Does anyone know if you can daisy chain more than one of these together or to an older sony 300 changer? Looking for the best option to add to system now that 300 is full.

wow i want one :-)

Don't know with personal experience, but I read a comment somewhere that I would assume to be accurate that no is the answer. According to what I read, no Sony DVD megachanger has been daisy-chainable. (or some other word that actually exists) He was lamenting the fact that their CD changers all do this, but not the DVD versions.

The Kenwood 400 - you can daisy chain three and the Pioneer 300 -you can daisy chain two. The Sony 300 and the new 400 DVD/CD units have three different sets of IR codes - so you could use up to three units - assuming you have three sets of A/V inputs.

I installed my 985 last night and while reading through the manual I think I recall that you can daisy chain up to three.
Is anyone else using this unit with a Escient Fireball? After loading in 210 discs and rebooting the Fireball, I can not get it to recognize that the changer is connected.
By the By, after shopping the internet for the 985 and every vendor telling me it was on backorder, I went to my local CC and saw it sitting there for 379.00, which was only 1.00 dollar more than the best price I could find on the internet.

Welcome to early product life. That'll change a bit in 6 months.

Can you settle the search for knowledge on the disc flipping issue? Nobody seems to know for sure if the 985 can read both sides of a disc automatically.

I didnt truly get into this product yet, and unfortunately wont be able to. Does anyone remember the commercial "Phone First?" Well after speaking with Escient, the 985 is not compatible with a fireball. I guess I should have phoned first, purchased later.
I will play with it later when I get home and help you settle the both sides dabate, but on the cover for the carousel, there is a sticker that clearly shows which direction the labels of the cds should go.
I bought the 985 for two reasons, one to rip all my cds into my fireball and two, to play my dvds in my HT and distribute them through the house using my Elan Vias. Apparently the Disc Explorer is very difficult to navigate/control using the Via's, is anyone else doing something similar to this. If so please share.
Ron

I previously had the 300 DVD/CD Sony unit an it had a button on both the remote and the front panel of the unit indicating "Flip".

I just received the 400 DVD/CD unit and I do not see any indication on the remote. front panel or the owners manual that it will read both sides of the disk. Hope this helps!

I was looking at using on of these to use it more as a mega cd /SACD changer as it has on screen display for user to see disc name on a tv. Played with one today in a retail store , spent 15 minutes trying to get it into all disc shuffle. Finally got it , (found shuffle time between discs @ 17-20 seconds, better than Kenwoods 30-60 seconds). There is no shuffle command on the remote or on the front panel. You have to go deep into an on screen menu to do it. there is no apparent way to even do it with a macro command. Why does Sony have to engineer the operation so almost no-one can use it ?????. (just had to say that!)

Does anyone know of IR codes for "shuffle" for this Sony DVD (or any SONy DVD)?

Scoop

Back to my original question: Are there any other new DVD mega-changers looming on the horizon, or any other reason to wait before getting one of these?

The dual-side play seems to be unimportant to me; the only two-sided discs I have are those with wide-screen on one side and full-screen on the other.

Larry
www.fineelectricco.com

I have only had mine for a couple of days and it seems to preform well. I also have a Kenwood 5900. the Kenwood does have somewhat better picture but the Sony is much faster.

Larry,

Your thread has been well threaded!!!!

Scoop

The Sony 985 does not flip. I have one. I'm still trying to figure out how I want to set it up in my pronto.

David

Can anyone who owns one of the new 985s tell me whether the method to select a specific disc on the box has been improved from the old 300 disc changers? I have an 870 and an 875, both of which are a nuisance for disc changes. You have to hit display, right cursor, enter the 3 disc number, hit enter then hit display twice to clear the screen. What I am hoping for is a disc button where you hit disc, then the number then enter. The multi button macro thing has just too many possiblities for error (sometimes display only needs to be hit once, sometimes the player refuses to accept the entries because of prohibited activities, etc... )

I have had mine for about a week - appears to be the same.