Sony DVP-CX985V 400 Disc Progressive DVD / SACD Player
The positives outweigh the negatives - with another remote.
After reading numerous reviews regarding the Sony DVP-CX985V, it became obvious that Sony's interface needed to be avoided altogether. Since I also happened to be looking for a way to avoid another remote in the living room (I'm embarrassed to say I've collected over a dozen somehow) I found the Harmony SST-659 universal remote can catalog all 400 slots and display them on the backlit LCD. <br />In short, you look at the remote to choose the movie, not the painfully slow and inaccurate Sony \\"Explorer\\" mode... which does a great job at making you feel as if you are truly exploring some vast, unknown and mostly empty wasteland.<br />You might not like the idea of buying a new DVD player and a fairly pricy remote just to make it all work. But if you're like me, and were ready to get rid of some remotes anyway... it's a winning combo. <br />What's the catch? The remote itself requires patience and an internet connection to program it... remember, it can control all of your systems. <br />The silver lining? I shopped around and bought both for a little more than the retail price of the DVD player alone.<br />So I actually love the DVD player now. The quality of the picture is superb. The sound decoding is faultless. It plays every rewritable disc I've thrown at it, and finally, it's just too cool. Watching the blue backlit carousel spin your library around gives my 3 year-old the giggles every time. <br />And I LOVE the door locking feature. We can keep his DVDs out of his hands and locked in the carousel. This has actually saved us money, since he's been able to find several of his discs in the past and frisbee them to death.<br />Bad kid. Good player.