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Overall Rating

Good Low-Cost Upconverting DVD Player - GREAT Region Free and MP4 Player!
I bought the Coby DVD298 DVD Player less for its 1080p upconversion of standard DVDs to 1080p than for its ability to be easily hacked to an all-region DVD player. But for those who don’t have the need for that and just need a player that will make their standard DVDs look hi-def on their HDTVs, fear not - while it’s not the best 1080p upconverting DVD player I’ve seen (that would be the Toshiba SD900, which is stunning!), it’s still an extremely good one that’s inexpensive and easy to use.

For those who DO want to watch DVDs from around the world, though, the DVD298 shines. It plays NTSC and PAL DVDs right out the gate - but as anyone who’s bought a foreign DVD and tried to play it on a US player knows, there’s a little thing the movie industry stuck on all DVDs called “region encoding” that is supposed to make that impossible. However, some DVD manufacturers (like Coby) make players that are global at the factory, then write the region encoding into software because it costs less than to build region-limiting into the hardware. These can be hacked to become region-free, and how to do this for these players, including the DVD298, can be found with a simple Google search. Once you’ve done it, you can take DVDs from anywhere in the world and watch them - from BBC spy adventures to obscure Japanese horror movies and Italian thrillers to Indonesian martial arts movies, all unavailable in the US.

The DVD298 also has the ability to plug in a USB drive or SD card and look at either images, listen to MP3s, or watch downloaded videos files from online. I haven’t had much luck watching MP4 video podcasts this way, though I have both listened to music and viewed photos - and a friend of mine with the same model was very impressed at its ability to show “Internet videos”.

Its biggest flaw, as others have pointed out, is that it’s kind of flimsily-built, as you might expect from a bargain DVD player. But put it on its own shelf rather than stacking DVD players and monitors below and above it, and it shouldn’t give you any problems.

If you want the ability to watch videos from around the world and also have regular videos look “hi-def” on your HDTV, I can recommend Coby’s DVD298 highly.

Overall Rating

Another great no-name product!
I owned Philips DVP642 (4 years old) that could also play DivX, but wasn’t very satisfied. After it stopped working, I decided to try a different brand, rather than upgraded to a new Philips. Coby DVD208 made me proud.

Lots of great Pros and lots of minor Cons:
1) Play most Mpeg4 video I tried. Also play MJPG (most digicam uses this). However, it didn’t play the 720p HD Mpeg4 I have. Didn’t have time to investigate why. Only play *.avi, not *.mov and others, but this is expected. I’m a PC, not Mac so this won’t affect me much. There are lots of software out there to convert *.mov to *.avi.
2) It can read *.srt subtitle file while playing mpeg4. It does not read *.sub. The subtitle font color, though, is not configurable and hard to read.
3) Play from USB or SD fine, also support SDHC (mine is 8GB) BEWARE: you need to insert the SD card upside down!! I was trying hard to push it in the normal way and it went in almost completely, but I had to use a plier to take it out.
4) Can change region or make region free
5) Has auto resume function, it can resume playing at the point where it was turned off
6) the remote has a reset button, which reset everything back to default. I used my programmable remote and got rid of that scary function. Also, make sure your remote has a learning function. You won’t be able to use a generic programmable remote with this.
7) When the sd card contains both pictures and videos, it doesn’t have an option to play both pictures and videos at the same time for a combined slide show. Have to choose one mode or another. It’s cheap, got mine for about $40.

I hope Coby will release some firmware update in the future to add more features and correct some of its minor flaws. Overall, I’m very happy. Only need to see how long it will last.