Price Paid:  $800.00 from Crutchfield

Summary:
Pretty much a piece of Junk. I'm suprised that Kenwood still sells this crap. I find it difficult to believe that the system has the ability to read CD Tag information but not DVD's. Kenwood is trying to force the consumer to buy more hardware just to read the DVD Tags. Every time you turn the system on it starts playing what ever CD it was playing last. Hey Kenwood I didn't hit the play button yet. Some CD's block functions so even STOP will not work until the CD lets you. Now I have to watch 5 minutes of Disney before it will take a stop command. If it autoplayed in a single disk player OK but not a 400 disk. The NetNamer software that allows you to name CD's and DVD's has so many bugs its almost unuseable. I've had Netnamer for a long time and still not one bug fix has come out of kenwood. I sent 15 (FIFTEEN) emails to tech support and NEVER got anything but an automatic reply saying they got the message. There is NO phone number for support on Kenwoods WEB site. I will NEVER buy Kenwood equipment again. Good luck in bankruptcy Kenwood.

Strengths:
Kenwood is very strong in ripping off the consumer with product hype.

Weaknesses:
Just about every feature.

Similar Products Used:
Single disk DVD's only.

Price Paid:  $589.00 from Military Exchange

Summary:
A great idea, but needs lots of improvments from Kenwood. Recently, when on random play, it only plays every other cd. Long layer changes when watching DVD's, freezes the action for a couple of seconds. The NetNamer software is terrible, and no support or upgrades for Kenwood. I will sell this unit, and try to find something that works!

Strengths:
400 discs

Weaknesses:
Long layer change, Really bad support from Kenwood, noisy

Similar Products Used:
Other changers from Pioneer, Sony

Price Paid:  $0.00

Summary:
This is my second review. Basically the quality of the unit (sound/video/build) is great but I have come across a ton of various bugs. Hopefully kenwood will at some point offer a firmware update to fix some of these.

Strengths:
Build quality, formats played, sound and video quality.

Weaknesses:
1. Over 30 seconds to swap from one CD to the next. 2. Reads entire carousel evertime you power on (all other brands only do it after you open and close the door). Powering off unit after opening door doesn't close the door either. 3. Netnamer DV software is very poor. 4. Twice now when navigating through the on screen "library" the whole unit will lock up. Have to fully power off and turn back on, and ALL the names are gone, have to run Netnamer all over again and it needs to read every CD. 5. A CD you just played 5 minutes ago will be unreadable this time. It goes through the disc flip several times (also annoying if you know you put the cd in the right way, now its backwards) then moves on. Power off the unit, turn it back on, plays the CD on the first try. 6. Halfway through the movie you get a 3 second picture freeze as it changes layers, no other DVD players do this.

Similar Products Used:
Pioneer DV-F727

Price Paid:  $785.00 from Crazy Eddie

Summary:
This thing sucks ! After 2 days of tring to get the netnamer software to work I called there customer service just to find out it doesn't work with dvd's and that if I want to label my dvd's I have to get the Entre Entertaiment Hub if I want to be able to load all my dvd's and be able to locate them.

Price Paid:  $800.00 from Crutchfield

Summary:
I own a Kenwood Sovereign DV-5050M. I purchased because of the jukebox (400 CDs) capability and the support for DVD and mp3 formats. It sounds fine and mechanically there's no problem but the interfaces for the netnamer software and for the 5050m when it's used in standalone mode are both so bad that I'll probably sell the device and use MP3 servers (I'll probably just use a dedicated standalone PC until someone comes out with a decent software interface and remote control for a jukebox type device.)

Strengths:
Good quality audio from CDs Plays the advertised formats well. Loading is a little tricky but that's typically a one-time task Fairly quiet operation The fact that there is a PC connection is good but everything about the software is horrible (see items below)

Weaknesses:
Way too complicated! - Difficult to find individual CDs and play them... (this is a crippling weakness!! My wife just wants a simple way to play the CDs she is interested in playing. She doesn't want to read a 70 page manual every time she simply wants to find what's in the jukebox and play it. She can't even use the new system.... and - even though she's not tech savvy - my wife is an average consumer who truly enjoys music. I'll probably have to sell my DV-5050M and place all the CDs back in their original packaging which I see as a huge wasted effort!) The netnamer software should allow you to print the locations of each CD...turning the dial to manually select a CD for immediate play wouldn't be so bad if you already knew where you were going. As it works today you turn the dial wait for the tiny display to scroll enough information to know which CD is loaded at which position. This is incredibly slow and laborious....people can read fast if the software would just allow you to print out the listing..then you could dial CD number 216 and hit play. The netnamer software is truly some of the worst software ever written. About the only good thing I can say is that it does conn

Similar Products Used:
Standalone PC with large hard drive and high end sound cards