Coby DVD-224 DVD Player

I bought this DVD player as a cheap replacement for a DVD player I don't use very much. Price was the only consideration and Fry's electronics had 2 players at this price point. I chose the Coby because the remote had a better layout.

Hookup was easy as I was just using the AV patchcords, not bothering to mess with composite video or digital audio. It doesn't get much use aside from my 3-year-old, and she doesn't care if Dora has 5.1 Dolby. Everything worked as soon as I turned it on, there was no tweaking of menus required.

However, when I started watching a DVD, the picture was jumpy. I was watching the first season of Scrubs, and at least once or twice (or more) in each half-hour episode the picture would pixelate into a checkerboard for a second or two. If I backed the DVD up it would always pixelate in the same place, usually if a large object was moving quickly on the screen.

At first I thought I could live with it, it wasn't worth the trouble of returning it. Then I noticed that the remote had a very poor range and often required several pushes of the button before it responded. That was the end for me.

I returned it to Fry's (the unbelievable hassle that is required to return something there may be designed to discourage people from returning merchandise; it actually discouraged me from ever shopping there again.) Then I went over to Best Buy and bought an RCA model for only $5 more that works great.