Home > Consumer Reviews > CyberHome CH-DVD 300S Progressive-Scan DVD Player , Silver

It does playback PAL DVD on NTSC TVs. I tried quite a lot region 1 or all region PAL DVDs and no problems although I don't understand why using PAL on region 1 (US and Canada) DVDs. Playback (non progressive) is smooth and trouble free so far.

It has almost all the features you can find from an expensive DVD player except Digital Optical Audio output and decoded Dolby Digital output. It does have Digital Coaxial Audio output to send digital audio signal to a receiver.

The unit is featherweight and very portable. A little bigger (wider) than an external CD-ROM driver. The fixed power cord (cannot detach at the player side) can be a problem if you will move the player often. The disc tray feels filmsy but probably no worse than trays on your PC DVD drive.

The player consumes very little power in use but surprisingly has 6.5W power consumption (from spec) when standby.

Cannot say too much about the reliability but it's cheap enough so I probably won't get mad if it breaks when it's out of warranty. Will try some MP3 and JPEG playback later. I bought Cyberhome CH-DVD500 about a year ago but the MP3 feature was faulty, JPEG playback quality was terrible and I retunred it.

The remote control is plain stupid! It uses button battery which is very expensive to replace and naturally I have concerns on battery life. All the tiny buttons are in the same size and you really have to look at it every time you use it. I may get spoiled by my Toshiba DVD player remote controller that has an excellent button layout and shape. I just grab it and know where is the button I want to push. Is a better remote controller really so hard to make? What is the manufacturer thinking? We all have pointy fingertips with pinpoint accuracy?
Well, at least the remote controller works well in reasonable range.

A capable DVD player desperately needs a better remote controller.

This is a very inexpensive DVD player that is intended primarily for folks who want to hook it up to a TV without also bothering to connect it to a digital 5.1/6.1 surround sound system. It is inexpensive, in part, because it has no Dolby Digital/DTS/THX decoders built in, and thus no 5.1/6.1 and no digital optical output circuitry and jacks. This helps keeps the costs down. It does, however, have an (inexpensive) co-axial digital audio output so if you have a surround sound receiver that has built-in decoders, you ought to be able to get true Dolby Digital 5.1/6.1 (although I have not verified this myself so caveat emptor).

The picture is as good as any of the images generated by my more expensive DVD players that have all the bells and whistles. It has progressive scan (but you have to set the component output ports to progressive scan by using the setup menu or they will not work properly - I spent a sweaty 20 minutes figuring this out !) and therefore DVDs look great on any TV that can handle this type of input (most modern analog TVs and all digital HDTVs). The image generated by the component video outputs running in progressive scan mode is pristine - as good as you can get on all but the most expensive digital HDTVs.

The remote is tiny and you have to point it directly at the unit, but it accesses all the functions and can be used to do all the set-up required. You can adjust the brightnesss of the image and some other parameters to balance the image with that from your cable/satellite box, something that I cannot do with one of my other DVD players that cost more than 5 times as much. This is a great buy for the money. I bought one for my Mom and then another one for a grandma. I think I'm going to get a third for my bedroom. If you don't care about surround sound, this is the DVD player for you.

Except for the very small buttons on the remote I really liked this small, feature-laden unit until the picture started "jittering" after about 15 disks and a few days prior to the skimpy 90 day warranty expiring. I thought the replacement one good until it started "jittering" after maybe the 25th disk and about 2 months after the warranty expired. Piece of junk- don't waste your money.

You may notice that all the people who love this machine have not had it very long. When I first got mine, I was singing it's praises to all my friends. However, I am now in the same boat as most of the other reviewers who gave it a negative review. I had it for 5 months and one day it just stopped working. It suddenly and inexplicably became unable to read a disc. Believe it or not, my brother's actually caght fire out of the clear blue. I was pleased to take his old remote, only to have mine die 2 weeks later. anyone need extra remotes?

Does not last long. I bought few of these and gave up on them finally.