There's no doubt that Sony has a 400-disc Blu-ray Mega Changer on the cooker -- heck, we
saw the thing last year at CEDIA -- but up until now, there's been no indication of its nearness to market. According to a vague Swiss product page and a report from
Sony Insider, however, the launch date is indeed drawing near. If hunches prove legitimate, the BDP-CX7000ES will allow 400 of your favorite BD flicks to sit within a single console, and we've every reason to believe that this one will support BD-Live and actually load films with some amount of haste. You know, very much unlike the
200-disc HES-V1000 that's already out there. As of now, it's looking like the unit will run right around $2,300, placing it squarely in rarefied air and ostensibly out of reach for the vast majority of home theater junkies.
[Via
Sony Insider]
posted May 21st 2009 4:59AM
And people wonder why Sony are losing money...
I have to honestly wonder; are there even 400 BD movies out yet? I mean, good ones?
They should really cut the fat cheques of those over-fed over-paid old men in Japan HQ
Even if there are 400 blu-ray disks, the thing costs $2300 but how much for 400 disks? $8000? $20 per disk. So its actually $10,000. Less expensive than filling iPod ;) but still too much for me. Besides, I have the usual question: why?
were people buying the cd equivalent of these in the 80s?
@Shinigami,
I think you were being nice pricing those Blu-ray movies at $20.
@SSS
They were called jukeboxes.
I hope there is a "microwave this shit" button for the oven, I mean disc changer.
You know when the feds raid the apartment looking for illicit DVD rips.
How dare they place it squarely in rarefied air and ostensibly out of reach for the vast majority of us home theater junkies.
this is why i say "digital download". i mean seriously, wtf....
The $2300 figure was derived by looking at a foreign price... it's likely to be a lot cheaper, even for the ES version.
Its still going to be a waste. Do that many people really need space for 400 BR discs? I doubt it. Heck, large changers are annoying anyway. I had one for 200 cd's a while back and found it was much easier to load one disc at a time than it was to mess with each disc's location in a changer.
For real Home Theater Junkies (HTJ), 2000$ is nothing. Nothing at all.
lol @ $10,000 worth of BDs sitting in this thing. but seriously, it's not all that ridiculous. imagine loading it up, having it automatically scan the discs and build a catalogue of all your titles with different ways to sort/search for your movie. could be pretty nice....you know, if you have 400 freakin BDs.
Yes it COULD be nice. Except when has a device like this
ever lived up to it's full potential. Just the haphazard way in
which certain DVD's are put together means that some
content will always be a bother. IOW, you're better off just
ripping it.
The entire industry is stuck in the 80s.
The same bulk of random access disk storage will become
affordable to the average consumer before this thing does.
Many of us already have disk arrays this size (or larger if
you count by disks and not by bulk). That ship already
sailed. Frys is selling the sails.
Would be cheaper just to buy a HTPC and put a load of 1Tb HDDs in.
400 disks = Up to 20TB. 20TB + HTPC hardware would be EASILY more than this unit...
You can overwrite data on a hard drive.
@Mitch: Most of the space on a Blu-ray disc is wasted on either extras, bloated MPEG-2-encoded video, or just empty space. If you rip a Blu-ray disc to an H.264-based MKV or MP4, even at 1080p, the resulting file is usually only 8-10GB. So while the total theoretical storage capacity of 400 Blu-ray discs might be 20TB, to actually store the movies on disc is more realistically only around 4TB, at most. Just buy 3-4 1.5TB drives, plop them on your network media server, build a HTPC, and you're all set. Much cheaper than this pile of garbage (and much more accessible, to boot).
@hexydes: Virtually every Blu-ray is already H.264 or VC-1 so any transcoding will only yield space savings by lowering the video bitrate and degrading image quality. Sure the extras take up some space, but many people actually like to use the extras.
the ultra mad jukebox for the 10s. (as in 2010s)...
Is this thing really necessary though? I'd sort 400 BDs on a lovely BD cupboard/stand/cabinet. coz since the BD movies come in disc boxes you still got to put them somewhere.
Why 400 bluray disks it probably reads dvd and cds too. So you can put your full 400 disks movie collection in it.
I can use a Bentley as a crib too if I wanted, but having sense to not blow ridiculous amounts of money on unnecessary things stops me. What I mean is, if you wanted a device for other media it would come at a cheaper entry point.
stupid to charge that much more.. the damn thing can only play one disc at a time for goodness sakes!
Here we go again. Sony always pulls a mega changer out it's ass.
Maybe they should focus on what is really kicking ass in the market place like hand held internet devices. Oh, yeah they have that disgrace called the MYLO or whatever and the more, much more, ipod touch just owns that lil shit.
Oh well at least they have great tvs, the ps3 and psp(worth it b/c of monster hunters).
Sony who?
Chiba. Sonny Chiba. And he will kick your ass if you make fun of japanese technology again.
5 Years down the line. 400 disks inside and the friggin' carousel stops. Been there, done that.
Yeah, I had a Sony 400 disc DVD changer that would randomly scratch the hell out of my discs while loading them. No thanks.
sony are done. the consumer age is done. sayonara robocop.
Can we assume/do we know that this will upconvert DVDs to 1080p as well? The current sony DVD changer only upconverts to 1080i.
If this is built anyway like the 400 disc DVD players Sony made then it will stop working in about 1-2 years after you buy it. The DVD players version was cost effective at around $400 and a decent player when it worked but they kept failing.
This would be awesome if you can put it somewhere hidden away connected to a media server and have it so you can simultaneously stream several movies to several places around your home at the same time..
ahh... one can dream....
Oh, I can hear it now. The MPAA now officially has an excuse why you never need to format shift to put your discs on a media server.
Make a five disc changer and you'd have my Blu-ray collection covered.
