Customer Reviews

JVC DRM10S DVD Recorder/Player

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

These units have a well documented "Loading Bug" problem. Search videohelp.com or avsforum.com to verify. After as little as a few days, the "Loading" message flashes on screen intermittently, each time wiping the disk clean. The frequency increases until the unit is unusable.

My Loading Bug started at 8 weeks. It was repaired under warranty, but the bug is back at 13 weeks, just past the 90 day warranty period and the JVC service facility's 30 day repair guarantee. It takes 1.5 hours of labor at $90 per hour to fix the Loading Bug. JVC told me, however, they would re-fix the unit as a "courtesy."

Incidentally, JVC offers extended warranties for its products on its website. I tried to purchase an extended warranty for the DR-M10S, but JVC doesn't even offer one for this model.

UPDATE 02/16/05: JVC now offers to fix this model free of charge, apparently even after the warranty expiration. See the FAQ page on JVC's website.

I just got this for 1 week now -- mostly been transferring videotape to DVD. What I'm writing here is my first impression, as I've only used a small portion of the features so far. The setup has been mostly straight forward. I like that the inputs are available in the front as well as the back. I like that it has the i.link for Sony camcorder transfer in the front. The manual can be a little confusing. I've trying to setup the menus and title menus, but it seems I only have 1 master top menu. The chapter menus are not configurable. The manual is not much help here. You can enter the DVD title using the screen display of a keypad -- moving aruond with your cursor can be a little tiresome. The reason I got this was that Consumer REports rated it well -- I believe it was the JVC-DRM10SUS. I assume this is the same one. The quality so far is good. I will add another review when I've tried the Sony camcorder transfer and my Dish Network recording features.

Here's is my followup review. I accepted the limitations of the bad menus, terrible manual but the machine went bad on me. It started to freeze in the middle of a DVD playing many times. Finally I returned this system to Amazon -- I think I'll pay a little extra for the Sony GX7 and get more features.

I do not recommend getting this machine - save your money and more importantly, your time. I wasted a month on it. Go for the Panasonic or Sony - their reviews are raving positive.

BTW, how I remove the stars? - I give this product no stars.

Two months ago, I gave this product a positive review. This was before my system got a bug in it that is not only common, but make the system unusable in any way possible. Whenever I turn on the unit, it flashes "Loading" on the display, not allowing me to make any of the other buttons work in the process. Even unplugging the machine does not take this problem away once it is plugged back in. A couple times I was able to stop the flashing message by waiting 24 hours and then pushing the power button again. This method gave me 20 minutes of play time before the problem came about again. The model is just plain bad. I do not recommend this to anyone. If there was a 0 star rating, I would use it for this product. Technical support on their site does not help the issue what-so-ever. Just don't buy it! If you really want to jump onto the DVD recording bandwagon, get a model with a built in hard drive. Even when this thing worked, it was limited by the fact that you could not delete unwanted scenes from DVDs unless they were in VR Mode or DVD-RAM discs. Either way, they are incompatible with nearly every DVD player on the market. Investing 70% more is well worth the price unless you want a bunch of commercials on your precious DVDs.

I had the "loading" problem and sent this unit back to my retailer for replacement. The replacement unit had the same problem and did not perform according to specs at all. JVC should never have let this unit out to be sold to consumers. After a lot of hassle and calls to my retailer and JVC, I finally found out that JVC will fix this unit for free. I sent it to the JVC authorized service center in MA. They fixed it and sent it back in only three days. So far it has performed great since being fixed. If this fix sticks I would rate this unit four stars instead of one star....we'll see...
Tom in CT

Approximately a week after purchasing this it began to malfunction. The unit flashes "Loading" for a couple of minutes and then turns off. Like the users stated this problem has gotten progressively worse. It occurs when you turn it on, turn it off (after playing for a couple of minutes), with a disc in, without a disc in, it just doesn't work.

If thats not enough, it has the absolute worse users manual I have ever seen. JVC should not only refund my money they should pay me for my aggravation.

Dude we got the loading bug and it wont work.
Its freakin stuped DO NOT GET THIS!!!!!!!!

This product worked perfectly for about one month. After that we could not use it due to it never turning on or off. Once it was powered up the display would read 'LOADING', after that you could'nt even turn it off without unplugging it. A real lemon!

If it weren't for the flashing "loading" bug, I would rate this a 5. I bought mine brand new in 2004, hardly used it, a year later (2005) to the date of purchase I started getting the loading bug. I went to JVC's web site to see if they had anything about this on their support site, and sure enough they did. It's a known bug which they will repair for free. So I sent it in, got it repaired, a year later (2006) this october, it started again. I sent it in for another free repair, got it back in 3 days, the bug seemed to had gone but a couple of days later it came back. I sent it in for a third and final time. I'm still waiting for it to get back from JVC's service department. I have no hope that it will be fixed so JVC has offered to replace the unit if it should go buggy on me again this third time around.

I should have done my homework before having bought this unit. Althought the picture quality and all the features are great, the bug ruins it. Making this unit inoperable and not worth spending your money.

I bought this dvd recorder just over 2 years ago & after having it for about a year, it started to freeze - Loading would flash on the unit screen & I usually could get it to turn off & reset if I held the open tray button, but about a week ago, my son & I was watching a dvd & it started flashing Loading again, with a brand new dvd in it. I thought I wasn't going to get it out, but fortunately I did. Held in the open tray button & got the dvd out, after closing it, it started to do it again, but this time, I cannot get it to stop flashing & it will not work at all now. This is very unfortunate because I thought JVC was supposed to be a great product. I will never buy a JVC product again.

Three complaints:

1. The LOADING issue is a HUGE problem. Within the 90-day warranty, I experienced the problem and called JVC. They said that the unit had a recall and to send it in for a repair for free. JVC kindly repaired it and sent it back. Within a year, the SAME LOADING issue came back. I sent it in for a second time, and JVC repaired for free again.

2. I bought the unit to dub my home video VHS tapes and Digital 8 tapes to DVD-R's. I was able to do this but when I placed into my Media Center HP desktop, it did not recognize the format that JVC recorded the video in. I guess JVC has their own. This makes it difficult when trying to edit, pick and choose scenes from the JVC recorded DVD-R.

3. The JVC recorder has the options to insert chapters when recording video. However, after you have finished and you finalize the DVD, all of those chapters disappear and the unit automatically inserts chapters every 5 minutes. Not sure if this is a JVC thing or a general DVD recording thing.