Sony DVP-CX985V Multi-disc DVD Player

I purchased this unit earlier this summer and refrained from commenting on it with the hope that use would take the edge off my initial impressions. No such luck...

Present audio/video components include:

Denon AVR 3803 (retired Denon 3300 and Sony 925)
Boston Acoustics VR975 (2x)(front)
Boston Acoustics VR910 (center)
Boston Acoustics Bravos (3x)(surround and rear center)
Boston Acoustics VR10 (2x)(B set)
Philips Q50 (retiring to bedroom)
Denon DVD2200 (DVD universal player)
Pioneer 563A (DVD universal player)(retiring)
XBox
Technics turntable (ahhh, LPs)
Mitsubishi WS48511 (widescreen)
Mitsubishi S-Video VHS
HDTV Scientific Atlanta cable decoder
Replaytv 5040
assorted Monster cables

Size:

This thing is huge. Measure your av cabinetry before purchasing this one. Depth is 22". Also the front panel buttons work better than the remote with respect to important functions (incl. disc advance and disc eject) so make sure it is placed high enough to view.

Purpose:

I bought this unit with agreement from wife to consolidate our DVD and audio CD collection. Our children our very young and we hoped to have a single unit to play both the kiddie material (audio and video) along with our stuff. Presumably most people considering this unit will want to consolidate their audio and DVD collections.

Be forewarned, this is not a be-all-do-all solution. At best, it will satisfy those who desire a global storage center and who have lots of patience and limited expectations. For the more discriminating consumer, you'll need a separate DVD/CD player for the occasional use. In fact, I wound up burning a whole bunch of CDs and keeping the copy for the single player since the CX985 was not fast enough for quick gratification (more on this below in search capabilities).

Noise:

The CX985 is noisy. The drive motor is loud and the change mechanism can be distracting. When the unit is first powered up, it spins from the default location (no matter where it was before) and hitting the open button will not do anything until to has traveled to the last played location, then respin and open. It takes a long time (12 seconds) and can be quite annoying (hence the continued use of the single DVD player).

Remote:

Terrible. Poorly thought out. Attention Sony - if you are reading this --> ergonomics and function are important. So what if it isn't super thin. Make the tray search functions easily accessible with less flips of switches and buttons. The search functions are printed on the remote and in a moderately darkened environment (i.e., your typical living room/av setup), it's hard to figure out which button does what. Moreover, switching discs are a pain. I wind up walking over to the unit itself to hit the 100 disc advance and spinning the disc select knob when jumping around on the tray.

Search Capabilities:

Each disc must be read by the unit before it registers whether its a DVD (with encoded information) or a CD (in most cases you'll have to input information). The optional PC keyboard is a necessity. However, Sony poorly implemented the input process. There is no short scan disc function so you have to play each disc manually before cataloging it (if you do each manually, you can't use the keyboard to jump back to the disc menu except via remote! So you type names with keyboard and remote to jump between discs - what a waste of effort). It took nearly 1.5 minutes per input so needless to say it became a rapid pain the in posterior. Also, if you have to move the unit at all, remove ALL of the discs first (trust me on this) or it will spill inside.

The search function works relatively well after you finally typed everything in. However, the lack of a 100 disc skip button on remote (there is a button on player) means that you have to scroll up or down in onscreen menu if you can't recall the name specifically or are just browsing. In fact, I wound up writing down the title of each disc before putting in player and physically categorizing by genre so I could bypass the search menus (since the paper method works very quickly compared to search function (though you have to get up and walk to unit to do this)). Go figure...

One last feature of the disc menu is worth mentioning. An image of the DVD is stamped next to the disc title and its a pretty neat feature.

Audio:

Sounds pretty good. I have 2 other SACD players (Pioneer and Denon) and Sony's implementation falls in between. I've always told listeners that the speakers and room acoustics count for 60% of the sound and the rest relate to the amp and components. Bass management a plus. CDs sound pretty good too though the unit won't win any awards. I thought the sound was a bit subdued compared with the Denon though it certainly sounded better than my old Kyocera CD player and the Pioneer unit. My Denon receiver doesn't have two 7.1 inputs and I earlier used a splitter to receive signal between the Pioneer and Sony. With the purchase of the Denon, I gave up on the 985 SACD since it was overkill and the Denon sounded better.

MP3 play is adequately implemented though somewhat primitive (then again, anything short of a computer or dedicated MP3 player will be primitively implemented so no deduction here).

Video play:

The video play is very good (I used the standard Monsters, Inc., Saving Private Ryan, Fifth Element (superbit), etc. and calibrated via Avia DVD). However, it did not perform well as against my Philips Q50 or the Denon 2200. Sony's video chip works well for most movies but my wife (Art Center grad in design graphics) noticed some coloration changes along with gamma/hue issues in especially busy scenes light/dark variations.

On the other hand, VCD play is barely acceptable. My wife got a lot of children's videos from Tawain and Japan (language stuff) and the VCDs play poorly (lots of artifacting) on the default mode. The CX985 has a VCD function that supposedly improves the visuals but it proved to be a minimal improvement. (In fact, the Denon 2200 turned out to be the best VCD player so another category of discs (DVD audio and SACD) sits in a separate pile.

Conclusion:

Well, I didn't return it though I continue to have reservations about it. If you need a multi-disc player with high capacity, this implementation is better than Pioneer's non-elite version (my brother has the Elite unit and I probably should have spent the money to get it). Be prepared for lots of hours scanning the discs.

My wife thought the concept was worth investigating but she too was ultimately disappointed since we offloaded so many categories for use with the single disc player. She also disliked the search capability and felt it was non-intuitive and unbelievably difficult for her to input.

Good luck with this one!