Coby TF-DVD7107 7 in. Portable DVD Player

I bought this for my wife and kids for long drives and flights. It makes long trips less painful for both parties. At $100 dollars I decided to give it a try.

The unit measures 7.8" x 1.5" x 6.6" with the 16:9 ratio TFT LCD measuring the 7" claimed. Its the typical fold in half type design that opens 180 degrees from closed and seems to have all the features that a normal DVD player would. I comes with plenty of accessories that include a regular outlet charger, car charger, remote w/ AAA batteries, corded headphones, removable battery, and coaxial digital output cable (5 ft.) to hook up to TV.

It has the following features from the Coby web-site:
-Compact Portable Design
-7" Wide -screen (16:9) TFT Color Display
-Plays DVD/DVD!?R/RW/CD/CD-R/RW/MP3 and JPEG Compatible
-Built-in Anti-skip Circuitry
-Multiple Subtitles/Viewing Angles, Slow/Fast Motion Play, Zoom Operation
-Convenient On-screen Display
-Composite Video Out
-Coaxial Digital Audio Output
-Headphone Jack for Private Listening
-Audio/Video Input Jack for Video Games, VCR or Other AV Sources

When I first opened it I slipped the battery on by sliding it in from the back, locked the battery with the switch and then plugged charging cable in the side of the player. There is a small light on the side that was red when I first plugged in the charging cable and then was green two hours later when I came back from my sons baseball game. I pushed the slide on/off switch on the side to on and it showed a screen saver and indicated no disc. So I grabbed The Last of the Mohecians (Wide-screen) and dropped it in. There is an open button that pops a somewhat flimsy plastic lid up and then you can open it further if needed. The DVD snaps on the center post like most portable DVD/CD players. I snapped the lid closed and pushed play. Last of the Mohecians seems to be a pretty good movie to judge an LCD against since its got a lot vibrant and contrasting colors. Once the movie started playing I noticed the sound from the external speakers, mounted below the LCD were not that great. Coby does provide a set of headphones with a three and a half-foot cord. I plugged it in the side port (there are two headphone jacks, one on either side) and thought the sound from these was very good. They do a very good job with the sound shifting around in a surround sound type way. In 16:9 wide-screen mode it still had about a half-inch of unused screen on the top and bottom but look right and not squished or stretched (I still think wide screen is just a marketing ploy to sell more TVs). There is also the 4:3 ratio that is accessed with the LCD mode button. A full screen DVD on the 4:3 ratio looks correct and not squished or flattened. The colors seemed very rich and vibrant but when you get near the dark spectrum of colors the colors just seem black. This is very apparent in night scenes. The blacks are fairly black but I have seen darker and there is a lighter area in the bottom right of my screen, but its not that bothersome. You will notice that some edges of objects or people in the DVDs may look a little rough around the edges due to the pixels in the screen. This may be common on small LCD screens but I do not have much experience with them so I can't say for certain. The unit does make a hissing when its spinning the DVD and there is a fair amount of vibration that is dampened by the four rubber feet on the bottom, but I consider the vibration to be a little much.

The remote has all the buttons the main unit has plus some more. There is a power button that will basically turn the unit off or in a standby mode and can turn it back on just as its turned off. The remote has a program button that lets you search through a menu of the DVDs chapters. There is an audio button that lets you select the audio type; this includes other dubbed languages if supported by the DVD. The angle button confused me but reading the manual it says some DVDs offer multiple angles to view a scene. There are six push buttons and two four-way buttons that have a single button in the middle of them. The buttons seem stiff, especially the four-way ones. One of the four-way buttons is the Play, Stop, forward/Slow/Fast Forward, and Back/Fast/Slow Rewind (it has speeds up to x32 or as slow as 1/32). Holding the back or forward side of the four-way down and then pushing the center button performs the slow option. The other four-way button is for navigating the menus. The other six buttons are Setup and menu on the right and LCD Mode, Display, Title, and Return on the left inside of the unit. The volume is controlled with a recessed wheel on the right side of the unit. Contrast, Brightness, and other options can be adjusted in the setup menu. The Menu button takes you to the DVDs main menu. The LCD Mode takes you to a page to adjust the aspect ratio. The Display button shows information on what options the DVD is playing on and time, chapters and stuff like that. Title takes you to the DVDs main menu like the Menu button on the right. The Audio/Visual jacks are on the right and let you use the DVD player on a larger TV by connecting the provided 5ft long AV cable to the larger TV.

As the feature list shows it plays a variety of discs, not just DVDs. I have played a regular music CD and it works except I keep hearing a popping sound, it also allows you to build custom play-lists. It accepts MP3 on CD-R and CD-RW as well as JPEG. I put a CD-R in with hi-res pictures (JPEG) on it and I could view them but they looked kind of low res on the DVD player.

All and all, this is a lot for the money. I purchased the two-year warranty with it just incase something happens to it but my initial impressions are very positive.

UPDATE: Downgrade from 4 Stars to 1.

I had to use the Warranty since it just quit playing DVDs. I had felt safe when I bought this since Newegg offered a 1 year replacement and I had a 2 year extended warranty with it. Newegg no longer has a 1 year replacement plan, its now 30 days so I had to return it to COBY. Its been over three weeks and COBY says it will be another few weeks before they return it.

It only lasted about 5 months.

Another Update:

The replacement from Coby mentioned above took over 3 months to arrive. That one also failed and Newegg told us to contact Coby again. The Coby customer service rep was difficult for my wife to deal with. She asked my wife for the serial number and when my wife read the number off the bottom of the DVD player the customer service rep told my wife the number was not the serial number even though it the only number on the DVD player. The customer service rep either didn't know where what the number was supposed to be or was lying. To me, it sounds like Coby knows they make low quality products and so does Newegg (since they reduced the return policy time limit). I wouldn't expect this DVD player to last more than 6 months to a year with regular use. As long as people keep buying Coby products, they will continue to dodge their responsibility to their customers.

On another note, Coby claims that if the replacement product fails, they will not replace that one if you are beyond their warranty offered on the original product.