Sorry...but along those same line we have other threads going on like Rocket Speakers and SV Subs that are even larger. Again, they would also not deserve a forum. If you notice, on this site, most forum areas are GENERAL. I am sorry...but not enough out their for these type of products to make a forum dedicated to it. At this time...this is not a need to fill.

Nuff said.
But now that this is up to ONE HUNDRED AND ONE, maybe we can still go for a summary or FAQ?
Randy

That sounds good to me...but I am sorry to say I have no time to make such a thing. :)

Any takers?
Randy

I nominate Jon :)

All this talk of messing with the thread borders on blasphemy. The blood of our wars pumps through these 100+ pages.

How many Entre owners could not make the sojourn? How many perished along the way, awaiting some word of upgrade? How many fell prey to the dreaded slot 222? How many remain hypnotized by the vision of ten duplicate discs in the Entre Guide, as the laughter of Kenwood thundered in the background, amid uproarious shouts of "Software Update?" How many Entres hit the Graveyard Called eBay?

If you aspire to be a true Entre owner, then you must suffer through these pages. Feel the pain, baby. Relive how Jeff of Kenwood was run out of this thread on a rail, as he tried to bring tidings of peace to a blood-soaked crowd. Watch the efforts of those who tried to bring peace dashed asunder. The politics, the intrigue, and finally . . . the liberation.

Then, and only then, will you be suitable for the answers you seek. 100+ pages? We scoff. We wrote those pages, from the inkwells of our veins. Read them, much like One Stab read all those Ludlow letters in Legends Of The Fall. This thread is the legend . . . only those worthy may participate.

Nick :cool:

Two days ago I bought DV 5050M and spent hours trying to install
NetNamerDV on my PC (Windows 2000). I very carefully followed
the installation instructions, but the program just does not install!
The setup quits after popping up "An unexpected setup error has
occured" message. Did anybody have the same problem?

I have tried to work around this problem by unzipping the file
NetNamerDV.CAB first, and then proceeding with installation.
In that case, the program installs fine (as it seems),
but when I try to run it, it gives me "out of memory" error, and
still starts, but in some weird locked mode, with all buttons not functional.

I would appreciate a lot any advice.
:confused:

I have it working under windows xp. don't see why 2k would be a problem. didn't do anything special either.

any chance you have an old version of the software? I downloaded mine after registering on their website.

I can't wait for the upgrade of the entre!!!! I am so looking forward to seeing it serve up music from the network.

Oh yeah, the multi-player support would be nice too :)

Any word when fixed dv-5900 will be available???????? Is Jeff's ghost perhaps lingering around???????

Slocko,

It wasn't clear to me that the Entre updates would allow it to stream audio from the network. Then again, I've already misread the release from Kenwood once, so I wouldn't be surprised if I missed this one, too.

What I recall was that the Entre would be controllable via TCP/IP (the network, your LAN). There's a difference!

BTW, Now that I'm selling my Turtle Beach Audiotron (if you want to buy it, let me know), I would simply love for the Entre to be able to stream audio from my LAN (as well as be able to play more than the stock iRadio stations).

Originally posted by RF1031
Nuff said.
But now that this is up to ONE HUNDRED AND ONE, maybe we can still go for a summary or FAQ?
Randy

100 pages? Mine only shows 67...go to User Profile and set your 'Default Posts per Thread:' to 30...that helps <grin>.

As you hopefully already know there is an FAQ on the kenwood site. We referenced it numerous times. They do seem to be adding to it but it is certainly a censored version of what one of us may put in it. Still it seems we could send them request of things to add or they could take even more (they are taking some) initiative to add more from this thread.

Nick's summary was pretty LOL funny and tongue-in-cheek, in case new readers don't know Nick. For most the system (Entre+DVDplayer) is working well. For some there appears to be some hardware issues or a sequence of events/steps that cause some disk issues (Nick that was 255 BTW x'FF').

I think many are happy that Kenwood has finally followed through with their multi-changer support. If you could be a fly on the wall in some of their meetings it would be very interesting. Also the recent survey was very interesting and insightful. They certainly are listening to this thread and other sources. (i.e. enhanced menus/search, larger harddrives, networked video, wireless Axcess, etc). They ARE thinking about us loyal customers and giving us some options such as possibly paying to get some enhancements...vs just a new Entre II and leaving us in the dust. Survey is just a survey I understand but come on...it is a critical step from them.

It may be an idea where a new FAQ (locked) thread is created with various authors contributing to different aspects. I have seen this done in this forum or others. i.e. Different aspects: Using Entre with DVD-Audio, Using Media Manager, Hidden menu options and what they do and don't do, Quick ways of doing look ups, Ways of and pitfalls of connecting to the internet, Customizing the Entre Groups, Sirius radio (speed, tips), Using Axcess with Entre....

Kenwood website: Networked Entertainment Tips & Install (manuals too) (http://www.kenwoodusa.com/group_info.jsp?categoryTypeId=130&productId=2357&productTypeId=147)

Kenwood website: Networked Entertainment (Media Manager at bottom) FAQ (http://www.kenwoodusa.com/group_info.jsp?categoryTypeId=110&productTypeId=147&productId=2358)

Sorry I meant, "looking forward to seeing if it can serve up music from the network".

If not, at least a beefed up media manager so I can easily transfer my mp3s to the hard drive.

I heard the next version of the Audiotron might have a tv interface? That should be interesting. Hopefully Jon you will give it a test drive and report how it stacks up against the entre in the interface category.

Originally posted by JonDeutsch
Slocko,

It wasn't clear to me that the Entre updates would allow it to stream audio from the network. Then again, I've already misread the release from Kenwood once, so I wouldn't be surprised if I missed this one, too.

What I recall was that the Entre would be controllable via TCP/IP (the network, your LAN). There's a difference!

BTW, Now that I'm selling my Turtle Beach Audiotron (if you want to buy it, let me know), I would simply love for the Entre to be able to stream audio from my LAN (as well as be able to play more than the stock iRadio stations).

Originally posted by slocko
I have it working under windows xp. don't see why 2k would be a problem. didn't do anything special either.

any chance you have an old version of the software? I downloaded mine after registering on their website.

Slocko, thank you for your reply. I did download the newest 1.31
version of NetNamerDV, though.

I have managed to install it yesterday! But in order to do that
I had to rename all libraries on my computer that the installation
was checking. After that it installed fine. Whoever wrote the
installation program, obviousely did not do a very good job.
Well, it works now. Maybe, I will keep my 5050M after all.:)

XP does have some application compatibility modes so it might have been able to trick the application into installing.

Netnamer is the worst piece of software ever written, but it does it's limited job.

Got e-mail from Kenwood today. Glad they are using our registrations now...hopefully more so in the future. Info is what we have learned from people doing this procedure anyway but I didn't realize there are 14 new streams.


Subject: Sirius Satellite News from Kenwood Sovereign

Dear Kenwood Sovereign Entré owner:

SIRIUS Satellite has created 14 brand-new streams that offer even more programming variety via your Kenwood Sovereign Entré Entertainment Hub. By updating the server used to tune SIRIUS streams through your Entré, SIRIUS is offering you 8 new music streams, 3 new news streams and 3 new entertainment streams.

This server update also allows your Entré to now display the proper SIRIUS name for each stream, instead of the general description names that were displayed before. For example: Entré now displays "Modern Rock from SIRIUS Satellite Radio" as "Octane from SIRIUS Satellite Radio".

This recent server update is the reason why you may have been experiencing problems tuning in a SIRIUS stream within the past week. To remedy the situation, you must rebuild your Entré’s list of Internet radio stations. This procedure is very simple and only takes a couple of minutes:
1. Press the RADIO button to enter the radio mode.
2. Once the RADIO guide appears on the GUI, press the OPTIONS button on the remote to bring up the OPTIONS menu.
3. Select the GET RADIO INFO option.
4. Select the INTERNET option. When the WARNING dialog box appears, select OK.
5. Entré will rebuild its Internet radio library with the proper SIRIUS Satellite URLs. When it is finished, the RADIO guide will appear on the GUI.

If you have any difficulty with this procedure, please contact us at (800) KENWOOD, or via the Internet at http://www.kenwoodusa.com/entrequestions

Sincerely,

The Kenwood Sovereign Team

I got the email twice. That's what happens when you're anal enough to buy two Entres.

Ownership has its privileges.

Nick :cool:

Originally posted by ScottF200
Got e-mail from Kenwood today. Glad they are using our registrations now...hopefully more so in the future. Info is what we have learned from people doing this procedure anyway but I didn't realize there are 14 new streams.

I got the same email, but after following the instructions I don't seem to have downloaded any new radio stations, talk, entertainment or otherwise. To me, they look like the same 60 music stations as before, with different names. Am I missing something?

--
Umberto B

Originally posted by Nick Satullo
Relive how Jeff of Kenwood was run out of this thread on a rail, as he tried to bring tidings of peace to a blood-soaked crowd.

Hm, in my well-worn, dog-eared copy of the thread, Jeff never answered a single one of my direct questions, which were all pretty simple as I recall. Not even an "I can't comment on that issue."

I doubt very much that it was his fault, however -- I suspect that Kenwood wouldn't let him contribute freely. That's a darned shame, because if he had been able to say that the Entre and changer update was coming, I would have kept the Entre (instead of returning it) and Kenwood would have kept another sale. Oh, well. That's what happens when a manufacturer refuses to talk to their customers.

Originally posted by DigitalGriffin
Well,

My Kenwood DV-5900M just bit the bullet this weekend. First the eject stopped working. Then it was returning disc to random slots. Now it refuses to recognize any disc. All this after 1 year 3 months of frustrated use.

This leaves me in quite a predicament because of the entre which is so full of bugs and problems, I'm sick of that too.

April fix or not, I'll NEVER EVER BUY A KENWOOD PRODUCT AGAIN. I should have known better when I bought $50 pair of Kenwood headphones that the headband busted on after 2 months semi-regular use.

DigitalGriffin,

Get the unit replaced ASAP. I had EXACTLY the same problems you had recognizing discs, eject and etc. I felt that the problems were deeper than a replacement unit alone so held out until I was in the same boat you currently are. When it stopped reading any discs I figured I had no other choice.

Kenwood replaced my unit with a brand new one and the difference is day and night. Eject still works 2 months later, no issues with disc recognition have appeared and layer changes are hugely improved.

I don't know exactly what changed between the two as far as QC, firmware or other changes but you can't compare the two at all.

The worst part of the change was dealing with the disc swap. I ended up getting a wooden rod and using the clear blanks that you get on CDR spindles and loading all the discs on the rod and standing upright in the corner while I waited for the new unit. Kenwood was very prompt sending the replacement to the service center but the service center didn't get in contact with me for almost 2 weeks after they had it. I wish Kenwood would have simply sent it directly to me so that it would have gotten to me quicker as well as saving a 45 minute drive to the nearest authorised repair center but that was the worst of the experience.

Get the unit replaced and then decide what you think about it after the new one arrives. If you still hate it send me a PM and I may be interested in a 2nd one since I only have about 30 slots left 'till mine is full. :)

Originally posted by Turin2006
I got the same email, but after following the instructions I don't seem to have downloaded any new radio stations, talk, entertainment or otherwise. To me, they look like the same 60 music stations as before, with different names. Am I missing something?


I only see the 60 as well and just tried the download again to make sure...and rebooted.

I tried to question this in the link provided in the e-mail...but a few minutes later I got this returned (doh!) so I send that to the normal Kenwood e-mail on their FAQ site ( EntreReports@kenwoodusa.com ) :

>>>>>
Your message
To: entrereportsfb
Subject: Message from Kenwoodusa.com: Entre Questions
Sent: Mon, 17 Feb 2003 19:08:52 -0800
did not reach the following recipient(s):
entrereportsfb on Mon, 17 Feb 2003 19:26:34 -0800
The message could not be delivered because you do not have create
permissions on this folder or it is only available to folder owners at this
time
The MTS-ID of the original message is: c=us;a=
;p=kenwood;l=KENMAIL0302180326CH62KR3S
MSEXCH:MSExchangeMTA: DOMINGUEZ:KENMAIL
<<<<<

Originally posted by ScottF200

MSEXCH:MSExchangeMTA: DOMINGUEZ:KENMAIL
<<<<<

There's your problem... M$ :D

Originally posted by Floydbob
There's your problem... M$ :D

On a oh-so-slight tangent (speaking of M$FT)...

If I were a program manager or business architect in Microsoft's eHome division (jobs that I actually applied for in the past), I would recommend either partnering or buying OpenGlobe to provide MSFT with the user experience excellence required to launch OS's and devices tailored for the component market.

Microsoft's Windows XP Media Center Edition is not even 1/2 way there. Sure, it's powerful, but it's certainly nowhere near as polished as the OpenGlobe experience (for which the Entre is a vehicle). HP's first XP MCE box is just a gussied-up PC. MSFT (and others) currently think: "We'll just put a pretty box and an extended OS around a PC and most people will put it in their family rooms," when they need to be thinking, "We need to built an A/V component leveraging the know-how and open standards around media playback and connectivity in the PC sector."

OpenGlobe has done a phenom job, IMHO, on building a highly specialized computing interface for an A/V component. The only hitch that I can see is that its totally proprietary, and can only be extended/developed by OpenGlobe and its partners, which limits its growth potential as a platform. Maybe if they opened up the dev platform for free, that would change things, but I don't see that happening any time soon.

Eventually, more devices should look and feel like the Entre. As a result, I'd love to see Escient bought out by a large organization (MSFT, etc.) so that an extensible UI/UE platform could be licensed out to the majority of manufacturers at a reasonable rate, which means that more devices would implement OpenGlobe's experience, which i think would be a Good Thing for the future of connected consumer technology.

Jon

PS - I can only imagine that there are varying opinions on this... bring on the debate! :)

Originally posted by JonDeutsch
As a result, I'd love to see Escient bought out by a large organization (MSFT, etc.) so that an extensible UI/UE platform could be licensed

The big problem with that is, when M$ buys something it usually is at it's peak. They tend to add useless feature bloat on top of whatever they acquire until a promising technology turns into a big crashing pile of poo.

Um, begging your pardon, but I would have to disagree with the notion that the UI on the Entre is anything worth writing home about as a UI. It's one of the more confusing pieces of electronics I ever had, and it also didn't work very well at all.

So, yeah, it's perfect for a Microsoft product, but.... ;)

I am looking for the service manual for the VR-5900 Reciever and I thought this would be the thread to post in to find one.

Does anyone here have one they could sell me?

Originally posted by JustMike
Um, begging your pardon, but I would have to disagree with the notion that the UI on the Entre is anything worth writing home about as a UI. It's one of the more confusing pieces of electronics I ever had, and it also didn't work very well at all.

So, yeah, it's perfect for a Microsoft product, but.... ;)

haahah! Cute. I'm surprised, though, that you feel the Entre is confusing. For compasion's sake (since I kind of know my audience here), let's compare the Entre to the ReplayTV (30x0) at a very high level:

In my opinion, the Entre looks more polished, with a better use of graphics, colors, and little artistic touches that make it look like a high-end class act. The Replay's UI is straightforward, but not as engaging.

But, more importantly, the big difference between a ReplayTV and an Entre is:

ReplayTV is a single-purpose unit. It does 1 thing, and 1 thing very well.
The Entre is a multi-purpose unit... this makes it more than linearly more complex to operate/navigate. As such, the Entre should be like 5 times more complex to operate. Where, in fact, if it's only 3 times more complex to operate, then it's a UI/EU win for OpenGlobe.

Granted, the Entre's interface could use some improvements! Keyword search (including title) would be a top one for me, but also little things like I should be able to select the disc I want to rip/copy and hit the RECORD button... not the reverse order (which is how it's currently setup).

Overall, the Entre manages music, movies, iRadio, and seamlessly integrates web info-looping into these processes. I've never seen web-browsing be so integrated into the experience as it with the Entre/OpenGlobe system.

Originally posted by JonDeutsch
haahah! Cute. I'm surprised, though, that you feel the Entre is confusing. For compasion's sake (since I kind of know my audience here), let's compare the Entre to the ReplayTV (30x0) at a very high level: In my opinion, the Entre looks more polished, with a better use of graphics, colors, and little artistic touches that make it look like a high-end class act. The Replay's UI is straightforward, but not as engaging.

I couldn't disagree more. First, it isn't really a fair comparison to compare a 3xxx ReplayTV which is 3 model cycles old to a current production model, but even so, just on pure looks, the RTV interface is much prettier and easier to use. You cite the use of graphics, yet, other than ReplayZones (which uses graphics, though they are superfluous), there is no need for graphics in the RTV interface, while the CD and DVD cover art display is an important part of the unit's functionality. Do you think that the RTV should display a "Friends" logo when you display that show? What a waste of bandwidth. Also, while we are on the subject of graphics, each element of the RTV UI is, itself, graphical, while, for the most part, even though it can display graphics, other than the display of cover art and radio station logos, it is essentially a text based interface. And as to colors, I suppose this is in the eye of the beholder, but to me, blue, yellow and dark green look much better than orange, charcoal and black. And, FWIW, what re the little artistic touches you are alluding to? I must have missed them. And I suspect that the folks at OpenGlobe would even agree with you: If you want to see what a really nice interface for a product like the Entre would look like check out the Escient Fireball or, more to the point, the Power Play (which I know is now a legacy product, but had a great interface into a DVD changer).

Notwithstanding all this, the use of graphics isn't really particularly relevent, because Mike said he found the interface confusing, not ugly (though I'll go on record and say that I find it quite ugly). And confusing it is in so many ways. I could go on, but I'll cite just a few and also compare to the ReplayTV, since you brought that up: (a) on a RTV, if you highlight an item and hit Select, that brings up a menu with a variety of choices, while on the Entre, hitting Select starts playback. While I grant that in most cases, this is the desired result, it isn't necessarily what the user wants. To get at a menu (if you could call it that), you have to go to the obscurely labeled "Options" button. (b) If you want to change the category of a DVD, you have to go to the Edit Category menu, a totally non-intuitive approach, given that most users who might want to reassign a disc to a different or additional category probably don't want to change the label of the category at all. The proper approach is to have an assign to category menu item, which, by coincidence, is exactly what ReplayTV has. (c) And while we are talking about editing, if you don't have an external keyboard, you can only enter text with the tedious SMS-style method using repeated presses of the number buttons, while RTV gives you a nice, efficient on-screen keyboard.

I could go on, but the bottom line is this: in a well designed user interface, you should be able to simply guess at how to get what you want, and be right 90% of the time. My 5-year-old son is able to program recordings on our RTV, adjust the recording quality to make extra time available, decide whether the recordings should be recurring or single event and assign them to his personal category. He learned this after watching me do it and playing around for about 5 minutes. He has only ever touched 12 buttons on the remote (ReplayGuide, Channel Guide, the four arrow keys, Select, Play, Stop, Pause, InstantReplay and QuickSkip). I never had to teach him anything. On the other hand, I have about 35 years of experience with audio/video devices, including a 10-year stint as a professional recording engineer, 20+ years of experience with computers, and the last 8 spent as a network engineer. Yet I still can't fully use my Entre or the remote without consulting the owners manual after 4 months of ownership. (I won't even discuss the fact that I have to reboot it on an almost daily basis.)

Now don't get me wrong, I think that the Entre is a very nice product, and, if it lasts that long, in a few generations, it will be a truly great product. It certainly has a lot of potential. But, IMO, it still has a long way to go.

ReplayTV is a single-purpose unit. It does 1 thing, and 1 thing very well. The Entre is a multi-purpose unit... this makes it more than linearly more complex to operate/navigate. As such, the Entre should be like 5 times more complex to operate. Where, in fact, if it's only 3 times more complex to operate, then it's a UI/EU win for OpenGlobe. Not to beat a dead horse, but I disagree here as well: IMO, the more complex the product, the simpler it needs to be to operate efficiently. But consider this: each of the areas of the Entre (CD Burner, MP3 Server, Internet Radio Server, and DVD Changer controller) could exist as a stand-alone product. Consider a Swiss Army Knife: although as a system, it may be complex because it contains so many devices, the knives, screwdrivers and corkscrews are themselves very simple tools. Forget for the moment that the features are contained in a single unit, can you honestly say that any single item (let's use the MP3 server as an example since it is the most directly analogous) is as easy or as intutitve to operate as the ReplayTV?

Overall, the Entre manages music, movies, iRadio, and seamlessly integrates web info-looping into these processes. I've never seen web-browsing be so integrated into the experience as it with the Entre/OpenGlobe system. Well, just check out what Escient is doing with their own branded units, which do the same thing as the Entre but far more elegantly implemented. Granted, they chose for marketing reasons not to include DVD control, but as far as the rest goes, their OpenGlobe implementation is much prettier and easy to use than Kenwood's. Finally, and FWIW, although I use the OpenGlobe features to show off the Entre to friends (because it is by far its coolest feature), I confess I have never actually had any interest in using it myself. Just as a test, I am currently listening to the new McCartney album on MP2 on the Entre, I fired up OpenGlobe and read the AMG bio on Macca. It didn't tell me anything I didn't already know and I'd never consider buying a CD from them, so I don't really see the point. Now if it were a bit more sophisticated, it could be used in some really cool ways: suppose, for example, it made a note of the actual song I was listening to and let me see lyrics or personnel information on that track. That would be useful. Additionally, it could feed me interesting tidbits about the song, artist or recording (such as if I were listening to "Yesterday" it could tell me that the original recording of that song was the first Beatle's recording on which neither John nor George played or sang, or if I were listening to "Live and Let Die" it could tell me about other famous artists who had recorded Bond themes).

And while I'm griping, some of the web related aspects of the Entre are unfathomable, undocumented and possibly broken. For examole, if one goes to http://www.openglobe.net/kenwood, the only options are Playlists and My Account. If one tries to access Playlists, one gets the following error message:

Error Type:
Microsoft VBScript runtime (0x800A01A8)
Object required: 'objXML.getElementsByTagName(...).Item(...)'
/kenwood/Play3.asp, line 4376


Browser Type:
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; Q312461; YComp 5.0.0.0; .NET CLR 1.0.3705)

Page:
GET /kenwood/Play3.asp

Time:
Wednesday, February 19, 2003, 1:38:24 AM

So there is obviously a glitch is the VB script that the asp is trying to run. If one goes to My Account, one is presented with a screen that displays one's account information, but if one tries to change that information, after hitting save, one is taken back to a login screen and, if one logs in again, none of the changes were, in fact, saved.

And WebSync? What the heck does that do? I've tried syncing several times, but although the process appears to complete successfully, I don't know what has been synced or where.

Originally posted by JustMike
Um, begging your pardon, but I would have to disagree with the notion that the UI on the Entre is anything worth writing home about as a UI. It's one of the more confusing pieces of electronics I ever had, and it also didn't work very well at all.

