By 

Gerald D. Martinez (NM) –

  

If you download movies and want to play AVI and MP4 files from the USB or SD card reader, this is what you want. This is the new model that replaces Coby TF-DVD7377 which is no longer in production, I ordered a 77 from Amazon and got a 79 in the mail and decided to try it out before sending back. Everything you read for the TF-DVD7377 player should apply to this one as well, even though this is the third review for this particular one.

I am giving it a 4 star because I could not find a reliable DVD and AVI-via-USB player of this size except for the Nextbase CLICK10 which is 4 times more expensive, although the best in its kind. This player IS cheaply made, flimsy, and the quality might not be the best, but it does what I wanted which is to play cartoons for my 2.5 year old while I watch my favorite shows. And play them from a USB or SD card and maybe an antic round object called a CD or DVD. I also bought a “Car Headrest Mount for 7 inch Portable DVD Player” (search on eBay like that) so that I can use this player on long trips and it does the job well.

I also connected a 500MB external portable HD via USB cable and was able to play all my downloaded movies and music while running on battery power alone. Although it will eat the battery fast.

While I have not used it to watch my favorite shows, I can tell you that while playing a 700MB AVI of Toy Story or Finding Nemo it does a fantastic job with great quality and definition. No big pixels or distortion of any kind. In fact, it plays them better than my ACER netbook since this screen can be viewed from any angle.

When selecting the input as USB or SD, the folder structure presented is like in windows and easy to navigate. The media needs to be formatted in FAT and not NTFS file systems.

Overall, not a technological marvel, but it does what I got it for and let’s hope we don’t drop it or it will be a nice paperweight

Please leave a comment if my post was helpful!

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 Comments (4)

By 

R. Goren (NJ, USA) –

  

In short, 5 stars for features for the cost. 1 star for a defective battery in my unit.

I bought this device for my 1yo to use on flights and in the car.
I chose this over the many other alternatives due to the SD card feature, which is amazing. I ripped several of the kid’s DVDs into AVIs, dropped them onto a 16GB SDHC card (works!), and that’s all. Never tried to even use physical DVD media, and probably never will.
I tried the remote only once; it worked, but I cannot report how good it is.

PROS:
- SD card (tried with SanDisk 8GB and Transcend 16GB, both with no problem at all). This alone justifies the device as you have everything always loaded on the device, no need to mess with discs.
- Good screen
- Good audio (loud and clear, certainly good enough for the kid)
- Screen rotation and tilting is great

CONS:
- The battery should last 2hrs. Ours lasted, despite overnight charging, only 15 min! Since I didn’t see anybody else complain about this, I assume I received a defective unit. I will replace it and update this report. (Still, the decreased rating will stay – as sending a defective unit should harm a product’s overall rating for bad quality control.) Luckily I will not need to rely on COBY’s warranty (and pay for shipping) as the retailer (not Amazon) will accept the RMA and provide an exchange.
- The menu system is functional but a bit annoying, if you’re using a file hierarchy on a disc/USB/SD (as opposed to just playing DVDs). Navigation is a bit cumbersome but ok.
- The top joystick is a bit annoying to operate. I prefer 5 separate buttons instead of this 5-action joystick.
- Whenever the SD card is chosen, the unit will automatically start playing the same file from the SD, without me choosing that file or pressing Play. It must be my luck that this happens to be a nice tune, but there is no reason to autoplay anything without my choice.
- Short warranty (3 months). It can be expected with the lower price point, but you should be aware of that.

OTHER THOUGHTS:
- Button Lock. Probably the only feature I truly miss. My kid is 1yo and likes to use his hands, and cannot resist trying this neat machine’s buttons. Then he’s frustrated that he stopped the movie accidentally. It would be super-easy and super-effective to have a “button lock” button hidden somewhere to prevent this.
- The unit assumes I want to play a DVD even if one does not exist and an SD card is inside. It means that you need to select the SD card from the menu every time the device is started. True, only 3 clicks, but it could have been designed to skip this. I’m not asking for a BIOS-like boot priority option (I doubt if the device has memory to store such choices), but rather to try a DVD first, and if it does not exist go to SD (and then USB etc.) without announcing an error.
- DVD-less device. I was actually looking for something like the COBY 7379, only without the DVD drive (remember I don’t want to ever use it.) Surprisingly, the category exists but only with higher-end models, superior displays etc. I couldn’t find anything in the lower price points (say $150 and below.) So the COBY 7379 has the extra DVD that I don’t need (but could prove useful one day, who knows.) Yet I think that COBY (and others) could consider the same device only sans the DVD drive. It could lower the price even further, remove the only part in the device that is mechanical (i.e. make it more reliable), and can decrease the form factor. Personally I would gladly pay even the same price I paid for the 7379 for a DVD-less device, for the above listed advantages.

BOTTOM LINE:
A superb little device that cannot be beaten for feature/price ratio. Perfect for my needs. Add a $20 SD card and you have a music/video box that is absolutely great.
Only real problem is with my unit (hopefully!) with its bad battery.
I would definitely buy again and highly recommend this unit, but make sure to purchase somewhere where your retailer can back you up with a good return policy (like Amazon’s).

————————
Update (1/2/2011)
————————
I RMA’d the original unit. Kudos to the vendor (a famous photo & video store in NYC…) that agreed to RMA the unit even beyond their return window.
The replacement unit proved to have a great battery. Playing solely from an SD card, I managed to get almost 4 hours running straight.
(note I played it with volume turned all the way down during the test – if I had to listen to 4 hours straight of kids music I wouldn’t be here to report the results… – it could have added some more time to the battery life. YMMV.)
Bottom line after this update – I am very happy with my Coby 7379, a 4/5 rating for me now.
Yet I keep my product rating at 3 stars to account for the…

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 Comment (1)

I got this couple of weeks ago and have been using most of the features except connecting an external USB HDD.

It plays MP3, MP4s, AVIs, DIVX and .DATs beautifully. The navigation is fairly intuitive. It handles standard DVDs and DVD-RWs well.

The body is not the sturdiest, but I wouldn’t complain too much for the price. The remote is a bit flimsy and slow in response, but does the job.

Am yet to put it to the “shock test” i.e. in the car on a bumpy road.

The only serious problem I have encountered, which I recall reading on some of the reviews, is that it seems to lose the audio track at times (no sound at all). I have not figured out a pattern as to when it happens, but am able to get over it by skipping a track back-n-forth …the audio does comes back, but you lose the video position and have to fast-forward to revert to the one before the audio was lost. Since the player is mostly used for my little one, I am not too fussed about this problem, but sure hope that Coby will soon issue a firmware patch (and instructions as to how to apply it).

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