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- Cyberhome CH-DVR 1600
- MattBeard's review
Picture courtesy of Keith Elman.
| Image Quality | 4.7/10   |
|---|---|
| Sound Quality | 5/10 |
| Features | 4/10 |
| Ease of Use | 4/10 |
| Value for Money | 4.7/10 |
| Overall rating | 4/10 |
By MattBeard
on 5th Jun 2006
| Time DVD Recorder Owned | Less than a Week |
|---|---|
| Image Quality | 6/10 |
| Sound Quality | 8/10 |
| Features | 9/10 |
| Ease of Use | 5/10 |
| Value for money | 8/10 |
| Overall value | 7/10 |
 MattBeard's recommendation | |
A very cheap DVD recorder, packed with features
Not the best picture quality
Fiddly little remote control
Somehow it just doesn't seem to hit the right spot
I had read quite a few mixed reviews about the Cyberhome CH-DVR 1600 DVD recorder before I decided to take the plunge, but I thought it was worth the risk for the price!
I also have the Cyberhome DVD-400 player, which is great, and so I found the looks to be exactly as expected - small, functional, but not the most attractive bit of kit in the room. The remote is probably the weakest bit of physical design, as there are about 44 small buttons, all the same shape and size, placed in a grid, and even when you do find the right button you need to be pointing it exactly at the recorder for it to work.
Connecting up the basic cables to get the unit working was easy enough, especially as there was a scart lead in the box (what is it with most manufacturers giving you everything you need apart from that one item?).
I went through the "easy set-up" stage (although I think perhaps they need to re-think calling it "Virgin Mode") and the tuner found all of our TV channels, even Channel 5, which we can't normally get (but very weak). One problem is that they ended up in the order: BBC1, ITV1, BBC2, Ch4, Ch5, so I had to move BBC2 up to slot 2 to match my normal thinking. Also, the tuner is not all that good, giving quite a soft picture, and it picks up quite a bit of interference from the unit itself when recording (this may be worse for me because we have a weak TV signal here). I also found that pictures that went from my Sky box through the recorder (in one scart and out the other) to the TV were noticeably worse than going directly to the TV (even before being recorded).
I bought a few DVD+ RW discs for the machine, and inserting one of these and formatting it allowed me to try recording something. Later, I too discovered that DVD- R discs seemed to work.
I pressed record on the remote control and nothing happened. Ah, I needed to select the source; press the "source" button and you get a nifty little picture of the front and back of the machine with a highlighted box around the DVD drawer, showing that this is what is currently active. Each time you press "source" or the left and right buttons, this highlighted box moves to indicate a different set of connectors. A large Picture-In-Picture style window shows the programme that is on that connector, so you know you have selected the right one. At first I loved this, but it very soon became an annoyance.
Once I had selected a source I could press record. This did exactly what was expected, although I was a little shocked when I hit stop that there is quite a lot of processing the machine does before you can then play the recording (but at least you get a progress bar to watch).
Playback was good, and in the HQ mode the recordings looked as good as the original, but you can only fit about 57 minutes on a disc! This was rather silly - each quality setting took you almost to a sensible length, but not quite - I foresee a lot of programmes missing the last couple of minutes!
So, I connected the full system up (TV, DVD recorder, Sky box, old VCR) and prepared to use it for real. It was then that I started finding problems.
The first one was that you keep having to go back and select the source again (why can't it just remember the input I used last?). When you have Sky, 99% of anything you record will probably be from Sky, so it seems mind-numbingly awful to have to select that scart input before pressing record *every time* (and the box claims "one touch record")!
Another problem was what happens when you do a timer recording. The box switches on and tunes to the correct channel for the recording, but for some reason it also sends a signal out on the scart to tell the TV that it has something to show. This signal is supposed to be used when you start playing a DVD to switch the TV over to the DVD channel so you can see the pictures, but this recorder was sending the signal when recording. This means that if you set something to record on BBC1 and then start watching ITV you will have your viewing interrupted mid-programme, as the DVD recorder wakes up and forces the TV on to BBC1. There is probably a simple solution to this (not anywhere in the manual), but the only cure I found was to go from the recorder to the TV via an S-Video lead!
The big show stopper for me was that widescreen recordings ended up wrong! This is almost certainly caused by the set-up I have here. I still have a non-widescreen TV (4:3 not 16:9), which is really good and has a large screen. I have Sky, and I often video programmes. I also prefer widescreen programmes to be widescreen rather than losing the right and left of the picture. So, the Sky box is set to "4:3 letterbox mode", and when it decodes a widescreen programme it adds black bars to the top and bottom to make it 4:3. This is good because I can watch it fine on my TV, and also record the programmes on VHS (and play them back fine on a any 4:3 TV). However, when I record these programs on the DVR-1600, it seems to record the fact that they started off widescreen, then when I play them back it adds another set of black bars at the top and bottom, and I end up with a tiny squashed up picture in the middle of a black screen!
I tried every option on the Sky box and the DVD recorder and managed to get some very odd results, but nothing kept the pictures the right shape if they started as widescreen. I checked for updated firmware, but the unit had the latest. I rang the special helpline (being bought from Asda there is an Asda helpline instead of being able to call CyberHome) and they couldn't find a solution, and in the end said I should take the unit back.
So, I did take it back and replaced it with a Sony RDR-GX120, which is about twice the price, but it is so much better. I found that none of the problems I had with the DVR-1600 applied to this machine, and the picture quality is far better. It is also dual-layer, so you can get over 14 hours on a disc!
In conclusion. Is the DVR-1600 any good? Yes and no! It does everything that it should and a lot more that you have no right to expect on such a cheap recorder, but I found it very difficult to live with, and I was relieved to take it back.
If you want a cheap recorder, and if you don't mind if the picture quality is not the best. If you can put up with re-selecting the video source every time you manually record, and either have a widescreen TV, or only watch programmes in "pan-scan" (no black bars) then go for it.
If you can afford to pay more, want the best quality or the longest recording time, or just want a unit that will do everything simply and easily, then it might be better to look elsewhere.
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