So, yeah, it's perfect for a Microsoft product, but.... ;)

I've been the proponent of many complaints about my beloved Kenwood, but this isn't one of them. I personally think the Entre is intuitive, glitzy, and still super-cool. It's got its design drawbacks, to be sure (such as the point mentioned by Jon about DVD-Audios being included in the "movies" section), but we part company here.

Still can't wait to get the email saying to send the changers . . . somewhere.

Nick :cool:

Originally posted by rbienstock
I couldn't disagree more. First, it isn't really a fair comparison to compare a 3xxx ReplayTV which is 3 model cycles old to a current production model, but even so, just on pure looks, the RTV interface is much prettier and easier to use. You cite the use of graphics, yet, other than ReplayZones (which uses graphics, though they are superfluous), there is no need for graphics in the RTV interface, while the CD and DVD cover art display is an important part of the unit's functionality. Do you think that the RTV should display a "Friends" logo when you display that show? What a waste of bandwidth.
Network logos on the RTV would be nice, engaging, and practical. So, I disagree with you on this one.


Also, while we are on the subject of graphics, each element of the RTV UI is, itself, graphical, while, for the most part, even though it can display graphics, other than the display of cover art and radio station logos, it is essentially a text based interface. And as to colors, I suppose this is in the eye of the beholder, but to me, blue, yellow and dark green look much better than orange, charcoal and black. And, FWIW, what re the little artistic touches you are alluding to? I must have missed them.

Yeah, I do prefer the charcoal, orange, and black to the many shades of blue and green. I guess it's personal preference.

As far as artistic touches, the one that really sticks in my mind are the "spotlights" that are conceptually above the top of screen, radiating light down on the album cover.

And I suspect that the folks at OpenGlobe would even agree with you: If you want to see what a really nice interface for a product like the Entre would look like check out the Escient Fireball or, more to the point, the Power Play (which I know is now a legacy product, but had a great interface into a DVD changer).

Well, that's fine. My assertion was that MSFT or like company should buy/partner with OpenGlobe/Escient, not Entre or Kenwood!
That said, it is very interesting that Escient's products are so superior to the Entre. Of all the screenshots on their website, it looks identical to the Entre. Can you elaborate on the differences... maybe even shoot a few screenshots at us?

I could go on, but I'll cite just a few and also compare to the ReplayTV, since you brought that up: (a) on a RTV, if you highlight an item and hit Select, that brings up a menu with a variety of choices, while on the Entre, hitting Select starts playback. While I grant that in most cases, this is the desired result, it isn't necessarily what the user wants. To get at a menu (if you could call it that), you have to go to the obscurely labeled "Options" button.

This is simply not true. Selecting a TV station in the guide, you are sent directly to the program you select. There is no menu. Yet, from the Replay Guide, you are given a menu. Not consistent, but that's OK. The Entre isn't consistent either. :)

Whereas on the Entre, the select button reveals CD tracks if you select a CD title. And, rightly, the PLAY button plays the CD. Better yet, if there is no option below the title (like for iRadio), then select becomes PLAY, which is nice. Further, the OPTIONS key is akin to the right-mouse-click in Windows to provide contextual options. And, the option screen is full-screen, so it's easy to see and navigate.

(b) If you want to change the category of a DVD, you have to go to the Edit Category menu, a totally non-intuitive approach, given that most users who might want to reassign a disc to a different or additional category probably don't want to change the label of the category at all. The proper approach is to have an assign to category menu item, which, by coincidence, is exactly what ReplayTV has.

From this usability angle, you are correct. But from another angle, the current process is very efficient: If you are setting up a new category and modding a category, it's nice to be able to mass-select/de-select discs. If it were only by disc, it'd be painful to setup a new category. At least in this scenario, discs can be in multiple categories!

(c) And while we are talking about editing, if you don't have an external keyboard, you can only enter text with the tedious SMS-style method using repeated presses of the number buttons, while RTV gives you a nice, efficient on-screen keyboard.

Huh... I find the SMS-style to be just as effective as the on-screen keyboard. Better yet, the Entre provides for wired and wireless keyboards. Does replay support keyboards?

I could go on, but the bottom line is this: in a well designed user interface, you should be able to simply guess at how to get what you want, and be right 90% of the time.

Sure, you're absolutely right! However, again, wtih a multi-purpose machine (Entre vs. Replay), you're not going to get that luxury. A PC is a multi-purpose device, and there's no way that the 90% rule can apply. It's just not practical due to the complexity.

My 5-year-old son is able to program recordings on our RTV, adjust the recording quality to make extra time available, decide whether the recordings should be recurring or single event and assign them to his personal category. He learned this after watching me do it and playing around for about 5 minutes. He has only ever touched 12 buttons on the remote (ReplayGuide, Channel Guide, the four arrow keys, Select, Play, Stop, Pause, InstantReplay and QuickSkip). I never had to teach him anything.

Single-purpose vs. multi-purpose. If all the Entre did was let you record and select DVDs, it would have the potential to be as simple as the ReplayTV.

Yet I still can't fully use my Entre or the remote without consulting the owners manual after 4 months of ownership. (I won't even discuss the fact that I have to reboot it on an almost daily basis.)

OK, you got me there twice. 1) I use a Marantz RC5200 for my Entre remote, which I set it up for my usage. 2) My Entre crashes at least once a week, which is incredibly frustrating and bothersome. My Replay only crashes if I channel-surf. So, I stopped doing that. However, my Replay shouldn't crash if I want to channel-surf.


Not to beat a dead horse, but I disagree here as well: IMO, the more complex the product, the simpler it needs to be to operate efficiently.

Actually, that is what I was saying. The Entre is 5x more complex and only 3x more complex to operate, IMO.

Forget for the moment that the features are contained in a single unit, can you honestly say that any single item (let's use the MP3 server as an example since it is the most directly analogous) is as easy or as intutitve to operate as the ReplayTV?

I don't know if I can answer this. I do know that I'm quite impressed that if you rip a CD, the MP3 album inherits the coverart and album info from the CD... keeping it cohesive vs just treating it as several tracks.

Well, just check out what Escient is doing with their own branded units, which do the same thing as the Entre but far more elegantly implemented. Granted, they chose for marketing reasons not to include DVD control, but as far as the rest goes, their OpenGlobe implementation is much prettier and easy to use than Kenwood's.

Great! Even more reason to support my strategy to turn MSFT's eHome division around. OpenGlobe is all that and a egg salad sandwich.

Just thought you'd like to know that I've posted a review of the Sovereign system on "The Opinion" (an e-zine).

http://theopinion.com/engine/teaser.asp?id=1521

Enjoy and feel free to provide feedback on the review's message board.

Nice review, Jon. Weren't you the one that was "underwhelmed" when you first got the Entre? ;) (sorry, I have to remind you of that one).

Nick :cool:

Originally posted by JonDeutsch
Network logos on the RTV would be nice, engaging, and practical. So, I disagree with you on this one. I wasn't suggesting Network logos, but now that you mention it, that would be a great idea.

Yeah, I do prefer the charcoal, orange, and black to the many shades of blue and green. I guess it's personal preference. ... That said, it is very interesting that Escient's products are so superior to the Entre. Of all the screenshots on their website, it looks identical to the Entre. Can you elaborate on the differences... maybe even shoot a few screenshots at us? I hadn't looked at the Escient web site in a while -- my main exposure to the Fireball is the one that my neighbor has. I went to the site, and there is only one blurry picture there. So I downloaded the PDF of the manual, and there I found a very instructive page, which I've copied and attached. Because AVS will only allow me to add one attachment, I've composited this with a page from the PowerPlay manual that I'll discuss below. The Fireball is on the left and the Power play is on the right.

As you can see, the basic layout of the Fireball UI is identical to that of the Entre, but the look is completely different, having a graphical backdrop, a different typeface, category headers that look like tabs and (shudder) a blue and green color scheme. The point I was making here was that the interface could look a lot nicer than it currently does, though I suppose that is a matter of taste, as you say. I recall that a coleague once told me that if a computer monitor displayed anything other than green type on a black background, that it wasn't a real computer. Now to see what you could do with a different concept, look at the more graphical UI of the Escient PowerPlay (that I acknowledge is now discontinued). Here you have almost no text and nice displays of cover art and graphical buttons. Before I was using the Entre, I was using a PC with DVDLobby to control the 5900. I stopped after it became impossible to import data into DVDLobby from DVD Profiler. There the concept was the same, and, I think, very user friendly: browse to a DVD, click on it and hit play.

As far as artistic touches, the one that really sticks in my mind are the "spotlights" that are conceptually above the top of screen, radiating light down on the album cover. I'm not sure what you are referring to. I don't see any spotlights.

This is simply not true. Selecting a TV station in the guide, you are sent directly to the program you select. There is no menu. Yet, from the Replay Guide, you are given a menu. Not consistent, but that's OK. The Entre isn't consistent either. :) OK, so you picked the one part of the RTV UI that has an inconsistent function (though it isn't hitting a TV station, but selecting a currently playing program -- if you hit Select on a program that hasn't started yet, you do get a menu). There was much debate about this on the Replay forum, where the RTV folks insisted that it should be the way it is now even though it is inconsistent.

Further, the OPTIONS key is akin to the right-mouse-click in Windows to provide contextual options. And, the option screen is full-screen, so it's easy to see and navigate. Clearly Right-clicks are the inspiration for this, and, IMO, an unfortunate one. If you've spent any time training people in computers, you'll know that many just don't get right clicking, which is why Windows gives you another way to do almost everything that you can do with a right-click (not to mention Macs, which, the last time I looked had only one button mice). The point is that there's no reason to have to find and remember a second button on the remote, when hitting Select could bring up a pop-up menu. Again, the issue is whether or not the interface is confusing. Any time you ask the user to have to remember what button to hit, you've added a layer of confusion. Everyone can intuitively understand what the cursor controls and select button do, or a button labeled Menu, but the Options button and the select/deselect all button, seem almpst peversely obscure.


Huh... I find the SMS-style to be just as effective as the on-screen keyboard. Better yet, the Entre provides for wired and wireless keyboards. Does replay support keyboards? Don't get me started here. If you count the keypresses, SMS style requires significantly more, especially if you are dealing with Caps and punctuation, or multiple letters on the same numeric key. Yes, it is true that the Entre supports wireless and wired keyboards, but I've tried several, and none of them have a repeat function: if you want to backspace over some text, you have to press the bsckspace key repeatedly instead of just holding it down. And why the Entre won't/can't support the 5900 keyboard is a mystery to me (actually, it isn't a mystery at all -- it is Escient's fault). FWIW, the Replay supports most (or maybe all) WebTV keyboards (wireless only). I got mine for $14.95.

Sure, you're absolutely right! However, again, wtih a multi-purpose machine (Entre vs. Replay), you're not going to get that luxury. A PC is a multi-purpose device, and there's no way that the 90% rule can apply. It's just not practical due to the complexity. ... Single-purpose vs. multi-purpose. If all the Entre did was let you record and select DVDs, it would have the potential to be as simple as the ReplayTV. But this begs the question. The complexity that you cite stems, as you say, from its performing multiple functions. But each function could exist independently. Instead of the Escient, I could have bought a stand-alone CD burner, a stand-alone MP3 server, a stand-alone iRadio server and a stand-alone DVD controller (let's assume for this discussion, that such a device exists, I acknowledge that it doesn't). Each of these devices would be as confusing or straitforward as their designers chose to make them. There is no added complexity from the fact that I might chose to have all of them. Likewise, there is no reason for the Entre to be hard to use or complex merely because it has multiple functions, IF each of those functions had been designed in an intuitive and user-friendly manner. The Entre isn't hard to master because it has a lot of features, but becasue its individual features are themselves hard to use. And your example of a PC, makes my point. I think that PCs generally do comply with the 90% rule. I can't remember the last time I had to RTFM for any program. I can almost always find what I want in the menus somewhere. But if anything is complex, it is in the design of a particular application that I might choose to install. A PC with hunderds of applications loaded is inherently no more complex than the most complex program on it, and potentially no more complex than a virgin machine with nothing but the OS on it.

My Replay only crashes if I channel-surf. So, I stopped doing that. However, my Replay shouldn't crash if I want to channel-surf. I can't help you there. I have 5 ReplayTV units. I tape everything I want to watch and watch it later without commercials. If I want to see what's on live, I browse the channel guide. I never channel surf. My Replays almost never crash (maybe once a year, if that).

Originally posted by Nick Satullo
Nice review, Jon. Weren't you the one that was "underwhelmed" when you first got the Entre? ;) (sorry, I have to remind you of that one).
Nick :cool:
I remember when Jon was initially underwhelmed as well, however, I also remember a progression as I saw Jon post where he would point out new features and subtle functionality things that he saw and liked.

RE: UI
Holy cow! I just posted the error message thinking others might have gotten it and then would see they were alone...also I thought Kenwood might have seen it if they didn't get my e-mails (I haven't heard back yet, BTW). Actually I think your guys post are pretty meaty getting to so specifics that OG/KW may be able to "see".

For me, I think the UI is good at the most basic level. Meaning can a user pick a movie, CD or radio station to watch/listen to. I think it is only OK for the "admin" of the system. I have complained about the lack of reasonable error messages and about the various areas of the OPTION menus being non-intuitive. I wasn't blaming Kenwood, per se, as they may only be implementing what OG has provided.

I don't love all MS work but I do really like it. They clearly do an extraordinary amount of user interface testing and revamping learning from past mistakes. No doubt they bring users in to "watch" them use the software and then adjust it based on this. I don't know if OG does this. It does not really seem so. I do admit that the Axcess DOES a pretty decent job of UI for it's inadequate 2 line display. It seems to pick right choices and defaults in several cases.

And in case anyone wonders, I have changed my posting name to reflect what I'm called on Planet Earth. Nicholas is what appears on stationery.

Nick :cool:

All I can say on the UI of the Entre is this.... My Father can use the Entre!

My father is 70 and is not at all a gadget person. I had to set the time on his VCR. :) Just trying to make a simple point.

He stayed at our home for a few days when they came back from Florida for XMass. I handed him the remote...showed him the three choices of media and just said...do what you would like. Before I knew it he had moved out of music and into Movies and had selected a movie he cared to watch. Later that day I found him listening to some of my Lite Jazz tracks.

Sorry...but when used as a playback selection media (it's #1 purpose) it received high marks from me because my dad could use it.

(Note...the only time he got stuck was when a day or so later he went to play a DVD that you needed to move around the DVD menu to get to the PLAY option. This is not possible with the Entre Remote for some reason.)

Hey David, now that your back in the forum, any update on the upcoming multichanger support and other upgrades?

Sorry about the long post, but I can't figure out how to make Entre' communicate with my LAN and my cable modem via an 802.11b wireless setup, and am hoping a wireless "expert" will guide me to the solution.

I purchased a Linksys BEFW11S4 (http://www.linksys.com/Products/product.asp?grid=33&scid=35&prid=415) wireless access point / router with 4-port switch where I connected my two desktop PC's and the HPNA bridge I already had (Linksys HPB200 (http://www.linksys.com/products/product.asp?prid=161&grid=)). I connected the cable modem to the WAN input and ran the router''s setup CD. Tested all connection, cable modem access from all computers, phoneline connection to Entre' and Axcess, everything working fine. So far, a piece of cake.

As wireless connection for the Entre', I picked a Linksys USB100TX (http://www.linksys.com/Products/product.asp?grid=34&scid=30&prid=126) USB to Ethernet adapter (a model listed on Kenwood's site for use with Entre'), and a Linksys WET11 (http://www.linksys.com/products/product.asp?grid=33&scid=36&prid=432) wireless ethernet bridge. I got this because a friend of mine uses the same module with his Xbox for online gaming, and he told me it is a snap to set up (the instructions on the Linksys site seem simple enough). I connected the wireless bridge to Entre' via the USB adapter (used a crossover cat5 cable as recommended on Kenwood's site), plugged the bridge in and ran its setup disc from my desktop computer. The program immediately detected the bridge, which was assigned an IP address by the new router (which I also enabled as a DHCP server). I made sure to select "Automatically assign an IP address" in the bridge setup screen. According to Linksys, that's pretty much it as far as the setup of the bridge is concerned. If I had an Xbox, theoretically I should be online now.

So, I changed both primary and secondary connection types from HPNA to Ethernet in Entre's setup menu, rebooted and figured that Entre' would now connect to my network, and to the internet, via the new wireless setup. Yeahrrright! Under "Ethernet", the system information screen of Entre now shows a MAC address (what's that, anyway?), IP address and gateway / network mask numbers that I can't figure out where they came from. Needless to say, network connections to/from Entre (net radio, Media Manager, OpenGlobe, etc.) don;'t work. The message "DNS failure while testing internet connection", or something similar, appears.

Are there settings I should change on either the bridge or the access point / router to make Entre' "talk" wirelessly to my network and cable modem? Kenwood's web site has an example of wireless networking connection and claims that both access points (the one connected to Entre' and the one connected to the router in the example) should be set to "wireless bridge" operations. I have a bridge on one side - which I figure does not need to be instructed to act like one... :D and an access point built into my router, but I don't see, or maybe cannot find, a way to turn this into a "wireless bridge" anywhere in its setup menus.

I have reverted back to my HPNA connection for now, but have not yet given up on the wireless idea, Any suggestions on how to make this setup work would be welcome. As you can tell, I am a total novice in wireless technology, but it did sound like a simple setup on paper. Now I am not so sure, all these numbers and the alphabet soup of DHCP, MAC, IP, WAN, LAN, DNS is making me dizzy.

--
Umberto B

Originally posted by zinja
Hey David, now that your back in the forum, any update on the upcoming multichanger support and other upgrades?

I only report when I have something. I will not speculate or give info unless I came from the right people.

Or should I say lack of.

I called support on 2/18/03 about 11:00 am pst, the first rep I spoke with was telling he knows nothing about anybody having any problems with the Entre locking up….. The second guy listened to my problem and asked if he could call me back pssss I’m still waiting.

My problem is the Entre is it’s started to lock up more the usual so I tried the 5555 thing and rebuilt the library. Now about 15 albums I deleted reappeared in the GUI but do not play. I tried the manual delete, and though media manager to no avail. If I due 5555 rebuild library they come back. Any Ideas??

My feeling is the two problems are connected.

Wayne

I was able to get a connection between the router/access point and the wireless bridge attached to the Entre, by tweaking some configuration defaults. However, the connection is excruciatingly slow. For example, it takes nearly two minutes for Entre to locate and play a Sirius station, and the music is continuously interrupted with "Buffering..." messages. OpenGlobe access takes forever, and often fails. Remember the speed of 1200 bps modems 15 years ago? This is much slower. Media Manager cannot identify Entre when I start the program, either.

The access point and wireless bridge are only about 20 feet apart (with two walls in between), so I don't think this is a transmission issue between wireless devices. I am assuming that this setup, and the wireless bridge in particular, has some sort of incompatibility with Entre. Has anyone been able to get Entre to work via a wireless connection? If so, what equipment are you using? David, do you know if Kenwood is working to make more wireless devices compatible with Entre? This networking method seems to be growing in popularity among home users, much more so than HPNA or PowerLine.

--
Umberto B

Say I recall there was "wireless" related questions in the survey. It might have only been about wireless Axcess type of devices but it points to the fact they are aware and thinking about "wireless".

There are an aweful lot of naive people out there setting up wireless networks in their houses. Most have very limited security enabled by default. Plus they are slow compared to CAT5e. Anyway those issues will certainly be resolved by the sellers/software_writers but until then...lot of professional reviews and articles out there that point this out as well.

Umberto,

In theory, the Entre can not be incompatible with a wireless bridge on the other side of the USB- > Ethernet bridge. In theory, the wireless bridge abstracts this translation from wire to wireless, and the devices attached should be completely none-the-wiser.

Products like the Linksys WET11 claim "the versatile Wireless Ethernet Bridge can make any wired Ethernet-equipped device a part of your wireless network." They don't even say "almost any" -- they say "any."

So, I'm thinking something else is wrong outside of Entre compatability. All that said, there is a remote remote chance that the Entre is the culprit. But I doubt it.

Continue to troubleshoot. Try hooking up your wireless bridge to another normal device and see how it operates.

I know I'm not the brightest guy on this forum, but when I fired up my Entre/5900 and it went through its "new disc" search it came back with "found new DVD...uploading DVD info...etc"

Up pops Blue Man Group DVD-A cover art! Since I had manually entered information pertaining to this DVD-A, and used Open Globes generic DVD-A logo for its profile, I had to manually edit the BMG information and import the cover art .... songs are also not listed as they would when Open Globe downloads CD info...

Still, maybe Open Globe is begining support of DVD-A's

Originally posted by flavorguy
I know I'm not the brightest guy on this forum, but when I fired up my Entre/5900 and it went through its "new disc" search it came back with "found new DVD...uploading DVD info...etc"

Up pops Blue Man Group DVD-A cover art! Since I had manually entered information pertaining to this DVD-A, and used Open Globes generic DVD-A logo for its profile, I had to manually edit the BMG information and import the cover art .... songs are also not listed as they would when Open Globe downloads CD info...

Still, maybe Open Globe is begining support of DVD-A's

Probably not. I've reported in the past how a few discs seem to have wandered into the OpenGlobe Site, such as Barenaked Ladies Maroon, Deep Purple Machine Head, and a few others. I think--but have no basis--that some of these have some duplicates in normal DVD-Video format; that's the way they appear to have gotten into the library.

When I see the Entre look up a DVD-A disc without manually entering the title, then I'll get excited.

Nick :cool:

I received my Entre' yesterday and have it most of it hooked up (still have to run the CD-R lines to/from the receiver). First off I would like to say WOW. This device is AWESOM, the MP3 and Internet radio features kick butt. I mainly bought this to make DVD selection easier (I have the Entre' connected to a DV-5900M). But wow the others features are great.

Now to my issue. I loaded the DVD player with my 265+ discs. The Entre' did the auto detect and matched just about 80%. The others I had to use the name search to match. This is where my problem is. I have a number of discs that I would be willing to bet are in the OpenGlobe site but I cannot match.

Here is an example, Disney's Snow White. The auto match failed and when I type in the name I get one of those low end Disney knockoff's. I am sure my issue is the name, I am guessing it is in the database named something like - Snow White Special Edition, Snow White (THX) etc.

Is there anyway to look up a movie list (to get the full name) on your PC from OpenGlobe, or is there a way to have a list of movies come back on the Entre' interface and select the one you want.

I has hopeing the PC managment software would let me manage the DVDs but it appears to only support MP3 managment.

If this is one of those stupid newbie questions please have pity :) on me and help.

Thanks !!

Originally posted by m s jaxjag
<snip> Is there anyway to look up a movie list (to get the full name) on your PC from OpenGlobe, or is there a way to have a list of movies come back on the Entre' interface and select the one you want.
<snip> If this is one of those stupid newbie questions please have pity :) on me and help.


