Sony BDP-CX7000ES 400 Blu-ray Disc Mega Changer (Black)
December 17, 2011 by Cherry
Filed under Blu-ray Players
Sony BDP-CX7000ES 400 Blu-ray Disc Mega Changer (Black)
- Organize & play 400 Blu-ray Disc movies, DVDs, and CDs
- Control with audio / video installation systems via RS-232
- Experience Full HD 1080p/24p video output
- Converts DVD video to near HD quality via HDMI
- Dolby TrueHD and dts -HD decoding/bitstream output
Store, access and enjoy up 400 discs with Sony’s premium Blu-ray Disc MegaChanger, the BDP-CX7000ES. A user-friendly on-screen interface makes it easy to sort and search by title, genre, cast and more, to quickly find the movie, TV show or album you’re looking for.
List Price: $ 1,899.99
Price: $ 788.00
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Great way to consolidate your Blu-ray/DVD collection,
The Sony “mega changer” is a unique product, capable of storing a medium-sized disc collection in a single, convenient device.
A wide range of disc types are supported in addition to Blu-ray, including conventional DVDs and audio CDs. Note that DVD-Audio, HD-DVD and SACD are *not* supported.
The build quality is first rate, typical of a Sony “ES” product. It weighs over 30 pounds and seems like it’s built to last a while. It hooks up easily using a single HDMI cable (assuming what you’re connecting to accepts this type of input). If you’re using Sony gear, you can control the “mega changer” using a common remote and Sony’s “Bravia Sync” protocol. For older equipment, there are 2 and 7 channel analog outputs, as well as digital coax. If you use high-end AV control system (such as Crestron), there are RS-232 inputs as well. The 5-year warranty is also a good touch.
In terms of sound and picture quality, I’d rate it as excellent. I have a variety of other high-end disc players, and in no case could I see or hear differences on the Sony. DVDs are upscaled for better performance, and the unit supports 24p True Cinema, BD-Live and so on. It supports all the latest surround audio formats and video features, and Sony has a built-in network connection supporting easy firmware updating. While I haven’t seen a specific commitment from Sony to support future standards, at least the infrastructure is there if they choose to do so.
The unit also features a built-in Ethernet port that can connect to the Gracenote service to retrieve album art and disc cover graphics. This is a nice touch, saving you from having to manually enter disc information most of the time. Unfortunately, the graphics are sometimes low resolution and on a small display, they can be difficult to see clearly. Also, on prior generations of this product, Sony included a way to connect a computer keyboard so you could easily edit disc information. This feature has been dropped on the BDP-CX7000ES…so long as you’re Ethernet connected and storing discs that can be found in the Gracenote service, this isn’t a big deal – but if (for instance) you tend to burn your own discs and want to edit titles, it can be quite a chore doing it without a keyboard. Some complain about the lack of WiFi, but you can always use a wireless Ethernet bridge to eliminate the need for any cables (this is how I have mine connected, and it works fine).
Finding discs is always a challenge with units like this, and so Sony provides a variety of ways your collection can be indexed. It’s possible to search by title, genre, rating – even director and cast member.
The unit can be somewhat slow loading and unloading discs, which I guess is a function of the size of the carousel. It can take 30 seconds to unload a disc, spin the unit to the desired slot, then load the chosen disc.
There’s also a slot that can be used to play a single disc without loading it into the unit. This is a good idea, but as I’ve kept my single disc player connected to my system, I don’t use the Sony for this type of disc. Similarly, there’s a USB port for connecting various types of media to the unit (for instance, special BD-Live content, or photos, etc). So far, I haven’t found a compelling use of this feature since it duplicates capabilities I have on other devices.
One problem I’ve had with the unit is that it seems sensitive to being moved – some of the discs seemed to move out of their slots just by sliding the device on its shelf. It seems important to not move the unit once its loaded with discs.
Although this is a fine unit overall, there are a few other areas that could use improvement:
1. WiFi should be built-in…I shouldn’t need to buy an outboard Ethernet bridge to connect wirelessly.
2. The Gracenote service is still immature, mislabling about 10-20% of all discs.
3. Would be nice to have built-in support for Amazon’s video on demand (or Netflix).
4. Takes a long time to setup initially if you have lots of discs. A wireless keyboard would be a big help.
5. The overall software interface is a bit clumsy…would be nice if it was easier to simply connect the device (over that USB channel?) to a Windows Media Center or iTunes.
