I've had a HDTV with HDMI input for about a year now, but nothing that that had a HDMI output. A week ago my cheap cyberhome DVD player stopped outputting 5.1 digital, so I went looking for a replacement.

I found the CyberHome DVD655 at WalMart for $89.95. It has HDMI output WITH HD upconversion video playback, and came with an HDMI cable. It also came with component and A/V cables. It outputs component, S-video, and composite video too. Optical and coaxial digital audio outputs. No S-video or optical cables were included, but I already had them. It'll play DVD, JPG, MP3, VCD, SVCD, Mpeg4, and WMA files. Using the HDMI button on the remote you can switch the signal between 480p, 720p, and 1080i. It also will output 720p or 720i through the component cables. It will play any DVD+-R/W or CD+-R/W disk, but not super audio DVDs.

The setup menu lets you select between NTSC and PAL, 4:3 and 16:9, 6 display modes (FILL, Original, height fit, Width fit, fit to screen, Pan Scan), and two jpeg modes (SD Jpeg and UP Scaler). The Audio menu in Setup lets you turn digital output ON or OFF, and downsampling ON or OFF in case your amp doesn't support the 96k sampling rate of most DVDs.

There is a GREAT ZOOM feature. It works with any image DVD or JPG on the screen.

I have not yet determined if there are any region or macrovison hacks for this DVD player.

All in all, this appears to be GREAT DVD player. It's far better than the cheap Cyberhome it replaced. The remote is much larger, and nicer looking too. It DOES NOT use the same remote codes as the cheaper Cyberhome DVD player. I'll have to do some digging to figure out what codes it does use.

Dave B.