It's not a stupid newbie question because we all have asked. It is a stupid ease of use issue that OG/KW need to address because *everyone* has this same problem and question. Sorry there is no solution that I'm aware of.

We've asked for a resulting selection list; we've asked for an internet look up option to their database so we could fine tune our searches; we don't have an answer.

I do believe there was a related question on the survey they sent out, if I'm not mistaken. It was related to a UI upgrade and they asked if we'd be willing to pay something for it; obvious trying to recoup some cost for that outlay of effort or new chip that would be needed. (seems strange since it is software driven and downloadable).

You can send your list of DVDs not found to : dvdtitles@kenwoodusa.com

I'd suggest sending your concern/complaint about this as well to : EntreReports@kenwoodusa.com

Aside from this issue...thanks for coming in for a swim...the water is not bad at all !

I echo Scott, and it is not something to bedevil newbies--I'm one of the Founding Fathers of this thread, and it's been a problem without a solution since day one . . .

Except . . . I remember there were some discs, like The Pink Panther, that would pull up a cheesy cover-art of the cartoon series . . . and then, suddenly, it became available. There is a disc called Fallen that would originally retrieve something else--Fallen Angels, something like that--and that too got fixed. So did the Little Women cover art.

So, while you may not be able to be as interactive as you like, I will give OpenGlobe this much, i.e., they have been picking these things up. So if this stuff is not there now, try again in a month or so.

Nick :cool:

Originally posted by Nick Satullo
<snip> Except . . . I remember there were some discs, like The Pink Panther, that would pull up a cheesy cover-art of the cartoon series . . . and then, suddenly, it became available. There is a disc called Fallen that would originally retrieve something else--Fallen Angels, something like that--and that too got fixed. So did the Little Women cover art.
<snip>
I recalled they refined the DVD look up and that aided things in the past year or so. They called it fuzzy look ups (using various characteristics to guess which DVD you had). No doubt a combination of this and people submitting their "not founds" to that e-mail address.

See post: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=888340&highlight=Brian#post888340

Scott & Nick,

Thanks for the responses. I guess I will have to hold out for the April update (I have been reading to keep up :D ) and hope for the best.

I have found that most of my matching problems have been purley due to how the title is entered at OpenGlobe. With a BUNCH of persistance I have gotten the list down to about 8. I will keep out it.

On another note, when I manually match a movide to the OG datebase I see a very nice write up about the movie. Is there anyway to actually pull this info up from the DVD listing screen??

Again THANKS for the help. Even with these issues I am VERY HAPPY to be a member of the Entre' family.

Thanks !

Originally posted by m s jaxjag
<snip>On another note, when I manually match a movide to the OG datebase I see a very nice write up about the movie. Is there anyway to actually pull this info up from the DVD listing screen??<snip>
You are batting a 1000.

Yet another gripe that has been there from the beginning. This was announced.

See 3rd bullet point:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=1726560&highlight=Easier+access+to+DVD+information#post1726560

Well, I've joined the entre crowd and have hit the same brick wall as Nick did somewhere along the way. Trying to look up Snow White and it locked up and now I can't get it to come out of blinking standby. I'm in the 30 minutes unplugged with the serial and usb ethernet unplugged. We'll see if that puts it back on it's feet.

This certainly is the worst POS in the world when it comes to the OS. I don't even think Microsoft could come up with something this bad. I guess once you get all your disks identified it probably gets a bit more stable (at least I hope it does :( ).

Originally posted by m s jaxjag
Here is an example, Disney's Snow White. The auto match failed and when I type in the name I get one of those low end Disney knockoff's. I am sure my issue is the name, I am guessing it is in the database named something like - Snow White Special Edition, Snow White (THX) etc. FWIW, if you type in "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", you will get the cover art of the older single-disk Disney DVD edition, which, one supposes, is better than nothing.

I was wondering if anyone tried removing the hard drive from the Entre and copying over the mp3s. It may take a unix box but I don't want to take it out if it has already been tried. I have 256 cds converted to mp3s on the Entre and I would really like to back them up somehow.

On another note has anyone used the Creative Nomad mp3 player with the Entre?

rbienstock et al:

THANKS for the help :) , I had already figured out my Snow White issue and found the same match. I was able to get my list down to 8 that I cannot match. I am pretty sure 7 of the 8 are in the OG DB but I am out of guesses on how they are stored :confused: .

Is there somewhere that I can post my list to see if anyone might have fought thier way through and figured the titles out. I don't want to clutter this forum if there is a better place to go.

THANKS AGAIN FOR EVERYONES HELP !! :D

For Snow White, try "Snow White Platinum Edition" - that got the new cover for me.

If anyone has found a combination that locates "Fast Times at Ridgemont High", I'd be most grateful to get it.

Mike

My advise for those trying to guess at titles for DVD matches is to type in only part of the title, and let the service do the matching. So, for "Fast Times at Ridgemont High", I'd type in "Fast Times" and see what happens. If that fails, then I'd try "Ridgemont High", etc...

Originally posted by Mkellyvich
For Snow White, try "Snow White Platinum Edition" - that got the new cover for me.

If anyone has found a combination that locates "Fast Times at Ridgemont High", I'd be most grateful to get it.

Mike


Mike:

If Entre' can't find it, or if it finds the wrong art of a similar sounding or older edition/cover of the same movie, I usually search a DVD online store, such as dvdempire.com, to get the EXACT spelling of the movie title (the DVD cases are not very clear about that, especially those "special", "platinum" "collector's" editions.)

In my experience, the search feature is unforgiving as far as upper/lower cases and punctuations are concerned. For instance, although i cannot verify it, searching for "Fast Times At Ridgemont High: Collector's Edition" may fetch the right cover, but "Fast Times At Riidgemont High - Collector's Edition" may result in a "Not Found" message.

Try it out, hopefully it works.

--
Umberto B

Umberto B:

Thanks for the advice. I will check out the site you listed and see what I can come up with.

Mkellyvich :

I could not get Snow White to come up with the name you listed. Is there some sort of -, : etc in the name. I do have the Plantinum edition and would like to have the correct cover displayed :D .

THANKS AGAIN FOR EVERYONE'S HELP :) !!

Just as an FYI I sent a note to ESCIENT to ask about access to the Movie title list. I still have not heard back, if I do I will pass along thier response.

I've posted before about my lazy desire to have "THE THREAD" summarized and been accused of blasphemy, heresy, etc. (As a dealer, I wanted to be informed to help clients via full disclosure.) Setting aside the zen benefits of thread study for a moment, I now have a specific information need which suggests an idea:

The need: Client's entre is locking in "updating" mode for seeming days on end. I'd like to know if it is likely the unit itself, the Kenwood supplied usb to ethernet adapter, a cable modem/linksys switch problem or setting. Maybe a firewall issue? Should I switch to an hpna adapter?

The idea: Could this thread be parsed into a dozen or so smaller archived threads? Right now, to research by subtopic or date requires many pushes of the "prev" button. If every 15 pages were in a separate thread we could search quickly by date (or with this thread, by eon).

What d'ya think David? Thanks to any kind souls who reply without any "When you can recite the thread while clapping with one hand, then you may seek the answer" type answers. Remember that many of you have been studying "thread" far longer than many of us, and while we wish to learn from your wisdom, we dare not tread the same path as ye.

Randy

I second Randy's request. Due to the limatations of the search engine there is no way to jump to an exact post within a thread if you get a hit.

It you be great if the thread was broken up along the lines of something as simple as a date range or even 100 posts.

Then if you get a hit on a search topic you could skim the thread for the needed information.

Just my 2 cents worth :D !!

The need: Client's entre is locking in "updating" mode for seeming days on end. I'd like to know if it is likely the unit itself, the Kenwood supplied usb to ethernet adapter, a cable modem/linksys switch problem or setting. Maybe a firewall issue? Should I switch to an hpna adapter?
The search function can do most of what you are looking for...

Try "Updating AND entre" in the search box and make sure that the check box for show return as posts is checked and search in DVD Hardware.

Unfortunatly that won't return any useful answers....

Along with FloydBob suggestion (although my finds did get good hits either) please make sure you use the drop down box that says 'find all post as slow as it may be'.

Also from past post (I was not originator of idea):
>>>
Re: Finding a previous post
The previous suggestion of using the option at the top of "Thread ---> Show Printable Version" and then clicking on the top right "Show all xxxx posts from this thread on one page" seems pretty good. Then user Cntl+F to bring up your IE find dialog box or equiv.
<<<

I just purchased 3 new DVD's and cannot match any of them :( . Is there some sort of delay before they show up in the OB DB??

The titles are:

Road to Perdition (Widescreen)
Stargate: Ultimate Edition
Beauty and the Beast: Belle's Magical World

Any help would be VERY MUCH appreicated. :D

Thanks !!

Road To Perdition was just released. I tried it as well, and no luck. There is usually a lag of time after the discs are newly released before they migrate into OG.

I can't comment on the others, although I coincidentally just ordered Stargate, primarily because it has Logic 7 encoding for its two channel audio, which is something that interests me because I own a surround processor that does Logic 7, i.e., a Lexicon MC-12B.

Nick :cool:

Randy

I have the same issue with the Entre. I have had it for several months. It was working fine, but a few weeks ago it locked into the "Updating" mode when I went to the guide and then froze up. This happened every day! It would return to normal after I rebooted it -- quite a pain, since it takes a few minutes to do so while everyone is waiting for the movie to begin.

I called Kenwood who suggested that I reset it the factory defaults -- which I did and now it seems to work most of the time. It occasionally locks up in the "updating" mode, however. Resetting it is NOT fun as you have to update the software version and enter all those DVD titles that don't come up on OG automatically.:mad: If anyone knows a simpler fix to this problem, please let me know. Kenwood acted like this was an unusual problem. I don't want to have to send unit in for service if I don't have to.

In general, I think that it has a lot of potential and I am looking forward to the software/hardware upgrades scheduled for this spring. I need another changer now -- but am waiting for the upgrades.

Jeff

Originally posted by astrojeff
<snip> I called Kenwood who suggested that I reset it the factory defaults<snip>

That seems to be Kenwood support's damn solution to _every_ problem.

People we have got to complain about this to them when they give us that line. It the equivalent of us installing some software on our personal computer, running into problems and tech support telling us to reinstall the operating system to see if the problem goes away. Sure the "problem" goes away...but they didn't fix a damn thing.

Can you tell this is a hot button with me? True we need to provide them as much detail as we possibly can up to the problem and help them debug it with some methodical testing. I understand that as I'm a developer and I work on customers problems once I get an understanding.

Sorry.

RE: my stuck updating issue
I've only had the stuck Updating issue once or twice. As I recall it was after I downloaded their new software. The solution was to reboot (not reset/reinit). I understand this and it is analogous to older windows software where the registery entries (etc) needed to be reloaded at boot tom. After rebooting my problem of Updating went away.

RE: other "unnecessary" reasons to reboot
Currently I only have to reboot when my ISP is down for any length of time (> 2 minutes) because the Axcess and Entre get lost and don't automatically release/renew like normal OSes do the vast majority of the time.

Originally posted by Nick Satullo
I can't comment on the others, although I coincidentally just ordered Stargate, primarily because it has Logic 7 encoding for its two channel audio, which is something that interests me because I own a surround processor that does Logic 7, i.e., a Lexicon MC-12B. It is a great disk, and the Logic 7 track sounds very nice. Interestingly, it does not sound the same in terms of steering as the 5.1 channel track played through L7 Film. I suspect that this is because they had to change the multi-channel panning to make it sound good in ordinary 2-channel.

No need to apologize Scott. That is a "hot button" with me as well. It's like this statement from the Entre user guide...........

"5. User error is more likely than device failure.
You probably don't want to hear this, but it's true. Use this manual to go
over the steps to operate Entré. Refer to the manuals for the other devices
in your entertainment system as well."

It's almost as if they put that statement in there so they would not need to do Tech Support. Very arrogant in my opinion. I'm probably just still ticked off because the "Slot 255" issue has not been resolved.

My Entre loses it's connection to my network whenever my ISP connection is interrupted as well. Which is quite often. I have to reboot almost daily just to re-establish the network connection. It's getting old. I wish there was some sort of option somewhere in the Entre for it to try to reconnect to to the network without rebooting the whole thing.

End of Rant.


Bob

So there is an article in AVI title 'the man BEHIND THE CURTAIN' (Russ Herschelmann).... I get to the list of his HT equipemnt.

Kenwood Sovereign 400-disk DVD player
Kenwood Sovereign THX receiver

What ! I says...no Entre...what a looooozer... (just kidding for those that don't own the Entre...suppose you still use punch cards <grin>)

...then I see the picture of the equipment next to the list and low and behold I see the Entre.


For those that don't know of Russ...try this link:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=Russ+Herschelmann

I have not been able to find reference to this in the forum. I am trying to list my movies using the categories available with the unit. My problem is that I cannot find a way of labelling the categories or of labelling the various DVDs and putting them in different categories. I do not have the companion Entre unit.

The manual, page 32, lists something about "normal play track mode". However, when I follow the instructions, I do not get any response from the unit. Page 59 talks about assigning user file names. Cannot do that either.

In other words, I cannot list my DVDs and put them in different categories. I find the manual rather confusing and I am not sure that it lets you do that type of sorting with DVDs.

Any help will be appreciated.

Ok, I have another one that I haven't seen mentioned. Has anyone else noticed that the bass management goes away for 192/24 2.0 DVD-Audio tracks? Or is it just that I've blown it on some setting in the player?

Originally posted by Floydbob
Ok, I have another one that I haven't seen mentioned. Has anyone else noticed that the bass management goes away for 192/24 2.0 DVD-Audio tracks? Or is it just that I've blown it on some setting in the player? Nope. It doesn't do bass management with 2-channel output. If it is any consolation, I don't think that any other player does either.

MS JaxJag and FloydBob

The exact syntax for the Snow White disc is :"Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs - Platinum Edition (THX).

Hope this works better...

Mike

Originally posted by Mkellyvich
The exact syntax for the Snow White disc is :"Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs - Platinum Edition (THX). That didn't work for me. Darn. :mad:

I've just encountered a strange problem on my 5900: There is one disk that the unit simply refuses to accept (Disk 1 of AI: Artificial Intelligence). This is not the unreadable disk problem that I and others have reported. There, the player tries to read the disk, fails, flips the disk, fails again and reads "Unreadable Disk." This is NOT what is happening to me.

What happens is this: I put the disk in (any slot it doesn't matter where), and push play. The changer closes the door, goes to that slot number and starts to read the disk. After 10 seconds, the changer stops reading the disk, spins around, opens the door and ejects the disk! It is almost as if the palyer says "get this stinking disk out of here." I've never encountered a rejected disk before, and, the disk plays fine on 3 other DVD players.

Has anyone seen this behavior before? Is there a fix?

This is my third post in a row. I'll chill now.

Originally posted by rbienstock
I've just encountered a strange problem on my 5900: There is one disk that the unit simply refuses to accept (Disk 1 of AI: Artificial Intelligence). This is not the unreadable disk problem that I and others have reported. There, the player tries to read the disk, fails, flips the disk, fails again and reads "Unreadable Disk." This is NOT what is happening to me.

What happens is this: I put the disk in (any slot it doesn't matter where), and push play. The changer closes the door, goes to that slot number and starts to read the disk. After 10 seconds, the changer stops reading the disk, spins around, opens the door and ejects the disk! It is almost as if the palyer says "get this stinking disk out of here." I've never encountered a rejected disk before, and, the disk plays fine on 3 other DVD players.

Has anyone seen this behavior before? Is there a fix?

This is my third post in a row. I'll chill now.

As weird as it may sound, I've had similar moments (though I can't say that I've tried several slots). What has worked for me with any unplayable disc is cleaning the play side of the disc, first with a moist cloth, then a dry one (remembering not to wipe in circular motion, but outward from the center). I don't know "why" it's been that way, but the 5900 has a strange reaction to smudges, even when the disc appears clean and shiny. I'm convinced that there's a smudge or coating of some kind that fusses with the laser pick-up. Perfectly "clean" discs have refused to play, and then work fine after a shoe-shine.

On another note, someone asked about the delay in OpenGlobe from picking up new releases, using Road To Perdition as an example. That disc was only recently released, and last week there was no information. Last night, however, I did a disc lookup and the information with cover art was there. Sounds encouraging from a currency standpoint.

Good Luck.

Nick :cool:

Originally posted by Nick Satullo
As weird as it may sound, I've had similar moments (though I can't say that I've tried several slots). What has worked for me with any unplayable disk is cleaning the play side of the disk, first with a moist cloth, then a dry one (remembering not to wipe in circular motion, but outward from the center). I don't know "why" it's been that way, but the 5900 has a strange reaction to smudges, even when the disk appears clean and shiny. I'm convinced that there's a smudge or coating of some kind that fusses with the laser pick-up. Perfectly "clean" disks have refused to play, and then work fine after a shoe-shine.

I wish it were that simple. I've had a lot of experience with the Unreadable Disk error, and have succeeded in getting these disks to play with, as you say, cleaning, and, if worse comes to worst, unplugging my 5900 for an extended period. That isn't my current problem. I am not getting an Unreadable Disk error. Instead, the unit simply refuses to try to read the disk: I put the disk in, it starts to read it, and then it opens the door and ejects the disk. This is different from truly unreadable disks where the unit will try to read the disk, fail, flip the disk and try to read the other side, fail and then return an Unreadable Disk error.

Originally posted by Nick Satullo
On another note, someone asked about the delay in OpenGlobe from picking up new releases, using Road To Perdition as an example. That disc was only recently released, and last week there was no information. Last night, however, I did a disc lookup and the information with cover art was there. Sounds encouraging from a currency standpoint. I never felt that currency was an issue. For me the big problem is the inconsistency of the database. For example, of the disks in the Samurai trilogy from Criterion, Samurai II and Samurai III are in the database, but not Samurai I. The Man Who Fell to Earth and Spy Kids 2 were in the database on the day they were released, yet Stargate Ultimate Edition still isn't in. And the way the system decides to match your choices is appalling. Why it doesn't show you potential matches and ask you to pick the right one, is beyond me. Even better would be the option of entering the UPC for lookup like you can do in DVD Profiler.

Incidentally, my Entre has come up with a new glitch this morning: When I tried to look up some disks, it tried to look them up, but it never looked in Open Globe. Usually, when there is an online problem, the unit tries to connect to Open Globe, fails, and returns a dns error. This time it didn't do that but it simply "forgot" to try to access Open Globe. Open Globe was working fine: I could browse the site, listen to Internet Radio and also get CD cover art in the music application. I could fix the problem, sort of, by going to a known good disk and looking it up -- sometimes it would still fail in the same way, but at some point it will decide to connect, and thereafter it will work OK for a while and then quit again after checking a few disks. Multiple warm and cold reboots didn't do anything to help either. But around noon today, the problems went away, and now it is working fine.

Originally posted by rbienstock
<snip> What happens is this: I put the disk in (any slot it doesn't matter where), and push play. The changer closes the door, goes to that slot number and starts to read the disk. After 10 seconds, the changer stops reading the disk, spins around, opens the door and ejects the disk! It is almost as if the player says "get this stinking disk out of here." I've never encountered a rejected disk before, and, the disk plays fine on 3 other DVD players.

Has anyone seen this behavior before? Is there a fix?

This is my third post in a row. I'll chill now.

Re: "get this stinking disk out of here".
When one personifies (http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?va=personify) the Entre I think that means it has become a member of the family:p

Your situation sounds vaguely familiar but I can't recall if I got it or if I read it. I suspect that it's reaction depends on how the disc gets looked up (manually from a few differnt menu options, automatically when new disc is added, etc).

A couple nights ago I had put in a rental and 15ish seconds into when the movie started playing I got an Entre error message about the disc in slot 105 (rem: I was playing a rental in slot 402). The message actually told me to trying cleaning the disc. It would have freaked me out if Nicks picture would have showed up as well but then again I don't know what Nick looks like.

This morning after reading Nick's post it reminded me of the situation. I took out Monsters Inc from slot 105 and used soap (removes finger oils) and water to wash it. I put it back in and it read it OK.

Well I just solved the AI problem: It wasn't a dirty disk, but something much more annoying. Most discs have a nice, smooth edge, but this disk had a very ragged edge with lots of tiny plastic burrs. I used an emory board to smooth it out, and, bingo, the problem was solved.

I have not been able to find reference to this in the forum. I am trying to list my movies using the categories available with the unit. My problem is that I cannot find a way of labelling the categories or of labelling the various DVDs and putting them in different categories. I do not have the companion Entre unit.

The manual, page 32, lists something about "normal play track mode". However, when I follow the instructions, I do not get any response from the unit. Page 59 talks about assigning user file names. Cannot do that either.

In other words, I cannot list my DVDs and put them in different categories. I find the manual rather confusing and I am not sure that it lets you do that type of sorting with DVDs.

Any help will be appreciated.

Originally posted by cai
I have not been able to find reference to this in the forum. I am trying to list my movies using the categories available with the unit. My problem is that I cannot find a way of labelling the categories or of labelling the various DVDs and putting them in different categories. I do not have the companion Entre unit.

The manual, page 32, lists something about "normal play track mode". However, when I follow the instructions, I do not get any response from the unit. Page 59 talks about assigning user file names. Cannot do that either.

In other words, I cannot list my DVDs and put them in different categories. I find the manual rather confusing and I am not sure that it lets you do that type of sorting with DVDs.

Any help will be appreciated.

Cai,

On the DV-5900M/5050M, you are limited in organizing DVD-Video discs. Your only option is to utilize some or all of the custom user groups to sort your DVD-V discs. There are 8 from which to choose, and you can label and use these any way you like.

I happened to use 7 for music management and then the remaining one was called "DVD Movies" and had all my DVD-V discs in there. However, you could create 8 genre-titled user groups for DVD-Vs only and manage them that way.

Of course, the Entre does a much, much better job of CD and DVD management. If you can find it cheap on-line or at your local Tweeter store, I'd recommend it.

One of the nicest features of the Entre is the ability to assign disks to multiple categories (called Groups on the Entre). While I had previously been categorizing my disks by genre (which is essentially how they get categorized by default), yesterday, the lightbulb went on and I made a couple of changes that make the Entre even more useful for me and my family. First, I used to wait a few weeks before I put my new discs in the Entre (I do lots of pre-orders so I get stuff almost on the day it is released) because I felt that it was best to wait until the Open Globe database would be more current. I just created a category called "Rescan" and I now put my new disks in the unit immediately when I get them. If they aren't found in the OpenGlobe database, I assign them to the Rescan Group and periodically I do a search of the disks in that Group and, once they are found in the database, I remove them from the Group. Similarly, I've created a Group called "Unwatched" to which I assign all new disks until I get around to watching them. Next I created individual groups for each of the members of my family and taught them how to assign their favorite discs to their personal Group. Finally, I appended numbers to the Group names (like 1 Rescan, 2 Unwatched, 3 Robert, etc.) that makes them sort in the order that I prefer instead of the default alpha sort.

