keyboard (you can do without the keyboard by using the remote but you have to have the patience of the god to do that)enter the title manually , then I have to start the movie sit through the legal announcements, find a good scene in the movie and pick that frame as the jacket so I would have something besides the name on the screen when I browse through the catalog. This is all too time consuming but you would do it anyways because it feels and looks cool when you show it to your friends :)
The title of my review is "It could be perfect" because I dream about a DVP-CX985V that has internet connection where it retrieves the movie information directly from the movie database. It catalogs movies to your preference "alphabetical or by genre or by year or by actor or by director" Displays more information besides the name of the movie (actors-director-year-awards even perhaps link to reviews) ability turn off the jackets so the screen would refresh faster or a faster processor which wouldn't lag. I wish for a search engine that can look up titles by actor or director or any relevant information using only your remote (a remote that has a mini keyboard built in)You might be a collector but you might not know all the facts about the movie you are collecting. I dream about a DVP-CX985V that would know all that and let you know if you want to know them as well.
I really enjoy having this unit and ready for more.
Rating:
Summary: Very hopeful when I bought it!
Review: I purchased this unit about 6 months ago. It was simple enough to hook up. I then filled the unit with 100+ DVD's and the rest with CD's. I allowed the unit to scan all the DVD's and CD's. I was not impressed that out of 100 DVD's it only recognized about 4, yes only 4.
I began programming the titles however was limited to just a few characters per title that could not handle most of the movie titles. After about 2 hours of painful work, I decided to go to my computer and type out an excel spreadsheet. I alphabetized the entire list. I now just have to pull out the spreadsheet to determine which CD or DVD I want to watch.
This brings me to the next issue. Let's say you are on the couch and just decided to play the DVD in position 102. On the remote there is no way to just type in position 102 and have the unit advance to that position. You have to hold a tiny button down and allow it to advance step by step.
Another issue is the remote has so many tiny buttons. The worst positioning is for the volume control and the disk change buttons which are set up one over the other. If you accidentally hit the + sign instead of lowering the volume in the dark, you have just ruined the entire viewing experience for the audience as you have just stopped your movie and went to the next DVD.
Another issue is although I have this feature turned off in the software, each time I turn the unit on or change to a new disk location the unit automatically begins to play the DVD or CD in that position.
It is nice that I get to store all my CD's and DVD's in a place where they are readily available. However, there is computer software out there that Sony should take a look at before it releases a new model.
I could not recommend purchasing this unit unless you are not interested in the software portion.
Rating:
Summary: These are great machines But.....
Review: I will agree that the user interface leaves little to be desired, you will get very upset if you try and use this machine to catalog your collection. I would recomend that you get a software package to catalog your collection and print off an index, then use that index to find your movie, dial it in on the machine and enjoy. I use Movie collector and it not only keeps track of what slot the movie is in, it also tells me everything about that movie including front and back cover art. Now to the machine, the purpose to buy one of these is that it will hold 400 DVD's and you don't have to have racks and racks of boxes. I might add that the machine plays the movies great. JUST BUY IT, Use something else to catalog where the movies are and you will be happy. $310 you can not go wrong.
Rating: 
Summary: User Interface Sucks -- now returned for repair!
Review: I've had the product for about 10 months. Sound and picture quality are fine but using the damn thing distroys much of its value. The ease-of-use issues have been well documented by other disappointed users so I will only say the issues they raised are right on. Hard to use is an understatement. My review is to share my experience with a failure mode and Sony repair. I have a lot of CDs and DVDs but am not a heavy user. Maybe watch a move once a week and play a few CDs now and then. Noticed some of the DVDs were making noise and not playing properly. Discovered fairly deep circular gouges that made several disks unplayable. At first, though they were damaged at purchase but then realized perfect DVDs were being distroyed. Appeared to be only disks around 350 that were damaged and probably when I used the auto LOAD function to read disk titles. May not be the cause but it is always after this operation that damaged disks have been discovered. Would like to know if anyone else has had this problem. Now for Sony service. After making it through the voice recognition phone menu system and providing name address phone model etc I was finaly placed in Q for a live agent -- 45 minutes later I was connected to a very nice woman who arranged for an exchange, not new, but a refurbished product. That's OK with me, a refurbished product is probably just as good as new. The rub is that it cost me over $40 to return ship the product to Sony. They provide a work order that you take to a "UPS Store" but you pay for shipping and handling. And then wait for Sony to send the replacement. I just returned mine last week so don't know how long the process will take. I do know that good customer care will ship you a new or refurbished product and have you use that packaging to return the original product. The best companies even pay for shipping, all shipping. If I get the refurbished unit back within two weeks and if it looks and works like new, I probably will be satisfied but Sony could, and should, have done better both in the design of the product and in its customer care.
Rating:
Summary: Sony botches yet another potential dream device...
Review: OK, where to begin with this thing...
Many people have complained about the menu. Yes, it really is as bad as everyone says. It's more or less useless. I use a computer program called DVD Profiler to catalog my movies... it even allows a catalog number which I correspond to the disc number in my player, and then I print the list and voila, not only a convenient list of your movies but you can even make it into an attractive coffee table book, lol.
Now onto my biggest gripe of all. This thing, after 6 months of use, is skipping on MOST of my DVDs. Now I'll admit I have some copied DVDs thanks to my DVD burner, and they skip the worst, so I can't hold it against Sony if my copying skills are substandard. The fact that the player is beginning to skip on COMMERCIAL DVDs, though? Dust and scratch free DVDs? Unacceptable. It's always right around the 30-60 minute mark, too. It's definitely a problem with the player. I've always tried to be a big Sony fan, but their standards just keep sinking lower and lower. Even my new Sony laptop is already having problems with the touchpad mouse. If some other company offers a DVD player like this one, go for it. Sony really dropped the ball on this one.
Rating:
Summary: very good! great features
Review: perfect for holding and repeated viewing of various dvds.. no more swapping in and out... what a pain it is!
great features... i love the search feature... fast forward and then release the button to continue playing....
Rating:
Summary: It's good, but it can be better
Review: The Sony DVP-CX985V disk player is pretty darn good for the price. There are a couple of things that bug me. 1st is the user menu. It needs to be more user intuitive. 2nd is the changing speed, if it was slightly faster and quieter it would be nicer. 3rd and most importantly, is that I wished it can upscale DVD video to 1080i component video output like the Zenith DVB318 DVD player. This feature alone would make this DVD player one of the most awesome DVD jukebox ever built. Can you hear me Sony?
Rating:
Summary: Don't Bother
Review: The user interface blows chunks. Finding a disc is difficult. There are no page up/down capabilities and only 5 titles are displayed at a time... try scrolling one at a time though hundreds of titles or typing the slot number to get around. The whole point of this player is to manage a large number of DVDs; they missed the boat. You cannot override the title of movies so if you want to sort them alphabetically, you are stuck with the title that was supplied on the disc (some are all upper case, some titles start with "The" so they sort to the T's, some are too long for the tiny space they provide). The software could never have been tested because some menu choices simply don't work at all, like the ability to turn off auto play when power is turned on. Finally, the thumbnail image capture is terrible. The thumbnails that are supplied on about 1 in 20 discs are good, but the ones you capture yourself are grainy and indistinguishable. I am sending mine back.
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