I have been having problem with my AIWA XD-DV370 playing my backups. Hesitations and pixelations. I know it wasn't the media because they were playing on other DVD players I have plus friends dvd players. Anyways, just picked up the CyberHome CH-DVD300 for $39.99 at BESTBUY. I told the kid there I was looking for a cheap player to play my backups. He pointed me to the one I have mentioned. He said this will play any type of media you throw at it. I was a little skeptical at first but what the hell. For $40 bucks and if he is lying I can always return it. So I got it. I just connected it and all my backups work fine on them. I specifically double checked the ones that would not play on my AIWA and those also work great. Some nice bonuses as well. You get a $10.00 mail in rebate bringing it down to $29.99 and plus you get which they did not advertise a $10.00 BESTBUY gift card at checkout. Not sure how long this last. You can use that for some DVD-r's or what ever you want. The only downside is there is no OPTICAL out for it but there is DIGITAL COAX and there is S-Video. If your looking for an inexpensive DVD player which will play all your media this it.
I saw those CyberHome players and picked up a couple; I was skeptical at first, but they haven't let me down yet. Let's keep our fingers crossed !
CyberHome is very cheap and plays all available format out there. Model CH-DVD300S at bestbuy.com at $25 after $15 rebate from bestbuy. No need expensive DVD player nowaday.
I agree about a cheap DVD player. I purchased a Philips DVD player a few years back that was upgradeable via cd-rom and since I've had it there has only been one upgrade. The said part is I specifically bought this $300 model because Philips said it would play DVDR's when they became available. Guess what, It only plays about half of my backups and it is not Mp3 compatible. I went out a year and a half ago and bought an Apex 1100W DVD player that plays everything except WMA (who cares) and DVD-RAM files. I use it hard and it hasn't left me down yet. I only paid $40 for it so I got my money's worth out of it. When and if it takes a crap I will by another one which now supports WMA (who cares) files. I've played the following formats with NO PROBLEMS: DVD, DVD-R/W, DVD+R/W, CD, CD-R/W, SVCD, VCD, JPEG, Kodak Picture CD, and MPEG. What more could ya want. What it lacks is no LED readout on unit itself. No support of long file names for Mp3 which I really miss. Limited controls on unit (lose remote throw unit away and buy another one). I have to admit in this case cheap is good!!!
Second the Apex. Also Norcent is not bad. Still makes me mad that my expense ass Toshiba is so picky about what is plays, but not my Apex.
Bought a CyberHome 300 form Sam's Club for $36 for my parents since they are old and behind the times. Hooked it up and tested a DVD-R backup of a movie I copied and it worked great. Then I tried a SVCD Photo Slideshow created with NeroVision Express 3 and it also worked great. I then tested it with a DVD-R Photo Slideshow made also with Nero and that played fine. I then turned the unit off and an hour or so I turned it on to explain to my parents how to use it and it wouldn't play anything. The movie backup would keep freezing up on me as well as both SVCD and DVD-R formatted photo slideshows. Maybe I got a bad one but after searchin' the net I found out a lot of people had problems with this particular model. I have a CyberHome portable 7 inch screen DVD player and have had it for a year and it works great. I wanted to buy them an Apex but there was none to be found in a 100 mile radius of where I live.
Toshiba had never given me any trouble in fact the 3 best dvd players i own are toshiba panasonic and philips these 3 players play all dvd+r back ups and vcds , the philips plays all mpg4 formats including xvid. all these players were under 70 bucks
I have a question about the CyberHome models - will they play PAL discs? My APEX 1500 is acting up (not reading some discs correctly) so I thought about picking up a CyberHome model but I do have a few PAL discs and when I stick them in my other players, I get the error message about the disc not being region 1. Thanks!
My dad has an APEX dvd player I'm not sure on the model but when he tries to play my backups sometimes they have a lot of pixelation tward the end of the disc but when I play them on my symphonic dvd tv combo they play fine. Then i tried them on my emerson dvd vcr combo and it messed up and the player froze up tward the end. Could this be something to do with the discs or software or do you think getting this player will solve the problem?
It's not the software you use. Usually it's the player and/or discs you use. Some players read different brands better than others. The best thing to do is find a brand and format(+ or -) that works the best and stick with it. There is one problem with this though and that is many blank media companies outsource there discs to other media manufacturers. What happens here is you might buy the right brand that works but this time some other company made it for them. There are many DVD info tools for free out there that will tell you who made the disc. It might say Memorex on the label but chances are someone else made them for Memorex.
I've Been using Verbatim dvd+r discs, are these good discs? I saw verbatim dvd-r discs in the top 4 best discs to use, on a website, and wondered why dvd+r discs were not listed.
Yes Verbatim discs are good but depends on who makes them. I'm using Verbatim DVD-R's which were made by Mitsubishi Chemical which is a good manufacturer. But once again the next batch may be made but a lesser quality manufacturer. I have some Verbatim Multi-Use CD-R's and they were made by CMC Magnetics which is about as bad as it gets as far as quality. As far as DVD+R's the -R's were the first format to come out and were introduced by Pioneer. Later on Philips introduced the +R discs. They are two totally different formats. Generally DVD-R's are prominent as far as more DVD Players will play them and not +R's. +R's are in the dual layer game (DVD9's 8.5 gigs) and this will boost their popularity when the price of these discs come down. Right now you're talking about $7 as the cheapest I've found. Well that's that. We need to get back to the original threads title. I believe there are quite a few threads pertaining just to blank media.
Same thing...bought the cyberhome CH-DVD 300 in silver for 39 dollars from Walmart and was floored after it played ANY media I threw at it. And yes, it burns me that I paid 99 dollars for an RCA 2 years ago that cant play crap.
Thanks for the insightful feedback. Thought my ATI All-in-Wonder card was my culprit, but I can testify that my Philips DVD726 player is very tempermental in accepting homebrewed MPEGs. Over the course of the past three days I've struggled with video capture recording settings (vid. & aud. res., sampling speeds, framing, etc.) and recording materials DVD-R/W or CD-R/W, as well as re-imaging and performing clean XP & W98SE installs. At times I've gotten the player to recognize and playback files; all be it at 3:4 or 1:2 speed, but it never reporduced correctly. In fact, the DVD726 only recognizes *.mpg or *.mp2 files at a 10% clip. It was a Christmas gift from the inlaws. Based on the other threads, I'm going to record an ESPN segment onto various media (CD-R/W, CD+R/W, DVD-R/W and DVD+R/W) and take it to Best Buy or Circuit City and test their floor models. The units with the capability to play those media and MP3's, along with progressive scan, will get my business. The Philips player is nice for *.vob movies, but rather useless for the majority of my needs. Whew, no more sweat over my recording source.
I have the cyberhome player everyone speaks of. Maybe I have a bad one, but it is not as good as I see everyone is saying. It plays only about half the media I put in. It will play TDK but only newer tdk. It will not play any lite on media. It will not play ritek. It will play memorex. Weird. I do use the region free hack, thinking this would unlock something, it did not help. I have an old JVC that plays everything, and its two years older. Its so fustrating, it seems that some dvd players advertise complete compatability, but when you bring them home they don't deliver. Its really aggrevating. Oh well.