One really annoying feature of the Entre that I recently discovered is the way it does its alpha sorting. First, sorting is case sensitive and upper case has priority over lower case. Thus a disk called "Title Z" will always be sorted before one called "Title a". This is very annoying given that (1) proper capitalization of titles dictates that articles like "a", "of" and "the" not be capitalized, and (2) the capitalization in the Open Globe database is very erratic. But it is really annoying that you have to list "Lady and the Tramp" as "Lady And The Tramp" in order to have it appear before "Lady Eve, The". The second, and even more annoying part of the alpha sort routine is that the absence of characters should be given priority to any characters that might be present. The Entre does exactly the opposite: if any characters are present, they are processed, putting that entry before a similar title without any additional characters. Thus "Jurassic Park III" will always come before "Jurassic Park". This one is even worse than the first problem, because while capitalizing the articles isn't so terrible, the only way you can correct this problem is to actually alter the title of the film so that it will sort correctly (i.e., "Jurassic Park I"). One shouldn't have to do this.

I would be happy if the entre would just control my two 5900m DVD players with over 700 DVD's. Which of course means that I may need a third 5900m pretty soon. I guess I can wait until April. I just wonder which year that April falls in.:)

Originally posted by rbienstock
One of the nicest features of the Entre is the ability to assign disks to multiple categories (called Groups on the Entre).
That is a cool feature. I have had an 'unknown' group like your 'rescan' but now I also use David's tip that looks them ALL up quickly. When they are found I then remove them from that group.
Originally posted by David Bott
Going into Movie Mode
Pressing OPTIONS
Selecting GET MOVIE INFO
Press SELECT again.

Good tip on "unwatched" group. I've had a "ShowMeOff" for about a year now for what else...showing off. Actually just showing off the buttkickers <g> as the fact I have a personal group in a movie selectable GUI shows off the Entre by itself!

WOULD NOT it be cool if you could "mark" movies you watched and it would count (bump up) and timestamp that. Then you could keep track of what movies you have watched and more importantly haven't watched for quite a while. When you fill up the 400 DVD changers you loose track of what you've seen "lately". I've made this request before. Sounds cool to me!

The only way you can re-name the category groups is using the interface on the unit itself. You cannot use the UI on the screen. You also have to use the UI on the unit to categorize dvds. You however, can use the UI on the screen to name your dvds.

To do this go into the all category and there you can label your dvds.

Also, you have to use the remote control to get to a certain menus on the player before you can label your categories and categorize your dvds. The keyboard does not have all the functions of the remote.

You would do much better if you have a laptop or pc that you can connect to the 5900. With the netnamer software (as poor as it is) you can easily create your groups, type in your names, and categorize them.

Good luck.

Originally posted by cai
I have not been able to find reference to this in the forum. I am trying to list my movies using the categories available with the unit. My problem is that I cannot find a way of labelling the categories or of labelling the various DVDs and putting them in different categories. I do not have the companion Entre unit.

The manual, page 32, lists something about "normal play track mode". However, when I follow the instructions, I do not get any response from the unit. Page 59 talks about assigning user file names. Cannot do that either.

In other words, I cannot list my DVDs and put them in different categories. I find the manual rather confusing and I am not sure that it lets you do that type of sorting with DVDs.

Any help will be appreciated.

well, my 5900 completely died. it now refuses to play any disc at all. Time to send it in which sucks because i will have to send it in again, once the hardware upgrade becomes available.

If you have a player that doesn't eject it seems that eventually it will die on you completely.

Does anyone know if anything I can buy that will let me stack my 400 dvds on a spindle? Will probably need more than one.

slocko,

I thought I saw a post regarding a spindle - try a search.

Does anyone use the Kenwood Touchscreen remote listed on the Kenwood Sovereign website, the RC-R1111, with an Entre/DV-5900M setup? Is it sold separately, what price? Does it work with any SSP? How does it compare with other TouchScreen remotes from such as the Marantz RC-5200, Theatermaster, or even Crestron controllers? Is it handy for using with the Entre and DV-5900M? Does it learn other components very well?
Just havent heard much about this remote at all, but looks interesting on the website.
Any comments?

Slocko, just go to your local hardware store and buy some dowling that is the right size for the DVD hole. No sense in spending a lot of money for spindles that you will only use once (and if your real lucky twice- if (not when) they do the hardware upgrade). As for April as a target date for upgrade, don't hold your breath. If it were going to happen in April they would have sent out notices on how to return the machines. Its already 1/3 of the way through March and no word from Kenwood. Call me a skeptic, but the announcement of an upgrade sure kept everyone quite for the last two-three months.:D

Steve*MH

The Kenwood Powertouch touchscreen remote is a curious unit - probably great for a dedicated theater, but not ideal as an everyday remote. Yes, it can learn IR commands, but I've had some difficulty. I have a Dish Network Dishplayer PVR - the Powertouch appears to correctly learn the remote commands, however, it will not reliably control the Dishplayer. On the other hand, it successfully learned all my Toshiba TV and JVC VCR commands and works very reliably with them. The unit is quite flexible - you can rename and resize buttons at will, however, it has some limitations on how the pages are set up - basically you get two master pages for your components, which when you select a component then change to component-specific pages. I have not found a way to link from one component page directly to another, which means you have to go back to the master page, select the other component, then work off of that component's page. You can, however, teach buttons any IR command, so you can get past this. The unit will do macros, but you can only assign them to certain pages, so often you have to navigate several menus in order to get to them. I'd read the manuals carefully and better yet sit down with a demo unit and the book to get a feel for whether you can make the unit do what you want before you buy one.

Really neat feature - the unit will store your complete DV-5900 disc inventory including all album titles and display it on the remote. Great for using it in another room. Powertouch has great integration with the Entre, including text entry and other nice features.

Good two-way communication with the VR-5900 - surround modes, speaker setup, etc are all available via the remote, and can be confirmed via the remotes display. The remote has both IR and RF, however, the VR-5900 only transmits IR, so you need an IR signal to get the two-way communication. The unit runs off C-Cell batteries, but can also be hardwired for both power and two-way signal if desired. Again, nice features for use in a dedicated theater - hardwire the remote near your seating position and put the gear out of site somewhere. Also will support the VR-5900's second zone capabilities - just set a second zone up last weekend and have been quite pleased with how the system works for this application (note - Entre does not play nicely in the second zone if the first zone is active, so I use the remote to control the DV-5900M directly).

The biggest drawback to the remote is the minimal number of dedicated buttons - for most operations you have to use the touchscreen, which means you are looking at the remote, not the TV or stereo. The unit is also pretty big - most use requires two hands.

For everyday use, I programmed most of the VR-5900, DV-5900M, and Entre commands into a Marantz RC-2000 Mark II. Quicker and more intuitive to use, higher wife acceptance factor. Superb macro capabilities, learns darn near any IR command, very reliable. I am a big fan of this Marantz remote - you can get them on e-bay for $50-$100. Be sure to look for the Mark II version - better layout with dedicated channel buttons.

The Powertouch retails for about $500, if you can find a vendor. Occasionally shows up on E-bay. I keep the Powertouch around to confirm settings and for text input when managing the Entre. Bottom line - it's great with the Kenwood gear, but has its warts when applied to broader uses. Play with one before you shell out your cash.

I personally don't have any experience with the Marantz or Pronto touch-screens, so I can't help you much there.

Hope this helps, ask away if you have other questions.

Mike

Originally posted by zinja
(and if your real lucky twice- if (not when) they do the hardware upgrade). As for April as a target date for upgrade, don't hold your breath. If it were going to happen in April they would have sent out notices on how to return the machines. Its already 1/3 of the way through March and no word from Kenwood. Call me a skeptic, but the announcement of an upgrade sure kept everyone quite for the last two-three months.:D

I disagree with your skepticism. Kenwood put out a press release on this, and it was officially announced via the Product Director. A publicly traded company cannot and will not afford any miscommunication of this magnitude. Nick may burst in right here and say "but Jon, they put out misinformation at the get-go, asserting multi-changer support in 2001."

True, Nick, but the effort and cost associated with this upgrade program is directly attributable to that miscommunication/mishap. I believe that multi-changer support would have been a pay-for upgrade if it wasn't promised up-front.

Publicly traded companies (especially now) simply cannot afford to misrepresent. Their multiples are based on trust and good business practices. They'd lose a lot more value by lying to their customers than by giving us all free upgrades.

Plus, the people who imagined up the Sovereign line must be, at their hearts, HT enthusiasts. As such, they must be, at some level, "one of us," and want us to be happy. Happy -- and loyal -- customers tend to buy more.

Call it the positive feedback loop. All it takes is a well-timed, well-conceived catalyst to thrust a company and its customers into this mutually beneficial loop.

Well - I for one is on stand by to buy 2 new 5900M changers once the multi changer support is implemented. I would also buy the HD upgrade to the Entre if that comes out so I can transfer my 80+ Gig MP3 collection to the Entre to be used as my only MP3 server !! There is a lot of potential to this system and I really hope we will See some nice upgrade options coming out in the near future, partly as response to the survey they sent out a while back. I also really hope they will put an effort to improve the Media Manager software to add the ability to manage DVD's and transfer MP3's in both directions between the Entre and other PC's on a common network.

Originally posted by JonDeutsch
I disagree with your skepticism. Kenwood put out a press release on this, and it was officially announced via the Product Director. A publicly traded company cannot and will not afford any miscommunication of this magnitude. Nick may burst in right here and say "but Jon, they put out misinformation at the get-go, asserting multi-changer support in 2001."

Here I come to save the day. I have no idea when they'll make good, but The Law of Consumer Electronics Upgrades does suggest that "thou shall delay such upgrades to long past the point of initial expecation." This is not an issue endemic to Kenwood.

True, Nick, but the effort and cost associated with this upgrade program is directly attributable to that miscommunication/mishap. I believe that multi-changer support would have been a pay-for upgrade if it wasn't promised up-front.

The reality is that the whole scheme was in danger of the dump heap. Someone at Kenwood finally authorized the money despite the sales of these units, which is and always has been abysmal.

Publicly traded companies (especially now) simply cannot afford to misrepresent. Their multiples are based on trust and good business practices. They'd lose a lot more value by lying to their customers than by giving us all free upgrades.

Like Enron? And as happy as I am that the fix is finally in . . . . sort of . . . Kenwood has sure shown its tolerance for truth aversion, without so much as a bead of sweat on the lip.


Plus, the people who imagined up the Sovereign line must be, at their hearts, HT enthusiasts. As such, they must be, at some level, "one of us," and want us to be happy. Happy -- and loyal -- customers tend to buy more.

Call it the positive feedback loop. All it takes is a well-timed, well-conceived catalyst to thrust a company and its customers into this mutually beneficial loop.

Here's where I buy into it. Sovereign and Entre remain among the best and most forward looking products of the last five years, and it still is leagues ahead of anything out there (although I can hear the hooves in the background, but there's still a distance to cross). Simple pride of having done something unique is what kept the Entre et al alive.

Nick :cool:

Ok, sorry to intrude on deeper ruminations, but...

When the entre looks up Blue Man Group and sort of almost finds it, how do you get it back into the DVD-Audio Group? Mines in "ALL" but nowhere else as best I can tell....

Originally posted by Floydbob
Ok, sorry to intrude on deeper ruminations, but...

When the entre looks up Blue Man Group and sort of almost finds it, how do you get it back into the DVD-Audio Group? Mines in "ALL" but nowhere else as best I can tell....

Just a stab in the dark, but sounds to me like the Entre is reading it as a DVD-V, not a DVD-A. As a DVD-A, it does not recognize the title or cover art. I wonder if your changer is set to DVD-V mode default, and thereby is telling the Entre that it's a DVD-V, not a DVD-A? Or, is this disc dual-sided? I don't recall, but you may have it inserted on the wrong side... possibly a DVD-V only side?

Slocko:

Thank you for the response. I have managed to figure out, with your and Jon Deutsch's help how to name the categories and input some DVDs. From the other posts on this page, it seems as if the Entre is a worthwhile acquisition.

Originally posted by JonDeutsch
Or, is this disc dual-sided? I don't recall, but you may have it inserted on the wrong side... possibly a DVD-V only side?

It's a DVD-Audio disk, but as with many it has a DTS and probably has a video on it somewhere. I think the Blue Man Group - Audio has a standard DVD evil twin and that's what is getting looked up.

Originally posted by Nick Satullo
Here I come to save the day. I have no idea when they'll make good, but The Law of Consumer Electronics Upgrades does suggest that "thou shall delay such upgrades to long past the point of initial expecation." This is not an issue endemic to Kenwood.


Oh, no doubt it will probably be later than expected. But I disagree with the original skepticism over the fact that the opportunity for an upgrade will simply not occur -- that Kenwood will re-neg.

Originally posted by Nick Satullo
Here's where I buy into it. Sovereign and Entre remain among the best and most forward looking products of the last five years, and it still is leagues ahead of anything out there (although I can hear the hooves in the background, but there's still a distance to cross). Simple pride of having done something unique is what kept the Entre et al alive. I agree with everything that you said up till this point. IMO, Sovereign and Entre aren't really that great or forward looking at all. What they have done, which is no mean feat and for which they deserve a lot of credit, is to put things together in an attractive package that may have been done better elsewhere, but are available only from Kenwood in a single, fairly reasonably priced, package. But best and most forward, no way! Take the 5900 for starters. Getting this changer was a no-brainer for me in that it held 400 discs, had progressive scan with Faroudja processing and played DVD-A (I won't mention the other important feature, multi-changer support, here for obvious reasons). To this day, it is completely true that no one else offers this combination of features. But along with this, I got a player that was unbelievably slow in contrast to the Pioneer DVD changer it replaced -- to slow to use for music use, and one that broke frequently. I'd also point out that Sony has just announced a 400 disc changer with progressive scan and multi-channel SACD capability with a $400 list price!

And I am truly disappointed by the speed and poor DVD-A support, because, to be frank, until the 5900 was announced, I had been planing on getting the Escient Power Play. This device, though costing $6,000 and only holding 200 discs, was essentially a standalone DVD control unit that came with one but could daisy chain up to six 200 disc changer units with fire-wire connections, had a gorgeous and effective user interface, captured DVD data down to the chapter and title level (so you could jump to a specific spot in a disc bypassing the discs own menu structure), allowed you to input or import tons of data about your discs, had scanner support so you could scan cover images directly into the unit, and much, much more. Frankly, the only reason that I didn’t get the Power Play was that it didn’t support DVD-A and I wanted to get a changer to handle my many DVD-A discs. In the end, I wound up not using the 5900 for DVD-A anyway, because the Kenwood doesn’t have a feature that many other DVD-A players have, the ability to bypass the DVD-A’s menu and access the tracks directly so that you can just select a disc and it starts to play. I now play all my DVD-As on my Marantz single-disc unit. I hear that Escient will soon come out with a new DVD playback system and I’m sure that that will have even more "forward looking" features, with an astronomically high price to go with that.

And as to the Entre, to some degree, we’ve already had this discussion, but the whole music side of the Entre is basically a pared-down version of the Escient FireBall but with a smaller hard-disc and a text based interface. To the features of the Entre, the FireBall adds a choice of 40GB or 80GB drives with bigger drives to come (40 is the smallest they offer), a graphical interface, touch-screen support, one-touch favorites and repeat play, a dedicated wireless keyboard that gives full control of the unit including everything that is available on the remote and two additional views of the music collection, Artist and Song. (The Entre uses the FireBall’s Artist view that sort of sorts by artist, although if you have multiple discs by one artist, they are each listed individually. The FireBall artist view does the same thing, with one exception: multi-disc sets can have a single entry. But the FireBall adds two more ways to view music: you can show an alpha sorted list of albums and also a list of songs (so you don’t have to remember which Beatle album has "Something" on it).)

I should tell you that I don’t even use the music modes on the Entre (I basically let my kids use it to burn CDs because I won’t let them copy music unless they do it legally on a SCMS compliant device (in the real world, I’m a copyright attorney, and this stuff is important to me).) My music system is an AudioRequest Fusion which has an unbelievably good user interface, the ability to create playlists on the fly, digital output, a true artist view (all discs by a single artist listed under one header), PC control using either a Java applet or a web browser, wireless control from a PocketPC, swappable hard drives, lossless compression, the ability to backup the hard disk and, most cool of all, the ability to stream audio to another unit at a remote location over the internet (thus if you have a vacation home with a Fusion unit in it, you can listen to tracks that are ripped onto the unit back home). Now that to me is really "forward looking," though at a price: the bottom-of-the-line 80GB unit costs $4,000.

And frankly, price is where the Kenwood really starts to shine. All the stuff that I’ve been talking about with their very advanced features consist of very expensive separate components. Kenwood has taken a subset of the features of many different products and put them together in a single package. In terms of putting things together in a single package at a pretty reasonable price, Kenwood can’t be touched. They’ve pared down what others offer, left off the whiz-bang features and delivered a system that does the essentials very well. So while I wouldn’t say that they were "leagues ahead of anything else out there" (when in fact they aren't even close to the front of the pack) they are, at least, thinking about what the true leaders are doing and trying to bring some of that to the mass-market world where most consumers live. They certainly deserve high praise for trying to do that.

Regards,

Robert

PS: As an aside, I was just looking at the Escient web site for their press release on their OEM deal with Kenwood, and I noticed that both the Escient and Kenwood products use an operating system designed by a company called Wind River. A visit to the Wind River site (http://www.windriver.com) reveals that that company created the operating systems used by many other products, including ReplayTV, the Apple AirPort, Linksys' routers and the B&O Avant, among others. (I recall how Jon felt that the Entre's OS was superior to that of the Replay. So I think it is interesting that they turn out to be based on the same platform.)

Originally posted by Steve*MH
Does anyone use the Kenwood Touchscreen remote listed on the Kenwood Sovereign website, the RC-R1111, with an Entre/DV-5900M setup? Is it sold separately, what price? Does it work with any SSP? How does it compare with other TouchScreen remotes from such as the Marantz RC-5200, Theatermaster, or even Crestron controllers? Is it handy for using with the Entre and DV-5900M? Does it learn other components very well?
Just havent heard much about this remote at all, but looks interesting on the website.
Any comments?

powertouch is great (and necessary) remote when included with kenwood receivers and, as mentioned, does text lists in your hand with two way communication to certain kenwood cd/dvd players. This two way interaction allows a $500 remote to display what a $10,000 crestron cannot easily do. Plus allows user changes without reprogramming remote system.

BUT, it is really poor interface for entre. Any touchscreen (as opposed to hard buttons) is a tough sell for menu-driven operations. For entre menus, or scrolling through a cable guide, you don't want to have to look at your hand while navigating your TV. My favorite remote for this activity is universal's MX700. Check out remotecentral.com for review. I have programmed two customer's entre systems with it and am very pleased with the unit.
Randy

Originally posted by rbienstock
I'd also point out that Sony has just announced a 400 disc changer with progressive scan and multi-channel SACD capability with a $400 list price!
Can you point me to the press release? I'd really like to have that machine in my living room. Considering how long it took to get the DVP-CX875 on the shelf after the announcement, I might be waiting a while for this new one.

Originally posted by RF1031
powertouch is great (and necessary) remote when included with kenwood receivers and, as mentioned, does text lists in your hand with two way communication to certain kenwood cd/dvd players. This two way interaction allows a $500 remote to display what a $10,000 crestron cannot easily do. Plus allows user changes without reprogramming remote system.

BUT, it is really poor interface for entre. Any touchscreen (as opposed to hard buttons) is a tough sell for menu-driven operations. For entre menus, or scrolling through a cable guide, you don't want to have to look at your hand while navigating your TV. My favorite remote for this activity is universal's MX700. Check out remotecentral.com for review. I have programmed two customer's entre systems with it and am very pleased with the unit.
Randy

.....................................
Do you have any comment on the Niles Intellicontrol remote? I've been told it uses hard buttons for all, avoiding scrolling through pages.
thanks

Originally posted by weldon
Can you point me to the press release? I'd really like to have that machine in my living room. Considering how long it took to get the DVP-CX875 on the shelf after the announcement, I might be waiting a while for this new one. http://www.highfidelityreview.com/news/news.asp?newsnumber=13145247

Originally posted by batlas
.....................................
Do you have any comment on the Niles Intellicontrol remote? I've been told it uses hard buttons for all, avoiding scrolling through pages.
thanks

Big, clunky, and hard buttons for all is no blessing either. The MX700 uses a combination of soft and hard buttons for best of both worlds. It has actual buttons for numbers, play, pause, menu, guide,etc. It also has lcd display to label buttons for odd items like "openglobe" "i-radio" "abc" "ghi". Lastly it has a thumbpad like a joystick to wiggle left right up down or just push down to select.
MX500 does similar for fraction of price, but as custom installer I like computer programming and storing frequently used devices. For instance, I cannot teach it escient commands because escient uses very high frequencies. Universal just e-mailed me a file from an escient employee that has 90% of the functions. Way coool.
Randy

Originally posted by rbienstock
I agree with everything that you said up till this point. IMO, Sovereign and Entre aren't really that great or forward looking at all. What they have done, which is no mean feat and for which they deserve a lot of credit, is to put things together in an attractive package that may have been done better elsewhere, but are available only from Kenwood in a single, fairly reasonably priced, package. But best and most forward, no way! Take the 5900 for starters. Getting this changer was a no-brainer for me in that it held 400 discs, had progressive scan with Faroudja processing and played DVD-A (I won't mention the other important feature, multi-changer support, here for obvious reasons). To this day, it is completely true that no one else offers this combination of features. But along with this, I got a player that was unbelievably slow in contrast to the Pioneer DVD changer it replaced -- to slow to use for music use, and one that broke frequently. I'd also point out that Sony has just announced a 400 disc changer with progressive scan and multi-channel SACD capability with a $400 list price!

Depends on your perspective. If viewed against the context of consumer electronics in general, then you're probably right. However, from the perspective of a disc management system, including the convergence/glitz factor of the Entre, it has no competition whatsoever. Nor does it appear that there is any on the horizon.

As a an avowed devotee of changers, I have indeed taken note of the Sony player (won't be out for months though), and will add one only for the feature of being a SACD changer.

