"But my first question is if you know if Sony will be coming out with a new player soon and should we wait at this point."

As far as I know the Sony DVP-CX777ES is not being replaced anytime soon. While it has been available for quite some time now, it has not been out long at all to where we should expect something new on the horizon. The price for these units at most Internet sites and brick and mortar stores has not budged since they first came out. If we were reaching the next stage in DVD mega-changer evolution from Sony, I'm sure these units would have seen a price break or two by now.

"However my main question focuses on the use of the Fireball DVDM-100 vs the Pronto TSU7000 setup you describe, coupled with issues regarding your use of DVD Profiler. As you are aware, other apps such as DVD Lobby do a similar thing. First could you comment on your use of DVD Profiler compared to DVD Lobby?"

First I would differentiate between DVD Profiler and DVD Lobby. DVD Lobby is a solution more in line with the Fireball DVDM-100, where DVD Profiler is simply a DVD database program used to catalogue your DVD collection.

*Updated on 12/14/05*
Below I have noted some things that come to mind regarding all three options, DVD Lobby, Fireball DVDM-100, and the TSU7000. I have not used the Fireball product, but after reading the manual I learned quite a bit.

DVD Lobby:
1. Will import your DVD Profile which is nice, but there is a substantial learning curve to getting everything setup and working properly.
2. Requires a HTPC and enough available com ports. If you are not using a compatible changer with a com port you will have to go with a USB-UIRT solution or slink-e if your changers have s-link capability. That adds an additional expense in addition to the HTPC if you don't already have one.
3. While the interface does allow for submenu pages for DVD titles which contain more than one disc, this is a very laborious process which involves creating a whole new scene for each submenu page or set of submenu pages needed. I'd have to know the product inside and out before even thinking of taking this on.
4. The database used is sluggish at best which I found irritating. After taking DVD Lobby for another spin here recently I still find that the product is simply not suitable for larger collections like mine. It's way too slow. The tests I ran were on a AMD Athlon XP 3000+ with 1.5 GB RAM, and a GeForce 6600GT card running XP Pro SP2.
5. Interface navigation irrespective of the slow speed was obtuse and did not work well in general. Let's take browsing one's DVD collection by letter for example. Say you are at the beginning of your DVD collection on the DVD cover image view. Choosing the letter option one would think you could go directly to that letter, but maintain the DVD cover image view if you wanted. This can not be done. The interface changes to a list view instead. Even worse, once on your selected letter you can't change back to the DVD cover image view and remain on the same page. When changing back to the DVD cover image view you are taken back to the last page you were viewing DVD cover images on. In this case I was taken back to the beginning of my DVD collection. To make matters worse, articles are not moved to the end. As such, when going to the letter "T" all my movies which start with the word "the" were listed there. I even had the DVDLobby plugin configured under MLServer to use the Sort Title field from my DVD Profiler import. Seems to have no impact when viewing your collection by letter.
6. You can not browse your DVD collection while having something else cueue'd up on your main display and sound system, such as DIRECTV, another DVD movie, and so forth.
7. The overall cost and setup involved with implementing this solution seemed a little overboard for what I was looking to do while not even meeting my needs.
8. On a good note, DVD Lobby does allow you to play movies encoded to your hard drive in addition to movies from DVD changers.

Fireball DVDM-100:
1. Any music that is playing (mp3's streaming via ethernet to the Fireball) will stop when accessing the DVD navigation part of the interface.
2. Like with DVD Lobby, not only music, but anything else that may be que'd up at the time on your main display and sound system will be interrupted just to access the DVD interface.
3. You can not import a database like the one from DVD Profiler even if you have ensured that each collection ID in your DVD Profile directly corresponds with the DVD slot number that disc is in.

Fireball has to read the discs in each changer slot while connecting to an Internet database via its ethernet port to download each DVD's profile for lack of a better word. If the Internet database Fireball uses can not identify certain discs, you must manually enter that data via the supplied keyboard I am guessing.

