Home > Consumer Reviews > Coby TV-DVD1390 13-Inch Color CRT TV with Digital Tuner and DVD Player

I needed a small TV/DVD for boating. This fit perfectly in the previous space.
The TV/DVD itself works perfectly. I was thriled that I could still find a TV/DVD combo like this.

Okay. This TV works fine and all, but every single aspect of it is annoying or oddly set up. First of all, the digital tuner this TV has doesn't work that well, even with a new antenna. And even though the screen is small, it's even smaller in the digital TV mode.

Secondly, the remote is really odd. Every single button looks exactly the same, which is something you don't usually notice being different on other remotes until you get one like this. For those who have bad vision, trying to use the remote is a pain. Especially for the DVD features. Instead of having that triangle for "Play" and that square for "Stop" you just have buttons that look exactly the same. It's very annoying and you'll often hit the wrong buttons when trying to use it, unless you have it memorized.

Thirdly, The DVD feature is annoying, too. For some unknown reason, the DVD player can't rewind past any DVD chapters. Meaning, if the movie has just gone onto it's next chapter, you WON'T be able to rewind any further. I never heard of anything like this, before! A half-working rewind feature? Another annoying thing is, unlike EVERY other DVD player, this one has no internal DVD memory, meaning you can turn it off and restart the movie at the same place and time. If you turn the DVD player off or switch modes, the DVD player won't remember the spot you paused at and will replay the movie at the preview trailers as if you just put it in for the very first time. This becomes even more annoying as unlike other TV/DVD sets, you have to switch modes to get to the DVD player, instead of any external modes being under channel two. And there's no forward/backwards in switching modes, either. It's all done with one button. And like I said, you won't be able to say, switch between TV channels or anything while in the DVD mode. Say, you wanted to check the weather or something. You can't just switch over to the TV mode without losing your spot in the movie. In other words, you're "trapped" between watching TV, watching a DVD, playing a video game, or anything else because of the odd and annoying way this TV is set up! You can't even take a DVD out or put one in without being in the DVD mode of the TV! If you're in analog TV mode, for example, the 'open DVD button' will not work! So, you'll have to hit the 'Mode' button three times JUST to get to the DVD mode in order to take the DVD out, and then, hit it another two times JUST to get back to the TV mode! This TV is filled with tons of annoying set-up flaws like this!

The five modes available are analog TV, digital TV (which doesn't work too well), DVD player, AV1 (back-of-set accessories) and AV2 (Front-set accessories), in that order. And like I said, you can't easily switch back and forth between them. You have the hit the button four times, for example, if you wanted to go from DVD player to Digital TV. And there's a delay between switching modes, as well. But speaking of digital TV, the digital TV tuner it has built into it is pretty horrible. Even with a powerful antenna, you won't be able to get as many channels as you should because of it's low tuner signal. Even if you could, though, another poor design flaw in this TV is not being able to *choose* what digital channels you want or not! Unlike the analog TV tuner, the digital one just auto-searches for whichever ones it can pick up and you can't edit or skip any ones you might not want. On the analog TV tuner, you can, but NOT on the digital TV tuner. You can't choose to manually add channels that the auto-search might skip over or choose to delete any ones you're not interested in watching. You just have to live with whatever it picks up and that's it. Yet another annoying design flaw in this TV!

I should've known better than to buy anything made by Coby. They are the cheapest and *WORST* electronics company, ever. Their MP3 players only last a few months before shorting out and dying, and their headphones usually die out within a couple of weeks because of the cheap and brittle copper they use to make them with.

The worst thing about this TV though, is it's price! One hundred and fifty dollars! For THIS!?! It's SUCH a rip-off! I only bought this TV because it was the cheapest digital TV available and we all need digital TV's now in order to watch anything, but this TV is probably the worst set I've ever owned in my life and I fully regret wasting so much money on this piece of crap. Do NOT buy this TV! Not even if it is the cheapest DVD player Digital TV you can find. It's not worth it. This TV may work, but it's set-up and design flaws are so annoying, it's ridiculous! The only reason I don't give this TV [One Star] is because it somewhat actually works. But the price, the questionable design flaws, and overall annoyance of this TV is enough to try to persuade you to not buy this piece of crap. It fails even as a work TV or something you wouldn't use very often. It is just poorly made, questionable functionable, has a ton of design flaws, and just overall downright annoying to operate.

SEPTEMBER 2009 UPDATE:
Just shy of five months of owning this shoddy product, it has broken. Entirely. Just one fateful Labor Day morning, of wanting to watch X-Men The Last Stand, I switch the TV to DVD Mode and press the "Open" button for the DVD Tray. It jams up inside for no reason, at all. Perhaps the signal it received from the remote did this? I try cutting the TV off for five minutes and unplugging it. I cut it back on and still jammed and still making a jammed noise inside. I switch to Digital TV mode and WTF? It's getting no visual, at all! Not just not recieving a signal, but no visual, whatsoever! I was more than ticked off. However, not the least bit surprised. COBY is, after all, the absolute, utterly WORST electronics company there is or ever was. Literally nothing they make lasts longer than six months, including all their MP3 players and their shoddy headphones and earphones. After this awful experience, I now take back my 2 STAR rating and here by give COBY a ZERO STAR rating! Yes, they are simply that bad. Their products belong in the dollar store and if this wasn't one out of only two televisions under Two Hundred Dollars that Amazon sells, I would've never bought it. I'm guessing even the Sansui DTV1300 13-Inch Color TV isn't THIS bad...

Great little TV for my semi truck.I was really surprised with quality of the digital channels with just the antenna.No hazy lines or interference.The picture quality is as good as if it were hooked up to cable

I bought two of these tvs. They have great pictures and when hooked up right work great. My daughter loves her dvd player. It is nice and clear as far as sound goes. the fact that it is digital ready is great. I think that people forget that it is not an lcd tv. Also maybe they should think about checking connections before blaming the tv.

I think this T.V. is okay.

If you're looking for something that will play, this could be for you. I've heard that upon opening the box, though, some of them don't work. Mine works though, so there's no guarantee that you'll get a non-functional television out of the box. Have hope.

The picture is nowhere near as great as advertised, though. It's pretty blurry. My old Sony is better than this.

The audio isn't anything special, but how much can you expect from a 13-incher?

The remote is a PAIN!! Almost NONE of the buttons on the remote are labelled... I had to COLOR in the buttons so I could find "PAUSE"! It's so frustrating. Also, it takes a good 5 minutes to change the channel from the remote. And once you press "5", you can't hit the "4" to get "54" because the remote automatically lost the infrared signal from the T.V.

Overall, this TV is functional, and it's affordable. It wasn't my top choice, though. I also don't have confidence that it will LAST very long. I think it's good for someone who doesn't really want a high quality product... someone who just wants to watch their favorite TV show and doesn't care if it's a little blurry.