Nick :cool:

Originally posted by Nick Satullo
Depends on your perspective. If viewed against the context of consumer electronics in general, then you're probably right. However, from the perspective of a disc management system, including the convergence/glitz factor of the Entre, it has no competition whatsoever. Nor does it appear that there is any on the horizon. I'm not sure what you mean by "a disk management system." If you mean simply a front-end to a DVD changer, then the Escient PowerPlay blew the doors off the Entre. I accept that the PowerPlay is now discontinued, but I suspect that even though they haven't announced it yet, Escient has a replacement in mind, and even if that hypothetical unit made no changes to the PowerPlay, it would still be far ahead of the Entre by virtue of its FireWire connection between the changers and control unit and the ability to bring in all of the DVD chapter and title information into the control unit's database. You could access all parts of the disc separately right from the PowerPlay menu -- so, for example, if you wanted to, you could index and jump right to any easter egg without knowing the secret handshake directly from the PowerPlay. If, on the other hand, you mean its CD/MP3 management, then that is just dead wrong as the Entre itself is a Lite version of Escient's FireBall, and the better music servers like the AudioRequest models blow the doors off both the FireBall and the Entre. And that completely ignores attempts to do a high-end music server like the $20,000 Meridian. The only place where the Entre faces no competition at all is in combining DVD management and CD/MP3 management in a single unit. It is completely true that no one else is even trying to do this, but I'm not sure how much stock I place in this argument, which is tantamount to saying that an A/V receiver is inherently better than separate components because the tuner, preamp, amplifier and surround processor in a single integrated unit. My guess is that you're not selling your MC-12 any time soon. ;)

Now don't get me wrong -- I think that the Entre is pretty terrific, but it falls short of what it should be if only because it doesn't even work reliably in accordance with its own specifications (no multi-changer support, erratic disc lookup and the need for constant rebooting). This completely ignores anything that other companies are doing. As to that, I suspect that you may not be completely aware of what else is out there, because much of it isn't really publicised in the consumer electronics world (either high-end or consumer), but is sold principally through custom installers and not generally advertised or promoted to the general public.

Pardon my jumping in here. I've just discovered this site and it's like finding a "home." I am building up to an integrated HT from individual components and a bushel of controllers. Right now I plan to purchase the Kenwood and have a few questions if you don't mind:

- Mention is made of a hardware upgrade to teh 5900. What will it do?
- Is it correct to assume that it will take quite a while for newly built 5900s with the upgrade in place to enter the retail stream? Would it be okay to get one right now and then send it in?
-I was searching for pricing and found one for$948 from "hookedontronics" on eBay. It shows a positive rating. Anyone know of this company or a close price from a "trusted" source?
- I've read about the Entre and the DVD management issues. I was planning on using DVD Lobby in conjunction with my HTPC (1.8ghz P4) and a ViewSonic AirPanel 110 to control everything. Any comments/criticisms or suggestions.

Thanks very much,
Rich

Rbienstock,
Interesting posts. I recall the first time I saw PowerPlay! The sales rep several months ago told me they were coming out with another this year. Competition would be good for the Entre...only because I'd like it improved as well. Frankly, I'm surprised with your PC knowledge that you are [not] pushing the DVDLobby (http://www.cinemaronline.com/dvdlobby.html) option that was talked about in Nov (recall the early Chiristmas present remarks) ? Slick customizable interface, etc.

Others/Rbienstock,
Re: Don't suppose any of you saved off the PowerPlay PDF I point to at the end of this post?

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=1265848&highlight=Escient#post1265848

It is no longer available. I'd like to refresh my memory on it. (please e-mail to avsforum@fauque.com) or if someone has the server space perhaps they would put it up for all to review.

Originally posted by RF1031
Big, clunky, and hard buttons for all is no blessing either. I agree except for one thing: the Intellicontrol is more than just a remote because has that dandy control unit that senses the state of the units and makes macro processing much more reliable. In some ways the Intellicontrol is a useful entry-level version of the far more and expensive sophisticated control systems. The MX-700 is still a great unit, as are all the various flavors of the Pronto in that they give you tremendous programming and lableing flexibility. But what they lack is any way of knowing that their commands were actually received and processed by the units (which could happen because the unit under control isn't in the expected state). This can only happen with some kind of feedback from the unit under control to the remote system. Thus there is a trade-off: what do you want, ultra reliability with little flexibility or ultra flexibility with no guaranty of 100% reliability? I know for some people, those who would be completely lost about what to do if a step in a macro isn't processed, for whom the certainty that one gets from a control with feedback outweighs any of the truly cool things that one can do with a programmable remote.

Originally posted by Rich Gibson
<snip>- Mention is made of a hardware upgrade to teh 5900. What will it do?
- Is it correct to assume that it will take quite a while for newly built 5900s with the upgrade in place to enter the retail stream? Would it be okay to get one right now and then send it in?
<snip>
Rich welcome. Related to your first 2 bullet points: The announcement and description was mentioned here (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=1726560&%20highlight=Easier+access+to+DVD+information#post172<br%20/>6560). Start reading from there for several post to see opinions and some follow up questions.

Originally posted by ScottF200
Rbienstock,
Interesting posts. I recall the first time I saw PowerPlay! The sales rep several months ago told me they were coming out with another this year. Competition would be good for the Entre...only because I'd like it improved as well. Frankly, I'm surprised with your PC knowledge that you are pushing the DVDLobby (http://www.cinemaronline.com/dvdlobby.html) option that was talked about in Nov (recall the early Chiristmas present remarks) ? Slick customizable interface, etc.

Others/Rbienstock,
Re: Don't suppose any of you saved off the PowerPlay PDF I point to at the end of this post?

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=1265848&highlight=Escient#post1265848

It is no longer available. I'd like to refresh my memory on it. (please e-mail to avsforum@fauque.com) or if someone has the server space perhaps they would put it up for all to review.

I started down the DVDLobby route, but it started to just be too much of a hassle, and what killed things was the change in DVD Profiler to version 2 (now 2.1) which necessitated using MS Access to get the DVDProfiler info into DVDLobby, not to mention that to make it work, one essentially had to use two PCs, the ProGear tablet to act as the remote and a second PC to talk to the ProGear and send commands to the 5900. Also, this is a great hobbyist solution, but it requires a lot of steps. Even after you get it set up the first time, you have to make sure that you use DVDProfiler collection numbers that are the same as your changer slot numbers (a real pain with multi-disc sets) as well as updating DVD Lobby every time you get a new disc. I have a terrible procrastination problem, and I know that even after going through the trouble of setting up DVDLobby, there is no way I would go through all the work necessary to keep it up to date. Also, FWIW, the battery life in the ProGear just sucked. Finally, there are issues related to the remote control system that is going into my new home (still under construction) that made that solution sub-optimal. DVDLobby is, however, a very cool program with lots of potential. I suspect that when the new wersion comes, many of those problems will get solved. In the end, for me, the turnkey solution of the Entre (especially as I got mine used for $500) made more sense. If only it didn't crash so often.

The PowerPlay manuals are still online

This is the User guide: http://www.escient.com/manuals/PowerPlayUsersGuide1401.pdf and this is the Technical Reference Guide: http://www.escient.com/manuals/PowerPlayTechRefGuide121100.pdf

Originally posted by rbienstock
I'm not sure what you mean by "a disk management system."

I mean nothing terribly technical. I'm talking about the enthusiast who owns hundreds of discs, and is considering an automated, intuitive way to access those discs without manually changing them, or replacing them in covers. To some extent, any DVD changer does that, but not with the added cover art and information download, as well as the very pleasing menu system from which discs are selected.

If you mean simply a front-end to a DVD changer, then the Escient PowerPlay blew the doors off the Entre. I accept that the PowerPlay is now discontinued, but I suspect that even though they haven't announced it yet, Escient has a replacement in mind, and even if that hypothetical unit made no changes to the PowerPlay, it would still be far ahead of the Entre by virtue of its FireWire connection between the changers and control unit and the ability to bring in all of the DVD chapter and title information into the control unit's database.

When I owned the Pioneer DV-F727 and and the Sony DVD changers (all except the current model), I briefly looked into the Escient, but can't say that I ever saw it used, or made a comparison. Perhaps you're right about it being better than Entre/DV-5900, but at the price point they were at, it was very hard to get interested. I confess, too, to not knowing just what the Firewire connection would bring to the table in this context, but if it's the control factors to which you've alluded, I'll also concede that these would not persuade me to spend the thousands more that the Escient would run.

The fact that Entre is also a digital audio server is nice, but not at all the reason I bought it, nor was the Internet Radio a factor. Perhaps it's just superstition on my part, but I don't listen to MP3 if I can avoid it (even with just a Redbook CD). As soon as the changers are upgraded for daisy chaining purpose, however, I intend to devote one Entre entirely to CDs, and DVD Audios, with two changers attached, and the other for movies. I love the idea that you can be playing a CD in the changer, flip to OpenGlobe, and have artist/music information provided intuitively.

As for the point about the hypothetical product . . . hmmm, I think I agree. That is, if Escient builds a better product, then it will be, well, better. ;)

Now don't get me wrong -- I think that the Entre is pretty terrific, but it falls short of what it should be if only because it doesn't even work reliably completely ignoring anything that other companies are doing. I suspect that you may not be completely aware of what else is out there, because much of it isn't really publicised in the consumer electronics world (either high-end or consumer), but is sold principally through custom installers and not generally advertised or promoted to the general public.

I don't claim to know all that is out there, but I am speaking from the perspective of something I consider primarily a DVD Changer/Manager system. Other than the discontinued Escient (and at some point price should be a legitimate criteria in the analysis) I still have not read of another system which manages a large DVD/CD collection in a changer; Provides cover art graphics in an intuitive menu from which you make your selections; downloads that information from the internet; provides a wealth of supplemental content on the music; and, to boot, does thing like record CDs, provides internet radio, and lets you store recorded MP3 files.

What DVD Changer product does that? Whether it's from the popular market or some esoteric underground market, you're right, I'm not aware of any DVD Changer product that does those things.

Nick :cool:

Originally posted by Nick Satullo
What DVD Changer product does that? Whether it's from the popular market or some esoteric underground market, you're right, I'm not aware of any DVD Changer product that does those things. On this point, you win, which I've already conceded: there is no single product that can do everything that the Entre does. I also concede that with the demise of the PowerPlay, there is no stand-alone hardware solution to DVD Management in a changer. But remember that you said that the 5900/Entre was the best and most forward looking product in the last 5 years, and I was just pointing out that within the last 5 years there were other products that individually were more advanced and better performing than the 5900/Entre combo. They may not have been as inexpensive or do everything in one box, but they were there. And they aren't esoteric or underground. Companies like Escient and AudioRequest are out there, just not in stores, but sold by custom installers. I'll bet that the FireBall has outsold the Entre by two or three times even though it is more expensive.

Your comment is comparable to a discussion I once had with someone who said "my Porsche is the best sports car ever" and I said "well how about a Ferrari Enzo?" and he replied "sure, but I can't afford an Enzo." So if you said about the 5900/Entre "coolest integrated solution," "best value for the money" or even " the only turnkey DVD manager on the market today" you'd have no argument from me. If you even said "the Kenwood Sovereign receiver/changer/entre combo has more advanced features than anything offered by any of the other consumer audio companies" you'd be right on the money. But "best and most forward looking products of the last five years"? No way.

Okay. It's not the best and most forward product of the last 5 years.

Nick :cool:

But definetely in the last 4 years :)

rbienstock

Hi, I'm slogging my way through DVD Lobby Pro, DVD Profiler and DVD Lobby editor and finding it daunting. I understand you need to use access to convert the data, but where are the instructions on how to do it?

I just tried the DVD Lobby Editor and Access '97 says the .mde file is an unrecognizable format. I'm at a standstill right now 'till I find out how to get Profiler information into DVD Lobby.

Another question. Given I have 400 DVD movies and have the DVD Profiler numbers in the same slots as the Kenwood DVM5900, how would I, for example, bring up all the Satr Wars DVDs to the DVD Lobby screen to make a selection?

The application has no help and the documentation is almost criminally deficient. From what I can tell, I'd have to look for the movie in DVD Profiler to find its location...if that is correct, what practical value is DVD Lobby other than seeing a thumbnail of the DVD cover?

Thanks, Rich

Originally posted by Rich Gibson
Hi, I'm slogging my way through DVD Lobby Pro, DVD Profiler and DVD Lobby editor and finding it daunting. I understand you need to use access to convert the data, but where are the instructions on how to do it?

I just tried the DVD Lobby Editor and Access '97 says the .mde file is an unrecognizable format. I'm at a standstill right now 'till I find out how to get Profiler information into DVD Lobby.

Another question. Given I have 400 DVD movies and have the DVD Profiler numbers in the same slots as the Kenwood DVM5900, how would I, for example, bring up all the Satr Wars DVDs to the DVD Lobby screen to make a selection?
Rich, it perplexing why you are not working with the authors on this DVD Lobby/Profiler issue?

Originally posted by Rich Gibson
I just tried the DVD Lobby Editor and Access '97 says the .mde file is an unrecognizable format. I'm at a standstill right now 'till I find out how to get Profiler information into DVD Lobby.

Another question. Given I have 400 DVD movies and have the DVD Profiler numbers in the same slots as the Kenwood DVM5900, how would I, for example, bring up all the Satr Wars DVDs to the DVD Lobby screen to make a selection?

The application has no help and the documentation is almost criminally deficient. From what I can tell, I'd have to look for the movie in DVD Profiler to find its location...if that is correct, what practical value is DVD Lobby other than seeing a thumbnail of the DVD cover? It has been some time since I gave up on this, but I can give some general advice. First, you need to get a couple of additional utilities to make this all work. One was DVDLobby Menu Maker, which is the utility that imports the DVDProfiler database into DVDLobby. I never tried the version that works with the 2.x data as I have no access to Access. :) DVDLobby Menu maker also puts in commands that use Girder to control the changer. All this stuff was, when I was using this, on the DVDLobby site. FWIW, the commands are processed in DOS, so don't run this on an XP machine. As to your second question, there is no way to sort or search for discs. All you can do is browse (I used the small thumbnails). But once you found the disk, you can view the DVD Profiler description and play the disk (as I recall you had to go into the menus to set this). Other than a pretty UI, the functionality of DVDLobby was pretty limited. Remember that all it is really designed to do is to display that glitzy interface on your home theater system before you play a movie. Everythging else, including changer control is tacked on and should be looked on as almost a beta version of the program. As I recell , Mario, the program's developer, hangs out somewhere on AVS, and is pretty helpful at answering questions.

First of all my apologies to my fellow Chicagoan for pestering you all. The DVD Lobby forum appears dead; no responses. I noticed that Mario, the author has lurked here so I figured, why not ask?

rbienstock, did you mean DVD Lobby Menu editor doesn't work in DOS, or Girder doesn't work in DOS? I'm dismayed by your remark; my HTPC is XP and it is very stable.

So here I sit, on the cusp of making investments in dollars and time and things get muddier and muddier. If you all won't object may I explain where I'm trying to go and perhaps you would spare some of your experience and advice.

Currently I'm using a 1997 Sony XBR TV for my screen, with the vidio control through my Denon Receiver. It gives me 6 S-video inputs:
1. VCR Output
2. TIVO output
3. DVD Player (right now single)
4. HTPC Screen output
5. Panasonic DVD Burner (DMR-E30)
6. Tivo output from master bedroom

My HTPC and monitor are at my desk behind the HT area and use a Matrox eTV AGP card and Pronto emulator software connected serially to a color Pronto aimed at the HT stack. Thus, if I'm working on my main computer I can see just to my right the HTPC LCD showing a small video of the input to the eTV card. The eTV virtual controller is just below the video and the Pronto is just down and to the left.

Here's where it gets over the top. I have rf modulated every "head unit" in the house with a CATV channel using various brand rf modulators (currently Radio Shack's mono unit is $24.95), all routed to a Channel Master distribution system. Thus any television in the house can select any of the ten rf frequencies and see any source. So...one cable runs to the eTV input on the HTPC. Thus from my computer station I can "tune in" on any video source in the house. So by clicking the mouse on the Pronto emulator I can see the TIVO channel selection matrix in the upper right window of the LCD and change main Sony unit.

Why the Pronto? I'm impulsive; I thought it would work. It's too small a screen and you have to keep looking at it to find the buttons. Still, it serves as a great rf xmitter.

I have about 400 DVD movies (some burned from off-air tapes) and want to search for a genre, or artist, or director, etc. and see the selection and then run the Movie. Now it's manual; I want to get the DVM 5900 so I can click on a movie. DVD Lobby serves no useful purpose for me; I'm out only $35.00. I am very happy with Music Match for MP3 playing and don't use my HTPC as a PVR and don't listen to internet radio so the Entre is not very useful to me.

DVD Profiler is perfect, but very, very tiny on an NTSC screen. I'm not really sure how Main Lobby can help.

I am interested in the Viewsonic air pad touch LCD ($1000) but if I can find a VGA splitter I can buy an LCD and wireless mouse for <$300 and accomplish about the same as the airpad but not have a touch screen (or would a digital LCD off the eTV output be better? I would still need an rf/composite/s-video cable to the digital LCD unit in any case)

This is all good for me, as I can manipulate the various software and controller emulators but my kids and grandkids are over twice a week and I wanted to simplify all this. That's the reason for the interest in the DVD Lobby and Main Lobby software.

So, with XP does anyone think Main Lobby will fill the bill for making the HT controls user friendly?

Thanks for your advice so far, and your patience.

Rich

Originally posted by Rich Gibson
rbienstock, did you mean DVD Lobby Menu editor doesn't work in DOS, or Girder doesn't work in DOS? I'm dismayed by your remark; my HTPC is XP and it is very stable. What I meant was that DVDLobby Menu Maker creates a DOS batch file for each disk that is processed when you hit the Play button in DVDLobby. These worked fine when I ran them on a Win98Se machine, but not when I ran them on an XP machine. This last was at the time I was just giving up on DVDLobby, and I never explored why I was having problems.

Sigh. I had really hoped that the DVDLobby stuff would have come along much farther by now. Too bad to hear that it's still requires so much work to hook it up.

Does anybody know about the status of programs to control the Kenwood changer? Do they work reliably, and do they have source? I hate to do it, but I may just have to write my own jukebox. Although, I recently discovered that the 5050 has the "Chroma bug", so I may just have to go back to another player........

Originally posted by JustMike
<snip>Does anybody know about the status of programs to control the Kenwood changer? Do they work reliably, and do they have source? I hate to do it, but I may just have to write my own jukebox. <snip> so I may just have to go back to another player........
You may want to wait to see if the controls have changed with the changer changes...but I think you should go back to another player that may meet your needs better based on your current and past post.

Originally posted by JustMike
Although, I recently discovered that the 5050 has the "Chroma bug", so I may just have to go back to another player........

FYI - I don't believe the DV-5900M has the chroma bug.

I think Jon's right . . . though Mike could also be right. There is a differerent progressive chip in the two players, although I did not think that the progressive chip was the culprit. I thought it was in the MPEG decoder, or perhaps in its application to the players.

Perhaps Stacey or Don can comment? I've got the 5900 and two 5050s, feeding an interlaced signal to a Faroujda NRS at 720p. My understanding is that the NRS "masks" the chroma bug anyay, so it's not a problem.

Kenwood says April is the upgrade month. T.S. Eliot said April is the cruelest month. I suppose they both can be right.

Nick :cool:

Do you guys really want to take this thread down this "Chroma bug" path? That'd be really sad. How about starting another thread and keep this on usablity issues as much as possible skipping the FUD (http://www.acronymfinder.com/af-query.asp?String=exact&Acronym=fud).

Nobody is trying to spread FUD, Scott. I stated my observation -- the 5050 appears to have the chroma bug. Simple statement. I didn't mention the 5900 because I assumed the F chip would mask the problem if it existed.

Unfortunately, this is also the only serial-controllable 400-disc changer I know of. I really wish I had a better alternative, but I don't seem to. Maybe the new mods will fix enough of my problems that I'll want an Entre again!

If not, though, one option I'm considering is using the 5050 for mechanized storage and casual viewing, but a different player for critical viewing... For that, I need to know whether the serial stuff works well and if source is available. Anyone?

Originally posted by JustMike
Unfortunately, this is also the only serial-controllable 400-disc changer I know of. Mike,

Isn't the 5900M serial-controllable? Given that the 5900M doesn't have CUEs (it uses the MEI decoder, so the F chip makes no difference here), doesn't this solve your problem?

Well I am about to spread a little FUD here, only because I cannot get a straight answer from Kenwood. I have a similar setup to Nick's, an Entre a 5900 and two 5050's. I bought the Entre and the two 5050's new but I purchased the 5900 from a gentleman on ebay. David mentioned in an earlier post to make sure that your gear was registered as Kenwood would be using that info to notify people about the upgrades. When I attempted to register the 5900 I found that the previous owner had already done so and politely told to go away. So I decided to call Kenwood to make sure that I would be able to get my player upgraded. Over the last six weeks I have called Kenwood four times, spoken to four different people and explained my story, provided information about my unit and the previous owner and been told I would be contacted, but I have not. The only thing I know for sure is that Kenwood warranties apply to the original purchasers only (all the people I talked to told me that) however as of today my 5900 still does not appear in my Kenwood profile and I have yet to have anyone at Kenwood tell me that I can expect to have it upgraded. I thought perhaps I would post this because it appears that Kenwood monitors this site and because some of my fellow Kenwood owners appear to have better connections with Kenwood than I and perhaps would be able to find out Kenwood's position on this matter. I personally believe that with the monetary investment I have made in Kenwood products I should be entitled to the upgrade. Thanks for listening to my ranting and any suggestions would be appreciated.


Tom

Originally posted by b00bie
Well I am about to spread a little FUD here, only because I cannot get a straight answer from Kenwood. I have a similar setup to Nick's, an Entre a 5900 and two 5050's. I bought the Entre and the two 5050's new but I purchased the 5900 from a gentleman on ebay. David mentioned in an earlier post to make sure that your gear was registered as Kenwood would be using that info to notify people about the upgrades. <snip> I personally believe that with the monetary investment I have made in Kenwood products I should be entitled to the upgrade. Thanks for listening to my ranting and any suggestions would be appreciated.
Without a doubt you have a large investment in Kenwood and they should respect that. I understand your frustration as I had to go through something similar. I will PM you the persons name and e-mail I was dealing with. In my case I had registered but still could not access their system. It appeared that their registration system was a little bit screwed up since I ended up with the multiple "records" none of which were tied to a account which said "he's registered, can log in and can get notifications status".

Keep after them. I suspect you have caused a lot of e-mails and meetings already <grin>. Remind them regularly of your large investment and you are a regular forum contributor providing other potential customers opinions of Kenwoods service and their products. It is the true.

Just got the VR 5900 and discovered, to my dismay, that I will need the IR 9991 to allow the receiver to communicate with the remote (all my gear is in another room in a closet. Currently using Xantech IR system). Anybody know where I can get one of these things for a reasonable price? Kenwood wants $300, which is more than 10% of what I paid for the receiver.

Hi guys, I've followed this thread since it's inception as I was looking to buy a 5900 (not an easy task based in the UK), however I would not be interested in purchasing the Entre. I know the unit is soon to be 'upgraded', but is there any indication that I could add cover art to my DVD's by using Netnamer or other such program?

