Price Paid:  $300.00 from Sears

Summary:
My wife bought this as a surprise for my birthday back in 99' so I have been using this player for over two years now. If you take the time to read all of the reviews below, you will notice that they are mixed at best. Overall, I have been pleased with it's performance. Like many reviewers here, I was pretty bummed that it would not play CDR's. At the time, I did not have a CD player in my house as I was just beginning to get into home audio. I was always into car audio, so my cd collection consisted of many burned cd's. I now have hundreds of CDR's, but I also have a changer to put them in. So now, it's not a real problem. Here is every other minute thing I can think of that has occured since I have owned this player:

1. Has locked up on various movies if I pause play. Arlington Road and Matrix played fine, even after pausing. I would say this has happened maybe five times ever. It would usually happen if I was on my second or third movie in a row, which I don't have the time to do very often.

2. I had to un-plug the player on two occasions because after locking up, none of the buttons would work on the remote or the player itself. I couldn't even turn the player off with the physical power button on the player.

3. The parental lock has come on all by itself only once. I have no idea why and cannot remember the movie I was trying to cue up. I just turned on the player, put in the movie, and it would ask me for the code for the parental lock. I read the manual and it said to type in all one's or something like that. I did that and it has not happened since.

4. The third tray has been somewhat louder at times than what I would consider normal when playing a DVD. This has not bothered me much since I can't hear it unless I am three feet in front of it with the glass door open, and the sound turned way down.

5. Is somewhat touchy when it comes to rental's. If there are many fine scratches on the surface of the disc, I get some weird behavior sometimes. i.e. scene jumping, audio cut out. I think any DVD player would have some form or another of this.

It is very handy having three trays to pop in some demo discs a shuffle back and forth without getting off the couch. The picure quality is great through S-Video, even though I have never had any thing to compare it to. The audio is fine as well. My receiver (Onkyo DS-595) does a great job of decoding the signal coming from this player. I do use the optical cable (not supplied)and the sound is fabulous.

Bottom line is that this player has served me very well. The above problems, in my opinion, are very minor and are not meant to make you run for your life upon seeing one. It's your money, so decide for yourself. Return it if you think it sucks. I plan on keeping mine as long as it will last.

Similar Products Used:
First DVD Player

Price Paid:  $300.00 from Best Buy

Summary:
As time goes on with this player, it is developing more and more quirks with the trays jamming, the DVD locking up and especially playing fewer and fewer DVD's. JVC blames this on the need to take it to a repair shop to upgrade the software. What doesn't make sense with that is I have a DVD player in my PC which is just as old and it continues to work fine with absolutely no difficulties. If software is going out of date, wouldn't it affect all DVD players?
I have repeatedly cleaned the DVD player and have done the reset procedure described on JVC's website with little to no improvement. Customer support is non-existent and JVC does not stand behind it's products. I will get a new DVD player soon and will never buy JVC again.

Strengths:
Price. 3 trays.

Weaknesses:
won't play some DVD's. Poor customer support

Similar Products Used:
DVD player in Dell PC

Price Paid:  $350.00 from Fred Meyer

Summary:
Works nicely, nothing to compare to since it is my first DVD player. However, some people have complained that it freezes after pausing. For me, it only has frozen when I pause it in DTS Digital. Recently bought a Reciever so I couldn't experience digital till now. Otherwise this unit works supremely.

Strengths:
3 disc and many digial options

Weaknesses:
no cdr or cdrw.

Similar Products Used:
none

Price Paid:  $183.00

Summary:
Picture clarity is great and sound quality via optical is excellent.

Aside from having 2 lockups during quick requests for pause, play, ffd etc (can't remember the particular combination), I haven't had any problems.

I realize that there are problems with other DVD players with lockups and that they are sometimes due to the disk.

Full points given due to very intermittent problem as opposed to low price paid for features.

Strengths:
3 Trays. Easy to use. Compulink.

Weaknesses:
2 Lockups in about 5 months.

Similar Products Used:
None.

Price Paid:  $249.00 from bestbuy

Summary:
Bought this set cause the price was good and it had a lot of bells and whistles. also seem good to have 3 dvd drawers. it played a total of 9 months and froze. took it to a authorized repair shop and was informed it would take 150 from me and jvc would pay for two ic units that had gone bad. as far as i can tell jvc is no longer making good product to only have such a limited warranty. also their customer service is poor to not existent. Called three times and the recording told me they were busy and call back and then hung up on me! Sent an e-mail through their site and when I finally got a person they said that was not for complaints. They offered to pay $50 of my cost. But there would not be a warranty after that. Decided to cut my losses an buy a better set. Probably a Sony! This set is has no reliability and was told after the fact by someone at circuit city that there were a lot of problems. It has cost jvc a car stereo that I would have purchased and bought Sony now. Would advise not to buy junk like this. If you must buy junk buy cheap, at least if you have to put out 150 + a year in maintenance you can buy a new Junker every year for less!!

Strengths:
looks nice and has a lot of bells and whistles

Weaknesses:
90 day labor and 1 yr parts , cost as much to fix as to buy a sony!