Coby V-Zon Portable Media Player
Coby V-Zon Portable Media Player review: PORTABLE PLAYER ALTERNATIVE
June 2007 By Grant ClauserGetting music and pictures onto the unit with a PC is one thing, but video is altogether a different animal. I don’t know about you, but I’m not big into downloading video. I already pay enough for DVDs, TV service and a DVR. The Coby does a trick that the iPod, Zune and Sansa can’t––it can record video directly from a DVD player or TV set-top-box. In my opinion, this is the best feature of the PMP4320. I plugged the supplied composite/stereo cables into my TV set-top-box and recorded a few hours worth of on-demand movies. The player doesn’t let you schedule by time, but you can set it to shut off at set durations, up to 2 hours. The videos appear in a special folder within the video menu.
My recorded videos looked pretty good. Not as good as some of the movies or TV content available on iTunes, but good enough for watching during my train commute, and they didn’t cost me any extra. The video controls could be a little easier to use. The fast forward was a bit sensitive and the resume feature didn’t work a couple of times, forcing me to use the fast forward to get back to the spot I left off when I shut the unit down. I got about 4 hours of video playback on the battery.
Coby’s 4320 player is not as smooth as some of its competitors. Its functions may take some getting used to, and the 20 GB hard drive doesn’t seem impressive compared to the 30 GBs of the Zune or the 60 GBs of the biggest iPod (a 40GB with a 7-inch screen is also available). But it’s got a larger screen, built-in video recording, expandable memory in the form of an SD card slot, a mic for voice recording and an FM tuner (that is recordable).
Page 1 | 2
