Are there any Blu-Ray changers (5-disc or Mega)?

None yet, wish there was. I would buy one.

Sony makes an expensive 200 disc server changer, but that is it. HESV1000 I believe is the model.

Market demographics probably don't support it at this time. Currently standalone units only make up about 10% of sales, which means that there might be 500K-1M SA units sold for all of 2008 in the US. If only 5% of buyers would be interested in spending an extra $50-$100 for a changer unit it would make the market as small as 25K units, spread out among all manufacturers so the market just might not be big enough.

Once BD adoption takes off it's likely that you will see changers supplanted by home media servers that can store hundreds or thousands of "discs" with instantaneous access from any network media player in the home. This is certainly the way technology is headed, whether BD wants to participate or not.

The best outcome for collectors, really, is for BD to get on board with managed copy, since they would have the best of both worlds, both a physical copy of the disc as well as the rights to store and play the movie in their home. I have a 2TB server in my basement that I could put a BD drive in for ripping BD discs to server storage. I could then put 40-50 of my favorite discs on the server and stream them in full quality to my PS3, Xbox, or other, future media extender devices.

you are all Epic lazy

Here ya go a 400 Disc blu-ray changer
read end paragraph

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...2329481,00.asp

Linked to an article with pictures, etc, in this thread at the bottom;

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1061473

Nevermind.

Wrong product.

I thought the VGP-XL1B3 disc add on was for BD.

Troy

Bump.

Any word on a changer yet? I saw the rumor of the Sony 400-disc beast in Feb, perhaps, but I'm looking for something simpler like a standard Sony-style 5-disc carousel.

Still.

(WAF prevents BR in the bedroom until it's a changer so she can load up her multi-disc TV series... and adding another unit to the stack is not really an option, either)

I hear people talking about the inevitable (and coming-faster-than-we-think) switch to streaming HD audio/video.

I suspect it will not be QUITE as fast as all that, but will likely come in the form of a staged transition like what you're talking about. Sony has invested a lot of money on winning the format war, and I doubt they'll be willing to give up that monopoly after only a few short years.

Towards that end, I'd expect they'll start removing limits on copy protection (or figuring out ways to do it that allow for disc ripping and media PCs). I don't expect this will make either Blu-Ray or DVD obsolete, though. At least I sure hope not.

They've also GOT to understand the danger of consumers rejecting new technology if it comes too soon. Then, of course, there are the dinosaurs who simply will not switch to media storage PCs because it's a huge pain in the ass to them when all they want to do is what they've been doing since time immemorial -- pop in the media on the player (be it LP, cassette, VHS, DVD, etc.) and enjoy, rather than futz with "Why is it saying my 'driver' settings are improperly configured? What the hell does this have to do with my car?!"

They've already done this . Almost (note: almost) all of the BR dvd's I've picked up over the last year or so have had a "digital copy" that can be transferred to PC's (or macs). They're even doing this with a few of the standard DVD's now.

Find a PC tower just big enough for 5 blu ray drives, maybe add a HD DVD drive. Thats your best bet right now.

There's a world of difference between the low rez digital copy that can be downloaded and being able to rip the full HD image for distribution at home.

I would pay big $$ for a 5 disc changer, nothing better than a changer(not a megachanger)

can't understand myself why there hasn't been any yet

-Gary

Because there aren't enough others out there like yourself willing to spend big $$ on a BD changer.

Yet.

I'd love to see a 5 disk player, also. You know, you get a few disks from netflix, it is nice to load them all in at once.

I think jmpage2 is probably right about market share. I also have the suspicion that the manufacturers would like us all to buy single players, then buy multi players later on.

I think that's it, too. There are a lot of incremental "latest-greatest" players they want to sell us before a $199.99 open-region, pal/ntsc, six-disc blu-ray player and top-quality DVD up converter...with at least one tray capable of time-shift recording in 1080p anamorphic...hits the market.

The moment a maverick manufacturer brings such a device to market at or around that price point, the other manufacturers can close shop with plenty of free time to start plotting the assassination of the one that burst the bubble.

And I can rid my A/V rack of at least 3 extraneous players, a half dozen HDMI cables, maybe two switcher boxes.

I'd get one too, but there's not even any new regular dvd changers any more. Sony's is a low end ($150?) vs my 555ES from way back that does sacd too. Denon has a universal that came out a few years ago for around $500 then.

Very interesting choice.

