Page 1 of Cyber Home AD-M512 - multiregion out of box or not?

I`ve been looking at some of the threads re Cyber Home 512 and am still confused as to whether this device has multiregion capability out of the box or not?

I note that Richer Sounds are selling the 512 for £149.95 but offer a "multiregion" version for £159.95. Are they simply making a "hack" and charging £10 for something that the purchaser could do for nothing?

Does it depend upon the firmware version or does the 212 hack (press 7, press 6 press SEL enter 13....) work on the 512 irrespective of the firmware.

If you are the proud owner of a 512 is it a good buy?

Cheers

Martin53

got a 512 from richer sounds before they were selling them multi regoin and had to down grade firmware to get multiregion maybe thats what richer have done to the players so the hack can work.have had the player for 3 weeks its a good buy for what the spec is

I have been looking at the 512 pretty closely also. I have the hack details from the M(1)uffy site (http://home.t-online.de/home/0306855728-0001/CHindex1.html), and went to Richer Sounds during the weekend. I got them to demo it for me. The first thing I tried to do was apply the region hack to play a region 1 disk. Of course the firmware was A009.9x, so the "secret menu" did not expose the required options.

So, out of the box, the 512 does not play non-region 2 disks, and does not allow you to apply the "secret menu" hack straight off. If you buy it, you will have to download the firmware downgrade (to A008 or A006.7), burn it to a CD (using the guidelines on the M(1)uffy site above - including CD burn settings), and run the CD in the player to update (downgrade) the firmware. There are some posts in this (?) forum which say this works fine - but the risk is yours.

With the A008 firmware version, the region hack is temporary - so you would have to enter the secret menu each time you restart the machine if you want to play non-region 2 disks. This is no major problem, cos it is quick to do.

The A006.7 version keeps the settings between restarts, but check out details at the list of bug fixes at http://www.cyberhome-europe.de/ger/firmm2512.htm. Makes me think you should be going for the A008 version. Also, there are no details on that site about A009.9. I would be interested to see what you are losing by going back from A009.9 to A008 - anyone?

Richer Sounds markets a "multi-region" version of the 512 for £10 more. I am not sure whether they have just applied the firmware downgrade themselves, or whether they have physically chipped it. Normall chipping comes at a £50 premium, so I am guessing they have just done the firmware. However, they mostly do not carry these mr versions in the stores (only mail order) - so you either have to get one delivered to a store and check it out for yourself - or order one and return it if you dont see what you expect. The downside of a "multi-region" chipped player is that it may still not allow you to configure the machine for a single (other) region. If that is the case, the machine may fail the RCE check (ie., I understand you can get around RCE disks if you can set your machine to a specific region code for the region of the disk - rather than you machine being just "multi-region").

If you are willing to go through the firmware downgrade - I reckon this is a good machine to go for. It has more functionality than anything else in the price range, and apparently has totally acceptable picture and sound quality (8 & 9 out of 10 in DVD Buyer). Note, however, that while it converts NTSC to PAL, it does not output PAL60. So if you are trying to play NTSC (region 1) disks on a TV which is not NTSC compat, you will not get a decent picture. Also, it does not convert PAL to NTSC at all, so the same problem in reverse for US buyers. However, it is cheap enough for the purchase not to be too much of a mistake.

Long winded - but HTH

Dear Paul,

I read your notes on the Cyber Home AD-M512 with interest and had found the firmware downgrade on the M(1)uffy site after having surfed for a while. The version 8.0 zip file downloaded fine from his site and I`ll burn it to a CD this weekend, but do you know if anyone has tried this? My machine came from Richer Sounds (this weekend) and they said that there is definitely a hack, but failed to mention the firmware downgrade!! Obviously, I try this at my own risk, but it would be helpful if you could let me know of the success or failure of the file provided by our Cyber-friend.

Cheers

Steve,

I have not tried the downgrade myself - so I can`t give a first-hand confirmation. I am sure I have seen a posting from someone - either on this forum - elsewhere within dvd.reviewer.co.uk - or somewhere completely different. If you can`t find it here, do a general search on http://groups.google.com under "cyber home region" or add "firmware" in there. You should find it.

I have not bought one of these yet - but I probably will during the weekend. I am willing to foot the risk (touching wood right now :), so you can wait til after then if you like!