6. It runs a bit hot in an enclosed cabinet and tends to generate audible fan noise.
7. Would be nice to have a way to link multiple units for those having more than 400 discs. While you can certainly connect multiple units to your system, each acts independently – without a coordinated index, you need to remember which discs are in which player.
Still, in spite of these shortcomings, I think this is a great product and I give it a solid four stars. It would probably be five stars for picture and sound quality, five stars for construction…
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|Fatally flawed,
I’m a Sony fanboi, but this is the weakest Sony product in over a decade and there’s no reason for it. For the want of a horse a kingdom is lost… Sorry.
It plays disks wonderfully but there’s no reason to have a changer so limited. Gracenote supplies disk information but it’s just not sufficient unless you are only watching mainstream movies. If you watch indies or special-interest movies, you have to enter the information by the remote, which is data-entry hell. For over a decade Sony has had a keyboard input. This is a step back from the 400-DVD player. And the ES non-HDMI player before that. And the 300 DVD player. And the 200 CD player… All of which I’ve owned and all of which were more user friendly.
If iTunes had the ability to enter DVD information, that would be okay. Pop the DVD into my Mac, label it, and then into the changer. I’ll do data-entry hell for Blu-ray. It would be an extra step but it would be a service to the community. It’s simple with a CD to enter information with iTunes, but the latest iTunes doesn’t let you do it with a DVD. There is I think an SDK [...] to let you write a program to do it, but my CS degree is 30 years out of date, and why should I have to? A keyboard input is simply not that hard to do.
Also it crashes. I don’t use it that much for the above reasons (I bought one the used market another 400-DVD changer AFTER I bought this) but perhaps a quarter of the time I have to turn it off because it’s stuck. I don’t have to unplug it, or even lever myself out of the chair–the remote’s power button will do it. But it’s a problem. A software update can fix this though. But it can’t fix the lack of a keyboard input.
The specs are wonderful. It has a lovely interface, like the latest Sony receivers (which I have and love). But the lack of a keyboard input means that I’d suggest passing on this unless you do nothing but mainstream movies.
This is the first Sony product that I regret having bought.
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|Must’ve lucked out,
I guess I lucked out on this one. Purchased this from a site that was fulfilled by Amazon and it all worked fine. Here are a few pros and cons that I’ve found:
Pros:
Setup was really simple. Just did an HDMI into my TV, digital audio into my home theater, plugged it in, and plugged in the LAN. It found the internet and worked fine.
Loaded 399 movies (the 400th slot was left for a movie rental, more on that later) and told Gracenote to just do its thing overnight. In the morning I came to look at it and it had found titles of 397 of the movies. One movie had no name and another, with Nicholas Cage in it, was just blank. Will have to manually see what those two are but I think 397/399 is better than most people reviewing on here.
A lot of people had problems with the size of the unit but it fit into my cheap tv stand pretty much perfectly. Plus, what do you expect for something that holds 400 discs?
Picture quality and sound seem great (I’m watching Zoolander while I write this and it looks great to me).
Cons:
HEAVY. Heavy, heavy heavy. And HUGE. I’m an ex-military guy so I had no problem lugging this thing upstairs but it is really heavy.
Good luck using a universal remote. Set this up with my Logitech Harmony One and it works, but the actual remote has dozens more buttons than my Harmony One found and, when setting up the discs, etc., there are a lot of buttons on the original remote you will need to use unless you map them manually to the remote
Rental slot?!? Thought this was a cool idea. A slot on there that I could put DVDs in and such from Blockbuster or Redbox. Not so much. This is just another one of the 400 slots (#1 I think) in the carousel that is set aside for rentals. Really not all that impressive of a feature there
Sony has discontinued it. So a pro and a con here. I was able to buy a top of the line $2000 system for less than $600 but still, not fun to buy something that has been discontinued. Still seems to play Blu Ray and DVDs at great quality so it does everything technology needs right now
Connects to the internet but no Hulu, Netflix, etc. Why? Would be pretty easy to create apps on here you would think but Sony chose not to go that way. Oh well. Looks like TiVo and I will be friends for a little while longer.
Overall, this thing does store 399 of my movies (not 400 because of that rental slot), picked up the names of all of them, and seems to work as advertised. Wish Sony would put something else out because I think there is still a demand for this type of product for people who have not gone digital for everything (and, let’s face it, 399 hypothetical blu ray discs is a huge amount of storage space on a drive. At its price point this seems to be a much better deal). So, since it does everything I want and more than I expected I give it 5 stars…
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