I postponed writing about Cambridge Audio in hopes that they would get their act together and solve the issues that plague them, but it has only gotten worse so here it is. I bought a CA DVD79 player about 6 weeks ago and had really awful lip sync problems immediately. The player itself has the exact same hardware as a few other manufacturers models, namely Oppo Digital. The hardware is technically very good, with a Faroudja DCDi scaler which is capable of upscaling everything to HD resolutions (720p,1080i) which is great, and it has DVI output. The picture is amazing, but the lip sync problem was ridiculously bad, so after doing some web research I found that Oppo has updated the firmware for their machine several times to fix problems including the lip sync. From another user on the Cambridge Audio web forums, it became apparant that installing the Oppo firmware was possible to do on the CA machine. So I tried it and it worked well, and since I have a new Logitech/Harmony 880 universal remote (web programmable), it was no problem getting codes for the Oppo player which is basically what the DVD79 becomes after installing the firmware. The lip sync problem is much, much better and it also included several other useful menu options.
I posted my experiences on the CA forum, along with my complaints with several others. In a series of dodgy responses, the CEO of Cambridge Audio replied to the thread, finally promising his engineers were working with customers and that a firmware update would be available in a few weeks. In one response he referred to Japanese people as "japs" to which I posted an incredulous reply asking "Did I really just see the CEO of Cambridge Audio write 'japs'?" My post was promptly deleted, and the post written by the CEO was edited to say "japanese". I posted a thanks for the fix, but asked for an explanation and/or apology for using racial slurs on an international public forum. The CEO responded with an apology for "any inconveniences" of not updating the firmware. I responded in turn with a clarification that my request was for an explanation/apology of his use of racial slurs. The next day the whole forum was shut down (not even just the thread) and all links to the forum have been removed. It's been about a month and no updates have been released, and the forum is still gone. What a bunch of asses. I'll never buy another thing from them again.
For anyone who cares, the Oppo firmware can be installed on the CA DVD79 since they use the exact same hardware, but the machine will basically then become the Oppo. This means the buttons on the front do not do what they say, and the CA remote won't work. The oppo remote codes are easily obtainable, however, if you have a programmable or universal remote. The firmware update adds lots of new features that basically fix all the problems inherent to the machine. If you're thinking of buying the player, get the Oppo. Links are below:
http://oppodigital.com/opdv971h_support.html
http://oppodigital.com/opdv971h_firmware_1022_download.html