Originally posted by JNelson
Just got the VR 5900 and discovered, to my dismay, that I will need the IR 9991 to allow the receiver to communicate with the remote (all my gear is in another room in a closet. Currently using Xantech IR system). Anybody know where I can get one of these things for a reasonable price? Kenwood wants $300, which is more than 10% of what I paid for the receiver.
Hmm...never even heard of the IR-9991 (http://www.kenwoodusa.com/product/product.jsp?productTypeId=10&sortBy=price&productId=381) before. I suppose you searched the net and saw the place that was selling them for $204 but they were available for on-line ordering - need to call. Some other review I saw mentioned something about them being discontinued but they are still on the KW site (per prev link).

I know the Carrier Frequency of the Sovereign line (and other KW products?) is 38kHz per a phone call (1-800-kenwood) I made in Sept02.

Jimmy,

First, why is it so difficult to find a 5900M in the UK?
Second, there seems to be nothing remotely close to cover art support using the 5900M by itself. The UI is limited to disc name, category, genre.

Thanks for reply Scott. I called the site you mentioned and they could give me no delivery date. Finally got someone at Kenwood who said he "thought" they had discontinued the IR 9991. Decided finally to send the 5900 back, which is a shame bec I have the Entre and the DV 5900 and had wanted to integrate.

Find it hard to believe KW would not have considered the possibility that some folks don't have system set-up with no line of sight to the receiver.

Originally posted by JNelson
<snip> Decided finally to send the 5900 back, which is a shame bec I have the Entre and the DV 5900 and had wanted to integrate. Find it hard to believe KW would not have considered the possibility that some folks don't have system set-up with no line of sight to the receiver.
It is a shame. I would not give up nearly so quickly. I checked ebay and there are none listed. If I were you I'd go to the various HT forum sites and post in the relevant form your request. Use a good subject and explain what you are trying to do. You may very well get lucky and someone used that IR 1999 and no longer needs it. Your subject "Kenwood IR 1999 needed or equivalent 2-way IR" could catch someones eye.

Agree. But at some level it's the principle. Having to shell out an additional $200-300 (more than 10% of what I paid for the box itself) to get the thing to work as advertised is a bit, shall we say, frustrating.

Thanks again for your thoughts.

JNelson,

I am using AVcast and Powermid IR repeaters to control the VR-5900 throughout my house. You don't need the two-way communication for most of the VR-5900's functionality - mostly for setup. Depending on how your theater is set up, you could hard-wire the Powertouch remote in your listening room for use when setting up the system, then use either the Powertouch or any learning remote (I use the Marantz RC-2000 mk 2) for everyday operations via one-way IR. You may also be able to set up two-way IR using your Xantech system for signals to the receiver and a Powermid or something like it for signals from the receiver to the remote. The Powermids are readily available for $50.

Mike

I saw the notes about the cover art support on the 5900.

One more question, I DO have the Entre', is there anyway to upload your own cover art when OpenGlobe does not have your DVD listed?? I can do this for my audio CD's (AWESOME feature BTW since a number of my CD's are either not in OG or the covers are wrong).

Thanks for the help !!

Originally posted by m s jaxjag
I saw the notes about the cover art support on the 5900.

One more question, I DO have the Entre', is there anyway to upload your own cover art when OpenGlobe does not have your DVD listed?? I can do this for my audio CD's (AWESOME feature BTW since a number of my CD's are either not in OG or the covers are wrong).

Thanks for the help !!

>>>>>>>> from search of this thread on word Amazon >>>>>>>>>

Posted by Kirby Baker on 08-28-02 07:02 AM:

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by JD-NH
Kirby- If you'd like to import graphics for CD covers, you can do that using Media Manager. Simply bring up the disc you would like to edit, double click on the "generic" cover art, and replace the image with one you've either scanned in, or borrowed from somewhere else. Keep in mind that image resolution is limited to 200x200, and Media Manager will modify any graphic you import to meet those criteria. Not a big deal, as long as you're starting with an image of equal horizontal and vertical res...otherwise it might get distorted!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And now for the question of the day.... Where can I find good CD cover art on the web? I looked on gracenote.com but when I looked up discs, I didnt see cover art. And I dont think we can access OpenGlobe without the Entre for free, correct? So short of scanning in CD covers (which is possible, just takes more time) where should I be looking?

And for question 2, what is the possibility that we could somehow transfer DVD cover art into the Entre for those few discs that just cant be found?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted by JD-NH on 08-28-02 08:29 AM:

Kirby-
Not that I would recc. taking cover art from amazon.com or cdnow, but I understand there might be some cover art there! As for DVD jackets, there is currently no way to edit them using Media Manager...sorry
Jeff

if you find something on the web just right click, and use "save as" to store on your local PC

<<<<<<<<<<<<<

Thanks Scott. I figured that was the answer (I had already done a bunch of looking). But since the subject was up I decided to give it a shoot.

Thanks again !!

Jon, thanks for the reply, but Kenwood Europe does not provide the 5900 or any disc changer I'm aware of. Infact Kenwood Europe I believe no longer exists in relation to HT gear, which is a shame.
I was gonna get a buddy to send me one from Crutchfields, but am rather reluctant if I can't somehow get coverart to display on the DVD menu. I heard somewhere that Netnamer was going to be upgraded to allow the allocation of name and coverart for the 5900, but it may have just been my imagination. Entre would be little or no use to me in the UK. Ah well!

Originally posted by JimmytheSaint
Entre would be little or no use to me in the UK. I'm not sure why it will be any less useful in the UK. If youhave a region 1 changer, you can still use the Entre to manage those discs. There are many UK CDs in the OpenGobe database. I know this because most of my imports get found, so you can use the music manager. Most of the iRadio is US based (not sure about the Virgin stations), but that doens't mean that you can't listen to them, so I'm not sure how being in the UK makes the Entre any more useless than it is in the US.;)

Not to change the subject, but for those really familiar with the DV-5900M, the bugs of this machine have been well reported, and hopefully all addressed with the soon hardware upgrade. But in terms of raw audio and video performance, how does the DV-5900M stand up to other "ultra high-end" players that are single disc players? Players from Theta Digital, EAD, Proceed, etc? In other words, would the DV-5900M be "out of place" in a truly high-end home theater with a high-end video projector based strictly on audio and particularly, video performance? Has anyone compared it directly to any of these $5,000+ players?
Thanks.

Originally posted by Steve*MH
Not to change the subject, but for those really familiar with the DV-5900M, the bugs of this machine have been well reported, and hopefully all addressed with the soon hardware upgrade. But in terms of raw audio and video performance, how does the DV-5900M stand up to other "ultra high-end" players that are single disc players? Players from Theta Digital, EAD, Proceed, etc? In other words, would the DV-5900M be "out of place" in a truly high-end home theater with a high-end video projector based strictly on audio and particularly, video performance? Has anyone compared it directly to any of these $5,000+ players?
Thanks.

Stereophile Guide to HT awarded the DV-5700 (the 5 disc changer version of the 5900M) a "recommended product of the year" in the AAA category. One level down from the creme-de-la-creme "AAAA" category (I don't recall which units ended up in AAA and AAAA, respectively).

I'd say this is a very nice place for this unit to reside. I'm especially surprised that SGHT had so few qualms with putting a Kenwood up on such a high pedestal.

Personally, I'm thrilled that *someone* took the mega-changer concept high-end. Kenwood took a "jukebox" form factor to the "media management system" level in one fell swoop.

I thought kenwood made a 6050 that was the european version of the 5050?

also in this thread was the name of a place that was able to modify the 5900 to make it region free. I believe Nick used them for that purpose.

Originally posted by JimmytheSaint
Jon, thanks for the reply, but Kenwood Europe does not provide the 5900 or any disc changer I'm aware of. Infact Kenwood Europe I believe no longer exists in relation to HT gear, which is a shame.
I was gonna get a buddy to send me one from Crutchfields, but am rather reluctant if I can't somehow get coverart to display on the DVD menu. I heard somewhere that Netnamer was going to be upgraded to allow the allocation of name and coverart for the 5900, but it may have just been my imagination. Entre would be little or no use to me in the UK. Ah well!

Originally posted by slocko
I thought kenwood made a 6050 that was the european version of the 5050?

also in this thread was the name of a place that was able to modify the 5900 to make it region free. I believe Nick used them for that purpose.

Here it is:

http://www.jvb.nl/pages/1smpii418.htm

I never had one of my Kenwood players modified, but I did use them to modify a Pioneer DV-F727 and it worked quite well. I spoke to them about the Kenwood modification, and, as you can see, they do it as well.

The unit can be modified either in the U.S. or in Europe.

Nick :cool:

Originally posted by Steve*MH
Not to change the subject, but for those really familiar with the DV-5900M, the bugs of this machine have been well reported, and hopefully all addressed with the soon hardware upgrade. But in terms of raw audio and video performance, how does the DV-5900M stand up to other "ultra high-end" players that are single disc players? Players from Theta Digital, EAD, Proceed, etc? In other words, would the DV-5900M be "out of place" in a truly high-end home theater with a high-end video projector based strictly on audio and particularly, video performance? Has anyone compared it directly to any of these $5,000+ players?
Thanks.

It depends on your perspective on DVD playback.

I've owned over 20 players (I currently have 10+--and I just ordered one of the new "super" players from Samsung--don't know what I'll do with it yet). I've owned Pioneer Elite, Meridian, Sony, Panasonic, Toshiba and many variations within that line. I've seen the Proceed extensively, and several of the Denon models.

I do not use the progressive outputs of the DV-5900 (or the DV-5050, which I also have). I feed the interlaced signal to a Faroudja NRS at 720p, which theoretically should be similar to the 480p output in the DV-5900, albeit with a higher resolution.

First, let me say that the difference among DVD players in general is very gradual in any case, unless you are comparing something to a very bad player (like a Sony Playstation 2). If you are looking for changes to be reflected in the high end dollars that are spent, I'm betting you'll be disappointed. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Great software looks great on any DVD player, and bad software looks good on none.

The Kenwood performs very well on both audio and video, compared to any DVD player in the world, or at least the dozens I've seen. That is not necessarily high praise for the Kenwood. It is high praise for the technology, because, in my experience, you can say the same thing about several brands.

Will you see differences? Sure, but, in my experience, negligible ones, and sometimes you're pressed to say which is better among the slight differences. Will you hear differences? I haven't, especially on digital signals like DD or DTS, as well as PCM CD playback. The one area that I can't say I've extensively compared is in DVD-Audio playback, although the 5900 sounds at least as good as the Panasonic RP-91 and the JVC 723, though those are the only ones I've compared in that respect.

I have a reasonably high end system, and I would not make the choice of the Kenwood Changer System if I thought it involved much of a compromise. I'm convinced it doesn't, although, as my recent Samsung order demonstrates, I'm willing to keep experimenting.

In my experience, the qualitative differences are found in very slightly different shades of gray, and even then it is hard to tell which is the "right" gray. However, the control, convergence, and convenience differences are fairly tangible to me. No one has sounded off on these products more than I have, but, until I see a better changer mousetrap, I will probably have the Entre/DV-5900 (or 5050 . . . several, anyway) in my setup.

Nick :cool:

Anyone here own a Kenwood DV-5900M changer and a Slinke who would be willing to test some simple scripts? Ideally, you have some knowledge and understanding of the Slinke.

I'm working on changer control now for DVDLobby Pro 2 and have it working smoothly with the Sony 875P and would like to add the Kenwood.

Also, just curious how some of you would utilize DVDLobby Pro 2.
How would you control it? (Remote, Keyboard, Mouse)
Where will DVDLobby Pro 2 be displayed? (Main viewing screen or on a separate computer/webtablet/touchscreen)
The reason for the second question is just to find out whether any Kenwood users have their home theater PC connected to their viewing screen.

http://www.cinemaronline.com/avsforum/dvdlobby2screen02.jpg

Originally posted by mcascio
Anyone here own a Kenwood DV-5900M changer and a Slinke who would be willing to test some simple scripts? Ideally, you have some knowledge and understanding of the Slinke. <snip> Also, just curious how some of you would utilize DVDLobby Pro 2. How would you control it? (Remote, Keyboard, Mouse) Where will DVDLobby Pro 2 be displayed? (Main viewing screen or on a separate computer/webtablet/touchscreen)
The reason for the second question is just to find out whether any Kenwood users have their home theater PC connected to their viewing screen.
Sorry at this time I'm not interested in testing since I have the Entre. I will have a PC hooked up but perhaps just for the movie intro.

I would like to hear more about a couple of features listed on your screen, however as they are relevant to slick user interfaces.

1) Times viewed? How is that controlled/counted? I did not see it defined in your user guide on your site
2) Trailer? Where is that coming from? Presumably from the DVD unless it is a connection to one of the several websites that have trailers. If the DVD then I'm perplexed on how it drives the menu system to display the trailer since most DVD menu systems seem fairly unique. This would be a pretty cool DVD menu option since you may have a movie viewing guest that is considering about 2-3 different movies in your selection and they want to see a trailer to get a glimps. Obviously they could go into the DVD menu but that is a pain and slow.

Scott,

DVDLobby can launch anything via command lines. So people just have defined commands to launch movie trailers they have downloaded and have stored on their hardrives.

So one command line launches the dvd player, another command line launches the movie trailer.

Originally posted by ScottF200
Sorry at this time I'm not interested in testing since I have the Entre. I will have a PC hooked up but perhaps just for the movie intro.

I would like to hear more about a couple of features listed on your screen, however as they are relevant to slick user interfaces.

1) Times viewed? How is that controlled/counted? I did not see it defined in your user guide on your site
2) Trailer? Where is that coming from? Presumably from the DVD unless it is a connection to one of the several websites that have trailers. If the DVD then I'm perplexed on how it drives the menu system to display the trailer since most DVD menu systems seem fairly unique. This would be a pretty cool DVD menu option since you may have a movie viewing guest that is considering about 2-3 different movies in your selection and they want to see a trailer to get a glimps. Obviously they could go into the DVD menu but that is a pain and slow.

Originally posted by slocko
Scott,DVDLobby can launch anything via command lines. So people just have defined commands to launch movie trailers they have downloaded and have stored on their hardrives.So one command line launches the dvd player, another command line launches the movie trailer.
Got it. I suppose the 'times viewed' is similar in that some script/batch_file bumps up a DOS/OS environment variable that is displayable. Would love to have a sophisticated feature in the Entre so you could get a list of movies sorted by last viewed. Hard to control a bit since just because you select a DVD from the Entre menu does not mean you "viewed" it. I think you would have to have a menu selection so that you could tell the Entre that you "viewed" and it bumps up it's counter and timestamps it.

Hi Mario,

I see you finally added genre. Is that working?

If I ever get up and running with it, I would be using a remote.

My plan is to have my pc outputting video via a high end ati video card to my tv.

Like someone else said, it's too time consuming to get up and running and maintaing your collection. As a hobby it's great, but if your time strapped it's hard to find time for it.

None the less, keep up the efforts and hopefully in some small way you can influence the big players about the direction they should be heading in UI design.

Originally posted by mcascio
Anyone here own a Kenwood DV-5900M changer and a Slinke who would be willing to test some simple scripts? Ideally, you have some knowledge and understanding of the Slinke.

I'm working on changer control now for DVDLobby Pro 2 and have it working smoothly with the Sony 875P and would like to add the Kenwood.

Also, just curious how some of you would utilize DVDLobby Pro 2.
How would you control it? (Remote, Keyboard, Mouse)
Where will DVDLobby Pro 2 be displayed? (Main viewing screen or on a separate computer/webtablet/touchscreen)
The reason for the second question is just to find out whether any Kenwood users have their home theater PC connected to their viewing screen.

http://www.cinemaronline.com/avsforum/dvdlobby2screen02.jpg

Hi Scott,

1) Times viewed? How is that controlled/counted?

This is a new idea I recently had after someone told me they had watched the same movie about 23 times. I figured it would be cool to know a more accurate number. :) I guess my original thought was just to increment the number each time they press play movie.

I think you would have to have a menu selection so that you could tell the Entre that you "viewed" and it bumps up it's counter and timestamps it.

I think this may be too much user interaction versus the option to just bump up the number when they press play movie. I could be wrong though.

2) Trailer? Where is that coming from?

Like slocko mentioned, you can launch a video file stored on your hard drive. The big difference between DVDLobby Pro 1.21d and DVDLobby Pro 2, is that it will be able to do away with the batch file in many situations. My goal is to first gear a version that works specifically with the Sony 875P and the Kenwood 5900. I've been trying to tackle every scenario from the beginning and it's creating too many delays.

The other nice thing about the movie trailer, is that it will play directly in DVDLobby Pro 2. So you won't have to launch an external player.

slocko,

I see you finally added genre. Is that working?

Yes - genre is working.

If I ever get up and running with it, I would be using a remote.

I will be assigning keystrokes so a remote control will work for executing most commands.

Like someone else said, it's too time consuming to get up and running and maintaing your collection. As a hobby it's great, but if your time strapped it's hard to find time for it.

I agree, DVDLobby Pro 2 will work much more efficiently with DVDProfiler 2 than DVDLobby Pro 1.21d does. Just export xml data from Profiler and import into DVDLobby Pro 2. I also plan to add a separate editor within DVDLobby Pro 2. Not sure if it'll make it in the first run though.

None the less, keep up the efforts and hopefully in some small way you can influence the big players about the direction they should be heading in UI design.

I think it will definitely set the bar pretty high for the big dogs. :)

Mcascio

Forgive my ignorance, but what is a slinke and is it needed for DVDLobby with the 5900 given that the 5900 has an RS-232 connection? Being a test engineer and an incorrigible experimenter, I'm interested in your trial effort...but not sure I have the requisite hardware (I do have the DV-5900 and an assortment of PCs).

Mike

slinke (http://www.nirvis.com/slink-e.htm)

From the FAQ on the above site

Q: What is a Slink-e?

The Slink-e is a small (5" x 5") microcontroller based unit which allows your computer to communicate with infrared (IR), S-Link, Control-A, and Control-S devices such as audio and video equipment. The Slink-e interfaces to your computer using a standard RS-232 serial port, so it can work with most computers and operating systems.

Q: What can the Slink-e do?

A: The Slink-e allows your computer to control or be controlled by Sony S-Link and IR devices from most manufacturers. This means the you can use your PC to control receivers, TVs, VCRs, CD players or anything else that works via remote control. It also means that you can use remote controls to command programs you write on your computer. The Slink-e is expandable to use up to 8 independent infrared receivers and transmitters. This allows you to use the Slink-e in every room of your house! The Slink-e is able to automatically route IR signals from room to room allowing you to control your devices from any room in the house.

And here I thought "it was just a wonderful toy" :)

Originally posted by ScottF200
slinke (http://www.nirvis.com/slink-e.htm)

Q: What is a Slink-e?

The Slink-e is a small (5" x 5") microcontroller based unit which allows your computer to communicate with infrared (IR), S-Link, Control-A, and Control-S devices such as audio and video equipment. The Slink-e interfaces to your computer using a standard RS-232 serial port, so it can work with most computers and operating systems.

Q: What can the Slink-e do?

A: The Slink-e allows your computer to control or be controlled by Sony S-Link and IR devices from most manufacturers. This means the you can use your PC to control receivers, TVs, VCRs, CD players or anything else that works via remote control. It also means that you can use remote controls to command programs you write on your computer. The Slink-e is expandable to use up to 8 independent infrared receivers and transmitters. This allows you to use the Slink-e in every room of your house! The Slink-e is able to automatically route IR signals from room to room allowing you to control your devices from any room in the house.

Yes Slocko,

and it walks downstairs alone or in pairs.....hmmmm being able to use 2 or more of something....why does that sound like it does NOT belong in a Entre' thread:)

Actually Slinkys will be able to "walk in pairs" but you will need to send them back and have upgrades sometime in the future....in fact I think they have removed that verbiage from the manual and the website until the engineers are SURE they will be able to.

But remember for FUN it is a wonderful toy....and it too does not support DVD-Audio!

Mr Integration,

Now THAT was funny! Thanks to all for the description of the Slink-e. Found the website and will investigate further - sounds like a fun toy to add to the system.

Mike

Originally posted by Mkellyvich
Mcascio

Forgive my ignorance, but what is a slinke and is it needed for DVDLobby with the 5900 given that the 5900 has an RS-232 connection? Being a test engineer and an incorrigible experimenter, I'm interested in your trial effort...but not sure I have the requisite hardware (I do have the DV-5900 and an assortment of PCs).

Mike

Hey Mike,
I won't have serial control working with the Kenwood immediately. It would be fairly easy to control it with a Slinke though via an IR emitter.

My first goal would be to get someone with a Slinke/Kenwood combo so I can write the control to trigger a specific DVD successfully. Once that's working I can look more into Serial control.

One of the problems Kenwood users have had is the multiple control of changers via the Entre. The Slinke/DVDLobby Pro 2 combo would solve this problem.

Here's a screenshot showing the Genre screen.

http://www.cinemaronline.com/avsforum/dvdlobby2screen03.jpg

I thought of a way to figure out whether a movie has been watched. Once the user presses the PLAY MOVIE button, it could then display the movie poster centered with a NOW PLAYING graphic. Underneath could be several buttons, one which would be VIEWED. This would then increase the increment.

Has anyone brokein the code on putting internet radio stations into Entre? I have tried several times and so far "station not available" is the reward.

Mario, I have a Kenwood 5050 and a Slink-e. I would, of course, much rather have the direct serial control, but I'm happy to help you if I can to get the IR working. PM me if you're interested.

Mario,

Thanks for the reply. I've put the slink-e on my list of toys to buy, will PM you once I have it.

In the meantime, has anyone played with the MX-5000 power amp for the extra surround channels (7.1)? Saw a few on e-bay and wondered a) if the amp was any good and b) whether the extra channels noticeably improved the movie experience. Looks like I have about 10 DVDs encoded with the DTS or DD EX/ES soundtracks, so I have some software that would make use of the additional channels. What are the impressions of those who have lived with the extra channels?

Has anyone tried the new Pronto TSU3000 with their Sovereign system? I just got mine and have it just about how I like, except I'm having problems with the DVD power on. With my 2000, I had a macro that would turn on the 5900, pause .5 sec, stop, pause .2, pause stop. This would keep it from autoplaying. However with my 3000 it doesn't work. I have to manually hit the stop button.

Jason

Any new info on stuck "updating" problem? What happened to the groundswell of support I had for parsing THE THREAD by date or per 20 pages or so. This really is absurd to have one long thread started a century ago.
Randy

Nevermind about the remote issue, it seemed to work last night, not sure why though :confused:

Jason

ADMIN NOTE:

This thread is for the support of the Kenwood system. This is not the place to talk about other interfaces so I kindly ask this be brought into another thread.

"Kenwood Sovereign System (Changer, Entre, and Receiver) Issues and Answers"

Thank you.

