Sony BDP-CX960 400-disc BD Changer

[TXRANGERSFAN72]

I have a small man-cave, so this is wonderful device is overkill. However, given my 500+ disc collection, it definitely made life easier, especially with my anxiety about kids scratching and not taking care of my discs. This keeps their grubby little hands off them. ...

Technically speaking, for most people, Blu-Ray players do not get better than the Sony BDP-CX960. Pure HDMI 1080/24 video output.Multichannel PCM audio output via HDMI 1.3 audio for Bravia-sync receivers. Digitial optical, coaxial and stereo audio for every other brand. However, there is no wi-fi for the heavy need for Internet, which you will use for the Gracenote categorization and BD-Live components. I had to move my home router to my man-cave just to avoid buying a separate wi-fi NIC for this one unit. Small irritation.

In addition, there is no native bitstream decoding via HDMI, so the 1.3 output (and if you happen to have HDMI 1.3 input on your receiver) is really not able to be used at its full potential. 99.999% of the people won't care about that though. Decoding is only to PCM, which is, frankly, fine with me. I'm not even sure I have the ear to tell difference if it was pointed out to me. Long story short, especially for early Blu-ray adopters like me who spent nearly $500 on a slow, dinosaur of a Sony Blu-Ray player, the Sony BDP-CX960 is the right price for an exceptional product.

[Dark Steel]

I purchased one of these a couple months ago and absolutely love it, except for the extremely long load times for a handful of movies. My only question is the audio output. I thought the player used bitstream to output the sound, since my Onkyo 707 internally does the decoding and lights up with the sound format of the movie, whereas the PS3 would use PCM and do the decoding internally and my Onkyo would only read MultiCh on the front display? Great piece of gear regardless!

[langn08]

Let's see some pics you guys!

[adamh]

i have this unit and let me say "it rocks". makes life much easier and basically a bluray server. the ony thing you need to to is edit a few things, which i need to do. this will make searching much easier. also the remote codes are not on logitechs site so will have to manually put them in. anyone done this let me know. if you can affor it, i would highly recommend. its about 300 dollars off at amazon.

[TXRANGERSFAN72]

@adamh - What Logitech remote did you get? I have been thinking about getting one as my man-cave has the changer, a PS3, a Sharp LCD TV, an HD DirecTV receiver and a Yamaha audio receiver that I would love to play under ONE remote.

[adamh]

i have harmony 890 thats uses rf. i think there is a newer one that has better buttons, but you can find 890's on the web at pretty good prices. has worked well for us though. just need to add some buttons manually for the 960 and were good to go. hope that helps!!

[swdvader]

According to Sonys Web site the player supports bitstream

The BDP-CX960 Blu-ray Disc™ player supports both internal decoding and bitstream output of enhanced audio codecs, including Dolby® TrueHD and dts®-HD Master Audio.6 These high definition audio formats delivers “lossless” surround sounds with 7.1 channels of discrete audio that is nearly identical to the master studio recording, allowing you to enjoy uncompromised sound from the comfort of your living room.

[TXRANGERSFAN72]

@swdvader - Yeah, I saw that too, but if I understood it correctly (and maybe I didn't), it's only through HDMI 1.3 on Sony Bravia product only. Even if I had a receiver that processed HDMI audio, it still wouldn't work. Otherwise, audio is processed through digital optical or coaxial. In my case, my receiver does not process HDMI audio so it really wouldn't matter, but did you read those specs as an indication that if I had a different HDMI-audio receiver, it would work? If so, I may start shopping for one.

[swdvader]

Ok, so I got the player and it’s GREAT! I loaded 200 Blurays and it found 199 of them. I was able to quickly correct the 2 it couldn’t find.
Let me say why this is a great player.
1. You can put the disc in any order.
2. As long as your connect to the internet, it gets the Jacket, director, Year, Rating, and Actor in the move.
3. You can sort your movies by number,name,genre,actor. (yes you can look up all the movies you have that have the same actor.
4. It tells you how many disc it couldn’t find, where they are located and you can edit them fast.
5. You can define your own genre. For example I made a comic book genre for all my movies that are comics. All you do is then set the genre of those movies to comic book. When I sort by genre and choose comic book all the titles are there.
6.Its a sony!
7.USB memory for BDLIVE
8.I have it hooked up to my HD Receiver and it BITSTREAMS all the HD-DTS,HD DOLBY, ect no problems. I am using HDMI and my receiver takes HDMI.
9.Extremly easy to load and set up.

I don’t know why people don’t like that it uses gracenotes. I had no issues with it. The size of player is big but it fit in my cabinet so no issue there either. I would recommend this to anyone.

[DigitalHoarder]

I'm not hating on this device at all, in fact I'll probably end up buying it. However, I thought I'd give a possible warning due to my use of their 400 DVD player I had a few years back.

Once you start getting 200+ discs in there, the weight starts to stress the carousel/platter and whatever do-dads it's sitting on. Furthermore, if you have all your discs close together, your tray will be heavier on one side and start to lean. Something happens to the disc reader/laser (obv I'm not good w/ verbage) and it starts to read off balance. If you ever empty your carousel, or fill it to the max, it will now be even instead of tilted and that's when problems started happening for me.

So, unless they fixed everything that goes in their BD player (and honestly I doubt they would be able to do much) it's possible this will happen to others. My suggestion is to stagger your discs outs and ya 400 sounds cool, but maybe only put 200 in there. I'm the laziest guy in the world, but seriously when are you going to watch all those movies w/in a few months time? Cautious usage will only ensure your new Sony BD player lasts that much longer.

