Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Quirky But Works, June 20, 2009
The bottom line with this machine is that it works. We've been able to record OTA and cable broadcasts, in standard definition and HD, to DVD-R and DVD+RW discs and we copied a VHS tape to DVD-R. All have worked well.
The ATSC (digital) tuner works great, but the NTSC (analog) tuner seems a little poor. We only get basic cable, so we expected to use the NTSC tuner and had tested the ATSC tuner for OTA signals for a few days. The NTSC output seems a little fuzzy, though that might be due to its A/D and D/A conversion, since we're using the digital output to our receiver and then component video into our standard definition TV. (The ATSC tuner output was observed through this same connection as well as via HDMI to a 22" LCD TV.) It turns out that we have digital channels, often two, corresponding to each analog channel in our cable lineup, so we're using those channels instead.
One of the first things you notice about this machine is that access to the Setup menu is awkward. You press the Home button on the remote and the Setup menu is selected, but not opened. You must press the center (OK) button to open the setup menu. If you want one of the other menus, you merely press the left or right cursor button and the menu is selected and opened at once. Why wouldn't the setup menu be visible immediately!
Another awkward thing about the Setup menu is that it contains normal use and setup controls. One normally relegates rarely used functions to a setup menu because they are set-and-forget options, right? Sadly, in this machine, you must navigate past such options to use common functions such as for finalizing or labeling a disc.
Another frustration about the design of the user interface is that common operations for a DVD recorder like finalizing are not the first that appear when you invoke the menus with the Home button and are not accessible from the remote any other way. The principle operations of a device like this should be close at hand and those used less frequently should be accessible, but require extra steps to reach.
My final complaint about this machine is that it will begin recording a timer program whether the machine is on or off and, if on, seemingly regardless of what you may be doing with it at the time. No VCR would start recording when the machine is on. It will complain when it is time to record, but will wait for you to turn it off before recording. A DVD recorder should be no different and this was just stupid on JVC's part.
An interesting behavior of this machine, which is unlike any DVD player I've ever owned, is that it will automatically load and begin playing an inserted DVD, just as a VCR would start playing a prerecorded tape when inserted. That's a nice touch.
The channel editing feature is very nice, too. When editing which channels the machine should recognize or ignore, it uses a picture-in-picture style arrangement to show the channel in the upper left corner so that you can navigate from one channel to the next while deleting or enabling them. Our LCD TV, by contrast, pretty much requires selecting a channel, navigating the menus to the channel editor, and then adding or deleting that channel, for each channel you want to change. A button on the remote to access the add/delete functionality is probably the simplest approach with analog TV, but that is harder to use with digital signals because of the fractional channel numbers.
This machine has a good ATSC tuner, records as expected, and so deserves four stars for function. If JVC were to upgrade the firmware with a smart, frequency of use based menu layout, it would deserve five stars.
(By the way, we've had no problems with the machine freezing up on us. If yours does, exchange it.)
|
|
|
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Works for me, July 11, 2009
I purchased this two weeks ago.
It took a short while to figure out how to operate the recorder.
Customer support was superb and helped me immensely.
Be sure to purchase the correct DVD blanks. They are listed in the manual, which is a page I kept overlooking.
I miss the old dvd/vcr recorders that don't require the HMDI. It was so nice to click on/off vcr. With this and other new ones, one must go to the menu for the t.v. and the recorder to switch things around. The t.v. is really a form of computer instead of the off and on switch.
Progress is hard for me to adjust.
However, I can now record off the t.v. to either vhs or dvd blanks. I can dub the vhs tapes to dvd blanks. All pretty easy with practice.
|
|
|
34 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
A piece of Cr@p!!!, April 17, 2009
Less than an hour out of the box and it freezes up playing a DVD. The ONLY way to unfreeze the machine and eject the DVD was to unplug the unit! A week later I am still trying to find the good points of this machine. I like having an HD tuner, and that works. But tonight I tried recording a DVD-R from 3 HD broadcast programs. This appeared to work. After all recording was done I visited the Title List. The thumbnails for the 3 programs were there, with the "TITLE 1", "TITLE 2", etc.. names the machine gives them (even though the HD tuner knew the names of the programs!) and the selected thumbnail was playing the appropriate program. So far so good. Now let's edit "TITLE 1" to read "Two & a Half Men", and press OK... waiting... nothing's happening... (I wait 5 minutes and start pressing buttons) The machine has frozen again and no remote control buttons have any affect, and all buttons on the machine itself have no affect. I have to hold the power button for 5 seconds or unplug the machine to reset the unit. When I turn it back on, it says "Please wait - Recovering defective disk", but has no progress bar to indicate how far along it is in this "recovery". I wait 10 minutes and discover that again the machine is frozen. I'm assuming the disk is now toast! - (if I can get it to eject)
Dubbing VHS tapes to DVD - was another big disappointment. I had 3 programs on a tape and wanted to dub the second one to DVD. It's an hour program, but followed by random garbage like commercials and a news broadcast. To dub, I forwarded the tape to the beginning of the program and pressed 'Dub'. The unit lets me pick the direction (from DVD to tape or vice-versa) and the recording mode (XP, SP, LP or EP) and then press Enter to start. That's it. There is NO option to define how long you want the unit to dub. You either have to manually stop it after an hour, or let it run until the end of the tape!! What stupid engineers designed this piece of junk?? And why would a company like JVC want to market this as their most expensive combo unit? This is the best they have??? (By the way, at the end of the dub, the unit froze again, and left me with an unusable DVD)
DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME AND MONEY!!!
I'll never buy another JVC product again!
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
Saving...