I am having a terrible time :mad: matching this movie:

Bad Company with Chris Rock

I have even talked with OG (via e-mail) and they sent me the "exact title" but I still cannot get it to match. They sent me:

"Bad Company (2002) (THX)"

Has anyone gotten this movie to match???

Thanks for your help !!!! :)

Ok, anyone here have Pronto 3000 that they are using with their Kenwood system? I'm having the worst trouble getting it to work constently with the dvd player (5900M). The transport buttons were not working so I decided to start over and relearn the codes from the keyboard. However, now almost nothing is working :0 I have the receiver and entre working great.

Jason

any one had problems getting a DSL HomePortal to work with the N-link usb to ethernet connected to the entre. Entre says dns fail on ISP.
Broadband works fine everyelse. Thanks

has anyone had problems with the net mate usb to ethernet losing connection to your router. several times a week the net mate link lite goes out and i loose connection to the web. i have to unplug and re-plug the cat5 cable. sometimes i have to reset the entre. suggestions? what is the most dependable usb-ethernet product for the entre. i have the list of compatible ones, but am not happy with the net mate. thanks

I have used the Belkin and the Netmate. It is the Netmate that worked best for me.

Twice in the last few weeks, I have lost audio on a DVD. It does not happen with any other input via the 5900, only DVD. After and entre reset and power cycle, it comes back. Any ideas?

Problem:

When the disks, CDs and DVDs were firsted placed in 5900m they were not evenly spaced, 1-235. They were detected and a high percentage were named and grouped. The installer felt that the disks should be replaced more evenly and they were removed and reinserted thru out, example, 1-60, 100-155, 200-265 and 300-345 and again detected.

The Music and Movie Guides listed multiple copies of several disks and more unknowns then I had before. The multiple copies I believe represent where the disk is now and where it was before.

Called Kenwood, they recommended I remove all the disks, close door let it detect no disks, they replace all the disks and it shoulkd correct problem.

Did that and it did not correct problem completely, although some disks are now listed correctly, but, some have added additional listings.

Is there some way to erase the memory regarding the guide info and start all over.

I greatly enjoy this forum - it's like riding a Kenwood Roller Coaster - Good, Bad, Good, Bad, Good, Good.

I like the product and if I can get this fix it would be great

Thanks

Originally posted by amargiot
has anyone had problems with the net mate usb to ethernet losing connection to your router. several times a week the net mate link lite goes out and i loose connection to the web. i have to unplug and re-plug the cat5 cable. sometimes i have to reset the entre. suggestions? what is the most dependable usb-ethernet product for the entre. i have the list of compatible ones, but am not happy with the net mate. thanks

You're actually lucky. I have the identical problem with my Belkin USB to Ethernet adapter, only unplugging doesn't work for me ever. I need to do a cold reboot (unplug AC) of the Entre to get the connection back. In this message (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?postid=1853464#post1853464) David Bott indicates that he prefers using the HPNA interface. I've been reluctant because I don't want to make the investment in an HPNA bridge unless I can be sure that it would work any better. As with anything related to the reliability of the Entre, I have my doubts.

Originally posted by Henna
When the disks, CDs and DVDs were firsted placed in 5900m they were not evenly spaced, 1-235. They were detected and a high percentage were named and grouped. The installer felt that the disks should be replaced more evenly and they were removed and reinserted thru out, example, 1-60, 100-155, 200-265 and 300-345 and again detected. The Music and Movie Guides listed multiple copies of several disks and more unknowns then I had before. The multiple copies I believe represent where the disk is now and where it was before. Called Kenwood, they recommended I remove all the disks, close door let it detect no disks, they replace all the disks and it shoulkd correct problem. Did that and it did not correct problem completely, although some disks are now listed correctly, but, some have added additional listings.

Is there some way to erase the memory regarding the guide info and start all over. There's an old Marx Brothers routine that goes something like this Patient: "Doctor, Doctor, it hurts when I do this." Doctor: "Then don't do that!" This is a gotcha from the lovely folks at Kenwood that I discovered when I removed some discs from the changer to take with me on a trip and put them back into different slots. Now whenever I remove a disc from the changer, I always put them back in the same slot as tehy were removed from. I do this by turning the 5900 off immediately after I've closed the door on the 5900 but before the Entre can detect that the discs have been removed. You get an error message and if you tell the Entre to ignore the error, your lisging is preserved, which makes it easy to find the correct slots to replace your discs. Your installer was wrong in telling you to replace the discs as the Entre lists all discs in alphabetical order, so the acutal slot number (other than 255 which isn't detectable by the Entre, a known bug) is irrelevent. You could just keep adding new discs wherever you choose.

In any event, the answer to your question is that if you do Setup 5555, you will get to a menu that will allow you do chose a Library Rebuild (which will improve your situation, and maybe even solve your problem) or a Factory Reset. If you are loath to do a Factory Reset, your only alternative is manual deletion. Doncha love it?:(

rbienstock

Thanks

What is procedure for Setup 5555 and for delete of each disk

Originally posted by Henna
What is procedure for Setup 5555 and for delete of each disk Setup 5555: use the remote, press the Setup Key, press the 5 key four times. Delete Disk: my mistake, you can only do this with MP3s.

After reading as much as I can in this thread without my head exploding, I must ask for help . . . I'm very interested in buying a 5900M dvd changer but first have some very basic questions. This thread is quite long and has given me a good idea of many of the issues with this player.

Have many of the problems presented in the earlier postings of this thread been fixed? I've read that there is an "update" coming soon? Have there been many of these over the past year and a half? Will a player I buy now have the most updated software?

I have a few friends that have the new Sony progressive scan changer and are quite happy with it. I've seen the onscreen menu system and the picture quality of this player. Both were fine. Since the Kenwood uses DCDi and I'm pretty sure it's picture quality has the potential to be far better given everything else is configured correctly. Can anyone describe to me or show me screenshots of the Kenwood onscreen menu system. Is it fairly basic with the intention of being used with an Entre? I don't plan on getting an Entre so I was hoping the dvd player's menu to be good.

Also, when in progressive scan mode, will the s-video or composite vid outputs still have a signal (not progressive) or do they "turn off".

Do many people choose an external av amp/receiver over the built in audio. I have a Denon receiver.

I really do appreciate any info you guys could share. Many times over the past couple of months, I've decided to just get the Sony. But I keep coming back . . . thinking I may miss out on a good product. Thanks.

I will give you my opinion on one aspect of the player. I think if you can hook up a laptop or pc to the 5900m and use netnamer the native osd is decent. Graphically it's better than the one the pioneer dvd jukeboxes have. The only thing that is very clumsy is setting up categories and assigning your dvds to categories. These tasks can only be done on the tiny display of the unit in combination with the remote (can't use the keyboard), unless you have netnamer. Then you can do it via the computer.

Originally posted by magnus00
Have many of the problems presented in the earlier postings of this thread been fixed? I've read that there is an "update" coming soon? Have there been many of these over the past year and a half? Will a player I buy now have the most updated software?

There have been no updates to the 5900M until this recently announced update. I do not know when the updated players will be available at retail stores, but I think I read on this thread that it'd be around this time.


I have a few friends that have the new Sony progressive scan changer and are quite happy with it. I've seen the onscreen menu system and the picture quality of this player. Both were fine. Since the Kenwood uses DCDi and I'm pretty sure it's picture quality has the potential to be far better given everything else is configured correctly. Can anyone describe to me or show me screenshots of the Kenwood onscreen menu system. Is it fairly basic with the intention of being used with an Entre? I don't plan on getting an Entre so I was hoping the dvd player's menu to be good.

Yes, it's a fairly basic UI so as to get you interested in the Entre. I didn't think it was so bad, but the Entre does blow it away.

Also, when in progressive scan mode, will the s-video or composite vid outputs still have a signal (not progressive) or do they "turn off".

I believe they stay "on" -- check this thread for confirmation.

Do many people choose an external av amp/receiver over the built in audio. I have a Denon receiver.

Not sure what you mean here... if you mean do people typically choose the external decoding vs. internal decoding, I'd have to say, at this level of Home Theater, yes. I use my B&K for decoding, not my 5900M.

I really do appreciate any info you guys could share. Many times over the past couple of months, I've decided to just get the Sony. But I keep coming back . . . thinking I may miss out on a good product. Thanks.

Well, I think it's a bit slower than the Sony (at least until the upcoming update), and possibly less reliable (I sometimes get disc jams). That said, I think the 5900M is in a different league when it comes to video and audio... and there's no way that the Sony will support DVD-Audio... which the 5900M does... complete with bass management for DVD-Audio (still a rarity!).

Originally posted by magnus00
Have many of the problems presented in the earlier postings of this thread been fixed? I've read that there is an "update" coming soon? Have there been many of these over the past year and a half? Will a player I buy now have the most updated software?

If you're talking about the DV-5900, then none have yet been fixed. There was a glitch-removing software update for the Entre that made it better last year.

As for the "updated" software . . . good question. We were told "April" that modifications to the changers would begin, but I've heard of no one that has been contacted yet. And tomorrow is . . .

I have a few friends that have the new Sony progressive scan changer and are quite happy with it. I've seen the onscreen menu system and the picture quality of this player. Both were fine. Since the Kenwood uses DCDi and I'm pretty sure it's picture quality has the potential to be far better given everything else is configured correctly. Can anyone describe to me or show me screenshots of the Kenwood onscreen menu system. Is it fairly basic with the intention of being used with an Entre? I don't plan on getting an Entre so I was hoping the dvd player's menu to be good.

The menu is about as good as the Sony's, but tucked away under some commands that get you into the "library" of the player. The Sony has a clunky user interface, so the Kenwood is no worse.

Most who have compared the progressive outputs (which I don't use) would give the nod to the Kenwood, but do not think for a minute that the picture quality is going to be "far better." It will be a nuance better. But that is the nature of DVD players. Expect the sound to be identical, but that's a function of the digital signal.

The DV-5900 has DVD-Audio, which is a plus (to me, anyway). However, the next Sony progressive changer will be SACD compatible, so that's where your main audio difference will lie.

Also, when in progressive scan mode, will the s-video or composite vid outputs still have a signal (not progressive) or do they "turn off".

Do many people choose an external av amp/receiver over the built in audio. I have a Denon receiver.

The video outputs are all simultaneously active. I'll venture to say that only a few people use the built in DD and DTS decoders, but if you want DVD-Audio, you have to use the player's analog outputs for that.

Nick :cool:

Brian is currently in Japan at Kenwood. I hope to receive the info on the update when he returns next week. Wil lreport back when I have more news.

With the announced upgrades in the works, I have decided that it might be the time to jump into the Entre / 400 disc changer combo and have started to follow this thread again. After skimming most of the posts and searching, I can't seem to find a topic discussing the depth of the DVD changer in relation to standard cabinets and tv stands / tables.

While I figure that many of you have your components housed in an AV closet, I don't have that luxury to do this in an apartment but wish to conceal as much equipment as possible in order to highlight the Plasma. If possible, I would like to have a piece that looks more like furniture rather than a video stand and hides the actual equipment. (Don't have the WAF to worry about - I am the one that wants the stuff hidden as I really drool over the idea of having a closet with hidden wires.) Doors of some type would be nice - as a Pronto Pro with the RF / IR converters will be controlling the equipment and that way LCD screens, etc. won't be distracting during a movie. With this setup and the entre, it would be fairly rare that I would ever even need to open the door.

After reviewing the offerings of most local furniture and AV stores, as well as the stuff from BDI (http://www.bdiusa.com), Bello (http://www.bello.com), a beautiful Manhattan TV cabinet from Innovative Audio (http://www.innovativeaudiousa.com), and a very configurable Synergy from Salamander (http://www.salamanderdesigns.com), I can't seem to find anything that has a useful shelf depth of either 22" (the stated depth of 5900) or 23 1/8" (the stated depth of the 5050.) Almost all of these cabinets / stands have useful shelf depth of 17" - 19" only.

So, here are my questions:

1. Is the 5050 really 1 1/8" deeper than the 5900? Is the 5900 truly 22" deep?

2. Obviously the 22" or 23 1/8" doesn't account for the additional space needed for wires, serial connection, etc. What would you say the true depth of this component is while the connections are in place?

3. Does anyone know of a company that makes stands that fit the changer out of the box? Is it hanging out the front or back or does it fit nicely?

4. Any other suggestions?




Any and all comments are much appreciated. Don't really want to do custom unless I don't have to and really am trying to find a way to have my entre cake and eat it too. Thanks in advance.

Matthew

Matthew,

I have the 5900 and it measured at 21 inches plus you would need at least another 3 inces to allow for cabling. Here is a link to my cabinet, http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/Pioneer/CDA/HomeProducts/HomeProductDetails/0,1422,564,00.html

I don't know if you have ever seen a Pioneer Elite rear projection tv, they have a beautiful black finish and this is the matching audio cabinet. It comes in 3 sizes and fits the 5900.

Rudmeister

Matthew,

A couple of options:

1. Bell'O does make a deep shelf unit: Model# ATC-2111M (23" deep usable space). I see it online for under $600.

2. What I have, the Omnimount RTA G100, is a very inexpensive (around $200) unit that is small, glass/metal design, almost disappears into its surroundings, and can handle all 3 changers with ease!
link: http://www.omnimount.com/product.asp?p=16
It comes with casters, but I remove them to give it a bit more of an upscale feel. In my home, this unit is currently holding 1 changer on its bottom shelf, and an assortment of art pieces are scattered amongst the remaining 3 shelves, effectively camouflaging the changer. This unit compliments my Bell'O cherry rack very nicely.

all quiet on the western front. Has anyone heard anything about the upgrades that are due out THIS month?

Well, the upgrades were supposed to happen this month. Owners were supposed to be notified LAST month. I hope this is not another "here we go again".

Anybody want to take a wager that Kenwood falls through on their promise? I say they won't do it. :-)

I for one hope they don't fall through as I am running out of space on my 300+1 Pioneer changer. I'd like to upgrade to the Kenwood with the newer features instead of the problem laden one.

it was too big of an announcement for them not to go through with it. they are probably behind schedule or ran into new issues.

i finally took my player in for repair. couldn't wait anymore. the player would not open, eject, or play.

even after re-initializing it it would not open the door. i had to take it apart and squeeze out 400 discs through the sides.

i have a kenwood service center close by that promised a two week turn around time.

when i call for status i will see if i can talk to the tech and see if he knows anything. you would imagine that kenwood has to prepare their service centers with procedures on performing the upgrade.

this is an actual kenwood center, not an authorized third party place.

Sorry if this is the wrong forum for this, but does anyone have or know of someone who has discrete "sound mode" IR codes for the VR-5900? I am looking specifically for use on the VR-5090 using a Pronto remote. If you have a CCF with these codes, I would MUCH appreciate it. Thanks.

I believe when I met Jeff at CES2003, he had the Entre hooked up to more than one changer. I recall David posting that he had seen it work, as well. So we know it can be done.

Now, I'm not ready to say that Kenwood won't come through (I did enough complaining about that before I got my second Entre . . . and I've still got a almost two hundred slots on changer/Entre no. 2) . . . and I know that, as much as I would have loved to buy an alternative a long time ago, the fact is that there is no alternative. What the Entre/Sovereign Changers offer is simply not available anywhere else. Other changers, but not with these features.

So . . . let's say that we get silence on the issue. Since we know it can be done, I wonder how far off it would be for someone to privately modify the players/Entre to get it to work the way it's supposed to . . . even if Kenwood doesn't?

So, DVD-player modifiers of the world--roll up your sleeves. There's a captive market for you in case--just in case--a certain event doesn't occur.

Actually, I got Kenwood points for registering my equipment, and claimed my prizes, which included a Kenwood baseball cap and t-shirt (no fooling, folks). Maybe Kenwood will just decide to call it even with us and send everyone a bunch of hats. Wear 'em proudly. ;)

Nick :cool:

Ok just so I don't get in trouble again....I have a source that does NOT work for Kenwood or any of it's agents, but is VERY reliable. Kenwood is currently ugrading thier in field "demo" units and is also upgrading the existing "stock" and we should get our invite to upgrade VERY soon. The software update will be at the end of this month or VERY early in May....again this is NOT an official Kenwood posting simply a rumour from a "reliable" source. I hope it is true....

Oh there we go again, Mr. Integration spreading vile rumors from unknown sources, unrelated to Kenwood, but almost reliable. He should be banned from this forum forever for giving us poor mortals a shred of hope on unoffical information:)

Just kidding Mr. I. I am happy to hear anything since we went for almost a week without any psoting whatsoever and no info on upgrades for over two months. I hope your right cause I have filled two changers and I have no intention of buying another entre.

Ok I totally retract it:) I love Kenwood more than anything in case Brian is on the net in Japan!!

We have become patient if nothing else! My first changer is just about full but I have NO CD's in it....I would love to add number two!

Originally posted by Mr. Integration
Ok just so I don't get in trouble again....I have a source that does NOT work for Kenwood or any of it's agents, but is VERY reliable. Kenwood is currently ugrading thier in field "demo" units and is also upgrading the existing "stock" and we should get our invite to upgrade VERY soon. The software update will be at the end of this month or VERY early in May....again this is NOT an official Kenwood posting simply a rumour from a "reliable" source. I hope it is true.... I wonder if this means that new upgraded units will be available before the upgrade process for existing units starts. That would be ideal for me as I have 388 DVD-V discs and have had to unload all of my DVD-As. If I could get a new upgraded changer before I have to send in my old one, I'd be an extremely happy camper.

I am also looking forward to the upgrades and anxious to see if they indeed take into account and fix all/most of the glitches mentioned on this thread. However, does anyone think Kenwood will create a similiar player with SACD capability in the near future? I guess in an ideal world, the current hardware/software upgrade would offer it as an option. The SACD capability, as many universal players are now entering the market, is in my mind the only feature the DV-5900M is missing. I would kick myself if this winter or next year Kenwood introduced the same player with SACD ability for just a little more money. Any thoughts on this: It seems SACD is getting a few more and more discs--not sure if it will ever topple DVD-Audio, but just nice to know that either way, your safe. Is it worth waiting, hoping for the SACD option from Kenwood? Probably should just be happy with the current upgrade offers when/if they happen.

Steve*MH,

I completely agree. Kenwood needs to tip the scales with the world's first "Universal High-End Disc Selection System" (can't call it a mega-changer or jukebox if you want the upper eschelan to listen).

Kenwood would re-energize the whole Sovereign line with this capability, in my mind. It would have all the magazines re-interested in the Sovereign solution set, and would keep Kenwood well-ahead of the mega-changer competition for a new 2-3 years. And, almost every Entre owner would buy one as their 2nd changer purchase. A virtual guaranteed base audience is primed and prepped for such a beast.

Just my 2 cents...

If Kenwood would introduce a new version of the DV-5900M with both DVD-Audio and MC SACD, it will be a huge no-brainer for me. It would be the only changer to offer both, and, of course, it's the only changer to offer a lot of things already.

I'm betting that Kenwood's sales still don't justify the expenditure into the product, but that it recognizes that the uniqueness of the scheme will finally settle into the consciousness of the good-system-minded enthusiast of music and home theater. That's frankly the only rationale I can see for their commitment to the upgrade (apart from the damages they might be compelled to pay because the product was supposed to have these features on its release).

In other words, as people's systems mature, and the idea of a changer becomes more logical to more people, the other ideas that Kenwood has been ahead-of-the-curve on might begin to make sense to more custom installers, and more individual enthusiasts. If that's the plan, then SACD would be a great step in keeping pace. I may be compelled to add one of the new Sony changers out later this year, purely for the SACD changing capabilities.

Nick :cool:

It would be interesting to know what Kenwood is thinking about this. It must have been a topic at some point. To give Kenwood credit, they have always attempted to be on the cutting edge with features in products, and the sovereign line is proof of this. It would seem very tempting for Kenwood to introduce the first Universal large multiplayer system and to keep their status of being first/cutting edge, especially for the Sovereign line. It would definitely give the line a new level of recognition and respect--and perhaps open doors for new customers who look strictly at the "ultra high-end" stuff, and look at the Sovereign line as a true high-end line--as it should be. Maybe with alot of discussion and input to Kenwood, SACD capability could be added to the 5900M at some point. I am wondering how difficult it would be to add this to existing 5900Ms as a hardware upgrade, since machines would be sent to Kenwood anyway, adding SACD capability would definitely have customers looking for the hardware upgrade, even if some money needs to be added for it. As said before, I think the move would definitely make the DV-5900M a no-brainer for many people who are now hesitant to purchase it. With updates to fix the bugs and SACD, it would truly be in a league of its own--if its not already and a must purchase for those that may not purchase it in its current form--and be thinking to add a SACD player instead. Hopefully Kenwood is listening. In an ideal world, maybe this addition is the reason for the upgrade delay.

I have no such hopes that our upgrade will include SACD. But I do hope that the "DV-5950M" has DVD-A and SACD capability, and is announced this summer with a fall release. It would be a brilliant upgrade and re-invigorator to the entire Sovereign line-up.

We know Kenwood is thinking about it, because I believe it showed up on the eSurvey they put out a few months ago (right?). That eSurvey was our only path into the psyche of Kenwood, and I extrapolated a lot of assumptions out of that survey (bigger hard drive upgrades in the future, included).

Do you hear us Kenwood?

I would have to agree on the update will likely not include SACD. Has there been anything confirmed on Kenwood working on a 5950M player as a successor of the 5900M? It makes sense to have it include the updates of the current 5900M and the only other feature to possibly add would be the SACD compatibility to differentiate it from the 5900M. How likely do you think it would be to have a new version come out possible this year? I would perhaps wait/hold off on the 5900M if such a machine "5950" would be coming out later in the year. I imagine it is speculation, but how likely do those with connections to Kenwood think it will happen?

Let's just keep on talking about the 5950 as if it's a fait de complete... and we'll suck Kenwood into our ideal future with us!

I think I blew it off, anyway . . .

You guys got the model named, and everything, huh?

If they did do that, however, and actually came through with the upgrade for the changers, it wouldn't require scrapping of the existing changers. Just buy the new model and have the older ones daisy chained.

Although I've got about 120 or 130 high resolution discs (DVD-A and SACD), I'm betting it will take a lot longer to get to 400. The saying-it-makes-it-so new model could occupy that unique role, and let the others just spin DVDs.

Nick :cool:

A 5950???? Gosh I thought I was the only "bomb thrower" here!!!!:)

Well it is a nice thought, but my guess would be that you will not see any new models until most of the old ones are gone and I would imagine a new model would be significantly cheaper given how much the prices have changed on really good DVD players....

I would welcome a huge price drop once everything is straightened out....we need volume to get newer product. Kenwood has dropped major cash on R&D and I would love to see them recoup. Innovation needs to be rewarded. I complain about the length of time and unfufillled promises, but it is still way better than the DVD management systems from Sony(Which stands for S.oon O.nly N.ot Y.et) and Pioneer and the other companies from the land of the rising sun

Here's hoping the keep right on bringing it!

