JVC XV-M555BK 3-Disc DVD Player

Rating:
Summary: Love this DVD player!
Review: I own this DVD player and it works beautifully! In response to the previous review with the remote problem, the unit will not accept fuctions at certain times. I was concerned, so I read my instruction manual to determine the problem. It seems that some DVD's will not allow you to perform certain functions. For instance, it might not allow you to fast forward through movie previews. That is not a problem with the XVM555BK, it is built in on the DVD to make you watch them. An easy way to avoid this is to press stop and then just start the movie. As far as movie viewing and sound quality, the unit is AMAZING! I recommend it highly! I listen to CD's on it rather than my old CD player. The convenience of 3 discs is good and the sound quality is great. I was also amazed at the price, less than some single disc DVD players. Thank you Amazon.com! I have really enjoyed the unit!

Rating:
Summary: It's The Firmware, Stupid...
Review: It's nice to have 3 discs in the machine at once, but this machine has very limited programming options, the remote control IR emitter is weak, and I frequently get the universal "NO" symbol (a red circle with a red line through it) whenever I try to do *anything*. This is the first DVD player I've bought, so maybe they are all like this, but I hope not. My recommendation is to either spend the extra four or five hundred and get a 200 dvd changer jukebox, or spend the price of this model on a high-end 1-dvd player that has more useful features.

Rating:
Summary: Great Product
Review: Not much to say, this is a really great product. I have bought many DVD players in the past, this is one of the best for it's price.

Rating:
Summary: Great player for the price.
Review: This is my second DVD player and I am very happy with it. I have owned it since December of 99 and had no problems at all. Problematic DVDs such as The Matrix, Arlington Road and ID4 have all played flawlessly, which cannot be said for many more expensive players. Having 3 trays instead of just 1 is a major advantage to this player in my opinion. If you like to watch bits and pieces of your DVD collection here and there, this is really the selling point of this player, since obviously, it is nice not to have to get up to change DVDs. Overall, I am totally happy with my purchase.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent player
Review: This is the first, and so far only, stand-alone DVD player I have owned, and I have to say, I'm very happy with it.

The convenience of having three separate loading trays means that one disc can be playing while the other two are being loaded; not really very useful for many people, I've noticed, but very handy when you're browsing through those multi-disc DVD packages. I've had some people complain about the lack of eject controls on the remote, but I've never considered that to be a significant problem--it's not like you can accidentally record over a DVD, like you can a VHS tape. Incidentally, the loading mechanism is hardly quiet, but it's not all that difficult to ignore--it's not really as loud as other reviewers make it sound. It's not the fastest loader I've ever seen though.

The picture quality is excellent, although I haven't seen a top-of-the-line system to compare it to, and I've had no complaints about the audio (note, I have this hooked up to a JVC 31" S-Video TV and a JVC Dolby Surround 2.0 4.1 [3.1 technically, with a subwoofer crossover] channel component stereo system; the S-Video hookup makes a significant difference in picture quality, especially on those freeze-frames; incidentally, this unit outputs video on both the S-Video and RCA-out connectors simultaneously. I assume it also outputs on the component connectors too, but as I don't have a component TV, I don't know).

I don't know how well CompuLink works with this unit, as I have an older JVC stereo system that doesn't recognize the DVD player as a component.

The unit is trivially easy to set up, especially by comparison to the rest of my setup, but I still recommend reading the manuals (all of them, including for your TV and stereo components) before starting to set it up--it may save you some grief, and might also remind you of features you've forgotten! Make sure you match up Left/Right pairs properly!! That's about the only tip I can offer.

This unit has only ever had problems with a tiny handful of discs, out of the hundreds that I own; I have played both region-locked (region 1) and region-free discs without any problems. Actually, I've had problems with two discs, but the second one turned out to be defective; the replacement worked perfectly. The only other discs that have given me *any* problems were 'Key The Metal Idol' discs one and two--and that was just in the menus. Disc three worked perfectly. I have also played VideoCDs on it, although I had to use a CDRW disc, rather than a CDR disc; it doesn't seem to like CDRs. It tended to lock up after finishing playing VCDs, however, and I had to eject and reinsert the disc before it would recognize it again.

I've had the unit lock up on me very rarely, and the few times it did all I had to to was turn it off (it did take a while to actually turn off--about 20 seconds) then on again--I have never had to unplug it or contact JVC, and I hope I never will.

Rating:
Summary: Good buy, but lacking on the CD-Audio side
Review: This player has a lot of neat features, especially the fact that it is a 3 disk system, just worth the price. Some of its best features are: *The remote is easy to use *The sound quality is great *The S-Video and RGB connections on the same unit *The Digest/Zoom are fun.

The fallbacks are: It is very noisy in changing disk (other reviews are not kidding), Most movies playback with the image brightness dimming slightly and then brighting every 2 seconds, The inconsistancy of Menu/Title is annoying (but this is the falut of the movie makers not the player), The CD-Audio support is missing the ability to program/repeat without using the remote and having the tv on, other CD-Audio "features" require the tv on to know what is going on (this is annoying), the unit gets very (very very) hot during playback, and (not finally but...) I hate having to be forced to view the copywrite information and some "preview ads" without the ability to scan passed it like on VHS - this may be a fault of the movie makers though - but it would be nice if this player allowed that. Final comment: you need an electronics degree to read the manual on how to get the best sounds with your stereo system - and I AM a technical person already!

Rating:
Summary: Great Features -- Great Price
Review: This was an absolutely great purchase. As far as I'm concerned it can go head-to-head with any of the more expensive models. As the author of the June 30, 2000 review notes, it handles many of the "problematic" titles with a breeze. This is truly a great machine. Another great JVC product. A company, which in my opinion, is leading the market!

Rating:
Summary: Great Features -- Great Price
Review: This was an absolutely great purchase. As far as I'm concerned it can go head-to-head with any of the more expensive models. As the author of the June 30, 2000 review notes, it handles many of the "problematic" titles with a breeze. This is truly a great machine. Another great JVC product. A company, which in my opinion, is leading the market!