Ah, the glow of the Channukka candles reflecting off the excited faces of our children as they rip the blue wrapping paper off the first gift of the 2001 holiday season ... a Samsung combination DVD / VHS player!

Our family had been wanting to leap into the new millennium by purchasing a DVD player, but we simply didn't have the shelf space for yet another piece of electronic equipment! The answer? One of those nifty-looking combo units we found at Best Buy!

Yep, it was great ... for about 45 days ... 15 days PAST the date when Best Buy would be willing to take the thing back and either refund our money or exchange it for a new one. Day by day, we found that we had to crank the volume a bit louder each time we played a movie. Before we knew it, we had to blast the TVs volume up to its max level of 50, and still we could barely hear the movie because of the hissing noise the combo unit was making.

We boxed it up, and brought it back to Best Buy, only to be told we had to ship it back to Samsung, and let them deal with it! Sorry kids, those new movies you got for Channukka will have to collect dust for the next 6 weeks while the folks at Samsung pronounce that there's nothing wrong with our player!

What? How can that be?

Sure enough, it's finally returned to us, and nothing is wrong with it ... the volume works fine! We couldn't figure it out, but were thankful to be enjoying our player once again.

This lasted for about six more months, until the volume, once again, had to be blasted, and we were stuck listening to an awful hiss. This time, I even hooked it up to our TV upstairs, to make sure it wasn't something wrong with the downstairs TV. Nope, still hissing like a hungry python.

Back it went again, and like before, Samsung had the unit for six weeks until they returned it to us, on again pronouncing that there was nothing wrong! And like before, it was returned in good working order. This is nuts!

We are now quickly approaching the one-year warranty limit, and the volume is again beginning its usual decline. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before it croaks again, probably just in time for the warranty to be expired!

Bottom line? You can bet we won't be spending our money on another one of these, and I certainly don't suggest that you buy one either!

This review is submitted as part of Sleeper54's "Lean-n-mean" write off, challenging us to write a product review in 666 words or less! Thanks for the fun idea, Tom!

Recommended: No