Home > Consumer Reviews > Sony DVP-NC85H/B HDMI/CD Progressive Scan 5-Disc DVD Changer, Black

This is a no frills DVD/CD player. I have one in the house to play DVD's & CD's in a second bedroom.
I bought this one (used) for less than a hundred dollars. I use it in my garage workshop. I wanted
to play CD's there and could not justify the expense of a Bose system. It is plenty adequate. The only
thing, I wish it had the ability to shuffle play the CD's.

Wow, this is a great DVD player. The up-converting on DVDs looks fantastic, way better than what our TV does. And there are a ton of great features, such as it will remember where you're at on a disc even after switching over to another disc in the tray and then switching back. Then there's the instant replay feature, which lets you jump back a few seconds to catch some missed dialog. And it must be buffered, because I don't notice any disc seek delay when doing this. Then there is fast play, which speeds up the movie a bit, with sound, so you can get through those boring scenes quicker. On the flip side, there's slow play, for... I don't know, maybe so that the kids' DVD will last a little longer giving you more time to rest. This player is also about half the height of our previous 5-disc player, giving more room in the stereo cabinet. The only downside so far is that the remote doesn't have buttons to access each disc slot like our previous one, it just has a Disc Skip to move to the next one. Our previous player was a Sony as well, and the remote for it still works with the new player, so we just programmed the buttons into our universal remote. Oh, and the only other thing is that when up-converting is in progress, a blue light on the front of the player is illuminated. It was a tad distracting at first, but we got used to it pretty quick. Otherwise, just put a little piece of electrical tape over the light. Anyway, to sum up, this is a great DVD player, definitely worth getting.

Picture is great and works great -- only thing is I did have a disc get stuck one and had to take the cover off to get it out!

I bought this DVD changer in October '07 and by July '08 it has started to die as described in other reviews. It takes forever to change chapters, it won't play legitimate disks I have recorded from tv, and it even refuses to play some store bought concert DVDs dropping back to the menu after a five minute stall. I refuse to have another Sony product in my home from this day on. There was a time Sony meant quality, but this is a heap of excrement! Add to that what Sony has done to people's computers with their copy protection malwear, I would say they are the lowest form of business out there and should be avoided at all costs!

I have had this unit for just about two months now. Video is fine from the DVDs. I am not quite the A/V connoisseur as some reviewers are - I'm significantly less discriminating. But it looks as good to me as any I have seen. I don't generally use it for anything else - just watching DVDs, though it does claim to play a lot of other types of disk. The things that I dislike about this DVD player are as follows:

1) The unit is extremely slow. Powering on, and especially when starting any DVD. It says "loading..." for much longer than any other DVD player I have used. Perhaps this is required in a unit that plays very high quality, but to me it is just annoying. Some DVDs take 30 seconds or more just to load and show anything at all. Too long in my opinion!

2) Another reviewer mentioned how difficult it is to see the numbers of the slots when the tray is open - and that's an understatement! Maybe it is these "old eyes" of mine, but where my entertainment center is there is no direct light shining down, and I can't tell what number is next to the slots in the tray without shining a pocket flashlight on it. No exaggeration - that is the truth! Also each slot number is between two slots and I have mistaken which slot I used on more than one occasion.

3) The remote control is terrible. I mean really bad! Thin and light, I will give it credit for at least having all the necessary buttons in logical places in the remote. (The Panasonic HT-830 I just trashed had the absolute worst layout for a remote I have ever seen. NO Open/close Tray button on top, but instead it was listed in the middle of its 100+ buttons and required a SHIFT press!). The Sony remote for this player for some reason requires that I press every button twice. Changed batteries 3 times and I am only 7 feet away, but it literally takes two presses for each button. Also it is not universal - can't control any other device.

While this is certainly a good player as far as the "neat" features it has - especially being able to swap out DVDs with the tray open WHILE you are watching another DVD - that's a killer feature that I love called Exchange! But the not-so-great remote and the excruciatingly SLOW loading times costs it 2 stars, and give this player a grand total of 3 stars.

For the price, though, it is a good deal.