Customer Reviews

Coby DVD-R1100 DVD Recorder/Player with NTSC TV Tuner

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Okay, for the money it has a pretty awesome set of features! Trouble is, it's really unreliable. By all accounts what happen to me is pretty common! If you're as unlucky as me you'll burn a slew of coasters alongside your good recordings and then after 95 days it'll just burn out completely! The Goods news is, if it burns out within 90 days Coby will send you a new machine free of charge (or for $31 at any time after 90 days)because they don't repair. The bad news is they no longer make the 1100 and you get a free upgrade to a 1200! By all accounts the 1200 is more reliable, but, with an inferior spec. It has less imputs/outputs, including no optical output, and only has 2 channel sound capability, instead of the 5.1 available with the 1100.

...BUT apparently Coby are going to reintroduce a new (reliable) 1100 later this year? So.. if you have one, you can do like me, stick your crapped 1100 in a cupboard and watch their website and then send your $31 dollars, once the new 1100 is introduced!

bought one of these a couple of months ago, It does clearly state that it is dvd+r only.. no problem there, and changing it from ntsc to pal.. only 1 click in the setup menu, and I did burn about 20 good disks with it before the problems started. It will not accept any input video from any source anymore. It has quite a few input methods.. S-video, composite, rca, and coaxial... as well as a set of front inputs. For a while it would take anything i could throw at it, now, there is no picture from anything except watching a disk on it. Coby customer support was easy to reach, and nice enough, but acted like they had never had any problems with it,and even after escalating the call to one of the 3 "super-tech's" the most I could get was to reset the machine. Not very helpful.


Skip this one!!!!

This machine was great while it worked. Great price. Decent playback quality. Loved the support of the various DVD formats.

But.....

The machine died 2 weeks after the warranty ran out...

I got this unit from my father who had it lying around his house brand new in a box in Nov 05. Sure enough, after 90 days use it stop working. I checked it out and found no power was going to the unit. I confirmed it with a repair place ( I had no warrenty) who said they could fix it. After reading these reviews, why bother! I'll just go out and buy a better unit next time!
I have a cheap Cyberhouse Recorder that had problems till I bought a $10 computer fan which cooled off the unit and now it works flawless everytime. It has got to be a HEAT issue with these units (have you ever notice how hot they get???).

I have been disappointed with this product & Coby's customer service from the start. After recording, if I press either DISC OPER or EDIT on the remote control, the screen goes black and the unit will not respond to any input from the remote or the front panel; the only way to regain control of the unit is to cycle power. Coby's customer support has been disappointing, too. For warranty work, they require $6 S/H in the form of a money order, not a personal check. It offends me that I'm inconvenienced by having to send this defective unit back and, far from being sorry that I've been inconvenienced, they are concerned only that I might cheat them out of $6.

This player is amazing, yet inexpensive. Plays NTSC and PAL (European) DVDs and burns them, too. Look for hacker codes for this player in the Internet to make it region free, and you can play DVDs from anywhere in the NTSC/PAL universe.
If it only looked cool -- with the mirror clear front it looks so 70's. I can live with that.

As the other reviewer has said, "save your money: don't buy." The manufacturer states that the unit offers compatibility with NTSC or PAL sources but fails to tell you that this requires sophisticated hacking. The "pamphlet" that passes as a manual is less than helpful and the unit is always less than cooperative. It should also be noted that the unit will ONLY record with "DVD+R" discs, and only 8x at that (this is not made clear in any of the company's literature and may result in owning many discs this machine considers "useless"). The unit also has a tendancy to freeze multiple times during any given movie. I am also disappointed with Coby's US customer service -- the DVDR-1100 is not even listed on either of the company's websites, and it takes far longer than the 90 day warranty period to ferret out all of the unit's idiosyncracies and flaws.

After using only 4 or 5 times, all of a sudden it started flashing HELLO,HELLO,HELLO,HELLO.Wouldn't let the disk out. Tried unplugging and re-plugging to no avail. No lights lit up-no power.
I called customer Service and was very pleased to be told that I could bring it into the Maspeth facility and get a replacement.
If this is true, I will find out next Tues. after the Memorial Day week-end, then I will be very happy since this unit is already past it's 90 day warranty. Happily, I live in the NYC vicinity or I don't think that I would risk sending a $31 money order plus shipping charges for a repair. Apparently they don't make DVD Recorders anymore since there are none on their website.
Will send a follow-up review when and if I get my replacement.
FOLLOW-UP!! THE COMPANY WAS WONDERFUL! GAVE ME A NEW DVD-R, NO QUESTIONS ASKED. I HAD NO RECEIPT AND IT WAS WAY PAST IT'S WARRANTY PERIOD. FIVE STARS TO COBY!!