I am not sure why so many of the recalls in the electronics industry are the faulty of defective batteries. You would think when all of those laptops were recalled over bad batteries the industry would have learned its lesson. Apparently not, Coby Electronics recalled over 19,000 portable DVD players today due to a fire hazard from faulty battery packs.

The DVD player in question is the TF-DVD-8501 DVD/CD.MP3 players with an 8.5-inch screen. The batteries covered in the recall will have a serial number starting with the letters HY. The serial number can be found on a white sticker on the battery.

Coby’s MP600 Video MP3 Player takes some obvious inspiration from the iPod Nano. It features a 1.44″ LCD screen that will play back all of your MTV video files, JPG photos, read text files as well as MP3 and WMA files. You’ll also get FM radio.

The best part is that they didn’t clone the price, which is just over $20 for the 2GB version. The 4GB version will cost you $29.99. So if you’re looking for a cheap alternative for the Nano, you might want to check it out.

It’s no R2-D2 projector clock, but Coby’s CR-A78 alarm clock is pretty cool in it’s own right, having kind of a 2001/Robot head with a laser look. In addition to the built-in projector that creates a virtual red LED time display on the targeted surface, the clock also has an AM/FM tuner, music alarm option, and a timer function. When I first saw this I thought the price would be expensive, but it’s only a very cheap $13.50. This one will fit right in with all of your other Futuristic looking gadgets.

Plain old radio is hurting a bit of late with stiff competition from satellite radio and digital tracks that are replacing normal radio in cars for many drivers. To try and get back some of the defecting radio listeners HD Radio launched with promises of higher audio quality at a price everyone will like—free.

The catch is to get HD Radio (assuming some stations in your area broadcast HD Radio) you have to get a new receiver. Coby Electronics has announced a pair of new HD Radio receivers including the HDR-700 Portable HD Radio System and the HDR-650 Component HD Radio Receiver. The HDR-650 is intended to be integrated into existing component systems in the home and will sell for $99.

Wannabe CE company Coby doesn’t get too much love from us because they rarely put out interesting products. One which is mainly catching our eye though at the moment is the apparently newly released MP-835, a portable media player which is trying to gun for the Apple iPod touch.

The Coby MP-835 offers up a three-inch TFT LCD color display for you to control its functions with. Memory options are available in a rather measly 2GB or 4GB configuration, though this can be supplemented by an integrated microSD memory card slot. It offers support for most of your typical media formats, including MP3, WMA, AVI, WMV and JPG.