Sony DVP-C650D DVD Player

• 5-disc changer DVD player
• Sony Precision Drive System with Active Tilt Control
• Built-in Dolby Digital 5.1-channel decoder and virtual 3-D surround modes
• Headphone jack with volume control
• Compatible with MegaStorage changers for DVD/CD changers

I've owned this DVD carousel for about two years, and I bought it because, at the time, it seemed to be the highest quality carousel around. I will discuss features/issues, then ownership experience.

On the feature side, I have found this player very inconvenient compared to my Denon CD carousel. It has a seperate button for disc exchange and opening the tray, so if you are playing something and decide to exchange a disc and hit the open button, you will take the currently playing disc, stop it from playing, and move it to the fore. Of course, I habitually hit the open button, and this drives me absolutely nuts. Given that the open button is about three times the size, I'm thinking I'm not the only one with this mental block. Wouldn't it have been easier to just have one button, and assume if something was playing you didn't want to stop it?

The remote is another area where this is an annoying unit. There is no "next disc" button. So if you have multiple discs in, and want to switch them, you better know which disc is in which slot. They have a feature called "disc explorer" which is supposed to solve this, but I have never been able to get it to recognize the names correctly off of DVDs, and it doesn't work at all with CDs. This is just annoying, and a bad design choice.

Other than these features, it is really fairly basic. Because it doesn't stand out, I rated it fairly low for features/design.

Where it really deserves a lower grade from me is that I have owned this about two years, and it has died already. My CD changer lasted almost 10 years with considerably more use. There is no excuse for a DVD/CD laser going out in two years from a home machine these days. I won't be buying another Sony product involving a laser again.

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I havn't utilized all the features yet, so I gave it 4-4.5 stars. I have an Onkyo receiver 575 that has a built-in digital decoder so that wasn't most important consideration when I bought this product. For the price range, 400-550, for a multi-disc CD/DVD player, I narrowed it down to this Sony and an Onkyo DV-C600. Having an Onkyo receiver, I really wanted to select the Onkyo CD/DVD player. It was important for me to be able to randomly shuffle and play CDs. The Onkyo doesn't do this, that narrowed it down to the Sony for me. When I have company or a small party, I don't like interrupting conversation to see what I can play next. While I don't need all the hook-ups now, the Sony provides more than enough to connect to this player. The Onkyo provided just ample connections. I am passing the sound through the Optical digital Out to my Receiver which then converts to 5:1 output to my 6 speaker system. I never realized what a piece of garbage my old CD player was. The sound and depth is great. I can't vouch for the decoder on the SONY player. I see a lot of comments elsewhere of not playing CD-R's. Sony makes it clear as well as most others, that this is not supported so don't expect it. If you do, check out the Marantz VC5000..., I think it will play CD-R's. As far as the Video features, I have no complaints. I'm using the S-video out to my 50 inch TV. It pretty cool to rotate the speed from the remote and easy to jump back/forth to scenes. The remote has a glowing color in the dark but not bright enough to really see, minor drawback. At first I thought the player was having all kind of video problems because it would get stuck on certain scenes and you have to skip a chapter to get past it. The problem often lies with the DVD itself. Blockbuster doesn't clean them or might have scratches, so check your DVD before playing it, clean it yourself. A thorough review of the instructions is necessary but I don't view that as a drawback if that means there a more features than most other players. For the price/features you won't be disappointed. You may find it cheaper elsewhere...but...look at there return policy, it will likely be 7 days (and you never heard of them). Amazon gives you a no questions 30 day policy. The comfort was worth the [cost].

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I have owned this DVD player for less than 2 years. Within the first 6 months it was in the shop for repairs to the laser. Now it will run for about half of the movie and start skipping and eventually stop playing all together. I have noticed that it gets very hot, and if I turn it off for a while it will work fine once again. This gets very annoying if you are in the middle of a good movie. Warrenty is out of date after a year.

The DVD player is also very sensitive to the littlest scratches. I can play the same movie on a portable DVD player without any problems.

I bought this player for all the features, and I thought Sony would put a better product together. It also looks good with my other components.

I am now looking for another DVD player, and I am probably not going to buy a Sony.

Avoid this player at all cost.

Be aware that this player comes in alot of Sony stereo sets.

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First of all, people, please keep in mind that this DVD player model is 5 years old! Pre-MP3, pre-DVD+/-R, etc. If you bought this within the last year, you have only yourself to blame if it doesn't have all the formats you want. Research, research, research!

Home Theatre Magazine used this DVD player as their benchmark for years. However, I also know that Sony started manufacturing the units in Malaysia later on in its life, and quality went down. I have had mine for over 5 years now, with ZERO problems. It's so feature-rich, that even after all this time, I still don't know all the things it can do.

Some people have complained about the CD quality playback, and I honestly cannot say that the sound out of the C650-D is great, but it's good . I tend not to listen with all my concentration mind you, so I'm not the best judge in this regard.

If you are thinking of buying a new DVD player, I would consider a newer model -one with progressive scan/480p output if you have a DTV or HDTV. I'm probably going to buy a new player in the next year, but only because the C650D is lagging behind the times and can't handle the newer audio/video formats we are accustomed to.

I've owned this player for 10 years (since 1999) and it still continues to work great. We watch Netflix movies on it all the time, and rarely is there a disc that it cannot read. Video and audio quality are both great, on standard def and hi-def screens. I was worried the quaily of the movies would suffer when we upgraded to a HDTV, but thankfully they still look good. It's too onld to have and HDMI connection, but has pretty much every other type of audio and video connection.

One feature we really like that we wish our other player had is the ability to show a countdown timer on the front panel screen. The only way to have the countdown timer on our other player is to have it display as an overlay on the television. Another feature we like is that you can press the Play button on the remote and that will turn the DVD player on, which is another feature lacking from our other player.

It also has a feature which is supposed to read the disc and put the title in the front panel screen, but the problem is most DVDs don't include the title information, so it's mostly useless.

I can't really comment on the remote since I use a programmable universal remote.