Customer Reviews

JVC HD-52Z575 52" HD-ILA HDTV-ready rear-projection TV

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

 

 

Quick Review:
The HD52575 is a great alternative to DLP for those who pick up on 'rainbowing' (the appearance of trailing rainbow effects caused by a color wheel). The picture quality has the potential to be excellent, however it is pretty poor out of the box. If you have a setup disk or good knowledge of home theater setup, this is hardly a roadblock. The picture is very clear and vibrant once the setup has been completed. Audio is standard for a projection TV, but most people buying this will be running through a receiver anyway. The menus are sub-par, but again, if you're all about picture this is a GREAT buy. It is also the brightest projection TV I've ever seen. It eclipses a number of CRT and Plasma displays. It could do with a few more high-def inputs, but other than that, near perfect.

Detailed Review:
The first thing I noticed when I picked the set up was how light it was. Even for a micro-display projection it was incredibly easy to lift and move. My first thought (which turned out to be correct) was that they sacrificed low-range sound by using smaller speakers and no sub. Over all the cabinet is pretty stylish. There is only a power button on the front and no hidden panel. All of the other controls are located on the right-hand side along with additional inputs. The TV, like most projections, has a warm up time. The JVC's warm up time is a little longer than most for the initial picture, but much quicker for full luminosity. It takes about 70 seconds (90 is advertised on the packed - in warning sheet) to get an initial display, with full brightness in about 2 minutes. An initial setup menu that looked about 6 years too old came up. It was a standard language/time menu. Easy enough. The first thing I did was hook up a Windows Media Center PC via a Monster HDMI to DVI cable. Initial results were not great and I have to admit I was worried I'd be making a trip back to the store that night. I grabbed Return of the King from my DVD case and threw it in the drive. Again, I was worried. The picture was artifacted and the color was good, but not great. I popped into the menu and bumbled around for a bit until I got the hang of their system. All of the menus are serially linked. That is, you have to scroll through each item to navigate. There are menu headings, but they are non selectable, so you can't even jump from one category to another. Very poor design. When I found the picture setup, I noticed that everything was set at 0 with a +-30 range. I immediately hit the Detail control and set it to -30. Anything above -30 adds artificial edge to the picture. This helped a great deal with my media center picture and I was feeling relieved. I began setting up the other controls. First I turned off all of the automatic configurations for gama, noise and color. I then worked on manually configuring the hue and saturation. The TV had very little red push (the over calibration of the red channel to compensate for the bluer grays used by most TV manufacturers these days), so tones looked pretty good. The color and tint did have to be adjusted to get true cyan and magenta (see the end of the review for what worked for me). In the setup I found that the TV had very little overdrive(how far off the edge of the display the actual picture is projected. Most sets project between 5% and 10% over the edge, causing a loss of data but eliminating black bars on smaller source), which was great. The overdrive sat at about 2.5%, which is professional grade all the way. All of my initial calibrations were done using the 'Standard' preset. The TV has only 4 memory allocations for settings, which is unfortunate. I used an RGB filter and a test pattern to verify color correctness, but for most people, eyeballing should be fine. The controls are not graduated as much as they should be (61 total settings for each control), but most people shouldn't have a hard time finding a good balance between all of the settings. After I got it set up properly, I threw Return of the King back in and held my breath. The picture was amazing! From 5' some minor issues could be seen and the MPEG2 format did show its limitations, but at 10', it was a truly great experience! I grabbed a high-definition demo from the Windows Media website at 720p and tried that. Again, the adjustments had worked and all was right with the world. I spent about 3 hours setting up my various inputs to match the quality of the "Standard" preset and I'm very pleased with the picture.

Breakdown

Picture:
Initially very poor. The detail seting on the TV is over-weighted. Turning it to -30 is the only way to eliminate all artificial edges. Color is OK, but can be improved. Brightness needs to be toned down and contrast adjusted to acheive the best picture. There is no true gray temperature, only high and low. Low allows for a more accurate color representation, however many people are now used to the bluer gray tones so it's up to you. The dynamic settings can really mess up a good DVD when they start over correcting, but they can be turned off. Very low overdrive means you're getting the most information from your media. Over all, befor adjustment *** out of 5 stars and after, ****1/2 out of 5 stars.

Sound:
Passible mids and highs. Very minimal lows. I didn't spend much time on this since I run through an external receiver. One neat feature is the ability to use the TV speakers as a center channel. They are more than capable to drive voice and it's a good way to get a more true-to-theater audio experience. *** out of 5 stars.

