Cyberhome CH-DVD 300 DVD Player

First I want to post an update about my new findings. I wrote in the review that follows that CyberHome website only consist of form for customer service request. That was the case when I first visited it when I purchased the Player. I just tried it again (about a week later), and found out that there is indeed a full website with even an online store. Perhaps the site was down at my first visit or something I don't know. I appologize for my premature judgment. I am going back right now to browse the CyberHome website and try to figure out what exactly is that company. I still have the player but it's sitting in a box at home. I bought a Philips DVP320 at Target for $50. It's design is really cool and the picture quality is much better than the CyberHome. That product is unforunately nowhere to be found on this site (or any other in fact). It is in cool funky colors, is even smaller than the CyberHome. Comes with a much nicer remote control, and is even easier to set to Region free. The only downside is that it doesn't have an S-video output. If you'd like check it out at target, but only in store, I think this is the only place you can find it right now and they go really fast.


I bought this player for my bedroom and certainly shouldn't be used for the main player in a home theater. I am probably taking it back even though I only paid $25 for it.
OK I won't waste your time with long writings. Here is what I don't like about it.

1. The remote. The buttons are very small, crowded, have the exact same shape and size, and are arranged in perfectly even lines with no difference in spacing or alignment or anything, which makes it impossible to find the button you're looking for in the dark. It's hard even in a bright light because they're soo small. As I said I got the player for my bedroom so this by itself is pretty much a deal breaker for me.

2. The other annoying thing that I had never seen on another player is the fact that you have to select the output to be used from the player's menu. As a default it is set to S-video and when I first connected the player through my tv's component input the picture was only black and white, there was no sound (btw I really don't understand why is the analog audio input by any means related to the video output section, maybe it just had a glitch or something), and there were also visible vertical lines across the picture. So after switching the cables 3-4 times because the only thing I could think of was that I somehow connected the component cable with the 3 colors not matching and reading the manual (a first in my life) to no help at all (terrible manual) I finally dug that stupid little menu and switched the right option. Besides being very annoying this could be a serious headache too if someone was to use this player as a main source in a home theater. In my living room I have my main dvd player hooked up with the component cable to my projector and the S-video cable to a TV monitor. Now if you can only use one of those outputs at a time you'll have to either switch the menu all the time or compromise the quality and use the basic composit connection.

3. The player has a menu for picture settings, where you can adjust the color saturation, brightness and contrast. Now this sounds very nice in theory but instead of being able to gradually adjust those settings, the menu bar jumps in large increments with really drastic differences and pretty much renders this feature useless. You'll be much better off leaving those settings as they are and using your monitor's picture controls.

4. The picture leaves much to be desired. If you're just using this for random watching while almost asleep this really doesn't matter, that's why I am not putting this problem on top of my list. But if you intend to use this machine as your main player I would advise against it. Even with the component connection used (in interlaced mode - my bedroom TV is not HDTV compatible and I didn't bother to try it with my HDTV projector) the picture is grainy with unnatural colors and shakes quite a lot - you can deffinetely see it even just on the player's menu screens. I don't even want to imagine what the picture would be like with composite output, but my guess is that you'll be better off keeping your old VCR.

5. And my last complain that I can think of right now is about the player's menu system and software. Simply said they're primitive. Visually unattractive, confusing, and plain ugly. On top of that there is a long delay between switches from one menu to another after you push the button on the remote. I noticed several times that I thought that probably I didn't press the button well or that I didn't aim it correctly so I pressed again which caused the menu to skip the function I needed because it took 2 commands instead of one and performed them with a delay.

OK! Now that I got the important stuff out of the way - I don't know about you guys but I always like to read the bad about a product first when I read reviews - so let me quickly mention what I did like about the player.

Well first and foremost it's really small. When it comes to a bedroom unit this is a definite plus since quality is not that important.

Second it is supposed to play a lot of formats. I didn't really try anything else but DVDs. I am not a big fan of MP3 burning and when I want to see my digital photos I use my computer - but still it's nice that it does all that if someone wants it.

Third I think the unit itself is quite attractive for cheap thing. It's silver kind of cute and unlike most of the cheap garbage DVD players you can buy in a pack of 12 this one is made of real metal and feels rather solid. Then again don't get too excited about that because really - has anyone ever heard of Cyberhome!!? Speaking of which I don't know if anyone has tried to go to their website, but I did. I thought I'd find info about their products or maybe even something about the company itself. Turned out it's just a form you can fill out to request product repair. Honestly I think you better pray you never have to use that form. It will probably be less hassle to forget about yor $25 and go get something real.

Gosh this was supposed to be what I liked about the player.

OK I will end on the positive note. The one really exciting thing about the player is that it is really easy to change the region code to whatever you want or to 0 so you can play any discs from anywhere in the world. I know most people don't even know there are region codes but for those who do this is quite cool.



Few more updates!

First I want to tell you that despite the amazing price of $25, and after 2 weeks of debating, I returned it. The more I used it, the more annoying it got. I found out a few more negative things about this player that I wanted to share with you guys.

There is no resume play on this player. Well there is, but it only works if you don't turn the power off. Once you turn the power off, even if you don't take the disc out of the player you cannot get to the place where you left off. And ofcourse if you have the screen and power saving features activated, even if you don't turn the power off, it will do it itself in 5 minutes, so say you have a longer phone call you'll have to dig through the disc to find your place again, and ofcourse you'll have to wait for all the warnings and everything in the beginning to go through as there is no way to skip those.

The other thing that I had not had on any other dvd player I've ever used was the remote control number button navigation. So far on every player I've used, when you press one of the number buttons, the disc is forwarded to the corresponding chapter number withint the title. This player takes you to the corresponding TITLE number instead. What does that mean? In case you're new to dvd and you don't really know the difference between chapter and title - titles are made out of chapters. Normally the movie on a disc is all one title - consisting of different chapters, which you can quickly access with the search, or the number buttons, or through the disc's menu. Most DVDs, however, have more than one title - the other titles are most often the included bonus features, or on some discs a different presentation of the same feature movie. So say you're watching a live concert and you want to skip to song number 6, you push the button on the remote numbered 6, and instead of going to the song it takes you to some interview with one of the band memebrs, because it happened to be TITLE number 6 on the disc. I hope you get the picture.

What you need to do to get to a specific chapter, without scolling with the arrow keys, you have to push GOTO, then scroll with the arrows to highlight chapter, then press the number button, and then press OK.

WOW!!! Seems to me like someone at CyberHome sat down and thought carefully how to make it more stupid and complecated.

Well I think this will be the last update on this review. As I said, I have already returned this player, and I'd highly recommend to anyone to stay away from it. It's a lot of aggravation and you might feel like you're missing a great deal, but at the end it's really not worth it.