Sony BDP-CX960 400 Disc Blu-ray Disc / DVD MegaChanger (Black) (2009 Model)

What is the point? I'm confused.Pros: It makes a regular DVD look pretty slick...much more than 1080iCons: Too big, Manual hard to follow and poorly Indexed, NO SHUFFLE FEATURE for DVDs, Remote buttons are too close togetherI owned a 985 Model and six 995 Model 400-disc Sony DVD changers. I've also owned two 400 CD disc changers.After trying to read through the manual, trying to figure out how to use the thing and then examining the features more closely, I dislike this product intensely. I hate this pile of junk is a better way of putting it.There is no shuffle feature for DVDs/BDs. Why would I buy a 400 disc changer then? Why don't I buy a single disc Blu-Ray Disc Player and switch Blu-Rays that way? This is essentially a large storage shelf contained in a BD Player case. Why buy it? I have to switch the DVDs/BDs one at a time. There is an inherent power in owning 400 DVDs...more than renting them or downloading them. It certainly costs more, it should have some advantages. Why then would I purchase (or keep) a player that holds 400 discs but doesn't make use of that power I paid all that money for? What advantage is there in me buying a DVD? the CX960 eliminates that advantage. It makes buying 20 DVDs at a time pointless. In times gone by, in the old 995 model DVD changer, I didn't have to worry...I put 400 DVDs I liked into one player and turned it on random. I didn't have to pick one, I didn't have to find out what slot number it was in.That being said, what is even more baffling is that CDs do have a shuffle function in the machine...so why not one for DVDs?The manual is not well laid out, the ones in the past were similarly hobbled by confusion. The index doesn't mention "Shuffle Mode" "Random Mode" or any other variation of what I was looking for in the CX-960 manual.I get the idea that for Blu-ray Discs, you could just scan through your discs and pick one. For DVDs, which I purchased this for (since it supports DVDs), you can't. The metadata doesn't exist, so you just have a series of worthless "Unknown Disc" markers. Besides...I don't want to have to pick a disc...I want one to come up randomly. You also have to scroll all the unknown discs to get to exactly to the right disc...if I were going to forgive the lack of shuffle feature. So essentially, I would have to go get the DVD case, find the number, scroll down the list find it and enter it. It would take slightly less time to grab a DVD case put the DVD in a DVD player and then press play. So...why bother? I don't think this changer has any features that makes it useful for putting 400 DVDs in. You still have to enter the disc number in after you find out what one it is.Additionally, the buttons on the remote are too close together in the central pod. The main down is right near return, home and options and its easy to stray one's thumb over too far and end up in menu purgatory.The only good news is that I only loaded up 6 DVDs to test this beast out, after reading somebody else's review that had advised to make sure it works before filling it. So, I was warned and held back on my zeal. Good deal. Now I can return this malevolent machination to the vendor from which it came.Hey Sony: Call me when you make a disc changer that has some real features and makes holding 400 discs more than a simple curiosity and allows an owner to use the power of having 400 discs in one place. You used to have my number. Now, after buying this on my faith in your company, I'm not so sure you have it anymore; my faith or my number. Pick one...just don't try to turn on the shuffle mode.