[Hep]

Originally Posted by TXRANGERSFAN72

@swdvader - Yeah, I saw that too, but if I understood it correctly (and maybe I didn't), it's only through HDMI 1.3 on Sony Bravia product only. Even if I had a receiver that processed HDMI audio, it still wouldn't work. Otherwise, audio is processed through digital optical or coaxial. In my case, my receiver does not process HDMI audio so it really wouldn't matter, but did you read those specs as an indication that if I had a different HDMI-audio receiver, it would work? If so, I may start shopping for one.

I have the Sony ES version of this player (same software guts) and I can confirm that it will do both PCM and Bitstreaming. Unfortunately Sony used the terms "Mix" and "Direct". They use the term "Mix" for PCM output because if the player decodes the audio it can mix the primary and secondary audio together (such as with BD interactive features). They use "Direct" for bitstream, for self appearent reasons (bitstream is only capable of providing the primary audio stream).

It will output the bitstream to any HDMI reciever able to perform the internal decoding.

[JAYSONE]

Originally Posted by Kyle Million

Once you start getting 200+ discs in there, the weight starts to stress the carousel/platter and whatever do-dads it's sitting on. Furthermore, if you have all your discs close together, your tray will be heavier on one side and start to lean. Something happens to the disc reader/laser (obv I'm not good w/ verbage) and it starts to read off balance. If you ever empty your carousel, or fill it to the max, it will now be even instead of tilted and that's when problems started happening for me.

Can you elaborate on the problems you had? What problems are you referring to when it starts to read "off-balance"?

I've read on the avforums that some users of the dvd version of this had instances of them scratching their discs...anyone experience this first hand?

Another question, if I wanted to remove a particular disc for viewing in another room for instance...would I be able to so rather easily?

Thanks in advance for the input folks.

[Dark Steel]

I've owned the Sony 200 dvd changer, and currently own the Sony 400 disc changer and 400 disc blu-ray changer. I've had no problems with scratched discs, but I did space them out when I first loaded them so it would be easier to put new discs in (I manually put them in alphabetical order). I'm using the Logitech 1100 touchscreen remote to control my system and I had to manually program it with the Sony changer remote since Logitech doesn't have the remote codes in their system.

[DigitalHoarder]

Originally Posted by JAYSONE

Can you elaborate on the problems you had? What problems are you referring to when it starts to read "off-balance"?

I've read on the avforums that some users of the dvd version of this had instances of them scratching their discs...anyone experience this first hand?

Another question, if I wanted to remove a particular disc for viewing in another room for instance...would I be able to so rather easily?

Thanks in advance for the input folks.

Yeah you can remove them as easily as inserting them, you just move the carousel around. Again, I'm admitting to not being an expert but I can imagine the carousel and the disc reader laser compartment/housing are isolated from each other. I'm imagining a support framework for the carousel. With the carousel being weighted to one side (imagine a bed or couch after a few years of sitting in the same spot) Again, assuming they aren't connected to each other, once the weight throws the carousel off alignment, it's possible it was also throwing the disc reader out of alignment. As long as you keep the same weight ratio, the disc read fine. Once you lighten the load on the carousel, the disc reads off because of the alignment.

Again, I have no solid proof but I do have some idea how CD drives in computers go bad due to alignment. What I noticed was that my DVD player would freeze and it couldn't read the discs. It didn't matter if they were new, burned, or CDs. It was doing this when full and when I was close to the unit and would move the carousel around to get discs, it seemed sluggish. So I started taking them out, and obviously in order. Eventually, I had half the rack removed and it was leaning heavily to one side. While turning, you could make out a faint grinding sound. It wasn't nothing too major, and could easily be from something else like dust (Tucson, AZ... no grass in backyard for me, only dirt.) Well, after taking all discs out, we'd have a few, maybe 10 in there. It seemed to work fine, but at that point, it was just as easy to load a DVD in the XBox 360.

So, I hope that helps. If you don't have this issue, no worries. But rational thought should suggest less stress on the joints of the unit will only lengthen the life.

[swdvader]

So now I have all 400 discs in the player. I don’t know about the cd version. The bluray carousel moves quiet and steady. The weight doesn’t seam to have any affect. As for my cabinet, it can hold me so I don’t think the players weight is an issue. So far I have nothing but positive feelings towards the player. If I run into any problems I let you guys know.

[swdvader]

I want to add that player also has a feature to make the player and remote work on a different mode. This is important because I have a single disc bluray set up for playing movies not in the changer. I dont use the rental slot and I dont want anyone else loading and unloading disc into the changer. So now each sony player using diffent signals and I am able to control each player seperate. I use the Harmony One and it also let me add the different remote.

[schmidtbaby]

Was about to buy a Sony BDP-CX960 and realized that most of our DVD collection are cheap compilations of 2-sided discs. (i.e. - 100 Mystery Classics, 50 Westerns) with different movies on either side.


I assume the 960 and others would only read one side - correct?

[swdvader]

Originally Posted by schmidtbaby

Was about to buy a Sony BDP-CX960 and realized that most of our DVD collection are cheap compilations of 2-sided discs. (i.e. - 100 Mystery Classics, 50 Westerns) with different movies on either side.


I assume the 960 and others would only read one side - correct?

Yes, it will only read one side.

[Woodydawg]

really want this in region B/UK. even better if it came region free (A&B and 0-6 dvd)would clear some space!

[swdvader]

Ive been using the player and its been great.

The only issue I see seams to be with gracenote and not the player.

1. Harry Potter titles came up in spanish. Easy to correct.
2. Toy story 2 comes up as Dark water. You cant change the picture so I stuck with Dark Water as the Jacket.
3. Lethal weapon 1,2 and 4 come up but it cant locate 3. Easy to fix.

Out of 400 movies 1% about 4 disc had to be fixed.

I find I am watching movies I would never have because I dont have to go get or look through my books. This is great.