[joerod]

I am a fan of Denon, I currently own the 5900 and 3910. But I have to admit the old Sony 999 ES gives both of these units as well as others a Run for the Money! I know it is used thru component, but with its 480P it still has KILLER pic Q! I was wondering if anyone else out there felt the same. You can still get this unit for a reasonable price (when compared to Denon). I also really enjoy its resume mode and custom picture screen saver mode. This Classic Flagship model has remained timeless. Anyway, I just wanted to make sure the 999 ES still get its due compliments, you hardly ever see it mentioned in AVS.

 

[Charles R]

I had one which I sold when I went to a HTPC. At the time it seemed some what "cheap" compared to the Sony 7700. I didn't keep it long enough to get attached but I did love how it remembers all of your DVDs and would pick up right where you left off. A great feature.

 

[John Ballentine]

The Sony 9000 of several years ago seemed to be the last of the high-quality / heavyweight Sony's. What a beauty. Bill Cushman of Widescreen Review still uses it for testing new projectors like the new Sony HS-51. It also has a very nifty feature that tells you exactly where the layer change takes place.

 

[blgentry]

I guess the 999 has good image quality. The colors were very saturated and nice on that player. I never evaluated the audio performance critically, but I hear it is quite high on the scale.


That being said, I think this player is not worth owning. The interface is overly complicated and difficult to navigate. The remote is not worthy of a $1200 component with small poorly placed buttons and gimmicky scroll clicker to control some features. Worst of all, this player's speed is simply unaccpetable for a player in this class. It's so slow to respond to remote commands that one frequently presses track forward or back twice thinking that the first press wasn't recieved by the player. The layer change is terrible as well, being well over 2 seconds.


Again, the image quality is nice, but the overall package of this player, in a word, sucks.


I lived with this player for about 30 days and was extremely disappointed. The Denon 2900 is a vast improvement in my book in every measure I can think of, save color saturation. In that one area, I think the 999 has the 2900 beat.


Call me opinionated, but this is my honest, unbiased opinion.


Brian.

 

[joerod]

I do agree with you on alot of what you said blgentry. The remote didn't matter because I use a universal that learned its commands anyhow. I really am emphasizing on the Pic Q. I like the fact that Sony also gave it a 5 year warranty too. It also had a pretty good body chassis design as well. But of all the features, the custom picture is where it is at! The layer change was pretty long, I wonder if they fixed it on some of their last manufactured models. Many places are still selling it as new but I do believe sony just recently quit making them...

 

[gaderson]

Quote:

Originally posted by blgentry That being said, I think this player is not worth owning. The interface is overly complicated and difficult to navigate. The remote is not worthy of a $1200 component with small poorly placed buttons and gimmicky scroll clicker to control some features.

Interesting, this is my favorite feature on my NS900V. Granted that's maybe because of the 'overly complicated' interface, but, it's certainly better than the one on my Philips 963SA. It enabled me to turn on subtitles quickly on a DVD that didn't have a subtitle option in the main menu.

 

[cybersoga]

I've had the 999ES for 2 years before getting the Arcam FMJ-DV27A. It isn't quite as bad as hometheaterhifi make it out, you can put it in film bias mode and it deinterlaces film OK most of the time, but I did sometimes notice moire on venitian blinds. Mine had a chroma filter (newer player than they tested?) so rarely did I notice any jaggies, but reds can look a bit soft. The output was too high, I had to turn down the input level on my plasma to stop it clipping whites. The layer change is typical Sony, a bit on the slow side, and you can hear the drive as it changes layer. Desbite all it's picture enhancement features, most of them are best left at their defaults to get a good picture.