Customer Reviews

JVC XV-S500BK Progressive-Scan DVD Player , Black

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I purchased this specifically for its capability to play VCDs and SVCDs. It wasn't the cheapest player on the store shelf but it was the only one that specifically stated support for the above formats. The case is slim and elegant, almost delicate looking with its streamlined buttons and low key styling. It weighs almost nothing and while in operation doesn't even get slightly warm...a good sign that quality components are inside. The drive is quiet and spools up quickly and the remote is a joy to operate. As i also have a JVC television the small TV/DVD switch allows me to operate both devices. Video quality is outstanding and the onscreen menus are slick, attractive and intuitive. If you have never seen progressive scan output this will be an eye-opener, wow. This is one well-thought out DVD player. MP3 support is excellent with long filenames. It does not have shuffle or playlist features though, and JPEG picture view speed could be better. Picture loading is very slow but the output is excellent. One possible firmware bug I discovered is that the screen saver kicks in while watching a movie. I simply turned off that annoying feature and all was well. Other features include a stereo enhancer and Theatre Mode.
Support for VCD, SVCD, MP3, DVD is excellent. This sucker will play just about anything you put in the tray. It is not picky about CDR/CDRW media at all and even 200-pack generics work great. No need to waste your cash on expensive brand name media. The outputs include component video, S-Video and digital fiber optic audio option. Considering how wonderful the video is out of the plain RCA single port, The S-video or component out should be all that much better.

I'd heard a great deal of buzz about JVC's new XV-S60BK DVD player - much of it revolving around the low list price and the anticipation that it would deliver artifact-free progressive-scan images. Buzz aside, the player looked unassuming enough when I removed it from its box. The sleek front panel has only the most essential control buttons, plus an indicator that lights when the player is set to its progressive-scan mode.

The back panel is equally streamlined but has all the usual outputs. The component-video jack is switched to progressive mode by pressing the Progressive Scan button on the remote and holding it for a few seconds. In a new and very welcome trend that saves you quite a few bucks, JVC packages a set of component-video cables with the player.

The JVC's remote control felt substantial, with large buttons I could easily locate by touch in the dark. The controls you'll use most often are on the lower half. Directly above them are buttons for less used functions like picture zoom and shrink, Digest (displays a grid of images from each chapter on a DVD), and picture-quality presets. The remote can also be configured to control your TV.

Pressing the On Screen button near the bottom of the remote during playback shrinks the movie to a quarter-screen window and fills the rest of the screen with a control panel. Several functions can be accessed from this panel, including repeat modes, time and chapter search, and selection of soundtrack and subtitle language or camera angle. It also includes bar graphs indicating elapsed time and the disc's data-transfer rate. When you're playing a CD, a similar onscreen control window is available to set up repeat modes or program track order - if you don't mind turning on the TV.

The JVC's 2x fast-scan mode delivered smooth, fluid playback. Another neat feature is aspect ratio control, activated by selecting the 16:9 Normal setting in the setup menu. This will prove useful if you have a widescreen HDTV that locks into a 16:9 or "full" display mode when it receives a progressive-scan signal (a number of them do). Set to its 16:9 Normal mode, the JVC player formats standard 4:3 images so they'll appear on widescreen displays with correct geometry instead of being stretched out to fill the screen.

Like the Marantz changer, the JVC effortlessly sailed through my progressive-scan torture tests. Scenes with fine horizontal lines combined with moving cam erawork all came through without any artifacts. Colors, too, looked solid, with no combing visible in either the bright reds of Yellow Submarine or the catcher's orange chest protector in For the Love of the Game.

When I switched to another reference DVD, the Hitchcock classic North by Northwest, I thought at first that the JVC came up somewhat shy on picture detail. Checking the sharpness control in the player's Normal preset, however, I noted that it was a notch below maximum. Bumping it back up let me clearly see both the texture in Cary Grant's impeccably cut gray suit and the details in the intricate furnishings of James Mason's library. Setting sharpness to maximum added slight ringing artifacts to the lines in the resolution pattern of Ovation Software's Avia test DVD, but I didn't notice any with movies.

The JVC XV-S60BK is an all-around excellent progressive-scan player that's also very reasonably priced. Having finally gotten my hands on it, I can attest that it more than justifies the buzz.

Order yours now!

The previous review discusses about the picture quality. Here I adds on the MP3 part.

It is very hard to find (I can't find one) an MP3 player that is designed specifically for a home entertainment system. As a result, I look for a DVD player that can play the MP3 the best. I brought a CD-R MP3 disk to Best Buy and test every compatible DVD player there. I found that this JVC XVS500 is the best, mainly it allows you to play the whole disk or just a directory. You can navigate from directory to directory and also from song to song. However, the display on the DVD shows only the numerical order-no text. All text info are displayed on the TV monitor. The sound is very good.

