[slinkelist] Sony DVD Changers

[Gerry Duprey]

On Wed, 17 May 2000, Ken Geoffrion wrote:

> Does anyone have any personal evaluations/recommendations on Sony's 
> DVP-CX850D changer?

It's both great and a pain.  The unit performs very well - great video and
sound (has on-board DD decoder, if you need it).  Disk to disk switch time
is reasonable and it's pretty nicely built.  It's a little wierd with
disks that have a pan and scan and wide screen side, but you can figure it
out.  "flipper" disks (i.e. Das Boot) are a bit of a trial since the unit
doesn't seem to handle them without manual intervention.

However, the "disk explorer" (the video disk management stuff) blows.  It
has extremely limited disk titles (like 13 characters) and is really,
really slow to navigate through.  In fact, as good as the rest of the unit
is, the disk management was bad enough that I returned the thing.  My hope
is a later generation would have better titling and faster access to the
list.

These may sound like semi minor points (I thought I'd get over them
myself), but after two weeks, it just bugged me so bad I was yelling at
it.  And normaly, to be honest, I don't return things unless they are
pretty broken - I usually "get by" as long as my basic needs are being
met.

Anyway, if you can stomach the disk manager (let it go a few weeks before
you decide) or you decide to not use it and only treat it as a disk player
(i.e. don't hook up the video), you might like it.

I don't beleive it is SLink-able, but I'm not 100% sure of that.

Gerry Duprey                     EMAIL: gerry@msage.com
VP, Systems Development          VOICE: (734) 663-0444
TSSi MicroSage
an eSchoolsSolutions.com Company
130 South First Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48104 USA