Sony's Blu-ray MegaChanger hits the streets next month with new ES standalone
By Ben Drawbaugh 
posted Jul 23rd 2009 3:00PM
posted Jul 23rd 2009 3:00PM
SONY ORGANIZES YOUR ENTERTAINMENT COLLECTION
WITH NEW 400-DISC BLU-RAY DISC/DVD MEGACHANGER
Company Expands Blu-ray Disc Player Options with Three New Models
NEW YORK, July 23, 2009 – Looking to help consumers simplify and manage their living room entertainment experience, Sony today announced the new BDP-CX960 and the "Elevated Standard" (ES) BDP-CX7000ES 400-disc Blu-ray Disc™ MegaChangers.
The company also announced the BDP-S1000ES single disc ES player expanding the Sony's Blu-ray Disc line to 13 models offering a broad set of performance and features.
The Blu-ray Disc MegaChanger models store and play 400 Blu-ray Discs, DVDs, and CDs, allowing consumers to relocate their disc library to a convenient, easy-to-access location.
They also feature the ability to download information from Gracenote's MusicID® and VideoID™ products to organize movies and music. When a disc is inserted into the device, Gracenote technology automatically downloads information across an existing Internet broadband service and saves title, director, some cast information, release year, and genre information for most titles, allowing users to easily navigate the library intuitively through the player's xross media bar™ menu system.
"Think about all those great movie and music discs in your collection," said Chris Fawcett, vice president for Sony Electronics' home audio and video business. "Wouldn't it be great to instantly play those movies or CDs -- definitely gives a new meaning to the notion of a movie marathon!"
BDP-CX7000ES and BDP-CX960
Leading the MegaChanger line up is the BDP-CX7000ES which outputs full HD 1080/60p and 24p True Cinema™. Designed to integrate with third-party automation control systems, the model features an RS232 connection and IR-in and is built to high-quality ES standards.
It offers exceptional audio quality with 7.1 channel analog output and superior video incorporating Sony's HD Reality Enhancer and Super Bit Mapping technologies. The HD Reality Enhancer technology continually analyzes the original source bit by bit, sharpening edges and reproducing detail, while reducing the effects of film grain. Super Bit Mapping delivers smoother color gradation realizing true 14-bit equivalent color tone from 8-bit sources.
The model also upscales standard definition DVDs to 1080p through Sony's Precision Cinema HD Upscale technology when connected to a 1080p display via HDMI.
Precision Cinema HD Upscale uses advanced conversion and processing to detect image changes at the pixel level, rather than the level of whole scan lines. Additionally, separate algorithms are used to process the moving and still parts of an image, resulting in sharp backgrounds with moving objects that are free from motion artifacts.
Complementing the BDP-CX7000ES, is the new BDP-CX960. This 400-disc MegaChanger also delivers full HD 1080/60p and 24p True Cinema output and Precision Cinema HD Upscale technology.
Both the BDP-CX7000ES and BDP-CX960 feature an Ethernet port for connectivity to a local home broadband network to download metadata from Gracenote, software updates and to access BD-Live™ content. There is also an external port for local storage so users can add their USB flash storage device to support BD-Live content.
The models support 7.1 channel Dolby® TrueHD and Dolby® Digital Plus, DTS®-HD High Resolution Audio, and DTS-HD Master Audio decoding as well as bit-stream output via HDMI. It is compatible with an array of video formats, including BD-ROM/R/RE (BDMV and BDAV modes), DVD-+ Video/R/RW, CD/R/RW, and MP3/JPEG on BD/DVD/CD recordable media and supports x.v.Color™ (xvYCC) technology. The BDP-CX7000ES also supports Deep Color via HDMI (v1.3).
The BDP-CX7000ES is available this August for about $1,900, while the BDP-CX960 will be available this fall for about $800.