I'd rather buy a 10TB server and software to rip/read 400 BD images.
Even better, rip the BDs to MKV format with AVC encoding. Allowing for 10GB a film, you only need 4TB.
I'll give the cost of this 400 changer to someone who can make me something to automatically rip a whole pile of DVDs/BluRays. Can't be much harder can it? I'm sure it would be infinitely more usefull - rip entire music, dvd and blu-ray collection without any of the painfull disc swapping.
Is it really that hard to use AnyDVD HD and RipBot264 to convert to MKV? Sure it might take a while, but it's not like you're actually sitting there watching it.
Just download it! A lot more easier... :D
What most of you likely don't realize is that these types of things are hooked up to HTPC-like front end systems for large home theatre installations. This is a consumer gadget site, but that's the primary use of these changers.and $2500 (this) + $2000 (controller) is crazy cheap compared to the HD-based options out there.
OTOH, any somewhat competent "consumer" with a PC can already replicate the same thing for a lot cheaper.
The main thing lacking in the dirt cheap PC solution is storage space and that
continues to get bigger and cheaper. HDTV is already a pain in the neck. If you
are "geeky" enough to understand what's going on with an overpriced home theatre
system, you can throw together a "media center" box.
Once PC's become less TV hostile and more akin to their ancient Amiga and Atari
cousins, this pairing of TV And computer technology will be even more trivial and
more obvious to the common man of the ipod generation.
hopefully streaming services will get better and we wont have to use anymore formats. kind of like not printing documents. later we are all going to ask why would anyone need to save, rip, burn discs, with good streaming services.
The problem with the old SD-DVD version of this thing is that the interface is totally useless, if you were to scan though the whole catalog of DVDs on it, it would take you like 2-4 hours (I have a spreadsheet that lists all the DVD's slot #s), if they actually make a nice interface for it, then it could be worth while (assuming the price comes to earth). As for ripping the BRDs, that's great, if it was really practical, it's a huge amount of data to store, and if you don't want to rip it again when you have an HD failure, you're going to want to have some kind of redundancy, and eventually someone is going to update the DRM on BRDs and then you're going to have to figure out the whole ripping process over again.
Overall, I'm of the mind that if you have the skill to setup a system to rip and store all the BRDs that this thing holds, and you invest the time and skill it takes to put that system together into a job using the same skill set (in perhaps a better economy) you would probably come out able to buy this thing anyway, and then not have to worry about DRM/HD failure/not having all the features, etc.
If you want to campaign the MPAA et al, to make it easier for someone to make a nice, elegant solution to this, well, that's another story.
For the fat American?
Let's see, a Japanese company makes a product, which has it's info posted on an obscure Swiss webpage...
yep, it's always about the fat Americans. Ever get tired of being the stereotypical stereotyper?
*its
Or you could get off your lazy ass and change discs manually. Seriously, how many movies does a person need to watch each day to get any benefit from this thing?
Just wanted to point out that this is the ES series which has historically been Sony's higher end product. It is possible we could see a cheaper model that isn't ES in the future.
this just kind of points out how irrelevant optical media's become, doesn't it? I remember the CD equivalent they used to do, and how irate a friend who shelled out for one was when I tipped up with a Toshiba Libretto loaded up with MP3s at his party...plus I could do visuals via the VGA connector to his projector...!
Why would you EVER stuff a big black box full with 400 BD-discs. Who is buying this?!
I seriously thought this was a microwave at first.
Awesome! I have their 400 Disc DVD changer and loved it before Blu Ray and my PS3 came along. But I bought it for $250, so anything more than $350 is a deal breaker for me. I'll wait to buy one used.
Wow, this is so much better than having everything ripped onto a media tank!!!!!
Nice Microwave
Freakin' clueless.
"Simply choose a movie before dinner. It loads while you eat, and Voila! -- instant BluRay!"
i had this co-worker that told me this: "it's kinda like there are a group of friends and they all have candy. and you get to where they are at and they ATE ALL the candy. and the only thing you can say is: 'c'mon guys.....'"
tomo
I am going to buy this. As long as it is not buggy I would gladly pay twice as much. I believe I represent the market Sony is aiming for with this product. It is for those who have a dedicated movie theater in their home. Escient's website states it's excellent Vision line of products will integrate with this device and if you have ever seen Escient's or Kaleidscope's "Wall of Movies" interface it is very very cool.
I believe Paul above is correct. I have no time or inclination to knit or cobble a bunch of hard drives together with each blue ray disc taking up 50GB, and I do not want to use compression or conversion to create an "its good enough" experience. Frankly put, this product is for people that have the income, love movies, and can afford to purchase these types of devices.
As Paul implies above, it is the investment of 2 hours to watch a movie that is the real cost, 2k will not deter this market from purchasing this machine. Compared to the screen, projector, speakers, etc.., this is not a big item for a home theater owner.
Sony, the winner of the HD format wars is making a bold statement with this device, a commitment not only to the media but to excellent cinema.
It's humorous to listen to people talk about the "media player revolution" like it's either already in place OR just around the corner. Truth is, many BD's ARE already pushing 50 gigs with the film and extras, so a 400 disc library would easily pass 15 TB's worth of storage (and prolly near 20 TB's)...go price that kind of HDD space (not too mention a media streamer) out in the next 6 months and get back to me. Further, "ripped" BD's on a media player STILL don't offer ISO's (menu's) and decent player functionality (FF RW, chapters, etc)- really a 75% solution for most.
Last...who the hell wants to rip 200-400 BD's and back them up (yes, plenty of people own hundreds of movies)? MUCH easier said than done.
This is an EXTREMELY viable solution for those looking to plug and play and be done.
The media player revolution will have to wait a bit yet for the vast majority of consumers, I'm afraid.