Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The Sony DVP-CX995V. Hmmm. Let's get the obvious out of the way. Yes. It will play your movies, your CD's and MP3's. The picture and sound is more than acceptable. Yes. It will hold a lot of discs in a relatively compact space and eliminate clutter in your A/V / Home Theater Room. Saying that, the product falls short of being truly usable for its intended purpose. The interface is horrific...and that is coming from a confirmed gadget geek who loves to play with the latest electronic wonders. I am very disappointed that Sony would put a product like this on the market. Some of the simplest things you would expect of the DVP-CX995V are missing or very cumbersome. For example, it would seem obvious that with 400 discs, there would be some quick and efficient method to select a disc such as keying in the disc slot from the keypad. Wrong. You either manually turn the disc skip control on the unit, or repeatedly press the "disc skip" on the remote while the player sequential spins the carousel (or repeatedly paging through screens of titles on a television). Thankfully, on the player there is a button that allows you to skip 100 discs at a time so that you only have to manually go forward or backward, may be 50 slots. Yes. It is that primitive. ------ UPDATE - 2/03/2006 - I learned from another user the following shortcut (which is not documented): With the remote switch set to "DVD", press the "Display / File" button on the remote. This will bring up the Control Menu 1 screen with the number of the disc currently playing highlighted in the first entry. Pressing the "Enter" button on the remote will clear the number and allow you to key in a new disc number. Press the "Enter" button and the player should now begin the process of changing to the disc you selected. Press the "Display / File" button until the menu screen toggles off. ------ The unit does not allow you to enter and save programs for favorite CD's. The closest you can do is to categorize the discs by artist, genre, etc and then select that group to play. This information needs to be keyed into the player. However, a disc (slot) can only be assigned to one category. This leads to the next item. The highly touted ability to enter and create a library of title information is flawed because the player loses its memory if it is without power for less than 24 hours. I live in Florida...this is an issue. Even if you live in an area which has stable power, what if you want to move or unplug the unit? It boggles my mind that in an era when you can buy 128MB of non-volatile flash memory for less than $20, why does this unit have this problem?. ------ UPDATE - 2/03/2006 - I have started the process of entering disc information of my DVD collection into the player. You have two options: (1) Insert all your discs into the player at the same time and hit the "Load" button on the front panel of the player. The player then sequentially mounts every disc in the player and attempts to read disc information if it is available. As others have pointed out, probably less than 10% of current discs have any information so this doesn't buy you much. You will then need to use a keyboard to enter title information for the remaining discs, as well as artist, genre and selecting a folder if you want to use that options. BTW, you cannot just select a slot number and begin to type in data and then put the disc into the slot. The player must load every disc first before it will allow you to enter any data. Apparently the player must know what type of disc is in the slot first (it will categorize disc type automatically - DVD, CD, CD-Data, etc.) If you have been following this process, you should recognize a problem...how do you know what disc information to enter (unless you have already written it out and carefully inserted the discs into the proper slot number)? This means you will have likely have to wait for the player to again mount the disc, wait through the interminable FBI warnings, etc before you can determine what disc is playing in order to enter the title information. (2)The second option which I have been doing is to load 10 - 15 discs at time, hit play and wait for the player to spin the discs around to the back and allow it to mount and begin reading the disc. At that point, with the remote selector switch in the "Disc Explorer" position, I hit the "Stop" button and then press the "Folder" button which brings upon the "Disc Explorer" menu. I keep the empty disc cases in the same order as I loaded the discs and then enter then disc information for the current disc. Once the data is saved, you index down to the next slot on the "Disc Explorer" menu , press play, wait while the player dismounts the current disc and then mounts the new disc and starts reading. Etc. Etc. Etc. Expect to spend 2 minutes total for each disc you want to file. I currently have approximately 300 DVD's in my library. An Excel spreadsheet is starting to look pretty attractive. One other oddity, if the disc does have text information, the player will not allow you to edit or override it. My DVD of "Independence Day" has a title of "ID4" which the player picks up and will not allow me to correct. ------ By the way, the DVP-CX995V is s-l-o-w to mount and read a disc. Forget about shuffle play of tracks between CD discs. I was disappointed to learn that this player will not read MP3's from DVD media like the other current Sony players do. Given the slowness of the unit, it would be nice to collapse 30 or 40 albums of music onto a single DVD but it is not there. Yes, the player forces you to wait 20-30 seconds upon startup while it loads and reads the information from the last disc played....whether you want to play it or not. This is such a simple bug...why doesn't Sony fix it. Yes. You will need to read the manual. This must be the least intuitive machine I have ever used. "Steep learning curve" would be an understatement. After playing with it for over a week, I don't understand what Sony was thinking about when they designed the DVP-CX995V. It doesn't have to be this hard. Not really a weakness but be sure your cabinent or shelving is strong and large enough. The unit is over 21 inches deep. With video component cables extended out the back, you should allow at least another 1-2 inches. Think about how heavy 400 DVD/CD discs weigh and add-in the weight of the player. Prior to buying this player, I read some of the negative reviews and thought they were written by the sort of person who gets confused setting up a VCR or using a remote control. Well, I was wrong. In fact, I don't understand the positive reviews that you will find listed. Bottom line. Unless you must have a player that can store 400 pieces of media, avoid the DVP-CX995V. Save your money and peace of mind. You will thank me. Hear me now...believe me later. ------ UPDATE - 02/03/2006 - After owning for over a month, my opinion hasn't really changed much about the DVP-CX995V. Video and audio performance are OK but nothing to get excited about. Although I am starting to learn and get use to its quirks and limitations, I'm not sure if it is worth all the trouble because it is so unusable. Definitely a niche product. On the other hand, when you consider all that it does, at $300 it isn't a bad deal. Still, I would not recommend this product without reservations.