BDP-S1000ES
The single-disc BDP-S1000ES Blu-ray Disc player bolsters the ES line adding built-in Wi-Fi® (802.11N/G/B/A) capability for easy BD-Live access. The model offers full HD 1080/60p and 24p True Cinema™ and upscales standard definition DVDs to 1080p through Sony's Precision Cinema HD Upscale technology.
The model can easily connect to the Internet through an existing wireless home network to download and stream BD-Live content from select titles including additional scenes, short subjects, trailers, interactive games, and more. It also enables easy firmware updates to assist in keeping your player up-to-date with the latest Blu-ray Disc media and features.
While compatible with most wireless routers, the BDP-S1000ES also supports Wi-Fi Protected Setup™, for a quick and easy connection to enabled wireless routers. Additionally, the player is Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) ready, allowing it to connect to other DLNA compliant devices to watch digital photos on your TV.
The model also incorporates Sony's HD Reality Enhancer, Super Bit Mapping, and Precision Drive HD technology.
It supports Deep Color video output and x.v.Color technology. The player is compatible with an array of video formats, including BD-ROM/R/RE (BDMV and BDAV modes), DVD-+ Video/R/RW, CD/R/RW, and MP3/JPEG on BD/DVD/CD recordable media.
The model also is compatible with advanced audio codecs including 7.1 channel Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Digital Plus, DTS -HD Master Audio, and DTS-HD High Resolution Audio decoding and bit-stream output, as well as analog 7.1 channel output.
The BDP-S1000ES is available this August for about $700.
This will surely fit all the box sets I have....but not for that price.
Wtf.
Its almost unforgivably idiotic that they left out RS-232 control on this.
why would you buy this - i have a sony cd mega changer and i barely ever used that thing - DIGITAL MEDIA !!!
Yep, it would be cheaper, smaller, and more desirable to make a similar system full of hard drives that back up your BD, DVD, and CD media. You could even encrypt it so the data can't be pulled off.
Except the worries of piracy prevent major companies from delivering the products consumers demand. Then the minor companies come in and destroy the market share with products that don't spend all day worrying about piracy.
"why would you buy this"
Because it's big.
Because uncompressed blu-ray films are still to large to be easily ripped to hard drives (400 films is about 15TB).
Give it a few years and these will go the same way as your CD changer.
Are there even 400 BD disks available out there yet?
@ controlburn,
You're going to sacrifice at least one of those things if you got the PC route. Size, well yeah if you use 2TB hard drives you could just about fit it in a full tower case but it would cost a bomb. If you use 1TB drives you might be able to beat it out on cost, but then you've got to find 15-20 drives a home, and that means a BIG case with lots of fans. The upside is extensibility, the ability to add or replace new drives and of course you don't *need* 400 disc storage.
I'm not sure why you'd encrypt it.. if you put Blu-Ray drives on there it'd have to be a pretty determined thief with a) a lot of time and b) a lot of 64GB memory sticks.
Purely on convenience this wins out and will save you a bucketload on your electricity bill - how much do you think running that 10 drive array will cost you?
I heard that with changers you get lower quality components versus a single disc unit. I know this is an ES so I would hope this isn't true.
And as said before, we are moving toward totally digital media, disc's will be obsolete soon!
discs not disc's
-too late, grammar cops!
I had the DVD version of this, it was decent once you hooked a PS/2 keyboard up to it for text entry, maybe BD discs will automatically populate the title info...
Then, 1 TB HDD's hit the scene and I got a Drobo and ripped all those DVD's to DivX, I shared the Drobo via my PC through Windows Media Player (Library Sharing) and stream all that right to the XBOX 360, and onto the TV, works awesomely!
Moral of the story, now the changer collects dust.
Exactly. Who in the hell would buy this thing? It looks like the size of an entertainment center. Just build a central file server, and attach HTPC or nettop or Popcorn Hour or etc. to each TV.
Physical media is stupid.
when a giant sunspot causes all your harddrives to fry i will laugh at you with my blue rays!
