CyberHome CH-DVD 500 Progressive-Scan DVD Player
Whole lotta features for the price
I bought one of these just over a year ago because I wanted to watch DVDs from anywhere in the world. For $60 or so, it was a steal. I don't dig the silver case, the remote layout is awful and some discs seem to take inordinately long to load, but those minor issues are far outweighed by the features. A quick remote hack gave me all-region compatibility, I can watch NTSC or PAL discs, and Macrovision is disabled on most discs. This machine will play discs (particularly DVD-R) that my more expensive Philips player won't. And a feature that came in handy just this week is .jpg viewing: I burned a bunch of digital pictures to a CD, popped it into the player and voila--instant slide show.<br /><br />I have had absolutely no mechanical problems with my player. (After reading the negative reviews, however, I'll keep my fingers crossed.) I liked mine so much that I just bought another for my parents for Christmas.<br /><br />Update, 8/12/05: Problems have cropped up. The machine refuses to load some discs, and will only play the intro on others. No rhyme or reason to it as far as I can tell. You get what you pay for, and I think I at least got my money's worth. Still, my next player will be a *quality* all-world model.