Two things that make it 4 stars rather than 5:
1) To change from directory to directory, one must use the remote. It would be nice if the player also has bottons for this purpose.

2) The Display on the DVD is too bright and the font is not "pleasant" to the eyes.

Furthermore, if the directory name and song name are also shown on the DVD displayed, it would give it 6 stars.

This player didn't work for me. I had problems playing longer movies. It seemed to get just past 1 hour of play then start hanging up. The picture would get "blocky", frames would be superimposed, and it would stop... then sometimes eject the disc. The discs would play without problems in my two year old computer DVD drive.

Another annoyance.. the recommended file resolution for jpeg playback is 640x480. With this resolution it renders in perhpas 3 or 4 seconds. If you have files at 1500x1000 or so, it'll take more than 10 seconds to display.

I bought this after returning a Philips DVD724AT that was defective. I'm very glad I made the switch as the JVC unit has more features and is built better. I had a non-progressive scan JVC DVD player for years before this that has always been very reliable.

The only downside is the JPEG file viewing is so slow it's not worth bothering with. On the other hand, I didn't buy this unit for the JPEG feature anyway so I don't really mind.

I'm not necessarily a video-phile, but I know enough about DVD players to know a good one when I see one.

This JVC player has a ton of great options. Progressive scan, component video, etc.

All this stuff comes second to buyers like me, who demand not really picture perfect video quality, but simply that it works and it works well. This is where the JVC shows its stuff. It has never skipped on me. Layer changes are barely noticable. The load time is little to none for a DVD, and skipping through MP3's is pretty painless as well. One of my older players would take almost twenty seconds loading an MP3 disc; not so on this JVC.

Any complaints? Sure. As other reviewers have said, the buttons are a bit frail on the player. But this is overcome by the great remote control. Also, the disc tray seems a little fragile as well. But if you are careful, this will never become a big deal.

I purchased this DVD player after doing some research -- it is highly rated by Consumer Reports. When I got to the store, I compared this player with a Sony model and two Toshibas which were equally well-rated. I purchased the JVC because I have a JVC TV, the price I paid was reduced and it had all the features I wanted. The picture is crystal clear, the sound terrific and set-up and installation was simple. At this price, this is a terrific machine and a good value.

silent drive, very low heat dissipation during operation, quality,not cheap looking, remote. Good suuport for mp3 files - 32 character on screen display - support for lower/upper case letters - very easy to navigate through folders without TV on. Good sound for mp3 files. Unfortunately no support for ID3V2 tags. You will have to strip them from mp3 otherwise it will just skip those files - Contrary to user manual report, outputs mp3 music through coaxial digital outs. plays home made SVCDs fine. JPEG rendering slow.

This DVD player is loaded with great features - progressive scan with component outs, MP3 and JPG ability. The thing I love about it is that it didn't have any trouble reading the my burned DVDs or CDs. So far I've this player has succeeded in playing DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVDR+RW, CD-R, CD+RW, VCD, and SVCD. You get zoom and also 16x9 modes and picture tweaking from gamma, to color to sharpness. There's strobe viewing and 30 disc memory resume. There are a few negatives: 1. you can't shuffle the mp3 so listening is linear all the way through. 2. JPG viewing is VERY slow. 3. No DVD-R MP3 ability, though I doubt any players (aside from some apex models) even support this right now. This is the best player within its price range and its compatiblity with all DVD media types is worth 5 stars alone.

My main reason for buying this player was its SVCD playback capability. I was making SVCDs of That 70s Show to start a little collection about a month before I bought this. I'd tested the SVCDs I was making on my friend's Apex player - where they all played perfectly. With this player, however, the video in the SVCDs was quite jumpy in any scene with a lot of action. The apex player, however, showed none of these problems. I reduced the quality of the movies, and then made new SVCDs that worked better, but as a result of reducing the quality, the video was worse than an old VCR tape. So, if you're looking for a player with good SVCD qualities, check out the Apex models...

As for DVDs, however, this player is great. It seems to produce a better picture than my old Toshiba. It also has component out, which is the best picture possible at this time. The choice of coax and optical digital outputs is also really good. This, and the slim design are the reasons I give it 4 stars.

For MP3s, playback is OK... but there's no Random choice, so you have to listen to your files in the order you put them on the disk. With lots of today's burning software, you'll end up with several songs by the same artist in a row due to the alphabetic sorting.

So, to sum it up:

PROS
-Great pictures
-Best video outputs (compenent)
-Video and Audio output choices (Coax, optical, etc.)
-Progressive Scan (if your TV is compatible)

CONS
-No random MP3 selection
-SVCD playback is sub-par