Yeah, that PS2 keyboard input thing was great - when I got my teenager to do the dirty work! Sony couldn't write software if it's corporate life depended on it (maybe it does?), and the "OS" for the mega changer is a kludge/joke compared to other modern apps that deal with digital media.
I have the 400 disc DVD version, and it's absolutely the last time I'll get suckered into buying one of these clunkers. Like the guy above said, physical media is dead and so is Sony if they don't figure it out pretty soon.
Unfortunately I have over 800 DVD's. The time it would take to rip high quality DIVX files is not work it. Drobo's are great, but my time is too valuable to deal with that.
I am still jealous that you did it though :-P
@Izzy,
The time consuming part is loading the discs one by one into the PC.
I first ripped an ISO using multiple PC's, stored it all on the Drobo.
Then I wrote a program that did the following:
1.) Mount .ISO via Daemon Tools
2.) Slysoft AnyDVD man in the middle decryption.
3.) Transcode main movie using DivX on Q9550 @ 3.8GHz, 8GB, XP64.
4.) Delete source .ISO.
Rinse, Repeat.
I ripped all the menus and extras out, as I don't really care for these and the XBOX360's DivX implementation lacks the menu features, or I can't figure it out...
It only takes ~17 minutes per DVD, sadly this was before the latest DivX with CUDA support, I could've trimmed that down to ~10 minutes utilizing the GTX260 I have.
I had a few hiccups along the way, had to re-rip several DVD's since the .ISO's were deleted, but the entire process took only two weeks.
@Grammar Delinquent:
If there is ever a large enough coronal ejection to corrupt data stored on modern hard drives, then I'm sure your Blu-ray discs will either be melted or corrupted as well. Hell, I think our media collections will be the least of our worries if such an event were to occur, especially since practically all electronics and power grids will be fried.
I guess Since it holds 400 discs, if Sony prices it for less than the cost of 400 players, people will think it's a bargain.
IT'S A $400 BRD player + a turntable and disc retrieval mechanism.
Let's try $600 for a 'fair price'. Sheesh.
LOL at Sony thinking someone actually owns 400 BRD movies.
I'm pretty close to 400 BD's.... Still I wouldnt buy this.
How about "dumb" one for $400 that you plug in USB or TCP/IP(better, then you could have it in the closet) to the PS3, or other Sony Blu-ray player to drive it. So you have one XMB/remote to manage all. Make the thing daisy-chainable so you can have a few seen as one large system. Allow it to auto-generate the local database and thumbnails using cddb, imdb, amazon, etc., to get all possible information about all discs without ANY user input.
Then, give me a small USB box for the PS3 that has a coax input and a M-Card Cablecard slot and tru2way, and bring your DVR software to the US.
That is all Sony.
Why waste the money? Just rip it to a hard drive.
Because it would take about 3000 hours to rip 400 discs, and require about 12TB of drive space.
Exactly. 1 blu-ray is only 13gb. Get a HTPC with 5 1tb drives and still come out spending less.
1 blu-ray is only 13gb
/facepalm
if you just rip the movie and strip out all the special content a blu-ray will average about 20gigs. I've seen from 15 - 30 gigs though.
And what about those who like the special features or just want to rip and go?
I was working up the gumption of buying the CD version of this just before MP3s hit. That lesson alone makes me wary of this solution again, and for the price, forget it.
Hook me up, and I'll tell you how to fix the economy.
Physical media aside... In this day and age, does Sony seriously expect us search through 400 movies using A/V controls from the 80s?! Am I expected to drill through the options on that tiny screen using the dial? Get with the times, Sony!
no, Sony are expecting your installer to hook it up using RS-232 and wire it into your home system controller. The front panel is only there for occasional use. Just like it is on an AV receiver.
The fact the product has the letters ES on the front should be an indication that they didn't release this product for typical Engadget readers who have an entire home theater budget of $500. Head over to Electronic House and you'll see the homes of plenty of potential buyers.