Also, I forgot to write in the posting above (can you believe I left something out!), you will have seen on the M(1)uffy site that you can also "flash" the start-up graphic on the A009.9 firmware. This is all very hazy on the site - so I am not so sure about this option. When you download the Ar3a0099.bin file, it is about the same size as the A008 and A006.7 bin files (once you download and unzip them). So I suspect this is just the full A009.9 firmware. Long and the short of it - I don`t know how to flash the A009 graphic - but if you could you would pressumably get to keep the A009 functionality (what ever that is) but get back your region hacks.

There`s the long story again. HTH

Paul,

Thanks for your kind offer to act as the guinea pig re. the firmware, but I took the chance last night and loaded up version 8.0. I too was a bit confused about how M(1)uffy could give us the `flash` for version 9.0. As long as you follow the instructions re. burning version 8.0 to the CD and loading it into the machine it works fine (I am relieved to report). You`ll find that the new secret menu boots up in German, but you can sort this out by going to the Setup menu and asking it to display in English. The region option is in the secret menu and I`ll test out the picture/sound on a region 1 disk once I`ve borrowed one from a mate. I don`t know what you lose from using version 8.0 in the way of functionality, but other sites that contain the hack for the ADM-212 (which I assume uses version 8.0 as the hack is exactly the same) report that there are no problems that they`ve found with the multi-region functionality. The only thing I wondered about was whether there is a limit on the number of times you can use the hack to set it to multi-region (version 8.0 of the firmware loses the region code when you turn the power off so it has to be re set). According to SPIRIT UK (see other bits of the forum relating to the ADM 512) the player will accept RCE disks if you set the region code rather than if you use the `accept all regions` code 13 in the secret menu. Hope all of this is useful.

By the way, if you do find that you can successfully flash version 9.9 then please let me know and I might try it. However, I think that that particular file is labelled `unofficial` on the site so I don`t know how safe it is to use.

Cheers

Steve

Sounds good. There is a blurb on the M(1)uffy site which says you can make the change as many times as you like. Under the "Cyber Home DVD-Player AD-M 212/512" page (http://home.t-online.de/home/0306855728-0001/adm2512faq.html) - below the "Setup" heading - there is a sentance which reads "The player can also be set to any region code individually - unlimited times!".

The theory with RCE is that the encoding on the disk detects where the machine is not set specifically to the same region code as the disk. That is, "multi-region" machines/settings will not work. However, if you can tell your player to act like it is Region 1 only, the RCE check succeeds and you can play the disk.

While we are on it, I am keen to see a translation for the German on the page "Cyber Home AD-M 212 / 512 - Problem-DVDs" (http://home.t-online.de/home/0306855728-0001/adm2512probs.html). Let me know if you have any leads.

Rgds

If you copy the text to your clipboard and then go to the altavista.co.uk, click on the `translate icon` ( a symbol like a fish), paste yuor text in and select German to English this will do a reasonable translation for you.

Well I`ll be...!

Here are the AltaVista translations, in the order of table records at http://home.t-online.de/home/0306855728-0001/adm2512probs.html:

1. The Player has difficulties with the playback of the MPEG tone, which is to be found still on some DVDs. This is totally distorted shown. - the problem can be recovered as follows: With the remote maintenance call the?Effect? menu, by repeated pressing of the?Effect? key on?Audio 2ch? change, the?Effect? key again do press, in order to get again do the 5.1-Anzeige and thus multi-channel tone, and then the whole with?C? force away. Now the tone for the run time of the DVD is correctly shown!

2. The DVD has strong menu problems, while the film runs perfectly. With the bonus material the start display and the?Broken Disc? symbol appear after selection of various menu options, and the selection cannot be played. This problem occurs also with other Playern!

3. DVD is detected (NO DISC) and cannot not be played This problem occurs also with other Playern!

4. DVD runs not :)

5. There are from time to time picture distortions. If one presses the?Play? key during these distortions (tone continues to run normally), again the normal picture emerges.

6. (Matrix) With this disk it gives always times again a few Probs (not only on the CH!). Generally it runs however on the Cyber Home! In the latter,, was obviously the DVD admitted case to me defective. After conversion it ran perfectly!

7. Navigation problems in the menus of the second page. Often only an empty background is displayed, on which one sees then the selection items alone. Player fallow with title 53 (one the Japan Trailer) with " broken disc " off.

8. After in the extra menu?Making the OF? returns the Player was played to the menu, one has however no options more.

9. Problems and crashes with the Layerwechsel with 1) with 2) problem at the end of chapter 9. Picture freezes, and Player does not accept thereafter the DVD any longer. Only after 2 hours it could be played again (Disc?Broken? Symbol). The remainder goes, but the crash always is here. When skipping by section selection on start chapter 10 is then all ok.