Steve, I can't believe that Kenwood would come out with a "5950" while they are still trying to fix the 5900m. That being said, I am sure that eventually they will put out a universal player that will play the two audio formats. However, at about that same time, I am also sure that some new technology will come along (can you say Blue laser light) that will make the current DVD format obsolete. Now, you can wait for the new technology to come out, but than some newer technology will be on the drawing board. The people who are early adopters will always pay a premium for products that are not completely bug free. Just look at early plasma tv's, or even HDTV's. Should you wait for Kenwood to come out with SACD? Only if you think its coming out very soon (which I don't think it is). I did not buy two 5900m's for SACD ability, nor do I expect Kenwood to provide it to me in some sort of minimal cost or free upgrade. What I do expect Kenwood to do, is to upgrade my two 5900m's and entre so that we can daisey chain three with full video and audio capabilities. Thats what I paid for one year ago, thats what I expect to have available this month (though I am not holding my breath).

I'm thinking of getting rid of my 5050M. If anyone is interested PM me. I probably woukdn't get a 5950 unless it is networkable with an ordinary HTPC with good software, not Netnamer.

Ahh, the first post where 5950 is not in quotes. A minor milestone for my naming-it-makes-it-so propoganda initiative. :)

Jon,

Maybe Kenwood reads this forum for research:)

Hey, I just got the newest Kenwood prototype and guess what? it is not the "5959", its the 6000m. Now this puppy does SACD, DVD-Audio, DVD+RW, DVD-RW, CDRW, VCD, SVCD, MP3, JPEG, DTS, Dolby Digital, 6.1, OSHA, and holds 1200 DVD's and can be daisey chained with an infinite number of other 6000m's. It is also compatible with entre and escient and can be networked with the pc for easy menu editing. It will also play laser disks, cassettes, 8-tracks and vinyl records.

It will also boil water, percolate coffee and dispense frozen marguarita's. Too bad Kenwood only made this one prototype, just for me. :)

Are you sure those features won't be "available" at CEDIA???

Originally posted by zinja
Hey, I just got the newest Kenwood prototype and guess what? it is not the "5959", its the 6000m. Now this puppy does SACD, DVD-Audio, DVD+RW, DVD-RW, CDRW, VCD, SVCD, MP3, JPEG, DTS, Dolby Digital, 6.1, OSHA, and holds 1200 DVD's and can be daisey chained with an infinite number of other 6000m's. It is also compatible with entre and escient and can be networked with the pc for easy menu editing. It will also play laser disks, cassettes, 8-tracks and vinyl records.

It will also boil water, percolate coffee and dispense frozen marguarita's. Too bad Kenwood only made this one prototype, just for me. :)

Damn, it doesn't play Blu-Ray HD discs? Any word on when they'll have that unit out?

Originally posted by zinja
Hey, I just got the newest Kenwood prototype and guess what? it is not the "5959", its the 6000m. Now this puppy does SACD, DVD-Audio, DVD+RW, DVD-RW, CDRW, VCD, SVCD, MP3, JPEG, DTS, Dolby Digital, 6.1, OSHA, and holds 1200 DVD's and can be daisey chained with an infinite number of other 6000m's. It is also compatible with entre and escient and can be networked with the pc for easy menu editing. It will also play laser disks, cassettes, 8-tracks and vinyl records.

It will also boil water, percolate coffee and dispense frozen marguarita's. Too bad Kenwood only made this one prototype, just for me. :)

Yet, slots 255, 511, 767 and 1023 will continue to not work if used with the Entre... rumor has it that it's Kenwood's equivalent of skipping the "13th floor" in a hi-rise building to avoid bad luck.

and the fix for that will be posted.....soon. Although they don't say it is a problem:)

just got my 5900 back from the authorized kenwood service center. this place actually stocks kenwood parts so they turned it around very fast.

i spoke with two of the techs and no one had heard anything about a possible hardware upgrade. so it's probably still a long time coming.

the part that failed was the size of a deck of cards. I think it was the center that spins the dvd. the tech said he didn't have too much faith in it's longevity. he said it does a lot of work. not sure how much faith to put in that, but i do use the 5900 probably more than most people. the kids watch at least one animated film everyday, sometimes two, and at night we watch a full length movie almost everynight.

I hope this cures the random unreadable disc problem. the part cost abougt 100 dollars he said. expensive in my opinion.

the problem with the ejection mechanism that pushes out the dvd, was a spring. he said the spring comes out of place. he pushed it back in place and glued it.

it doesn't push out the rentals? can someone verify if the rentals should also push out the dvd? since there is enough room to grab them, he thought it probably doesn't push them out.

Hi all.

I just bought a Entre, 2 DV5900s and a VR5900. I was having some problems with the PowerTouch remote, and I stumbled across this forum.

I was wondering if there is a FAQ for this setup. Please point me to one if it's available. I started going through all 111 pages and realized I was going to lose my job if I kept it up.


Thanks,

Richard

Slocko,

The tech was correct. Discs in the Rental Slots are not supposed to push out when ejected.

Bob

thxs.

by the way, my creative solution to storing the 400 discs was to take a thick rca cable, make a knot at one end, and slide the discs into the cable. when i was done, i tied another knot at the other end.

Originally posted by RichardSP
Hi all.

I just bought a Entre, 2 DV5900s and a VR5900. I was having some problems with the PowerTouch remote, and I stumbled across this forum.

I was wondering if there is a FAQ for this setup. Please point me to one if it's available. I started going through all 111 pages and realized I was going to lose my job if I kept it up.


Thanks,

Richard

Sorry, Richard. You found the FAQ. Unfortunately, it is 74 pages long and counting (111?)

I would start on making sure you have the software update for Entre (don't know what the version number is now) that was the big hit for us last summer.

There was pleading awhile back for a FAQ, and David told the guy that asked to suffer and die of thirst ;)

Actually, he indicated that putting one together would have been too much time, so I wouldn't hold out hope for one. Get used to working with the Entre, and then come back with specific questions.

Good luck.

Nick :cool:

RichardSP, do not drive yourself crazy trying to get the entre to recognize both of your 5900m's. Although you can daisey chain the two 5900m's, you can only attach one to the entre. The other 5900m will have to be connected to another input on your receiver and you will have to use the 5900m's GUI (menu) to see whats on that player. But, don't worry, Kenwood has a fix for the failure of entre to see more than one 5900m. We know this because someone said the fix would be here in April (year not specified). According to the one's in the "know" it will require you to send the two 5900m's back to Kenwood for a hardware upgrade, so don't go putting all 800 of your DVD's into the two units unless you want to unload them in April (year unspecified).

putting 400 dvds back into the player is a lot of work especially if you decide to rearrange them to put genres together. i got as far as putting 100 back into the player before I realized that I might have to do it again in the future and stopped.

definetly going to use the entre from now on. no way i am re-entering 400 discs even with the help of netnamer. can't do a simple copy anymore in netnamer since i re-arranged the discs.

going through this has made me realize that the future is definetely in bits for dvds. like cds before them, it just makes so much more sense to have your movies in digital bits.

nick i don't envy you when the time comes to unload your players.

Originally posted by slocko

nick i don't envy you when the time comes to unload your players.

I do know it. What would be nice is if, in the Entre process of rebuilding a library, Entre communicated the disc information to the changer. However, I found out the hard way before adding Entre No. 2 that it doesn't work that way . . . you have to manually enter the titles on the changer. That's where the keyboard is of some help, but still a formidable task.

A helpful tip is using DVD Profiler as a supplement. I can look at my DVD Profiler and get a printout of what's available, and in what slot. I've never bothered with NetNamer.

Nick :cool:

i wish they would put the bar codes on the discs themselves. for some one like me to go dig out the cases to put them in dvd profiler, it's a formidable task.

Originally posted by slocko
i wish they would put the bar codes on the discs themselves. for some one like me to go dig out the cases to put them in dvd profiler, it's a formidable task.

Don't let that get in the way. You can enter it by title. You might get the version with an incorrect bar code, but, unless there's something obviously different about what you're choosing (like a full screen dvd instead of anamorphic), the information is generally the same.

For that matter, I wouldn't let inexact information about the disc prevent me from using DVD Profiler to create a personal catalogue. You still get the disc identity, cover art, and nearly always the exact information that's pertinent to your particular "bar code." On top of that, you get the organization that it gives. That's the most important thing, and as long as you have disc titles, DVD Profiler enables you to create your list.

Nick :cool:

When doing the (eventual) upgrade, I was thinking I would do this:

1. Disconnect changer from Entre
2. Remove discs, and write down which slot for each
3. Send back Changer
4. Receive improved changer
5. Re-insert discs as they were originally organized
6. Reconnect to Entre

In this scenario, the Entre doesn't even know the Changer was gone. Sure, it will say "Hey, where's the changer?" and I'll just hit Ignore until the changer returns.

Correct?

Or... another possible alternative, which would be easier:

1. Remove all discs
2. Don't remember where they are
3. When changer returns, just re-insert wherever
Q-> Will the Entre pull up my disc customizations by the DiscID stored in its database, or does it store custom disc info by slot?
4a. If the former, then no matter where I re-insert the disc, my customizations (still in the Entre) get applied to the disc
4b. If the latter, then the Entre reads the disc from scratch, but at least the cover-art is stored in the database, and I can select it from the (long) list without having to have to re-upload it via Media Manager.

Thoughts?

scenario one sounds best to me. especially if like Nick you have been storing slot number in dvd profiler. i haven't used the entre extensively, but people have posted it doesn't like it when you don't put discs back in the same slots.

I guess you are right Nick. I wanted to use the scanner, but I guess I can do them little by little with the title.

I was planning on using scenario #1 as described by Jon. I used this website someone in this group made to make a printout of what disc is in what slot.

http://keystone.stanford.edu/~huster/cddata/

I don't think scenario #2 will work. Back when I called Kenwood about the "Slot 255" bug, it was brought to my attention than you cannot exchange or swap discs to a slot that already contains a disc. At least not during the same open/close cycle of the changer door. If I were to open the changer, swap the discs in slot 1 and 2 and then close the door, the Entre will not update the guide to reflect the discs new positions. I would have to remove both discs, close the door, let Entre see the new empty slots, open the door, put the discs back in the empty slots but in the new order I want, and now the Entre will do a quick lookup and put the proper disc info in the proper slot. The exception to this rule is if you want to move a disc to a slot that was already empty. The same rules apply to the Escient products to which the Entre is based upon I believe.

Bob

Bob,

What you're saying, though, doesn't necessarily take scenario #2 out of the running. In #2, we're looking at essentially telling the Entre it has a blank slate -- like it was when everything was new. But... the exception is that the database/hd now has customized data based upon CD ID info, and also has all the cover art on the hard drive as well.

The big question is: Will the entre attach the customization to the CD (via CD ID), or will it just be dumb and say, "hey a brand new disc, let me go look it up on CDDB" and then all customizations are gone?

Very true Jon, and I don't have the answer. I just want to avoid having the changer load and read each disc after I put them all back in. I am hoping that if I put each disc exactly where it was, the Entre will never know it was gone and no discs will have to be re-read. I will put every disc back in the changer before reconnecting the serial cable to the Entre.

I'm pretty sure our changers will come back with their memories erased, so all tiltles the changer has stored will be gone. I recently purchased a serial A/B switch box and use it to go back and forth between the Entre and PC connected to my changer. Why? I like having all of the artists, titles, and tracks list on my changer as well. If I only had movies loaded, I might just use the keyboard. But since my collection is mostly music CDs right now, typing all of those tracks would take forever. That's were I flip the switch to PC and let NetNamer DV do the work. Once I have updated any new discs, I flip it back to the Entre. When I get my changer back from the upgrades and all disc are loaded, I can restore all of my artist/title/track info from my PC to my changer. It will take most of a day to do it, but it's still better than typing it all back in.

Bob

You can test this now on a small scale with just three discs (I only have DVDs in my 5900, so I don't know if this will work with CDs). Here's what you do:[list=1]
Pick three discs in the changer that have customization. They should be in contiguous slots.
Open the changer and remove all three discs.
Close the changer and immediately turn the changer off.
You'll get an error message saying something (I don't recall the exact wording) about communication with the changer being lost and what do you want to do. One of the choices is to preserve the database. Chose that one.
Turn the changer back on and put the first of the three discs back into the slot it originally occupied and close the door.
You will not be asked to do a Quick Lookup, and all three discs will still be in the listing, as previously customized.
Open the changer again and put one of the two remaining discs in a new slot (in other words, not in the slot where you had removed any of the discs previously) and close the door.
Here, I get somewhat differing results. Usually what happens is that you get a Quick Lookup of only one disc, which reads the disc and gets the disc info from Open Globe. This results in the following: two listings for the disc, one without customization that indicates the current slot and another with customization but that points to an empty slot. One time, however, the Quick Lookup did look in the empty slot and noted that the discs were removed and deleted them. I don't know what triggered that, but doing that deliberately is actually the next step in this test.
Go into Setup>Changer Management and do a Quick Lookup on the two slots in which your last two discs were originally in.
The Quick Lookup should complete, find the slots empty and delete the records from the database.
Open the changer, put the third disc anywhere (other than slot 255) and close the door.
The unit will do a Quick Lookup, and load new data from Open Globe.[/list=1]
So what does all this prove. First, that Jon's Scenario 1 works because if you put the discs back where they originally were and do it in a single pass or before you allow the changer to communicate with the Entre, then the discs aren't looked up again and the original customized listings are preserved. Second, that scenario 2 doesn't really work, because the database could wind up showing discs in two different slots. Third, that if you want to rearrange the positions of the discs when reinserting, you need to do scenario 3, which requires that you first clear out the existing records by doing a Quick Lookup on the entire changer before reinserting the discs, which will be looked up anew when you close the changer doot. It is important to note that customization is only preserved in Scenario 1.

I do scenario 1 all the time as I frequently take discs out to watch when I travel. So long as you prevent communication between the Entre and the Changer when the discs are out and put them back in the slots where you took them from, the Entre never notices that they were gone.

My Entre has been freezing up quite a bit lately. Most of the time it is while Internet Radio is playing but it has also happened while surfing the DVD guide. Any ideas?

rbienstock,

Thanks for the great research and insight. This should help many of us with our (eventual, right Kenwood??) upgrade process.

Originally posted by JonDeutsch
Thanks for the great research and insight. This should help many of us with our (eventual, right Kenwood??) upgrade process.
No prob. FWIW, although I've never unloaded the Kenwood, I have unloaded my Pioneer CD changers a few times, and there's not too much of a trick to it. All I did was start at slot 1 and grab a bunch of discs and pull them out. You can take out about a dozen discs at one time by simply tilting the stack slightly. You don't need to take them out one by one. What I do then is just put them in a shoe box standing on their edge with the disc from slot 1 on the right (i.e., they stay in numeric order reading right to left. Assuming that you have no gaps in your sequence, it is a simple matter to reload (which you have to do one disc at a time): just start with the right-most disc in your shoebox in slot 1 and work your way through the stack moving right to left, one slot at a time. I had about 500 CDs in two changers and was able to unload each changer in a few minutes and reload each one in under 1/2 hour. I know that it is living dangerously just putting the discs in a box and letting them rub against each other, but I think that they're more durable than that, and if you're careful, the risk of scratches is minimal. And considering how hard it would be to put hundreds of discs in cases and take them out again, I don't think that it is worth the effort.

Unfortunately for me, I loaded my changer up like a crafty chap... I loaded DVDs in from 399 backwards, DVD-As from 1 forwards, and CDs 50 and onward.

As a result, I have no disc type segmentation, but also some nice gaps between disc types (I have a total of about 350 discs in the changer).

So, I'm going to have to do some extra work to maintain proper slot-state.
Bummer.

Vr-5900 HELP!!!!!

I have the VR-5900 and I am trying to hook up a 4yd old Mitsubishi VCR to it thru the composite cable then send the composite signal unconverted to component thru the receiver to my Sony Hs-10.

The problem I have is the VCR tape will play and show up on the screen ranging from a few seconds to several minutes then the screen blanks out and comes back usually within 5 to 10 seconds later. Pretty annoying say the least.

Do you have any ideas what might cause this? I am thinking about getting a new S-Video VCR to see if this problem goes away. I called Kenwood technical support and all they said was they would forward my problem to their engineering group. The tech thought on the phone it might be a Macro Vision problem, which I have no idea what that even is.

Any help is appreciated.

Jose Lozano

Why is anyone worrying about taking their DVD/CD's out of the 5900m's. Its now past tax day and still no word from Kenwood (unless they removed me from their registration list) on if and when they plan this big upgrade. I have said it for the last 15 months, it won't be this April, so why bother figuring out how to store your disks until they make an official announcement.

Zinja,

Because most of us wouldn't be here ("here" meaning active Sovereign enthusiasts) if we weren't, ultimately, optimists at heart.

Originally posted by JonDeutsch
Unfortunately for me, I loaded my changer up like a crafty chap... I loaded DVDs in from 399 backwards, DVD-As from 1 forwards, and CDs 50 and onward. I feel your pain.

Don't take this suggestion the wrong way, but here's something to consider: (1) the 5900 makes a lousy CD changer because it just takes too long to change discs. Other companies make changers that can do things much faster. I've never had a disc change take more than 10 seconds on my Pioneers, whereas the 5900 can sometimes take longer than 30 seconds. So you can't program tracks on different discs and have a meaningful mix on the 5900. Moreover, if you also have the Entre, why not use that as your jukebox? (2) I stopped using the 5900 as my DVD-A player when I ran out of space, but I'm glad I did. I now use a Marantz 8300 to play DVD-A and it has one feature that makes DVD-A playback much nicer -- when you insert a disc and close the door or perss play, the music starts immediately (like a Cd) bypassing the menu. I think that your music needs might be better served by getting a player that did both DVD-A and SACD and using that as your transport for high resolution music.

rbienstock,

I hear ya, and I completely understand where you're coming from, but your strategy is completely counter to why I bought into the Sovereign line!

My changer is primarily filled with CDs... my Entre/5900M system is specifically purchased to be a music management system, and secondarily, a video management system. I know that disc swaps are slow, and I know that DVD-As aren't handled properly by the Entre. And both these facts lie counter to my vision of using the Sovereign system as my music management system.

However, even with all that pain, I still end up listening to music 50 times more often now than before the Entre/5900M because I don't have to go hunt for CDs in a rack to put into a player. The menu-based selection of music far outweighs the "barrier to listening" of going to a rack full of CDs, deciding, opening, and inserting discs. That's just how it is.

And... what pushed me over the edge on this (what I consider) large investment in home entertainment is that the 5900M hosts CDs and DVD-As. I philsophically believe that my music management system should host all music discs, regardless of the format. Sure, SACD is missing from the picture here, but I happen to be more aligned with the releases on DVD-A to-date (for the moment, at least).

So, here's what it boils down to for me:

If I went back to a single-slot disc player for music, then I'd just sell the entire Sovereign system.

I think I'm in the distinct minority on this board for using the Entre/5900M combo for 95% music, 5% video. Kinda surprising to me, actually, considering how much the Entre is obviously geared toward music management!

KENWOOD HAS NEW RECEIVER LINE OUT. Wonder how long before they make a DVD player announcment. Here's the link:

http://www.audiorevolution.com/news/0403/17.kenwood.shtml

Originally posted by DigitalGriffin
KENWOOD HAS NEW RECEIVER LINE OUT. Wonder how long before they make a DVD player announcment. Here's the link:

http://www.audiorevolution.com/news/0403/17.kenwood.shtml

Clearly, at $200 to $600 retail, we're not talkin' Sovereign level components. Doesn't look like a threat to me. Because I can only use my 5900 and can't yet use my two 5050's the way I want (Entre control) I have ripped my favorite CD's to the Entre and enjoy the menu functionality that way.

Originally posted by jsalsano
Clearly, at $200 to $600 retail, we're not talkin' Sovereign level components.

You make a very interesting point here (are you listening, Kenwood marketing?):

Because Kenwood decided they need to keep the corporate name on the Sovereign line, everyone thinks of the Sovereign line as just more Kenwood product. Directly above in this thread, you can see how someone thought that since Kenwood Proper is putting out a new A/V reciever, that must mean that a new Sovereign changer is in the works, too.

If Kenwood would have done what Onkyo did with Integra, this would be less of an issue, I believe, and would give Sovereign more high-end credibility. Because, frankly, Kenwood does not have a very good reputation in the mid-fi marketplace, even though the die-hards know they can make very good products.

Originally posted by JonDeutsch
However, even with all that pain, I still end up listening to music 50 times more often now than before the Entre/5900M because I don't have to go hunt for CDs in a rack to put into a player. The menu-based selection of music far outweighs the "barrier to listening" of going to a rack full of CDs, deciding, opening, and inserting discs. That's just how it is.

Jon,

I completely agree with you. I have two DV-5900M's (sans Entre) storing my (predominantly audio) catalog. The convenience of the library has increased my music listening frequency and variety. I'm also happy about the lack of disc damage and jewel case clutter when compared to my habits with a single disc player.

For me, the time it takes to change discs is not a large problem. However, I wish the Relay feature was more intelligent. If I had it my way, relaying would:

Support additional methods of tagging discs beyond User File
Alternate between decks for each disc as opposed to playing each User File sequentially (like Relay + Random mode)
Queue the next track for a quicker transition in Random mode


Namaste,
McE

Originally posted by jsalsano
Clearly, at $200 to $600 retail, we're not talkin' Sovereign level components. Doesn't look like a threat to me.

That wasn't really my point for the posting. Companies run product cycles and tend to announce a whole series of products once during the year. What the post is saying is Kenwood's product cycle has come around. Correlate this to the estimated April DV-5900M fix*cough*BS*cough*:D. If there are changes to the sovereign system, it would be a good time.

~TheUnhappySovereignUser
~D

Originally posted by OscrDGrch

Alternate between decks for each disc as opposed to playing each User File sequentially (like Relay + Random mode)
Queue the next track for a quicker transition in Random mode


Namaste,
McE [/B]

The Sony Megachangers do that now. They even offer cross fading, and are a lot quicker in stand alone. Some even have on screen displays.

They also offer easy sorting by Artist, Album, and disc number.

~D

Originally posted by DigitalGriffin
The Sony Megachangers do that now. They even offer cross fading, and are a lot quicker in stand alone. Some even have on screen displays.

They also offer easy sorting by Artist, Album, and disc number.

~D

Cool! If they only supported DVD-A and 400+3 discs.

P.S. I'm really diggin' the Rental Zone. It makes life with Netflix very easy.

I have to agree with you. Netflix should pay Kenwood and get their name on faceplate of the 5900 :)

They should have called the slots the "NetFlix" zone. That's all my 3 slots see as well...