WARNING: This is a very long review...*You want a Blu-Ray changer, so that you can keep all of your Blu-Rays (or standard DVDs) in one place, organized, sortable, and easily accessible? CHECK.*You have a home theater where you'd like to be able to scroll through all of your movies from the comforts of your chair and pick what you'd like to watch easily and painlessly? CHECK.*You'd like to have all of the information for your collection, including titles, release date, album art, and actor/director, loaded automatically (but customizable where need be)? CHECK.*You want all of the above at a reasonable price, but don't want to sacrifice the current industry standards for Blu-Ray video and sound quality? CHECK.This unit does what it claims to do and nothing that it does not claim to do (e.g. no wifi, no netflix/amazon, etc.). It's not magical or particularly revolutionary. It simply organizes Blu-Rays, automatically loads and enters (most) metadata, provides a relatively easy-to-use user interface, and offers outstanding Blu-Ray output.Are there downsides? Of course. Dealbreakers? Not if you are simply looking for the above.*It's not the fastest, but it's fast enough for all that it does. Be prepared to spend some time, especially with initial setup. It takes about 60 seconds to queue a movie and another 45 seconds or so to load the movie menu/movie.*Also, it's not quiet - there is a constant very low level noise when this unit is on, even idle (almost trivial but there - if you're watching a movie you absolutely cannot hear it).*It is massive in depth and height - it loads 400 Blu-Rays on a carousel for Pete's sake! It didn't claim to be "compact."*The XMB interface (familiar to PS3 owners) is not as elegant as say, AppleTV, but it's absolutely just as functional.*Those who want internet movie streaming won't find it here (though I think the firmware could be updated to accommodate this - just my own guess).*You will need the Ethernet port on the back for Gracenote and BD-Live. A unit of this size with that kind of requirement should have had wifi built in (after all, Sony did build that in to the PS3 and wifi modules are pretty cheap nowadays). But again, there is an Ethernet port, so this is a nit.All that said, at [...] (as of December 11, 2009) plus free shipping/no tax, this is the steal of the year from Amazon for the "problems" this thing solves (face it, getting up from the chair, opening the container, pulling out the disc, and loading it into your Blu-Ray into the player is hardly a "problem"). It's basically just a bit more expensive than a regular blu-ray player but with FAR more functionality and practicality - especially for a home theater. There is really no reason to research further, wobble, debate, hesitate, stutter, or second-guess any further. Stop reading here and buy this thing if you want the above capabilities, and can stomach the price. I've lost at least 3 precious weeks (at this price) with this thing, desperately waiting for an official review somewhere.One caveat - this is a new product offering, new model. I cannot testify to its durability, longevity, stability, etc. over time. The above is based mostly on initial impressions.The rest of this review is for owners/users. I will add to this as I identify other issues/problems/workarounds:* Loading - Others have stated issues with loading (especially the dreaded "load all discs" which erases all of your loaded, and EDITED, info and starts from the beginning). A couple suggestions: load about 20-30 discs at a time. For that matter, try to break up the initial setup into manageable chunks (load, then edit, load then edit) rather than trying to do everything at one sitting - just my two bits. With each load, you will see a folder called "unknown discs". Highlight that folder and press "options". Then scroll down to "load" (not "load all discs" up top). It will only load the Gracenote info for those discs and won't touch your other edited info. Basically, do not EVER hit "load all discs" unless it's the very first time. Sony should have added an "are you sure" prompt for that, but it is kind of out of the way too. Just stay away from it. There is a folder called "BD Data" that you can't open but I think this is where the device stores the edits. I've confirmed that you can shut down, unplug, etc. and still have your edits/data.* Disc breakage - Because of the other review I read on disc breakage, I decided to only load a few discs at a time, as I described above. This seemed to work fine. One thing that can happen, b/c the slots are so close, is that two discs can actually overlap in the same slot. It's not as hard to do as you think - I caught this once. Not saying this was the cause of the other person's problems though (in fact, I doubt it was). In general, that is another reasons why I think it's best to do the initial setup in chunks - you minimize the potential for damage. So far, I've played a couple movies and loaded all my movies (only about 120 discs b/c I only loaded the Blu-Rays) and I've had no issues with breakage. SO FAR.* Organization - This might not apply to everyone, but I'm obsessive and anal when it comes to the organization of my media (e.g. iTunes, AppleTV, etc.). I cannot stand not having the right year, the right names/titles, album art, etc. Gracenote is "okay" in that it will sometimes get the data right. 99% of the time, it has at least some data, but it's only "perfect" (again, in my lil anal world) about 10% of the time. For example, I like to organize by title (you can sort by release year, slot # and title), but this unit recognizes "The" as the beginning of the title. So, "The Godfather" and "The Matrix" appear with the "Terminator 2" and the other "T's". I prefer to change the title to "Godfather, The" to get the organization right for my tastes. Others may differ. Also, if you order Box Sets, it will usually default to "Matrix Collection (Disc One)" rather than "Matrix, The" (actually it won't ever put a space before "(disc one)" - See? Anal...). Sometimes Gracenote will have the preferred choice if you highlight the title, go to "options", and press "load" - sometimes not. If so, you will see 2-4 additional options. You may have to try a few to get it right. If Gracenote isn't perfect, I always correct it manually. This means spending A LOT of time editing. Also, there is no way (yet) to add missing album art, so if it's not at Gracenote, you're SOL (and you will feel the feeling of fingernails grating the chalkboard everytime you scroll past your "dud" movie file). But I will be hounding Gracenote to update it's database with holes I find, hopefully others do too. I will periodically "re-load" problem titles. I've only loaded Blu-Rays into mine so this is kind of inexcusable (Gracenote/Blu-Ray coding issue, not Sony).* Editing - As above, if you need to edit for any reason, it's pretty painful. But I found a little shortcut that others may not have realized. Rather than scrolling with the arrow buttons on screen to a letter, pressing the letter, then scrolling to another block, simply use the remote control itself. For example, a "space" is number "0" on the remote. If you press zero, the first slot is space. Let's say you next want the letter "T" in caps. Simply press "8" right after and since T is first in that queue, you will get a "T"...and so on. So, let's say you want to type ", The" (I've done this so much, I'm typing this from memory), you would hit "yellow button" twice (gives the comma), "0" once (space), "8" once (capital T), "4" five/six times (can't recall exactly how many - lower case "h"), then "3" five/six times (lower case "e'). Then press "enter" on the remote and you're done. You can do that without pausing or scrolling - all in a row! Maybe others knew this, I only realized it after the first edit. Another thing - "Clear" on the remote works as "backspace" if it's all the way at the end and as "delete" if it's all the way at the beginning. I found that using the remote saved me TONS of time. It's still kind of painful (especially having to type certain phrases like "Special Features" over and over and over again) but it's way better than using the on screen display. If you don't edit much, you might not care.*Other media - As I've said, I've only used this for Blu-Ray so far. I cannot speak to the capabilities with standard DVD (which should be about the same), CDs (should be the about the same), or with home CDs/DVD-Rs/RWs (which I would expect to vary WIDELY). I also don't know how it handles digital media off USB (haven't tried yet). For home DVDs or rentals and such, I plan to use the "rental slot" (which I have tested and it works perfectly). But that's more my own quirkiness and not wanting to "mix" my hi-def Blu-Ray with standard - pure personal preference. (In fact, I have all my home movies, loads of other movies, and all music digitized on a backed-up hard drive running through a hacked 2Tb AppleTV, so I wouldn't use this machine for any of that anyway.)* Usage - Last but not least is actually using this thing. It works as expected for a Blu-Ray player, but it takes a bit of time to load - more than normal b/c it needs to queue the disc first. It also automatically loads and plays the last loaded movie at startup/power on (haven't tried to figure out yet if that can be disabled). Be careful not to hit the "home" button which is clumsily placed so close to commonly used buttons (also be careful with other Sony remotes which can activate functions on this). I've programmed a Harmony remote to manage everything so I don't have that issue, but I hit "home" once and it took me back, right out of my movie, to the movie selection screen. This pretty much means another 60-90 secs to watch your movie again. My suggestion? Basically, don't rush when using this. Wait a sec or two before you hit a selection b/c if you do something unwanted, you must wait painfully for the "load" to complete, THEN wait for the "load" you actually want. There is no "undo". From a quality standpoint, picture and sound are outstanding - certainly as good (or better) as my very spec'd out previous Blu-Ray player - so you lose nothing and probably gain here. As stated, I haven't played with the USB Port/BD-Live functionality yet. Depending on what additional functionality I get from a USB drive packed with goodies, this could be a HUGE bonus. Seems like the XMB menu is set up for this, but I just don't know yet. I will update.Anyway, I hope some of this long-winded review is helpful since there are still no major professional reviews out there. I'm very pleased with this purchase.