Does anyone know if the 975 has the chroma oversampling bug? I've gotten to the point that anytime there's anything bright red on the screen, all I see is that stupid freakin' fringe. And it's made worse by scaling.

Hi,

Has anybody attempted to write a program (VB preferred) that copies music through the slink-e from various Jukeboxes? I would really like to copy good music to my IPOD this way, but taking out 1000 CD's and putting them in my PC one at a time seems like a very time consuming effort.

Thanks,
Siep

I just returned a Sony DVP-CX985 to Frys after using it for almost a month. What a waste of engineering talent. They took something that could be the coolest device around, and for the lack of a few additional features they made it almost unuseable. I'm talking about the interface that you are supposed to be able to use to pick your DVDs and CDs to play. It just sucks. It doesn't recognize more than about one in thirty of your DVDs, and so you have to type in the name by hand. Then, if you want to pick a scene from the DVD to use as an icon, you have to start the movie, navigate to a scene, and then press a button. Five minutes minimum per DVD, and then to add insult to injury the quality of the screen shot is horrible. Let's see what's next, it's slow, and every time you hit the "Folder" button to find a disc I think it has to start from scratch and read every one, it's that slow. Every time you power it on it plays the last dvd that was playing, a function that you are supposed to be able to turn off, but can't. The browser only shows a small number of DVDs at a time (5, I think), and that means more time trying to find a movie. And there is no S-link. There's more, but I'm getting bored writing. Oh yeah, I have also had two Sony DVD players die the infamous C32:00 death within the last year. The ONLY reason I bought this player was because the rest of my system is Sony, but that was a dumb reason. Anyone got any recommendations for a good, inexpensive DVD player not by Sony?

I own 3 of the Sony DVP-CX985V 400 Disc DVD players and could not be happier. Sorry to hear yours did not work out for you.

In order to appreciate them you have to forget about the Disc Explorer feature and find another way. For the price the picture quality is excellent in my opinion. I have had mine for 8 months now and they have performed flawlessly. I picked them up for $1300 out the door. That's taxes, tags, and 5 year service plans on each. I knew going in I would need another solution for accessing the DVD slots other than the Disc Explorer feature. To this day I have never used the Disc Explorer. Can't even tell you what the interface looks like. It would have been nice to have the s-link and com port like the CX777ES has. To buy three of those for the price at the time could not be justified unfortunately.

Even with the lack of s-link or com port support one could still use the changers in conjunction HTPC front ends like DVD Lobby and a USB-UIRT device. I could not find a front end that I was happy with however, as I wanted the ability to create themed submenu pages for DVD box sets and so forth. All the front end DVD navigation software out there that I could find did not offer this type of functionality. Programs like DVD Lobby for instance took quite some time to browse through your collection due to the database being so slow. That kind of turned me off as well.

My solution was to build a configuration for use with either the Phillips ProntoNG TSU3000 or TSU7000. I needed a new remote anyway to use with my home theatre so the timing could not have been better. I eventually ended up going with the TSU7000 as I needed the additional memory for later on. Currently I have 1005 DVD covers in my remote which can be accessed by letter or you can just page through my entire collection. I have 16 DVD covers per page, some which jump to themed submenu pages as well. Each DVD cover loads the DVD from the proper changer and cues the rest of my system up accordingly. Just takes a second or two for the macro to execute and 10 seconds or so for the disc to load up. It did take quite a bit of time to program the 1200 macros for loading the changer slots, but once my base configuration file was done it has been all down hill from there. It takes very little time to update my configuration file as well when I need to add new DVD titles. One of the things I really like about about using the TSU7000 to browse my collection and que up DVD's is that I can kick back and browse my collection while another DVD is currently playing or say I am watching something on DIRECTV. With a HTPC type solution you could not browse your collection and then cue something up without bringing up the interface on your screen.

Anyway, if you are interested in more detail check out this thread. My .pcf file is available for download as well. It is not in the files section, but towards the end of that thread I've included a download link for the lastest version.

-Lowpro

This message was edited by Lowpro on 11/23/04 03:30 ET.

I would like that info, Thank you.
Do you know if anyone besides Kenwood is utilizing that port to control your Audiio/Video equipment

Guys I own the following Sony Mega Changers:
CX-850 200
CX-860 300
CX-875 300 2 of them
total of discs is 1100

I still own A & B sided discs such as "Storm of the Century"or Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves", now the players I have listed have a 'flip' button that turns the changer 180 degrees then re-inserts to play the other side. The 895 however doesn't have this feature and the discs are tighter which is a primary way of the disc getting a electrostatic (static electricity) charge, this facilitates you pulling out the offending disc getting a anti static cloth and taking out the charge where as the changers above have a bit more room and getting a static charge is very *infrequent*

The key power code to the service menu is the same on all changers, first click on title*, then clear* then power*. Number 4 is hours of service #1 875 has 740h 25m while the second #875 has 365h 10m and so on thru the 4 changers I own. I use wired remotes to shut down or power up, other conventional means don't work because all the changers work on the same RF(Radio Frequency). :)

How did you make your DVD covers? Scan? Did you scan big and then resize to fit? What was the setting (64K color / 256K) ? What's the trick for not using too much memory for all these graphics? I have the 7000, too.

Glen I have Dell Image Expert, Photo album 5 and Paint Shop Pro.

1. I first scan the cover or download it then set to landscape
2. Print size 10.8 X 7.24 High on single 8.5 X 11 from borderless printer
3. Higher resolution from cover you need to have it in paint, take the dropper and get a match, then add more paint. The more paint you have the higher resolution your going to print, 1000kb or 1MB is in hires territory.
4. Print at 300DPI you don't want it any higher than the studios cheap way.
5. I have a X-Acto guillitine bought at staples.com for $29.95 'practice' cutting when your sure start to cut at the edge using the guide provided.
6. Optional for the retail look I use a EK Sucess small corner punch on all 4 corners to make it look like it came from the plastic wrap. :)

grovvy
I wasn't asking about scanning for printing covers (but thanks for the tips), but rather what Lowpro did for all the DVD graphics he's done in his 7000 pcf to get the quality screen shots I've seen yet not use too much memory. 1000 covers, + submenus + background panels! Can't imagine he has any memory left.

Lowpro,
Just how many "pages" did it take to get DVD part of pcf done?