Customer Reviews

Yamakawa CH-DVD 300S

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This is a sweet little DVD player. I would love it even were it not for its special capabilities. It has a nice, lightweight remote with well-designed functionality (not the most superior layout, but better than most), a setup menu I found easy to use; and it feels well-built and looks very nice (the latter two being bonuses I did not expect). The player lets you select not only PCM or AC-3, but also provides an equalizer with some degree of customization.

The picture quality is beautiful, and the player seamlessly does everything I have demanded. Be advised that US consumers need to concern themselves with two issues. First, the all-important region. Some DVDs are made without a designated region; these are called "Region 0" and their "region" is allowed in any player. Some DVDs are made with different regions in mind (US is Region 1); and there have been two different methods used by the studios to implement this. One method allows a DVD player to query the disc for the proper region and can allow play; the other method deliberately foils this. For discs encoded with the second method, a player must first be told it is Region X (where X is the proper region). This is not the fault of the player, but the studios (who, frustratingly, often don't ever release highly-sought-after titles in other countries but STILL disable the discs there).

The second issue with which we in the US must be familiar, is that there are other "standards" than ours here. We use the "NTSC" standard to encode our DVDs and videos. The UK, for example, uses the "PAL" standard. If I wanted to watch, say, a DVD of "Solo" from the UK, I would need to ensure I had a player which could play Region 2 DVDs AND which could convert the signal from PAL to NTSC. Many of the more well-known-brand players I found require you to get a PAL TV. This little Yamakawa does not. All you have to do is politely request that he always play NTSC, rather than leave the player on the default "AUTO" setting (NOTE: If you see a black and white wavy picture without sound, you are probably accidentally playing PAL). In summary, this player has been a joy to me and has worked flawlessly; and I hope it can provide others with the kind of happiness it has given me.

EDIT 04/11/09: My Yammy's Video out and SVideo out stopped working a little while ago, but I *still* use it because it is still the best multi-region player I have found! (I use the component out and the VGA out instead)

EDIT 08/27/10: I am still joyfully using my original Yamakawa with its component outputs; and my best friend is still using my other Yamakawa (which has had no problems) that I had gotten a few weeks after the first as a backup.

In my case I was looking for a DVD player to play Region 2 DVD's on an NTSC TV here in the States. I was surprised when I searched for a multi-region player and this one popped up for $60.00, I figured I couldn't go wrong! Even if the worst thing happened, the player didn't work as I expected and I couldn't get a full refund, it's not like I'm spending hundreds of dollars on a player - so it seemed like a good chance to take.

I was pleasantly surprised when I unpacked this player and hooked it up to my system. The first thing I did was turn it on and put in a disc, just to see if it worked out of the box. It did! The picture looked good - the sound was good!

At this point I went into the set-up menu (what strange colors to use). I set most of the settings to my preferences. I got to the equalizer settings, and although you can adjust them, the treble and bass boost caused the sound to distort. I generally leave the processing to my pre-amp processor, so leaving these off was the best solution for me. I was surprised at all the options available for the price of this player.

Another slight negative, this time about the remote - you have to point the remote directly at the player. If you are off by a little the remote won't work. I thought my remote was faulty until I discovered this.

It performed as expected when playing a region 2 DVD that I had purchased (on my NTSC TV). It does everything that I bought it for!!

This player is an excellent value at $60.00!! If you are looking for a decent multi-region player, without spending a lot of cash, this player is for you!!!

One last note - I received the product very quickly - within 5 business days!

This player has an unmatched features for the price. It plays all DVD formats from any country (region) and it looks much more expensive than it costs. Great deal!

If you are looking for a DVD player to play not only region 1 DVDs (US) but also region 2 (i.e. UK) DVDs in PAL format, this is your man. If you have a TV that only supports US coding (NSTC) this box will read region 2 PAL disks and play 'em on a NSTC TV, cool hu !
Other multi-region DVD players can't do this (as they require you to have a TV that can receive both PAL and NSTC) and the player costs 3 times the price of this beauty ! OK, I'm off to watch series three of The West Wing which was available in the UK about a month ago, well ahead of the US release of season 2.

I'm an international students doing my graduate courseworks in Texas. I have a problem about DVD zoning because most of my favorite movies are from Asia with the different zones with US.

I did search many alternatives which are more expensive than this product (i.e Sony with starting price at one hundred something). Buying this product gives me a big surprise! Firstly, the seller is really great. I got the product very fast in all good conditions. The product is easy to set up and keeps what you set up into its memory. So, you don't have to be bothered by the several setup process. Picture and sounds are great for modest users. But for the high-end settings like an expensive home theater or flat screen tv, I have no comments.

Thanks to the reviews posted in this website that helps me make my decision to buy easily.

Easy to use, looks nice, fast delivery!

I had a few problems with this machine at first - the instructions for changing the region are not in the main manual, but on a bit of paper that fell out when unpacking. Still, that's my fault. The only problem with this beasty is the awful user interface. The menus may be the ugliest thing I've ever seen. However, the fact that it does pretty much anything I could want makes up for that.

I was only going to give it four stars, but that would be nit-picking somewhat, especially at this price...

Have only had this player for a short while, but have been very happy with it. I bought it to play multiple region DVD's and for the higher quality VGA output. I have it hooked directly to my InFocus X1 projector and together they produce a very nice image. "Tom Tom" mentions having to re-input the password each time a new region DVD is inserted, however if you input the password and set the region to zero, it should play discs from all regions without needing to set the region code again.

PROS:
Plays DVD+-R/Ws, CD-R/W media, MP3 files on CD or DVD, All region DVDs, VCD, SVCD, JPEGS with slideshow, audio CDs, PAL format on NTSC televisions. 15 pin VGA output, Component output, Optical Audio, Coaxial Audio, Composite output, 2 seperate MIC inputs for karaoke function - I plugged my electric guitar straight in. Wow.
CONS:
DON'T LOSE the small paper that comes with it to set "Region free". Short filenames on screen Explorer menu for MP3s and JPEG CDs. Default Video & Audio options are not for a home theater system, you need to tweak it if you want to use DTS and progressive scan. Unit can run hot - needs adequate ventilation.

You won't find better at this price.

It does what it says it does. It's not double boxed so damage may occur during shipping. My first one kind of acted up when I received it. Basically it wasn't loading dvd's occasionally. A quick call to yamakawa direct (this is a Yamakawa 288K not a Yakumo CH-DVD 300S btw) resulted in a an empathetic tech who quickly sent me an email to complete to receive a new unit and return the bad one w/o cost to me.

The picture is ok. Progressive scan seems to be too fuzzy, blacks seem too black. I may just have to do some more tweaking though. Ok for the price anyway.