Home > Consumer Reviews > GoVideo DV1130 DVD-VCR Combo

I bought this DVD/VCR Combo for $119 and it works amazingly well. The DVD player works better than my Cyberhome 402 and the VCR plays flawlessly. The standard Universal remote that comes with it is better than most DVD players supply today. The buttons are a decent size on the remote and can control most TV sets.

This unit really shines when it comes time to play DVD+R and DVD-R discs recorded on a home computer. I had VHS video tapes that I recorded to my computer and then transferred to blank Verbatim DVD-R discs. I also have one movie on a DVD+R disc. This DVD player plays them flawlessly, while other brands may not play these discs at all.

This unit is an excellent bargain and functions better than other brands I tested. Other brands I tested were Emerson (which could not play DVD-R), Panasonic, Toshiba, Samsung and KLH. The KLH plays DVD-R and DVD+R and is also very expensive, but the Go Video unit is the least expensive of the combo DVD/VCR units that I have actually used that can play everything I put into it.

Go Video removed the capability to play Video CD's (VCD) from this model, compared to their pre-2003 models. Why?

Secondly, there is a critical flaw in their 'human factors' when they designed the remote control: While playing DVD's or CD's, to fast-forward, you have to press and hold the fast-forward button. If you just press the button quickly, it resets the movie to the beginning. What a pain in the neck.

Third: I still haven't figured-out how to change the display to show the track and time for a CD. The default is a counter that counts the seconds of the song, but you have no idea what song you're on.

As a Mechanical Engineer, the poor human-factors design of this remote gives our profession a bad name!

I purchased the DV 1140 a few months back for $79.00 to replace my old DVD player that went out on me. I have to say that as a DVD player it should only be looked at as a temporary one until you can get a better one. It's just a basic DVD player with no real features to it at all. It can't even play Video CDs. When I looked on the box it says it plays CD-R, CD-RW et al so I assumed it will play my movies that I burned to CD-R but it only mean audio files like mp3s. It also said it played WMAs but once again don't expect it to be videos. Just certain audios. My old DVD player was only $30.00 and it played practially everything! Why this one cost more and doesn't is beyond me.

Now for the VCR section. When I picked this DVD/VCR combo up I gave my old JVC VCR to my mother and I have to say I miss it! Since they can't possibly have too much stuff in the DVD part of the player that they can't make room to improve the VCR section I have to come to the conclusion that they just didn't care that their VCR is of poor quality. The picture isn't all that good and the sound before the Hi-Fi kick in is annoying! With my old VCR (Hi-fi) I can just pop in a tape and everyting will play perfectly. With this player you MUST play the tape for a good few seconds before the annoying grainy noise will stop and the sound gets clearer. I tried to take it off of Hi-fi to normal mode to stop that from happening but all it does is stay on the grainy noise for good. Also everything you record to video will go thru the same thing when you replay it back.

The player tries to hype up it's ability to record DVDs to Tape and watching DVDs as you record to tape but I haven't used those features yet and I pretty much consider that to be useless. Why would I want to record a DVD to tape? A VideoCD to tape I would understand but a DVD? Plus most DVDs are copy protected anyway. But then again I haven't tested out this feature yet so I don't know.

Overall I would say save your money and really hunt for a DVD player that's worth your money. Unless you want to experience what DVD players and VCRs were like before they made better ones.

I give it two stars: One for actually playing DVDs and another star for it actually playing Videos...better yet the VCR only gets half a star.

I purchased last years same model and the VCR quality is noticably poorer then my 3 yr old SONY VCR. also the VCR recording can not record weaker signal stations. My sony would record it but the govideo unit would just end up with garbage.