Region Free, Superb audio and picture quality, Drop Dead Sexy design, DSP effects that WORK! and The prettiest OSD that you have ever seen

No Component Video or ONBOARD DD5.1 decoder

I was dying to get a DVD player but with HDTV and Progressive scan players realistically on the horizon as comsumer level products I did not want to spend more money than I had to. I needed a entry level player that provided excellent video quality without any onboard DD5.1/DTS decoders. The JVC XV-K503TN fit my requirements perfectly. Lets have a quick look at the specs

* High-bit/high-sampling (10-bit/27MHz) video D/A converter
* Composite video, S-video and
* DD5.1 and DTS Digital Out for external DTS decoder (Optical)
* Digest Function
* Karaoke Functions
* GUI/OSD - Graphic User Interface/On Screen Display
* Optical digital output for PCM, Dolby Digital, DTS and MPEG Multichannel
* 3D-PHONIC for virtual surround sound
* Separate construction throughout:
Power supply, digital circuitry, analogue video and analogue audio circuits are physically separated
* ‘Digest’ Zoom’ and ‘Strobe’ functions‘functions
* Bit-rate indicator with peak hold (audio and video signals separately indicated)
* 3-mode screen-saver (Modes 1, 2 and dimmer)
* CD Text function

First lets start with the cosmetic. This unit is gorgeous and I really mean that, its dead sexy. The GUI is the most useful/relevant and good looking GUI Menu ever. It contains a "preview" windows which actually plays the movie while you make your setting changes to the player allowing you to see and hear the effect that your changes are making in realtime without having to exit out. The bit rate indicator, which is just a toy on most players, is taken to a whole new level. The Bitrate is actually a VU style graph showing the current audio and video bitrates seperatly in the GUI Menu, VERY cool. Comes with a whole host of other useful functions such as Zoom, Strobe and Digest. I use the digest function constantly (Digest basically created an animated display of the chapters available on the disk), This is a very useful feature.

Now to the more important. The image quality is crystal clear and I am yet to spot any visual artifacts that usually plague many DVD players in high bitrate scenes. Very clear audio is delivered throughout the entire range with the provided outputs. Downmixing is available for people wanting to hook up their older prologic decoders and a very useful compression mode is available for night viewing. Most players these days also come with a small army of useless 3D DSP effects and the JVC is no different except for one thing... They ACTUALLY WORK! This was the most suprising feature of this player as the Yamaha and Sony DSP effects did not impress me at all.

Nothing is perfect and I cant say that the JVC is the odd one out. It lacks Component Video outputs and onboard DD5.1 decoders. This did not worry me as I wanted DTS as well as DD5.1 so I had purchased a seperate receiver/amplifier and my Sony Trinitron TV does not support component video and I dont plan on purchasing a new TV till HDTV. If you need these extra features you might want to consider their next model up, the XV-D705GD.

Personnally I love this player to death. Its crammed with features however not laiden with "spec fillers" such as built in decoders and useless video filters, that will never do as good a job as the real thing anyway. I could not recommend this player more highly enough to anybody. It fit my requirements perfectly with extra USEFUL features to boot. Excellent as an entry into the DVD market or as a stop gap player until progressive scan and HDTV become affordable.

Similar Products Used:

Sony DVP-S525D, Pioneer 414

one if my fav DVD player now (1999), it looks like a million bucks! This is the latest and improved model, realease for the Asian/Australia Market first because of the karaoke function, which is very well features as u get many karaoke functions (if u ever need it).
Plays all region as it's modified my JVC Australia.

Picture quality: Superb! so clear and detail, makes any lousy TV looks better too! The sound is ok i guess, never really can hear the different but it sounded ok, so i guess it's good. Cant say much on that, sorry.

for this price, u can only get pioneer 414, sony 525, or Toshiba 3109, which i thing the JVC is the good pick above all.

Good picture quality when it works

If you have come to this site for reading about the product, please mail to ma and I will describe to you the very cramky way in which the unit works. It is really frustrating to have this unit and I donot know why I have selected to buy this. This was dione based on the two revioews that appeared before this. Most probably these two reveiws have been written by JVC themselves>>!@Q I am not happy at all. When similar players can read discs with minor damages, this guy just gets STUCK.Can be very frustrating sometimes.

It plays for 10 minutes and then suddenly gets stuck. The switch it off and on, and it does not play for more than 2 minutes, before it gets stuck. Manmufacturer talks about static electricity etc. But that should nopt cause so much of problem

Not my repeat purchase brand; Can someone help me in solving my problem