Rating: 
Summary: Best value for your money
Review: Recently purchased this after a month of research on it and other camcorders. The good things about this camcorder are this: 1) Unlike other camcorders that bombard you with numerous buttons placed about for you to awkardly control, JVC has devised a centralized control system, where that 90 % of what you do with the camera is done by the On/off/PLay Switch, Menu button and the Zoom, which is nicely put in a localized area that your right hand can operate with no problems. 2) The image and sound quality is exceptional. VHS,VHS-C, hi-8, cant compare to the quality of this DV Cam. 3) At 1.2lbs.( give or take a oz.), this camera is very light and easy to handle. Sony D8's are all about twice as heavy as this cam, good excercise tho. 4) Good bit of editing tools, such as Fade effects, video effects, etc. could use a tad bit more tho in this area, but suspect, its a good arrangement of editing features for the avg. consumer. Lots of manual configurations you can set too also. 5) Zoom is good, after about 20 X(10 X opitical + 10 X digital) image suffers dramatically. But very nice below this, may suggest buying a telephoto converter that will increase your optical zoom by 2 X if you are serious bout your photography. By the way, can zoom in and out on things while playing back tapes or looking at pics 6) Digital camera side of this camera is good, takes very good pics outside, inside, better be sure you got plenty of light or it will come out a bit grainy..Suggest using Photo Software to edit pics. But I'd say the digital camera part of this beats out any digital camera in the $200-300 range, and if it had a flash.. man, what it could do indoors. Definitely a great web cam. One drawback to this camera is the included battery which only lasts about 35 min. if you use LCD screen and zoom a lot. So plan on buying an additional battery. On the plus side, it only takes 1.5 hours to charge the battery. And you can get 50-55 minutes if you only use the viewfinder, but, you will soon find out how hard it is to use the viewfinder as opposed to the LCD. If you got any questions about this cam, feel free to email me. And I can also help you save big money on this product to, if your interested. Take care
Rating: 
Summary: Software Problem
Review: The Provided software to download digital still photos does not work in Windows 98 SE also. The Picture Navagator crashes on clicking any menu in it.
Rating: 
Summary: a solid performer, but watch for Windows upgrade
Review: This is a replacement over a Sony 8mm camcorder I owned, which was broken mechanically. So I was not a Sony fan when choosing a replacement.JVC 505 camcorder certainly meets my expectation when price and performance are considered. For its basic function, the video taken is very clear and colorful, with very little distortion. It amazed me in responding to sudden change in background lighting very quickly, which was not the case with Sony 8mm. Video stabilizer kicks in when you are shooting on moving feet. Sound quality is reasonable. Battery life comes close to book value, if you refrain from zooming or using LCD. Digital still camera works like a charm, making us wonder if we should buy any more films for our Canon SLR camera. Speaking of its outlook, it's not the smallest in size, but definitely light in weight. Over all, 505 certainly qualifies as a family camcorder. With the price in the lower range of its class, you get good value for your money. --- Below is an update on 1/1/2002.
After I upgrade my computer from Windows 98 to Windows XP, the Multimedia Navigator program that you need to download pictures to PC stopped working with a "connection error". Searching for JVC's website returned for only one unrelated item in the entire "software update" catagory, and FAQ specifically says no software available for NT, which XP is based on. If you know a working software for NT/2000/XP, please let me know.
I give one star downgrade as a result. ...
Rating: 
Summary: Good for the 1st year after that terrible
Review: We bought our camera new and thought it was GREAT! We took pictures with it mostly and did take some videos of holidays and our kids' programs, ect. Now 2 years and only 6 mini-dv tapes down the line we get an error message stating "head cleaning needed". Well we went out and bought the "needed" head cleaning cassette and ran it through. The next time, and every time since you get into taping about 5 minutes and that same message pops up. JVC's customer support is terrible. All they can say is, "take it to an authorized service center apparently your heads are bad. Well for us the closest one is 120 miles away. Add that to the cost of $50-$100/hour labor plus parts to get it fixed, are you nuts? You can probably buy a new camera by the time your done. As others have stated in their reviews, the software compatibility is also another issue they won't help you with. Just keep searching on the net and you'll eventually find someone that can help you with that problem. I am very disappointed with JVC and I wish people would wait a while before they write these reviews. People writing them a month or two after having their product is good to explain all the nice features, but how is it working now a few years down the road?
Rating: 
Summary: NOT FOR LONGTERM
Review: We bought the JVC GR-DVL505U Digital Camcorder a couple of years ago. The first year was great. It did what it's supposed to do. That's why I still give it some stars. But on the second year, it started flashing a lot of error messages, constantly ask to clean head, and sometimes DID NOT record at all without any indication on the screen. We found out later when we tried to view the tapes. At first, we thought it was just a bad tape, but it happened to every single tape. In one of the tapes, we found more than half blank/skipped sections. It's so sad and frustrating because we're trying to record our baby's 'first everything'. We're planning to get a new one. We can no longer depend on this camcorder to capture the important moments. I guess 2 stars is too generous because I wouldn't recommend this product to anyone.
Rating:
Summary: NOT FOR LONGTERM
Review: We bought the JVC GR-DVL505U Digital Camcorder a couple of years ago. The first year was great. It did what it's supposed to do. That's why I still give it some stars. But on the second year, it started flashing a lot of error messages, constantly ask to clean head, and sometimes DID NOT record at all without any indication on the screen. We found out later when we tried to view the tapes. At first, we thought it was just a bad tape, but it happened to every single tape. In one of the tapes, we found more than half blank/skipped sections. It's so sad and frustrating because we're trying to record our baby's 'first everything'. We're planning to get a new one. We can no longer depend on this camcorder to capture the important moments. I guess 2 stars is too generous because I wouldn't recommend this product to anyone.
Rating:
Summary: Great if you get the extended warranty
Review: We got this 3 yrs ago. For the price we paid, it was packed with features and performed well for the most part. We didn't bother with the included software since we had Pinnacle. A year ago (2 yrs after purchase) we had blotches and blackouts on tapes when viewing previously taped DVs. Went through and scratched up bunches of tapes before trying out the head cleaners. Things were ok until few months ago. The motor to eject and receive the cartridge started to get stuck. After jiggling few times, even brute force, it would be ok. Now this past weekend, after we tried to use it to tape our son's birthday party, it degenerated to the point where it's 'eating up' tapes and it takes several minutes of coaxing to get the tape to go in or out. Time for a decent burial me thinks.
Rating:
Summary: Great if you get the extended warranty
Review: We got this 3 yrs ago. For the price we paid, it was packed with features and performed well for the most part. We didn't bother with the included software since we had Pinnacle. A year ago (2 yrs after purchase) we had blotches and blackouts on tapes when viewing previously taped DVs. Went through and scratched up bunches of tapes before trying out the head cleaners. Things were ok until few months ago. The motor to eject and receive the cartridge started to get stuck. After jiggling few times, even brute force, it would be ok. Now this past weekend, after we tried to use it to tape our son's birthday party, it degenerated to the point where it's 'eating up' tapes and it takes several minutes of coaxing to get the tape to go in or out. Time for a decent burial me thinks.
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