Playing UK DVDs in the US
Feb. 10th, 2005 10:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
swehTwo years ago I bought A Cyberhome 500. Interesting DVD player. Not the best playback quality but it was damn cheap and it had one very very good feature; it was region hackable (many are) and it would convert PAL to NTSC (many can) but keep the aspect ratio correct (that's where many fail). Great stuff!
I noticed recently that I was starting to get playback errors. Mostly on UK DVDs. Odd. Hmm. Some research leads me to believe that the DVD player itself may be going bad. Since these are just IDE DVD ROM drives in essence, it is possible to do a drive swap.
How odd... the CyberHome 320 (at Target) is $38. I can't get a DVD ROM drive that cheap! Now the 320 is just a rebadged 300. When I last looked the 300 didn't do aspect ratios properly. However since then there have been 3 different models of 300 and some do it right. Ah, what the hell.. $40 and I can swap drives around. Still cheaper than getting a ROM drive!
But hey... this is a 320MU model and it seems to do aspect ratios properly! And the picture is _more_ stable than the 500. Well, damn! Of course the 320 doesn't have any front panel display, but because the picture quality is better I'm seriously considering retiring the 500 and keeping the 320 as is.
This DVD player isn't much bigger than 4 VHS tapes (in 2x2 block shape). Small thing! But I'm impressed so far!!
I noticed recently that I was starting to get playback errors. Mostly on UK DVDs. Odd. Hmm. Some research leads me to believe that the DVD player itself may be going bad. Since these are just IDE DVD ROM drives in essence, it is possible to do a drive swap.
How odd... the CyberHome 320 (at Target) is $38. I can't get a DVD ROM drive that cheap! Now the 320 is just a rebadged 300. When I last looked the 300 didn't do aspect ratios properly. However since then there have been 3 different models of 300 and some do it right. Ah, what the hell.. $40 and I can swap drives around. Still cheaper than getting a ROM drive!
But hey... this is a 320MU model and it seems to do aspect ratios properly! And the picture is _more_ stable than the 500. Well, damn! Of course the 320 doesn't have any front panel display, but because the picture quality is better I'm seriously considering retiring the 500 and keeping the 320 as is.
This DVD player isn't much bigger than 4 VHS tapes (in 2x2 block shape). Small thing! But I'm impressed so far!!
