Cyberhome CH-DVD 300 DVD Player

Ok. I am walking through Wal-mart one day and I see a sign saying "DVD player 34.95". WOW! 35 dollars for a dvd player that is so great. So I just had to have one. In fact within the same week I went back and bought 2 more. So here I am with 2 silver cyberhome 300/s's and one 300/b (the black one). Well everything was working great it seemed to read ever format that I threw at it. DVD R, DVD RW, VCD, SVCD, even plane .mpegs burned on a disc. This was my dream player. I never liked the small remote but I fiqured why not the player was too good to judge by only the remote anyway.

Fast forward 91 days. I had noticed that some of the playback was kinda messed up on the unit. For some reason if ou had dvd with pictures and movies it didnt want to read it. Then it quit reading any cd media. Then the day came where it read nothing. That dredded bad disc screen. It was already to late to take them back to the store (Wal-mart only has a 90 days warranty, how convientant). So I decided to take a look on the net to see what I could find. And boy did I find a landmine of issues people were having with these players. But none of them seemed to be having my problem. So after many sleepless hours of searching I finally found my main problem. The unit is equiped with a Flat Flexable cable connector that connects the laser lens assembly to the main bourd of the dvd player. Well I thought, This was going to be easy.

The first thing I did was call cyberhome. My unit was still very much into the parts and labor warranty. The technition on the phone says I have to send the complete unit to california so they can send it to their place in China to get it replaced. And I had to pay for the shipping of it. Well I asked then wouldnt it be easier if they could just send me the part. I was fully qualified to install it myself. (I am a electronics repair technition). Well the tech puts me on hold for about 1/2 hour and returns to say as much as he would like he could not send the part out. So I said oki goodbye and hung up the phone. I decided at that point to read the warranty information one last time to see if I had misread something but it was there clear as day. They would cover the price of the parts. So I called them back a few days later and asked again for the part for the unit. Again I was rushed off the phone with a curt no.

So again after many hours of being online trying to find a matching part to replace the broken one I finally found a exact match for the replacement part. Stocked by digi-key electronics parts. So with the information I had just retained I called cyberhome again. This time I was not as nice as I was the first few times I had called. I told them square off that I had already found a supplier for the parts and I either wanted the reimbursemnt for the part or for them to order the part and have the part sent to me. Well after many many many days of waiting and many many calls to california. They admitted that they do not carry and parts at their tech office in california. That all the returns get sent to China. And they would only make a deal with my if I signed a legal form saying I understand anything I myself do to the unit will void it under the waranty.

The dvd player was at that time 7 months old. I only used it the first 3 and had been fighting cyberhome for 4 months to get it fixed and I was finally making progress. They finally ok'ied me to order the replacemtn parts and I sent them the reciept of the part prices and they did indeed replace me for the part price. For 3 units it was about 20.00 in parts. They did not reimburse me tho for the shipping and handling fee for the parts or the 5.00 min order fee. But they did indeed finally start fullfilling the warranty they offer.

I would tell people to stay away from theis company. Getting a hold of them is very difficult and you can surely expect extremely long hold times. My longest hold time was 3 hours. The players look nice and shiny abd low priced but you will get what you pay for.

And for the people who are wondering. Yes the dvd player works now but it still has issues playing DVD RW's. So consider yourself warned