Overall good product, great for large dvd/cd libraries

I bought this DVD jukebox so I would have a place to store my 150 DVD's and about 200 CD's. The first unit I got started having problems with playback after about 3 months. The DVD would hang for about 10-45 seconds at a time. I sent it back to Sony for repair and received my current unit. The return process was easy and fairly quick, but I was very upset at having to pay for shipping on such a large, heavy item. I personally think that manufacturers should reimburse their customers for shipping on defective products, especially for something this size.

But don't let the fact I got one defective unit scare you away from this beauty. I have had no problems with my second unit at all.

Now on to the meat of the review. The player has a feature that scans your discs and tries to pick up information from them to show in the disc menu. This works fairly well on new discs but was lacking (of course) on the older ones. I'm guessing that the tagging information wasn't added to the discs until a certain year and there's really nothing that Sony could do about that. For the ones that didn't pick up information automatically, you can plug in a keyboard and enter it in yourself. You can also choose a preview picture for each disk that allows you to quickly see a scene you can choose in the disk menu. I usually chose the title screen, or a memorable scene from the movie to help me quickly identify the movie.

Connecting to my other equipment was fairly easy. I have the HDMI going to my TV since my amp does not have HDMI inputs. I have the digital coax running to the amp and get 6 channel surround. The only problem I've noticed with this setup is that I sometimes hear an echo if I have the sound turned on both the TV and amp. Not sure if this is from the player or if the TV or amp is taking longer to process the signal and causing this. Everything I've played so far sounds very well, from my newest CD and DVD to an old mix CD I made years ago.

Picture clarity is very good. It isn't quite as good as my single DVD player with HD upconvert, but I can really find nothing to complain about.

One thing I really like about the player is the ability to set parental controls per DVD. This means that my kids can watch their movies whenever they want, they can choose the movie and I don't have to continuously watch to make sure that they're not watching something that is going to give them nightmares.

As anyone who is even considering buying a jukebox like this should know, there is a major investment in time getting everything setup. You will need time to load all of your DVD/CD's into the player, setup the menus, choose thumbnails and setup locks. I would suggest that you take the time to organize your collection prior to even starting to load the discs into the player. This will save you the time of figuring out if you want dvd X in the beginning near the kids movies or toward the end with your action movies while you're loading the player. Another suggestion would be to make a spreadsheet showing what number position you put each disc in. Place a printed copy on top of the player or near the remote and quickly find what you're looking for.