Comments on: Big Blu: Sony's 200-disc Blu-ray changer, plus Blu-ray burner and 500GB HDD

Sony has announced the HES-V1000, a 200-disc Blu-ray changer and burner, complete with a 500GB internal hard drive and an Ethernet port that pulls movie and music information off the internet.

[iamwho]

Way too big

Disclaimer: I'm a Sony fan and own a 400-disc DVD changer. That said, I definitely don't need a changer that's as tall as my Polk speakers. For sure I don't have the room to accommodate that monster. The better (and harder) engineering trick would be to take that Blu-Ray tower and cram it into something SMALLER than my current changer; for my part I'll sacrifice 100 discs capacity in exchange for a 1 TB hard drive. Memo to Sony: bring back the auto-flip and easy play features while you're at it.

[jimothyGator]

Blu Ray title information

Why don't they include information about the disc (title, cast, director, genre,
etc.) on the disc itself? I've thought it was a mistake not to do so on CDs, but
that was 20 years ago, so it's somewhat excusable. But surely there's enough
room on a 25GB disc for a couple hundred bytes of metadata.

[kipdaddy]

Missing Firewire Input

I'm surprised nobody mentioned that there is no Firewire / i.Link Cable/IEEE 1394 input. Wasn't Sony one of the first to promote IEEE 1394 technology? Wouldn't you want to be able to connect your digital camcorder to this? Is it DRM issue?
To me, at the price I think it's ridiculous that it's not there. Unless the Firewire port is hiding under a front panel and the reviewer didn't see it.

[szhjcn]

Giga- Ethernet

Surely this should support Giga-Ehternet? This would improve the bandwidth to stream movie content around the house. Even better would be 2 x Giga ports in order that people could keep the media streaming network separate.

Also as alredy mentioned, a firewire connector.

Will this have a SCART added for the European market? If yes can control signals (to start & stop recording) be used over this?

This has lots of potential, with these additions it would be an interesting system.

[markdoiron]

Changers are Dinosaurs

Changers are dinosaurs. Too much chance for mechanical failure (both the changer, as well as the disk medium). What we need is a box with a huge hard drive (and maybe room for a couple more!). Then let us rip the content to it from the CDs/DVDs/HD DVDs and BRDs. Then let that great and mysterious box stream the content to appropriate devices around the house. The disk is the delivery medium, that's all. And this box is ready to step into a future of content delivery via the Internet. --mark d.

[Ijedh]

Nice idea, obscene price

I own TWO Sony 400-disc changers; they cost me less than a grand put together. That's about as much as I would be willing to pay for this Blu-Ray changer. $3,500? Nah.

[c.Lake]

What IS the point of this monstrosity?

Why in the hell would I buy this? Anybody? Well, Let me offer a different
scenario, with the very same out come for thousand of dollars cheaper than
this crap.

1.) A Blu-Ray Drive -- $500
2.) A Computer -- $600 or free
3.) 2TB drive -- $650 - $700
4.) CSS unlocking software -- $25

Done.

(That's a saving of $2300 to $1600 dollars. Duh. Are Sony executives high
when they come-up with these ideas? Do they screen for intelligence during
the interview process, or do they just shave a bunch of monkey and put them
in business suits?)

[tom.grounds]

I would prefer a server I could place in closet...

I agree with pretty much all of the other posts. I would prefer a server in my data closet with my other servers that would serve up my dvd's in my media room (or other rooms in the house). Now, that said... if I were to consider this beast... here is what I need to know -

Any further technical specs available?

I have been looking for a server to manage my DVD library - I have over 1000 DVD?s and would love to know if this is a viable solution for me. I have been looking at the kalidescape system but I?m not ready to spend $51,000 for a solution. This seems like a nice compomise.

Some of the questions that I have are:

01) Did they think through expansion and growth? This only holds 200 DVD?s - will they allow for daisy-chaining or add-on components to the server to accomodate more than 200 DVDs? (Sony missed the boat with their 400 DVD player by limiting the number that can be chained together) and 500gig isn?t much - will there be the ability to expand the HDD?

02) Does the DVD player do any upscaling of the image to 1080p? or will they leave this off so that people purchase blu-ray replacements for their existing movies?

03) What is the user experience like when browsing/searching for movies? Will I be able to search by actor, awards, genre, title, play time, etc? The indicate that they grab meta-data off of the internet for each movie in the player - is the UI easy enough to search based on that data?

04) Streaming Video? Will this eventually allow for the streaming of DVD?s and other video to other devices on the network? It?s great to have a place for all your DVD?s, but you don?t solve the problem of wanting to watch something in a different room than where this device is located. Also, watching multiple programs. The new Receivers allow for 2nd room streaming - will this do that as well?

05) Environmental sound - it looks like a tall tower - I hope that the fans and drives are silent - This deivce has to be near your audio equipment for cable connections - what is the sound level of the internal fans, drives, etc. and will it be distracting since you can?t put it off in a closet someplace.

06) Loading of DVD?s and gathering meta-data: Is this loaded and stored on the internal hard drive? or will will device always go to the internet each time you access a movie?

07) Meta-data management/Configuration management - is this done via a web page from anywhere on the network? will I be able to see if I own a movie from any PC on my netowrk (or externally) when I have them all loaded in the device, or will I have to search for it on the device to determine I own it or not?

Well, those are just a few of my initial questions
Tom.