When considering buying a DVD player most of us tend to stick to more popular and known brands such as Sony and Panasonic but there are plenty of other brands around, that will certainly give these well known brands a run for their money. If you were browsing in a store and seen a DVD player made by CyberHome you would probably keep walking as you would pass it of a some cheap Japanese company that would not offer support, or their products would not last much longer than their warranty You could not be further from the truth. Admittedly CyberHome have not been around for longis helping establish them as a well known brand.

I have been lucky enough to get a hold of one of their DVD players for testing. It is the model CH-DVD 402. This unit comes in both silver and black so that it can fit in with your other electrical equipment as you please. The unit is well packaged and the front of the unit is well protected against scratches that occur in transport. In the package is the instruction manual in various languages, the remote control with batteries, a scart lead and a set of composite video leads that are gold plated.



Around the back of the unit there are various connections. Firstly there is the option for Scart connections. This option will give you the best picture possible and it also supports RGB if you have a TV that will support this. There are also composite video outputs along with your phono outputs to connect to an external amp. Finally there are coaxial and optical outputs to connect to a processor to get the most out of the DTS and Dolby Digital capabilities of the unit.

The front of the unit has a good display on it so you can see it from the other side of the room. It is centred on the unit and the controls are to the right. To the left of the tray we have a power led which is an unusual cool blue colour and does not conform to the normal red that has become so common.

Upon switching the unit on you are met with a simple background that displays the type of disks the unit plays. Pressing setup on the remote allows you to customise the set up of the DVD player to your settings. Navigation is easy and the ergonomic remote and soft buttons gives you a good response when you press them and there is no lag between pressing the button and the menu option moving.



There is an open button on both the unit and on the remote, once pressing this, the tray slides open rather slowly but give the impression that the unit is well built. The motor is also really quiet and there is no noise upon opening or closing it. I tried playback on various types of media and this unit just seemed to love every one of them. Upon inserting any media the player seemed to pick the disk up very quickly. On certain cheap or poor media where other players would take a few seconds to read, this unit played them as soon as you closed the tray. The same with when you skipped through chapters, other brands gave a slight pause between the chapters where it struggled to read the disks, not the CyberHome. VCD and SVCD play back was also very good. The picture was sharp and the unit seemed to play any media that you offered it. Also incorporated into the unit for VCD playback was Play Back Control (PBC). This enabled you to play a VCD such like a DVD with the menu and chapters if it was written that way.

The unit also played MP3 CDs and surprisingly MP3 DVDS. It also had the option to view JPEGS and this can be set up in a slide show. MP3 playback was rather good and the sound was crisp. Navigation was simple too and the remote made this easier. Another surprising thing about this unit was that it also played back DVDs with an MPEG movie on it. It allowed you to browse the DVD much like you would for an MP3, when you selected the MPEG file it played back just like a DVD movie would.

My final impressions of this unit were that it is very good value for money. It seems well made but best of all seemed to play anything on any media that you offered it. Also it is easily hacked for multi region and macrovision seems to be disabled as standard. The fact that CyberHome are constantly releasing firmware upgrades for it, that can be initiated by flashing the unit with a CD leads me to believe that the support for this unit will certainly last longer than the warranty.

Specifications
• DVD Chipset:
  * MTK 1369
• Audio Outputs:
  * Dolby/DTS CoAxial Digital
  * Stereo RCA-Type Phono Jacks
• Video Outputs:
  * Component Video Out
  * S-Video Out
  * RCA-Type Composite Video Out
• Video Features:
  * Multi-Angle Support
  * 2X, 3X, 4X Zoom In/Out
  * Multi-speed Slow Motion Forward & Backward
  * 2X, 4X, 8X, 16X Forward & Backward Search during
  * Selectable NTSC or PAL Output
• Dolby Digital Decoder:
  YES
• DTS Decoder:
  YES
• Playback Formats:
  DVD, CD, SVCD, VCD, MP3, JPG, CDR, CD-RW
• On-Screen Display:
  * Programmable Playback Video / Audio / MP3 Tracks & JPG Image Files
  * Multi lang. support for OSD
  * Parental Control with Password Protection
• Remote Control:
  Multi-Function 44 Key
• Dimensions:
  16-12/16" x 3-3/32" x 11-3/8" (WxHxD)
• Weight:
  9.1 lbs
• Accessories Included:
  * Remote Control w/ Batteries
  * Power Cable
  * Stereo Audio Cables
  * Composite Video Cable (RCA-Type)
  * User Manual

Region Hack
Press the SETUP button on the remote
Press the buttons 1, 3, 6, 9 in order
Press the LEFT button
Press the LEFT button
Press the LEFT button
Press the RIGHT button
Select the new VERSION option
Now select 0 for multi-region playback