Setup:
Setup is a pain. The menus are not intuitive nor are they complete. The visual style of the menus are about 6 years out of date at best. * out of 5 stars.

Other:
One complaint I read about the TV was fan noise. It is definitely present, but mostly unnoticable in a large room. There is not enough polution to be an issue.
Viewing angle is very high for a rear projection. The horizontal angle is very wide and the picture can be seen very well by everyone seated in a standard room. To preserve the intensity of the picture while keeping the viewing angle wide, it has been narrowed slightly on the verticle plane. Standing next to the TV, the picture is noticably dimmer, however as soon as you get your eye level below the top of the set, the picture jumps to life. The ammount of light driven by the set is amazing. But because of that, you do want to have some ambient light in the room.

Value:
A very good value when compared to competing technologies. High picture fidelity and low entry cost make this TV a great value. **** out of 5 stars.

Tech Info:
Here are the settings I used on the HDMI input to get a truer picture:
Tint +1
Color -8
Picture +8
Bright -27
Detail -30
Temperature: Low
All automatic settings OFF.

I've had this tv for 3 months now and love it. Out of the box picture was pretty bad but after tweaking for a couple of days i got it tollerable. Just last week i had a pro calibration. It cost 400 bucks but was worth every penny. Alot of people don't know that every tv, especially big screens, should be calibrated. I won't go into great detail (google television calibration) but the correct color temperature for a tv is 6500 degrees. This tv before calibration was 15000 degrees. That basically means whites look blue and flesh tones look green. All tv manufacturers set the color temps very high from the factory because it "looks" better to us initially and could possibly give them more sales just from the customers first impression on the sales floor. It took about 3 hours for the calibration and all I can say is WOW! The picture is now literally stunning. One more thing, I see alot of people are really annoyed by fan noise. I hear the fan of this tv about 1% of my total viewing time and it doesn't bother me at all.

If you have this tv or any big screen television you really should have a calibration done. I see alot of reviews of people saying the picture is great but they don't mention having it calibrated. If you think it looks great now imagine what it would look like after a pro calibration.

PROS:
Looks great on or off
Easily viewable in a sunlit room
Good sound
Beautiful picture quality
No screendoor or rainbow effect
Lots of inputs
Great value for a superior technology

CONS:
Menu system could be better
Must spend extra cash for calibration (true for every television though, and worth it)
Great looking stand from JVC is extra $500

I was impressed with this TV's picture in the showroom - I thought it was better than DLP sets (i.e. Samsung) and similar to plasma sets that cost 2-3x more. But I was a little reticent to purchase this TV due to the fact that its relatively new (released July-04) and there is not much critical feedback. I ended up purchasing the TV from Amazon and its been great. Check out AVS forum for detailed discussions about this TV and the technology behind it.

Got this TV back in August. Love the picture, and the slim profile. Got the HD52Z585(the cabinet is all black). Only problem is that I'm having an HDMI input compatibility issue with my hi-def satellite receiver. JVC has reported this as a problem on their website: http://www.jvc.com/support/support.jsp?pageID=1&item=411. After 3 phone calls to JVC, and waiting a month for service (which never occurred), I contacted the dealer. The store that I bought the TV from has an exchange policy with JVC if there's any problem. So they're bringing a new one tomorrow. Hope it doesn't have the same issue. If it does, I'm asking it be replaced with a different brand.

I've purchased countless JVC products over the years (3 HDTV's, 3 AV Receivers, VCR, 2 DVD Players, CD changer), and have never had a problem with any of them until now. Their customer no-service basically ignored me for a month (which is why I didn't give it 5 stars). So on that alone, this will be my last JVC product. Pity... You would think they would be willing to work with you on a $3000.00 + TV, but I guess not.

If you only use the component jacks for HD, you'll still love this TV. Just make sure a reputable dealer stands behind it if there's a problem.

Purchased this tv about 3 months ago, and am still very impressed by it. The picture with a high def feed is just incredible, I still find myself just standing and staring at it. But that is also its one drawback, not enough channels are in high def yet. I have dish and you only get 2 maybe 3 channels in high def that are worth watching. Local channels must be picked up using an "off air" antenna you will have to buy and have installed in addition to the dish, I don'y yet have the antenna as I am still trying to decide which to buy. Football / Basketball on ESPN in hi def is really cool.

Also you need to plan on spending another $300 to $600 on off air antennas, DVI to HDMI cables, etc just to get this set up correctly.

