First what this is: it's a great device to easily store and retrieve your DVDs. When reading the reviews here before I bought it I was concerned about the access speed. This is not an issue if you simply maintain a list of the DVDs you have in the player. The progressive scan picture is good and if you enter the slot number of a disc it quickly plays it. This is what I wanted out of this player and it delivers.

I also have a Sony 300 CD player and was concerned that the DVD remote control signals would interfere with the CD player (so that if I turned on the DVD player and wanted to play disc 4 that the CD player would also turn on and play disc 4). This concern is unfounded and there's no overlap in the remote control signals (and if there were, the DVD remote has three settings that enable it to effectively use one of three different sets of commands to avoid this problem - a nice feature).

I have had no problem with the 300 disc CD player so I am confident in the quality of Sony's DVD mega changer.

One negative: when you stop watching a move, the DVD player only remembers the location where you stopped it for a single DVD and only if you don't turn off the DVD player. In contrast, a 5 disc Sony player that I also have is great in that it remembers the location of where you last stopped 50 different DVDs - which enabled you to avoid having to watch the FBI warning and other nonesense everytime you put in a disc.

I have not even tried to use the menu system to retrieve a disc (because of all of the negative comments that I've read), nor have I tried to enter data about the DVD's into the unit (I used a keyboard to enter data into my CD player and it was a pain, but the data was not lost even when power was lost for over an hour). As mentioned above, the menu system can be avoided if you create a simple table with the slot number and DVD title.

Overall, this does what I'm looking for and the price is great for what you get!

I've seen so many negative reviews of this machine that I feel the need to comment myself. The user interface is definitely it's biggest flaw. I, too, have resorted to using secondary lists to know where my discs are. At first I used a paper list, and now I have a file on my laptop for my CDs and use my IMDB account for my DVDs. (Just type the slot number in the URL section of your movie notes) Anyhow, it is a big area Sony can improve on. What I would ultimately like to see is an ethernet connection to get the info off CDDB, etc. I was one of the folks who bought this for CD's, opting for the DVD version because of the small price gap between the two. What I absolutely LOVE about this machine is having all (or most) of my CDs able to be played though randomly. Granted, a few minutes are spent setting up with the akward menu system, but once set, this thing will play forever until I stop it. I have to wonder why I have to scroll though a menu for such a common function as shuffle, though? Here is the exact procedure for starting the process. Turn on machine. Default folder is "ALL". Hit folder button once to show the "ALL" folder, again to move to "DVD" folder, and once again to move to "CD" folder. Now, you cannot access the menu that contains the shuffle function unless a disc is playing, so hit play. After disc loads, hit "display" button twice to get to correct menu. Scroll down 6 items, then hit right arrow to enter shuffle menu, then down once for random disc, or down twice for random tracks across all discs [my preferred]. So yes, there is definitely truth in the poor menu design complaints. But, after doing this daily, I basically can do it with my eyes closed, and don't even need the TV on. As far as performance, I have had this nearly two years now and never had a single problem other. I often leave it playing CDs at random for hours, if not days at a time. Playback is flawless (I use the optical output). DVD,s too (via component)all play perfectly. I too wish more DVD manufacturers would include pictures and title info. One last thing that bothers me...I had dreams of burning comp discs of MP3's to load and play randomly, but after trying the few I already had, the machine really doesn't like them much. It pretty much ignores MP3 discs in random mode. Also, MP3 discs cannot be put into folders. Additionally, VCDs are auto grouped with CD's which can get annoying on random. I stopped storing VCDs in my machine for this reason. Well, I'm not sure my review will come across much better than the others. It is harder to expand upon the reasons I love this machine, and easy to draw out the negatives with detailed descriptions of the problems. All in all, I think most people with a sizeable collection would appreciate all that this unit has to offer, and like myself, overlook even it's glaring flaws.

I have had this player for a few months now and have been very satisfied with it. The price through Amazon was the best that I found, even compared to military exchange shopping. From my perspective, the best thing was eliminating the DVD mess around the TV. I have four small kids (8,6,3,2). Discs were constantly getting scratched and ruined. Not now. And they are able to navigate their movie selections easily. I printed up a numerical title list based on categories, "animated, little kids, children, action, drama, comedy, etc" and left room inbetween to add more movies as they come.
I read a previous review about the complaint about not having a single slot for rentals, etc. I was slightly worried about this when buying, but it really isn't a problem. You open the carasol and put it in any empty slot. Dial in the slot and the movie plays. No big deal! I recommend leaving slot 1 open for this purpose. Granted there are some things that could use improvement, but for what is out there now, I am very happy with it. I give it a four just because I know that faster and easier electronic/remote searching will be available in the future. But I don't think that it is any slower than finding the DVD in a box, unloading it, putting it in the DVD player and waiting for it to load. If you have kids, then this is a buy in my book. One other thing... you can childlock certain movies or even specific scenes on movies. Another plus with kids.
jfw.

I have been using this machine for about 2 months now. I have loaded about 210 dvds and 150 cds, all play quite nicely. I have not noticed any scratching of any of these disks. I recommend checking for this, in case your machine has a manufacturing defect, as has been (questionably) reported. Also, read the instructions of your equipment thoroughly, before hooking up all the connections to all of your equipment--this may help to ensure that quality signals are tranfered from your player. I have a nice home theater system set up with this player--it performs quite well, with very good picture and sound. I have backed up copies of some of my DVDs and CDs (not always easy to do with todays copy protection schemes), and these also play nicely in this player. I have even added jacket picture, and text information to my copies, which show up perfectly in this players folder system (you can find info on how to do this on the internet). If some of you are trying to play poorly copied disks, the player will have problems playing those disks. If you try to play disks that the player was not designed to play, it may not play them. This is a realitively inexpensive machine, and still could use some improvements: the speed of changing disks is somewhat slow (to be expected with a 400-disk changer?), the display and management of disk information, and searching abilities, could be vastly improved upon, although the present design does work in a very limited, and minimal, way. I do keep a list of my disks handy beside me when I am already playing something, and do not wish to stop the player, to access the folder mode. I have had no problems shuffling, randomly, in order, all disks, disks in a special folder, or only a certain set of disks. I think some reviewers did not read through the instruction manual before writing their reviews. I feel the player is a fine value for the money. 4 stars.

I've had this player since August and have had nothing but pleasure from it. It comes close to being as essential as my Tivo for me, and it wasn't even my idea to get it -- it was my husband who wanted this gadget. One caveat -- I almost never use the Sony menu system. We have a Harmony 688 remote so we use the Media button there to store and select our titles. Love it!