Like many others, I've used a 5-DVD changer (Sony) for several years and love it. I have somewhere between 750 and 800 DVDs and all my electronic gear is located in a separate room behind my theater screen. This necessitaes a 40 foot walk (conveniently past my DVD collection) everytime I want to load up the player for the weekend. The only reason I have not made the switch to BluRay is the lack of availability of a 5-disk changer. Do I want to wrap up several thousand bucks in a mega-changer? Not really...and that would still necessitate picking and choosing which disks to load or not load...

The good news is that by not yet using BluRay I have been able to put off the necessity to upgrade my projector to native 1920 full HD. The current 1280 brings me the Comcast HDTV channels - even if they're not quite to the same quality as my wife's 50" Panasonic 1080 LCD.

Long and short is that if I have to spend thousands I'd rather be putting it into a good projector than a storage device.

If it's any consolation, you can probably get 5 single-disk players and an auto-switch for a lot less than thousands. More like $600, I'd guess.

Grrr....

(I'd gladly pay $600 for a da*% 5-disc BR carousel!)

Sony makes one:
BDP-CX7000ES and BDP-CX960400 Blu-ray Disc Mega Changer.
Not cheep, about $1800.00 USD!

Link:
http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/...52921665945153

That's the player I'm interested in getting, but it's very deep and I'd have to take the back of my entertainment cabinet off for it to fit!

Changers are nice, but not exactly necessary. My mom still has her 5 disc DVD player and even back then she hardly made use of the changer.

So I would probably buy six 5-disc Blu-Ray changers. Three for the house (which has three 1080P TVs), and three for the RV fifth-wheel (which has three 1080P TVs).

The $100-$600 range would be considered, with the typical Internet price competition explored.

Convenience and flexibility are everything ... modernize and simplify; modernize and simplify; modernize and simplify !!!!! :-)

PS I have 50 high-tech friends like me !! :-)
PPS They all have friends ... we are all baby boomers !! :-)
PPPS Does that constitute an indicator of market demand ... can you extrapolate ... well, duhhhhhhh !!!!! :-)

Do the arithmetic ... it doesn't qualify as "math" ...

Is there any news of a 5 disc changer for blu rays? I already went down the 400 disc changer with DVD and don't think I want to do that again but I do really like my 2 5-disc sd DVD changers. Hope someone has good news, thanks.

Would love to see one of these from Sony, Panasonic, Oppo or other. A 5, 6 or 7 disc Blu-Ray carousel player (JVC and I think another manufacturer had a 7 disc cd and/or dvd carousel).

I have never owned a single-disc cd or dvd player myself. I don't see the point. 5 discs is perfect for movies, film, video etc. What is better than having your two, 3 or up to 5 planned films for the evening already in the player (ok, 5 films/movies is alot, but that means you've got more than you need),Another useful way of using the 5 disc carousel is having the additional bonus material discs loaded along with the main material, or having more than one disc in the player in case the first movie is a bomb (happens occasionally when renting stuff, you or one or more of your viewing group is disgusted with the current movie playing, and you take a vote, and sometimes you bail and go on to the next disc loaded)...or you could have multiple tv season discs, or an audio disc in addition to your video material, or a calibration disc loaded along with other discs, the list goes on and on. While a large changer has uses for people to catalouge all there discs (the Sony 400 dvd changers), you don't need to go that route to enjoy more than what a single disc player has to offer. I always find 5 disc players far more useful than single disc players. I wish they would come out with a 5 disc blu-ray player.

The pathetic truth is, we have the technology to produce a 5 disc (or whatever) carousel player for Blu-Ray in high volume at reasonable prices. Think about it; how different could it be from a regular DVD carousel? The only difference would be the mechanics to play Blu-Ray discs as opposed to DVD's. Everything else about the players would be basically the same.

It's all about greed...plain & simple. The manufacturers want us all to buy simple single-disc players first because that's all that's available. When they feel they've sold about as many as these as they would like, THEN they'll wheel out the multi-disc players so some of us (who really crave the multi-disc players) will end up buying AGAIN. Of course, they'll price these at ridiculously high prices because initially the demand will be high.

Such a shame. Good thing the quality difference from DVD to Blu-Ray isn't as dramatic as it was between VHS & DVD. Because of this, I will have no problem waiting until these greedy companies finally offer us reasonably priced multi-disc players before I buy.

One issue I would have is if I selected the wrong disk number, waited a minute for it to load up, only to realize that I loaded the wrong disk. This wasn't such a problem with dvds which start right up, but I could see this being quite anoying with blu-rays...

I don't understand why this is even needed. Is it really that hard to get up off your ass after the first movie finishes in order to change the disc? I figure that a lot of AVSers have HTPCs or media servers for music, where a carousel is more useful.