I visited 5 stores with the JVC and none of them had the JVC looking good. I was nervous because I was contemplating dropping $2800 on a set that looked less then spectacular at every store I auditioned it at. Yet, there were dozens of people claiming to love their JVC. Reviews left and right raving about it's accurate colors, stunning HD, superior cabinet design. So, I took the plunge. I could not be happier.

Yes, I did return the first model. Yes, I have had 3 light engine replacements, no TV is perfect. You have to balance the trade offs with the picture quality. Sony's are soft, poor blacks and red push. Hitachi's break, black crush, and red push. Panny's are just blah, too dark, muddy, etc. And all had the stupid side speakers which limited my space. The JVC just has an excellent picture, awesome colors, and the cabinet allowed me 2 more inches with a smaller footprint then LCDs. JVC support has been spectacular and extremely fast, faster then Best Buy, to fix my issues. My wife and I get headaches and eye fatigue from DLPs, the LCDs are just too long (with ridiculous side speakers) poor black levels and bad color reproduction along with Screen Door Effect. So, the JVC won be default, but has been all that I could have hoped for. Very happy customer.

I love everything about this TV - EXCEPT the bulb doesn't last nearly as long as JVC will lead you to believe. We got about 600 hours out of ours vs. the 6000 JVC claims. There are blogs about lamp life and there are people trying to build a class action suit.

I looked for a long time and had settled on a DLP Samsung model. It had a very good picture and these DLP types of TVs are very popular now.There are two things I didnt like about them. 1) They have a mechanical color wheel that generates the colors. 2) because of 1 above, they have a rainbow effect that can be noticed. (I have a friend that already has a noise coming from his Samsung DLP color wheel.)
The JVC has a 3 chip design that eliminates both of the above. It is very bright( I have a bright sunny room),reasonably priced, and it looks great. The only possible problem is, they do not seem to be selling enough of them to make them the leading technology. As a result, I worry about future supply of parts and such.

Have had this tv for @ 2 months now and am still very pleased with
it. The picture quality in Hi-Def is just stunning, also with DVD's
and video games (playstation). You may have to adjust the picture at first but its not a hard thing to do. One note I would add is this tv like all the others are only going to look great when watching Hi-Def channels,DVD,or video games, regular cable is all right but you view all the junk in the picture and to be honest it looks like junk. The good thing is before too long all channels will be in Hi-Def and you will be glad you bought this tv.
If you have not seen sports in Hi-Def you will be in for a real treat, looks better than being at the event.
7/8/07..........Still very happy with this t.v. I did have the original bulb burn out, but JVC replaced at no charge and the second bulb has lasted. I have had no other problems with this set, it is used everyday for more than 8 hours each day. Very happy I bought this set.

I have always come to understand that sometimes electronics are faulty (As I was an electronics technician), but the issues I have had with this piece of electronics have far exceeded even my worst nightmare.

Short Version:
-------------------------
-11/06/05 Bought TV at local electronics store (REX Electronics)
-02/27/06 Turned TV on and heard pop, flickering lights on front. Opened bulb casing, bulb is shot (this is after about 400 hours of use, Bulbs are rated at greater than 10x that). Call JVC customer service, they said they would ship out a new bulb 2nd day air.
-03/01/06 Got a voice mail from a JVC rep saying they cannot ship the bulb without my credit card information so as to charge me if I don't return the blown bulb.
-03/02/06 I provide credit card information, am advised that the bulb will ship 2nd day air on 3/3
-03/07/06 No bulb arrives, I contact JVC customer service. I'm told that JVC has "mixed up the good bulbs from the bad bulbs in the warehouse" and that they don't expect to have it worked out until the end of the week. Speak with team leader Eli, he assures me that this will get resolved.
-03/10/06 I am told that the bulb has shipped out on 3/9.
-03/14/06 I received the bulb and replaced the bad bulb. Immediately the entire downstairs of my house begins to smell like chlorine. I turn off the TV and contact JVC customer service. I'm told that the bulb is defective and to send it back. I am also told that the bulbs are on back order and it will take over two weeks to get a new one. I speak with JVC manager Joe Rodiguez, he apologizes but does not budge on the two week replacement. When I ask to speak with Joe's manager, he advised that he did not have a manager, and he could do nothing for me.

I have had a horrible experience with these bulbs, and JVC customer service is unwilling to reasonably appease you if you have bulb problems. I am unsure that JVC can do anything to restore my confidence in their customer service or products at this point. Do yourself a favour and skip the hassle.

I did contact the electronics store that I purchased this television from (REX). I advised the manager that I wished to return the television for a full refund. We'll see where that goes.