10 out of 10 people found this review helpful.
Very good player with a software bug!
Date of Review: Sep 4, 2005
The Bottom Line: A great player to have if you don't mind the broken auto play feature. Wait for Sony to fix the problem before purchasing.
I had been waiting since March to buy this player and finally got it a couple of weeks ago. I wanted to put my ever growing collection of DVDs in one player for easy access and this player can hold up to 400 DVD/CD/SACD discs.
The player has a "Load" feature which will identify the type of disc and grab any jacket cover & title information if it exists. Most discs do not have this info, but several of mine did. There is a keyboard input that will allow you to input Title and Artist information for each disc. There is also a way to tag genre (Comedy, Horror, Jazz, Rock) information to each disc.
It takes a while to input the information, but once complete you can Sort by Slot number, Title, Genre, Artist. You can also list by All discs, Video, Picture CD(jpeg files), Music or Folder.
It is also possible to assign each disc to one of four user customizable folders. I use this to sort my videos to Movies or TV Shows. Unfortunately, the Disc Explorer listing screen always defaults to 'All'. I would prefer mine to default to movies first.
How does it look/sound? The picture and sound are great. I'm using the HDMI connection to my HDTV. The player will upconvert the signal to 720p or 1080i when using the HDMI cable. Component can be set to 420p while all other outputs are 480i only.
The Disc Explorer interface is easy to navigate and can quickly scroll through large collections of discs. Once a title is selected, it does take about 30 seconds to start playing. This does not bother me, but some users might not like the wait.
Now for the bug. Any time the player is turned on, it has to locate the first available disc. Once found, it starts to play the disc. There is an 'Auto Play' off feature, but it does not work!!!!!!!!!!! This may not seem so bad, but it is very annoying to wait for the player to find and play the disc. The only known workaround is to push 'Stop' until the disc stops playing. Some titles do not allow you to stop until after they have played through the upcoming previews and FBI warnings. This makes the annoying wait almost unbearable. Older Sony models would also start discs automatically, but it would not start if you pressed stop after watching a disc. This does not work for the 995 model.
If you know what number your favorite disc is and want to play that one, you can find it in the interface or press Display, Enter, Disc Number, Enter, Display, Display to get it to change. There should have been an easier way to do this.
The player is nice for managing large collections, but I would recommend waiting for Sony to fix the auto play bug before purchasing.
