Offering amazing features for such an affordable price, Cyber Home's CH-DVD 500 makes a rich and promising starter player. It has everything from top-of-the-line progressive-scan component-video outputs to built-in MP3 decoding, JPEG image viewing, and a dual-laser pickup for compatibility with not only DVDs and CDs, but CD-Rs and CD-RWs as well. Whether you have an HDTV now or you're planning to get one, the CH-DVD 500 stands ready to deliver the full potential of DVDs. Progressive scanning, referred to as 480p for the number of horizontal lines that compose the video image, creates a picture using twice the scan lines of a conventional DVD picture, providing higher resolution and sharper images while eliminating nearly all motion artifacts. Composite-video and S-video outputs bring compatibility with nearly any television. With 3:2 pulldown support, the player corrects for a common distortion in DVDs when 24 frames-per-second movies make the leap to 30 fps video; 3:2 pulldown removes the redundant information to display a film-frame-accurate picture. The CH-DVD 500 is compatible with DVD-R/-RW and DVD+R/+RW media, handling just about any recordable disc. It even plays both PAL- and NTSC-formatted discs, handy when you're viewing non-region-specific European discs. A set of multichannel analog-audio outputs routes decoded Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1-channel surround signals to an audio-video receiver. Dolby Digital and DTS signals can also be channeled through the player's digital-audio outputs (one each of RCA coaxial and optical) for direct connection to a surround-featured AV receiver. The player has left-right analog audio outputs, too.
Other features include 2x motion zoom, onscreen display (with MP3 navigation), programmable playback (including MP3 and JPEG files), and firmware upgradability. Supplied accessories include a composite-video/stereo analog-audio interconnect, instruction manual, a power cord, and a multifunction 44-key remote control.
