Sony fan says "DON'T!"
Written: Dec 15 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: great video & audio & component outs
Cons: User unfriendly interface/Too bulky
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| Necessary's Full Review: Sony DVP-CX850D Multi-disc DVD Player |
I purchased this player about a month back for just shy of $500. We already owned a Toshiba DVD, and our collection of movies was growing to the point where my wife was tired of all the DVD cases accumulating in our apartment. I also wanted to upgrade to a model with DTS outputs which my older Toshiba lacked.
I was only able to find two high capacity models at the time, the Pioneer DV-F727 and the Sony DVP-CX850D. At my local retailer I discovered that although the Pioneer held 101 more discs it was twice the price and that didn't seem justifiable to me, so to home with the Sony I went.
The first thing I noticed after getting the player unpacked was its enormous size. It just barely fit into my rack at 20 inches in length.
After hooking everything up I started the daunting task of inserting and labeling our DVD/CD collection. This is where I started getting angry, because the illustrations in Sony's owner manual leads you to believe that you can enter text labels of two lines and numerous characters. In actuality there are two text lines, but only one can be edited by you; the other line is for discs containing programmed data and believe me there aren't many as I found three out of 200. Also, the number of characters shown is far less than the machine actually lets you enter.
The DVP-CX850D allows you to categorize your music and movies into their list of genres. The problem here is that there are too few and you run into problems trying to decide where to put a title that doesn't really fit into those provided. For each genre there is a little bitmap image that is supposed to represent that category. For example the "POP" group has a cartoon drawing of Madonna. This image box is supposed to be for those discs which contain artwork; there are even less of these in
existence, so what you get is a list with about 50 of the same image in a row. None of this would be a big deal if the player didn't get slowed down because of these graphics, but it does, and big time baby!
This leads me to my biggest problem with this machine; it's total lack of searching capabilities. On-screen searching takes a bazillion years, so if you don't recall what slot you put a particular disc you can count on wasting a lot of time. You cannot page down quickly either because the Sony cannot load the images/data fast enough and therefore displays blank labels. Yeah, you can group your collection into four user defined categories, but that's pretty weak especially since Sony only allotted three characters for you to title your group. Folder titles such as Oldies, Costner, or Tori Amos are out of the question.
Anyway, after searching the net I realized that I could get the Pioneer for just over a hundred dollars more than what I paid retail for the Sony, so that's exactly what I did. I just received it this morning so expect a review soon. Already I have noticed that even though the capacity of the Pioneer is 101 discs greater it is way smaller than the Sony. You can even link two Pioneer DV-F727's for greater capacity which is yet another thing the Sony cannot do. With the Sony you can only link CD changers.
To sum it up; the Sony is too slow, too bulky, and outdated. It might work for those using it strictly for DVD's, but I would not want to search for CD's using it's impractical GUI. Also, Sony has already released two new 301 disc models which are supposed to be 40% smaller than the DVP-CX850D. Even still, it is my understanding that Sony kept the cumbersome GUI they call "Disc Explorer" on these newer models.
One other thing that's been bothering, sorry I must mention this, is that on my Sony reciever the cool blue light reads "Multi-Channel Decoding", but on the DVD player that's supposed to match it reads "Dolby Digital." I noticed they changed this on the two new players.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
Necessary
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Reviews written: 2
Trusted by: 1 member
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