COBY DVD Player with Karaoke DVD628
Good looks but Mediocre Quality at a Cheap Price - Your Mileage Varies
For weeks, I've been looking for a good quality DVD player with the following specs:    1) Slim design  2) Progessive scan/component video  3) Plays all DVD/CD formats  4) Dolby DTS (not just Dolby Digital 5.1)  5) Karaoke  6) Region-free    Of the above, this players meets 1) 2) and 3). 4) Karaoke sucks but it does work. On formats, the manual actually says it plays DVD+_R and R/W, which I only tested with a couple DVDs and they played (barring restrictions below).    The problems...    It's built in China and distributed in the U.S. but unfortunately, it is NOT region-free.  It claims to play PAL (vs. NTSC) but does NOT convert from PAL to NTSC for play on NTSC-only TVs.  There's no DTS decoder so you can't take advantage of a great system (DTS rocks when compared to 5.1). 'course, when one can afford such a great system, why bother with this not-so-cheapo performer?    Perhaps this player is too 'new' to have many reviews, 'hacks' or firmware upgrades that I'm not aware but given it barely met my needs, I give it 2 stars and only then, because it's a decent player with karaoke.    *Edit 1-11-06: by now, I've used this on a number of occasions and love that its a cheap backup that can play tons of stuff my Sony can't (what doesn't though?).  For the price, I have to give it 3 stars now but can't edit the rating.  Still no region-free hack...*    Next time, I'm buying the highly recommended Philips (my friend has it and it plays most of the COBY rejects) and skipping the karaoke. Not worth the disappointment before x-mas, esp. since I'm too lazy to return it via Amazon.