CyberHome DVR 1600 DVD Recorder (Progressive Scan)

CyberHome DVR1600

DVR 1600 DVD Recorder (Progressive Scan) Review, by Melissa Perenson November 30, 2005

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• Reviewed by: MNuser

  Strengths: Price

  Weaknesses: Recording quality\finalizing process\overall build quality

  Overall: Had the unit for about 6 months, and while it's been worth it for transferring VCR tapes to DVD, I'm upgrading as soon as possible.The reason is simple: It seems to produce more coasters than usable disks. I applied the latest firmware to no avail.The quality of the recording leaves a bit to be desired as well. Lots of jaggies, and moving color blocks. Anything other than HQ (1 hour) is about equivalent to video tape.The disks play fine in the recorder, but even on a brand new DVD player it's hit/miss on whether or not a recorded disk will work. Many times they're just not recognized as valid disks, even in a computer DVD drive.I've been using a workaround that's a bit of a pain, but it works:- Create your DVD with DVD+RW disks. Verbatim seems to work best for me.- Use ISOBuster (or another program that can actually read the disk) to recover the data from the disk and copy it to ISO- Use your favorite DVD editing/burning software to burn the ISO to a DVD-R or whatever your player likes.- Erase the DVD-RW to use again.It's a hassle, but it works. For the open box price of $49 it's been worth it, but at the bargain price of $99 you might feel you're paying too much.

• Reviewed by: DONCOOK2

  Strengths: Cheap

  Weaknesses: Life Expectancy 3 months MaximumVery hard to program

  Overall: I have bought 2 neither lasted more than 3 months. Cyberhome website shows warranty of 30 days. Be afraid, be very afraid. I will never ever buy Cyberhome products again.

• Reviewed by: rkocz

  Strengths: Number of inputs, good recording quality.

  Weaknesses: Poorly arranged remote, slow initial reading of the DVD, noise.

  Overall: This is my first foray into DVD recording. I purchased the Cyberhome unit mainly to back up my VCR and 8mm tapes. It does the job well, and the quality is really good, especially when recorded at the 2h "speed." The recorder has a good number of inputs, especially the AV ones on the front. Very well thought-out and convenient. The number of playback formats is equally impressive; however, you won't be using this thing much for playback. The initial read of any DVD is slow to the point of frustration, especially when you compare it side-by-side with a decent DVD player. The remote is poorly designed, with identical buttons arranged on a rectangular grid, making the occasional use of this thing very annoying. Playback is pretty noisy too, especially during spinup and track switching. Bottom line: good recorder, so-so player.

• Reviewed by: sparty3535

  Strengths: Great UI, like the on screen keyboard

  Weaknesses: Having to format disks, incompatability with many disc manufacturers

  Overall: Interesting recorder - I think a lot of the complaints are centered around the fact it only works with certain DVD manufacturers. I used two others before going to Fuji DVD+R/W. I also upgraded the firmware. The combination of upgrading the firmware and only using Fuji makes it work like a champ!The size makes it nice to travel with too..So I went from almost returning it, to loving it..

• Reviewed by: hedog

  Strengths: Clock works great, interface is quite good

  Weaknesses: Kept freezing up when playing commercial movies, doesn't record, can't finalize discs, that's all the farther I got.

  Overall: This thing sucks! Period! When I first installed it I tried to first play a commercial movie just to see some of the features. It played fine for about 10 minutes & then proceded to freeze up. I then ejected the DVD & tried to load it again. It said "bad disk" & wanted to format it.I then was going to try to record something off of the tuner. I set everything up & waited. It did start to record, for the first 15 seconds, & then froze up. Every 2+ minutes it would record about 5-8 seconds.I finally got the unit to acknowledge the firmware disk that I had to burn. It kept saying "bad disk", until on my forth try it finally read it. I updated the "loader" & followed the instructions. I then put one of my last 2 Fuji DVD+RW DVD's (which are a recommended disk) into the coastermaker. It actually accepted/formatted the thing. I thought that maybe the firmware update fixed the problem. I then scheduled something to record off the tuner again. It actually recorded for 5 minutes before it started to freeze up. It recorded about 19 sporadic minutes of about 45 minutes on a 30 minute program (apparently the recorder is based off of the amount of time it records, not the actual time that you set it to record/stop). It then said that the disc was bad & it couldn't record. I then tried to eject the disk & if asked me if I wanted to finalize the disk. I said yes. It didn't finalize & gave me an error. I figured since I bought RW DVD's I could simply reformat the disks since they're new. I couldn't. Every disk I bought became a "bad disk" and nowhere is there an option to reformat. I have yet to actually see something on screen that has been recorded, so that's why I don't have more items in the strengths/weaknesses area.I have read many reviews on this thing. Unfortunately it was after I purchased the recorder. My advice is that anyone who says that it's worth the money, must be employed by Cyberhome. Stay away from this entry level recorder & you may avoid headaches 10 minutes after you first use it.