Re: Sony DVP-CX850D User Poll....

Maybe this will help you decide.

I just sold my Sony 850 for the Pioneer Elite DV-F07. It holds 300 disks, and has a much better control paradigm. It has both IR and RS232 control. The only negative control feature is that it must be powered up to use the RS 232 capability. I power it up/down via IR and do all of the rest via RS232. It has seperate IR commands for power on and power off so there is no state problem. The RS232 is bidirectional, and Pioneer sent me the full protocol manual at no charge (email me if you want a copy). I can also send a copy of my driver/test program (VB6) which handles both the IR (for power) and RS232 capability using slinke for IR I have all of the codes for IR and can supply those in a format you should be able to convert to a cde file. I also have a test routine that will drive the full IR capability of the unit via the slinke.

Via the RS232 interface you can do things like ask it to read the contents of each slot and upodate an internal data base similar (much less infor) to what CDJ maintains. You can then query the data base for the state of a slot (empty or full) type of disk (CD, DVD, Video-R) text name, artist name and other parameters including a disk ID of about 8 charachters. If you remove a disk and put it in another slot, the unit will re-index it and find it again. You can set the name and artist of each disk through the interface very nicely.

I added the control program to my system and now have the same functionality for the Pioneer that the CDJ provides for Sony Mega CD's, including name search, cover display, and key disk information (director, stars, rating, award, running time, synopsis).

Another nice feature of the Pioneer is that they properly integrate a second slave player. The outputs of the slave are (video, audio and digital audio)fed into the master and the master does switching of the signal out of the master based upon what slot (0-600) was selected.

I paid about $875 on the net and got it delivered in 4 days.