Coby TF-DVD8500 8.5-Inch TFT Portable DVD/CD/MP3 Player with Swivel Screen

by Coby

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7 x 2 inches ; 5 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 5 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0007ZYU9U
• Item model number: TF-DVD8500
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #63,347 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: June 15, 2006

Product Description

8.5" TFT Portable DVD/CD/MP3 Player with Swivel Screen

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

75 of 81 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars First Impressions on the Coby 8.5", June 25, 2006

By 

Dave (Hilo, Hi United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Coby TF-DVD8500 8.5-Inch TFT Portable DVD/CD/MP3 Player with Swivel Screen (Electronics)

The unit is pretty flimsy, mostly composed of lightweight plastic, but this is a boon if you're looking for a featherweight device. On-Off slider switch is clunky at best. The opening latch is not intuitive and requires the attention of a few more brain cells to get this clam to open up. The latch for the external battery pack is similarly designed. With a fully charged battery, I was able to get through Aeon Flux twice (about 3 hours). Screen resolution is only about 410x230 for this 8.5" display, which yields very large pixels. The documentation states a resolution of 1440x234, but I don't believe that for a second. Each pixel is about 3x the area of a pixel found on a typical computer monitor, so edge artifacts are easily discernible. Compare this to the gorgeous 320x240 pixel resolution of a 2.5" Apple Ipod. The slow LCD response time causes choppy motion on fast action sequences and the black levels look dark gray at best. On Aeon Flux, Charlize Theron, lacks her normal, vibrant glow. This unit also does not auto-detect the format of the movie, so you'll need to manually switch from 16:9 to 4:3. This is easily accomplished with the push to two buttons, but that's unless you prefer a more portly Charlize. On particular DVDs, the unit has this habit of skipping and momentarily freezing while it's trying to reacquire the track.

The speakers play just loud enough to drown out the excessively noisy disc drive mechanism. The box includes 2 headphones which plugs into the two headphone jacks located on either side of the unit. However there is only one volume control, so you will need to negotiate with your partner on the appropriate
volume setting ... but honey, 105 decibels give realistic sound levels.

It was surprising to find an included remote control, like that's really necessary. If you're sitting far enough to need the remote, then you won't be able to tell Charlize from Philip Hoffman (you know, the bad dude in MI3). However, about half the DVD functions only can be accessed via the remote, so you're forced use this remote that was clearly designed for the hand of a hobbit.

Bonus: The unit contains audio/video outputs and inputs, so the Coby can be connected to a large TV for DVD playback, to do justice to Charlize. A video output device, like a Playstation 2, can be connected to the Coby to display on the on the 8.5" screen. The output and input jack is surprisingly the same jack - the input/output function is selectable via the AV In/Out switch. Strange that this particular feature is not mentioned anywhere in the manual.

All these shortcomings are forgivable for this sub-120 dollar unit. Hopefully this thing will outlast its 90day warranty (Amazon's website states a 1 year warranty period - I've emailed customer service resolve this inconsistency). 2 stars for performance, 4 stars for value.

40 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good product and worth the value, July 11, 2006

By 

S. Natarajan - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Coby TF-DVD8500 8.5-Inch TFT Portable DVD/CD/MP3 Player with Swivel Screen (Electronics)

Excellent features and nice accessories included. After comparing few portable DVD players in Best Buy and Circuit City, Coby is very good. Picture quality is much better than Insignia and Audiovox. Of course Sony and Samsung had little better picture quality than Coby; it's not worth paying twice the amount that I've paid for Coby. After all it's your portable DVD player, not your primary entertainment system. Audio volume is excellent compared to any other portable DVD player that I've checked. Also works great when connected to the TV. This is my second product from Coby and I'm satisfied with it.
Features - 5 *
Picture - 4 *
Audio - 4 *
Accessories - 5 *

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Decent Player, November 12, 2006

By 

PC (Ohio) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Coby TF-DVD8500 8.5-Inch TFT Portable DVD/CD/MP3 Player with Swivel Screen (Electronics)

I agree with many of the other reviewers that you can here the disc whirring and it is somewhat annoying. We used it for a long car trip, so the whirring was drowned out by the other background noise and the sound from the movie. The player had a nice accessory package and there was nothing else we needed to buy to use it. We traveled to Florida from Ohio and back. It probably had a good 30 hours worth of use, during which we successfully zombified our four year old daughter, which is exactly what we wanted! The player never skipped and was reliable. For the price I would recommend it.