Once this intial process is complete the unit will need to refresh its database each time you open and then close a given changer door. It then must check all previously empty slots in that changer for new titles you might have added, in addition to checking the slots which already contained discs for any changes there. The manual did not say, but I'd be very curious as to how long this process takes. The manual did state that for 3 Sony 400 disc changers it should take approximately 2 hours initially to read each disc and download the data to its internal database. You'd most certainly have various titles at that point however, which were not identified properly requiring manual updating.

4. No option for creating submenu pages for DVD titles which contain more than one disc.
5. The Fireball DVDM-100 does not come cheap. For the price I think it falls short. You are also restricted to DVD changers which have com ports. It's a narrow list at that. This rules out using other more inexpensive changers like the Sony DVP-CX985V for instance.
6. Only 4 com ports are available with this unit. There is no room for adding additional devices down the road. While many may not find the need for hooking up more than 4 devices, for the price it should support more in my opinion.

Please keep in mind that I have never used the Fireball DVDM-100, so these are just things I've gathered after reading the manual and various forums. I don't want to give the impression that both the Fireball DVDM-100 and DVD Lobby are not worth your time. Many people may find them to be the perfect solution for DVD automation / navigation. For my tastes they simply don't get the job done. That brings me to the TSU7000. The all-in-one solution for your home theatre and DVD automation needs.

TSU7000:
1. Does not require any additional equipment be integrated into your setup for DVD automation other than the DVD changers themselves of course. You also have the freedom to buy any DVD changers you choose. They do not need to support s-link or com port.
2. Can be purchased for much less than the Fireball or DVDLobby (the software itself and required hardware), yet without all the limitations I've outlined above.
3. While setup is a manual one it takes very little time to add new titles to your configuration file and then download to the remote. This is after your initial configuration file is created.

It does take a basic knowledge of desktop computing and photoshop or similar graphics programs. You will also need to keep track of the exact order you place the discs in your changers. Using a program like DVD Profiler can help make the process much smoother. DVD Profiler can provide other benefits as well. I will often use DVD Profiler to browse my collection first if I want more detail than just the cover images. You can also do searches by any number of criteria as well. I then simply browse to the DVD cover in my remote and cueue it up.

4. Is an all-in-one solution with the ability to control and automate your entire home theatre system and DVD collection.
5. You have the freedom to customize the interface with regards to graphics, layout, and functionality.
6. This being said I quite enjoying being able to just pick the remote up and browse my DVD collection while not having to interrupt what might be cueue'd up with my home theatre system at that moment.
7. Browsing your DVD collection is quite fast as there is no database which needs to be accessed which would slow things down. My current TSU7000 configuration file allows you to browse your collection by 24 seperate genre/categories A-Z. The DVD cover image pages consist of 9 DVD covers per page sized at 72x100 for easy readability on the 240x320 screen. When tapping on a DVD cover image my entire system cueue's everything up very quickly. To date I have had flawless macro execution.
8. The only real downside for people with larger collections right now (over 1,200 discs) is the limited 32 megs of available memory in the remote. I just passed the 1,200 mark recently and while I will have enough room in the remote for another 400 DVD cover images I won't be able to do as much with the remote going forward if I expect my memory to hold out. In fact, I have already started to save on memory where I can by removing some of my more elaborate DVD submenu pages and replacing them with simpler pages. Phillips has released the TSU7500 which sports an additional 16 megs of memory though. That's just what I need.

"Do you think the Pronto solution is as effective?"

For me the Pronto solution is the most effective among the three choices hands down, the other two being DVD Lobby and the Fireball DVDM-100. I was drawn myself to the attractive clean looking interfaces found with DVD Lobby and the Fireball. When it came down to it however, I did not want to use my primary display screen to browse my DVD collection. I also did not want to invest in a monitor accessory or tablet pc just to get around this. In addition, I wanted control over the functionlity of the interface, design, layout, graphics used and so forth. While the TSU7000 does not offer a large surface area, I found it is not really needed to do what I want. All this and the remote does double duty controlling the rest of my home theatre system as well. It does not get any simpler than that. The most important thing is that is works and works flawlessly. They way I see it, if you are going to spend a good chunk of change on a remote like the TSU7000, you might as well put the thing to work. I most definately think I have accomplished that. :-)

-Lowpro