Customer Reviews

Coby DVD938 5.1-Channel DVD Home Theater System (Black)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

This system is wonderful for a starter set. If you're a college student, new to surround or looking for something simple for a smaller room, this is a great choice. The biggest plus about this system is that I can hook up my Xbox (RCA hook up or digital). Keep in mind that If you hook it up with RCA you can't get surround, but the stereo sounds amazing. I was afraid of Coby from all bad reviews on other systems. This one really exceeded every expectations. Very clear sound, great price and a great DVD player make this perfect.
I'm 21 and live in an apartment so the rooms aren't that big. I have a 100 sq. foot living room. This system is just right. When you finish setting it up (took me about 30 min, running cables and all) you need to put in a DVD like Lord of the Rings to test out the sound. If you leave everything at the default you'll notice that there's almost no bass and the center speaker is WAY over powering. Play around with your setting for a while, you CAN get bass out of it, just look through the menus.

I view the Coby DVD938 from a "Value" perspective. Based on the relatively low price I do not expect top of the line performance; however, I do anticipate solid quality from a set of basic features.

The Coby DVD938 delivers on this criteria. Nothing fancy, just basic features with decent sound quality.

I would not recommend this for your main home-theater setup. Instead I would recommend it for a secondary system.

My only "Beef" with this unit is the way in which the audio source defaults to DVD each time the unit is powered off and back on. Add to this a really long delay on the Coby when switching between audio source input (approx. 3-5 seconds) and three audio input sources (DVD, Radio, Line). My primary use is for audio from my Dish satellite receiver. This is the "Line" audio source on the Coby. So, each time I power the unit on I trudge through the process to switch to "Line" audio input... My work-around solution to simply mute the Coby when powering down, then un-mute when powering back on (saves lots of time, but wastes some electricity I suppose).

On the surface, this product seems to be pretty good at first. Then once it is all hooked up, things change a bit. The first thing you have to do is make sure you get all the settings correct or you won't get Dolby Surround on the external input.

The second thing I found out and it still bugs me is that it won't hold the last "source" setting after you put it on standby. There are three source settings; DVD, Radio and Line. I use Line 90% of the time. But every time I shut the system down at night and then start it up again the next day, I have to change the source to line again. This is really just poor design.

The third problem is on some DVDs it will skip and not play them. I thought I had a bad DVD until I bought my Blu-ray player a few weeks later and the DVD played fine on that.

Overall, the sound is great but I wouldn't count on it for playing all DVDs well.

We bought this unit based on price, and it is great, for the price. It is a basic unit with basic features.

I wish there was more customizability in the unit. It is a pain to always have to walk through the controls from DVD, to Radio to Line input, just to watch cable TV. But what can you expect for under $100?

Well worth the price.

This was a great buy on a surround sound system. It was
a gift for my son-in-law who loved it. I had shopped around
this was the best price I found, it was delivered quickly and
in great shape. Thanks Amazon.com.

The sound is mostly what I bought this for, since most LCD TVs have weak or poor sound. I've been pleased with the audio quality, but the AM/FM receiver is very weak. I ended up supplementing it with an FM antenna just to be able to get some stations that didn't sound like 30-70% static. The DVD player is also poor. Dark scenes cause my screen to flicker as the player is somehow not transmitting a true black to my TV properly (this doesn't happen with dark scenes on cable, so it's not the TV). I'll probably end up buying a DVD player to supplement this, which means that I'll have spent a minimum of an extra $80 between the FM antenna & DVD player supplementation. If you're looking for an all-in-one unit, look somewhere else. If you just want to get better sound for your TV, then this will do fine.

Somewhat easy to install. Hard the hardest time getting it into surround sound but after playing awhile and using the TV to see the prompts, it was a breeze. Sound is awesome. Did not need the to run extra wire for antennea. Over all a good unit for the price

Not a bad product. Sounds good after replacing 20g wire with bigger 8g. Does not remember settings after turned off(including volume). Volume very high when turned on and no control for about a minute. Quality of speakers and sub ok. Very not up-to-date for connecting to modern hi-def tv's. Your old school rca jacks. Worth it to spend more on a more quality, up to date system.

I was disappointed from the very start. The instructions seemed to be written by a 10 year old. The system only had an AV output so I couldn't connect my HDMI cable from my tv. When I finally got it all hooked up only 2 of the speakers worked and the ones that did, didn't sound that great. But after 30 minutes of tinkering I realised that you can only use the "surround sound" when you are using the dvd player.
The response time from the remote to the dvd player took a very long time and sometimes it wouldn't work at all. The dvd player would turn off randomly or change from dvd to radio. The radio stations didn't come in clearly and some didn't come in at all.
The overall quality of this product is crap. I will never buy a Coby system again.

Are you kidding me? The product description says "Plays digital media files directly from USB drives and SD memory cards." What it doesn't say is that if you're using an MP3 player or an SD card of MP3 files, the unit won't recognize it. I bought this for the specific purpose of playing MP3s from my Walkman through my home stereo. As popular as MP3s are today, how can they make a unit that doesn't play them? Unbelievable. It's going back tomorrow.