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Review 3 of 101
Price Paid:
$500.00
from Cambridge Sound Summary: I bought the Sony DVP-CX850D about a year ago. Over all is has performed as a DVD player well. I have had a 36 XBR TV for about a month and have used the component input, the picture is as expected, great. I never had a DVD that would not play.
My hope a year ago when I purchased it was that most DVD would be text Titled, and this has not come to pass. You must enter the titles into the unit by keyboard or remote. The editing capabilities is small, don’t make a type-o.
The unit has an index capability to sort the DVD. Once you index them it places a picture beside the title, nice feature. The unit can scroll through the disk at about 1 disk per second when indexed. This results in over a 3 minute to move through the full menu (TOO SLOW). I think they are using a Commodore VIC 20 to produce the disk index menu. It is quicker if you do not index them as Action, Sci-Fi, etc, as this adds the picture of the index where the jacket cover goes. I am trying to remove the index, to speed it up.
When I bought the DVD, I was hoping to make VCD from home videos and place them in the unit. This does work, but limited. Home made disks must be written to CDRW or the player will not recognize them. I have read that there are some green and silver CDR that work but I have not been able to make them work.
I burn an Audio CD (CDRW) with Text. The player supports text and shows the title of the disk, not the song, not the artist. If you change tracks on the CD a big blue bar is shown on the TV stating track on the left and blue space to the right. The bar is the full length of the screen, plenty of space for the track title.
I am happy with the player as it performs as a DVD player well. I did get a chuckle out of Sony sending me a notice on the new 300 Disk Carousel. I don’t think I will upgrade until CDR, VCD 2.0, SVCD, XSVCD and FULL TEXT are supported. My next player will have this and an Ethernet port to find the DVD or CD title from the net as well as an HTML interface for programming song play lists.
Bottom line, it is a great DVD player, I expected more, got less, but still a good value.
Strengths: I have a small child and the carousel is great. My Son never touches a DVD, thus never chance damage. I rent 2 or 3 movies and place them in the player, and you enjoy seamless viewing.
It is Sony quality in workmanship.
Weaknesses: User interface is poor. REALY BAD. With 200 disks, the menu is important, and this fails in speed, usability, versatility, and esthetics.
Limited CDR and CDRW support (though stated not supported) and limited VCD support.
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