Sony 995 DVD Changer

Mike

Senior Member
I just ordered one of these changers. What delayed me for so long was being worried about not having serial control. Given that the serial control version (the Elite one) is more than twice the price, I decided trying out the lower one was the right choice.

My harmony remote will control it using a list of titles, and eventually, I expect CQC will do the same. If it misses a command I'll hit the button again I am thinking (I understand that serial is ideal, but the price difference does not seem to justify itself here. Plus, I have a history of finding issues with Sony products so I am hesitant on buying a $800 retail DVD player from them. I feel more comfortable with the investment around $279 each. If it works out I can take my savings and add two more players...

In any event, I'll post my experiences in case there are others wondering about this as well.
 
IR will work, though it's not nearly as nice as serial control for a device like this that you'll be tying to a media system. I don't think you have to worry too much about problems with the higher end one. I've not had any problems or really heard of other folks having any either. It seems to be pretty solid.

The gotcha with IR is that there are two sides to a changer based media system. One is picking something to play, but the other is having the automation system know which disc is playing, and knowing when the tracks change, so that it can retrieve the metadata for the playing media and display it.

CQC has a 'changer manager' driver that, with serial changers, allows you to treat a set of them like one big changer and it can use the two way serial control to keep up with which ones are turned on or playing what and so forth, and show the status/metadata for the currently active one.
 
I hear you Dean, the price premium was too great. I can almost buy three of the high end ones for the price of the lower end one. I figured I would try this. If the cost difference were not so great I probably would have gotten the high end one. The other aspect is most of my other equipment is not controlled by serial either (although something I will look at in the future though).

We shall see... perhaps I will regret my decision, or perhaps I will get several of these and be happy, for the price of one of the high end ones.

EDIT: I guess the point is, is it 'good enough' for the low-end price.
 
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