I have a Drobo - and it holds a lot more than 400 movies :-) Much cheaper too.
Movies are files, and are they much happier on hard drives than on little silver platters.
C.
I prefer keeping my dvd's on the shelf. I would need to stack about 3-4 of these 400disk changers to fit the collection.
Believe it or not, I have the time to get up, put a new disc in my player, and push play. I keep my movies orginized by the letter of which in the alphabet so i can find them quikckly even.
ya.
Wow, it would cost like ten times the price of the device itself to fill it with Blu-Rays.
I listed my entire HD-DVD and Blu-Ray library on eBay. I have over 200(?) DVD movies that I haven't touched in over 2 years. Physical media is dead!
Are there even 400 Blu-ray movies out yet?
at least 1800 according to Amazon
I have owned several megadvd changers and will never go back to them after my last one died on me twice in less than a year. Sony was so cheap that they wanted me to pay for the shipping for the repair each time. It just caused a cool $75 each way, each time.
Lets count the ways that this things fails shall we?
1 -- Way overpriced. A 400 Disc CD changer is about $200, and the only thing different is the CD drive vs. the Blu Ray drive. Call the Blu Ray Player $400, and this stupid thing STILL costs more than 3x what it should.
2 -- You could do it cheaper and better with a media server. Nobody has 400 Blu Rays now, so MOST of the spaces in here would be filled with DVDs. If you throw 5 1 TB hard drives in your PC you will have a much more well organized, much cleaner, much easier, and drastically cheaper solution.
3 -- Did I mention that a 400 disc changer is useless? Unless they have something in there scanning the disc metadata and cataloging all of them in there, it is going to be a huge headache scanning through the discs. It is infinitely easier to go pick up the box off the shelf, and put it in the player (assuming that you insist on using physical media, that is).
This thing is just more fail than I can really handle.
Yes. Metadata is the kicker here and why disk based solutions still make more sense.
Despite all of the whining about how long it would take you to rip a 1000 disc collection
all at once, it would be far less trouble than dealing with one of these relatively crude
DVD jukeboxes. ANY media center software (even mythtv) is less trouble to deal with
than a jukebox interface that's not really designed managing the metadata associated
with 400 pieces of media.
Blu-Rays have the meta-data stored on them already.
Pop Iron Man in a PS3 it comes up as Iron-man (even has a logo)
In the PR it even states it also grabs info off Gracenote. Dunno how well that would work with DVD's.
pointless
does it support DivX or HDdvd´s ?
No SACD support?
If you need an SACD jukebox, then you want Sony's DVP-CX995V.
WOW News??? Didn't realize optical media is still relevant. Guess I missed the memo.
Okay quick question about the "Physical Media is dead" stuff.
Is this because:
This is a tech site
This is an American tech site
both of the above?
Because most folks I know don't know how to rip DVD's, and services like Hulu n Netflix are US only.
Meaning for most of the world physical media is rather relevant.
(I can't give a rented streaming video as a Xmas gift either)
Re: the "physical media is dead" crowd
Just ignore them, they're morons. Radio didn't replace physical media. TV didn't either. Neither did cable television, and the internet has a long way to go before it's capable of delivering the peak quality currently available on Blu-ray and audio formats like SACD or DTS -HD Master Audio.
Notice that most of those pronouncing physical media kaput are relying on either rips (from physical media) or torrents (from someone else who ripped physical media). Also notice how complicated the ripping process can be, and that it looses a lot of the original data - especially surround audio channels.
Streaming digital media has its place - I love streaming Netflix and last.fm internet radio - but when I want quality sound or picture, I fire up the SACD player or the DVD and projector. (I'm currently waiting to pick up the new OPPO universal BD/SACD player)
Not to mention netflix and hulu dont compare in video quality. The "physical media is dead" crowd is probably happy with youtube quality.
Ive seen mkv and other "1080p" sources, and they do not compare to bluray on a high end 60" plasma