I'm looking for some advice from those of you that own multiple Megachangers (300+ Capacity) and if you have any organizing tricks that you use. Right now I have 3 Sony Megachangers (2 that handle flippers. one that does not.) I have started trying to organize close to 1000 dvds and don't know if I am up to the task. So far I have earmarked one player as child friendly (tv shows, comedy, disney etc.) I have tried to sort most by genre and a few by actor, director, box sets, music and right now i have discs everywhere lol. I thought it was a good idea when I started out but now I'm not so sure. Thanks in advance for your input!
Chris
dollfins1
dvdtalk
RDYoung
09-30-04, 11:06 AM
Wow. Pretty big task. I would guess that regardless, organization would be the key. You'd almost have to alphabatize everything, and place where they were located next to them. I don't know...My big project was putting custom covers on everything and transferring the movies to thinpaks to save space. This will be an even bigger project, I'd think. Honestly, so long as everything is labeled as far as where everything is, I would say do what you're doing. I don't think I would separate anything out by genre or actor, except for maybe the television stuff and the kids/family stuff, like you're doing.
Good luck!
robyn
JsphOfArimethia
09-30-04, 07:48 PM
This is something I'm going through myself too. Although I only have the one 400 disc player. There's a few threads over on the AVS forums. Most people seem to gravitate towards the Cinemar software. My experience with the trial wasn't all warm and fluffy, but that was on a Windows ME laptop.
http://www.cinemaronline.com/dvdlobbypro.html
Check out their forums. There's some good info in there.
Then there's all the people who are using the Pronto. Search through AVS for that. I'd do the searches myself but I'm on dial-up here at work.
dollfins1
09-30-04, 08:15 PM
Thanks for the replies! I finally managed to get all of the discs in the players in a more orderly fashion than they came out lol. i'm still not 100% happy with it but it will have to do for the time. i left a few slots for movies i expect to buy to fill in collections. i broke it down like this (more or less)
player 1 (holds 301 flippers): television, comedy, childrens, classics, drama - i ran out of space so a few comedy escaped to player 2
player 2 (holds 301 flippers) double features, horror, steven king movies, arnold, travolta, stallone, and mel gibson collections, some comedy, some scifi,
player 3 (holds 400 single sided non flippers) music, superbits, criterions, non flipper boxsets and 2 disc se's, b horror, trilogys, quadrilogies, action, adventure, some scifi, tom hanks, tom cruise and war movies.
as i said i hope i never have to do the whole collection again. i will settle for a good spreadsheet or will check into the software mentioned above. now more fun to enter 90% of the titles that don't scan automatically into the changers indexing feature. should take me another week lol
again thanks for the advice!
:)
JsphOfArimethia
09-30-04, 09:37 PM
Originally posted by dollfins1
now more fun to enter 90% of the titles that don't scan automatically into the changers indexing feature. should take me another week lol :) I just did that myself earlier this week. Plugging in a keyboard is highly recommended. Even with the keyboard though it still took a couple hours.
And just so you know my current sort method, it's a very plain spreadsheet with nothing but the titles and the slot # they're in. I was feeling creative one day and had the idea of making a report in DVD Profiler to print out and keep as a coffee table sort of book. I just haven't got around to it. Procrastination is my first love. :)
Tsar Chasm
10-01-04, 02:24 PM
Oh man, I read about a component that would allow you to plug in up to 4 changers and allow you to control everything from it.
I'll see if I can find something for you.
My 300+1 changer sits in my garage as I outgrew it and couldn't remember what was in there and on the shelf.
Tsar Chasm
10-01-04, 02:29 PM
Here you go. Escient makes one that manages 3 megachangers.
http://www.escient.com/fireballdvdm100.html
I bet it is expensive :)
JsphOfArimethia
10-01-04, 02:36 PM
^ $2000 :) I had forgotten about that bad boy. I know some people love it. Others hate it. To each their own I guess. I just passed on it as an option cause of the price. Too rich for my blood.
dollfins1
10-01-04, 03:10 PM
wow! i didn't realize that unit (the fireball) was that expensive! maybe one day when the technology comes down in price i would consider buying something like that. one of my units (sony dvp-cx875p) has started eating my dvds. its gonna have to go in for service. at least it's still under warranty. the other 2 (another dvp-cx875p and a dvp-cx985v) are working fine. i've been entering titles manually all day. i am surprised more dvds don't have the disc info included.
JsphOfArimethia
10-01-04, 04:16 PM
Do you have any gaps between discs in your players? I have the 777ES, which is just the ES version of your 985, and it seemed to me to be thrown off in reading disc info on the Load whenever it came across gaps. So I just loaded all, hit the Load button, went the through the manual input process, and then took out the dvd's where I wanted spaces. It helped a little bit. Not too much though. I still had to do a bunch by hand. And of course, user experience may vary. :)
It could've just been a placebo effect for me. :D
dollfins1
10-01-04, 04:51 PM
no problems with the 985. it is a lot faster than the 875 (quieter too!). i wish i would have purchased 3 of the 985 but already had the 2 older 875. the only differences (besides capacity) are that the 875's automatically flip 2 sided dvds by pushing a button, and the 985 plays sacd as well. the major problem i'm having is that my older 875 (300+1) has developed a taste for my dvds lol. that is why i will send it out for warranty service next week. i really don't mind all the typing but was just curious why more dvds don't have the disc info included. it couldn't take up more than a few megs. some really bad dvds have it while some really good (and expensive) ones don't
JsphOfArimethia
10-01-04, 05:07 PM
Originally posted by dollfins1
it couldn't take up more than a few megs. some really bad dvds have it while some really good (and expensive) ones don't totally. i'm with you there. and just from burning a few dvds from my comp, i'm pretty sure it only takes about 1 meg. my another annoyance is having to abbreviate some of the titles.
Once Upon/ Mexico
Good,Bad, & Ugly
From / Earth / Moon
grrrr. that and the hang on the layer change are the two things that irk me most about this player.
small quibbles though. my shelves are now free for more dvds. :)
Buy: