Just to clear up a item from my other post...I paid $60.00, not $6000.00 for the unit. For that amount, it would have to do A LOT more than play/record shows for me! Also, the last unit should read...JVC hr-S9600U, not 960. Lastly, the comments about "quality Bose systems" are correct, the only good thing you can get is the POWERED subs because of their design.

GORGEOUS picture, TONS of features, and outperforms "cheap" SVHS machines made by lesser companies.

NONE!

This is an EXCELLENT unit! I have experienced absolutely no problems of any kind in the last 3 years I've had this VCR. No noise problems, it's as quiet as a mouse. The picture is BEAUTIFUL! The recordings look like live TV. Even in HDTV recordings, there is only a negligable difference. Anyone that can get their hands on a JVC SVHS should get one...forget the other "cheap" brands, these are built to last and are loaded with features. That's why I have 3 of them, the 4600, the 7600, and the 9600.

Similar Products Used:

JVC HR-S7600U and JVC HR-S960U

picture quality compared to vhs

noisy transport

I can't believe there haven't been more reviewers mentioning the noise of this thing. I had it for about three weeks before I couldn't stand it anymore and took it back. When you are watching a scene from a tv show or movie and there is silence during a conversation or low volume of any time, then all you hear is the constant whining of the transport motor. I am 12 feet from the TV and have it in an open rack. If my girlfriend is sleeping and I have to have the volumn down slightly I can't hear the t.v. at all, but I sure can hear that motor whirling. I shouldn't have to put a blanket over my vcr to enjoy it. JVC if you're listening....dummy up! Whatever is causing that screeching, lose it! Other than that, a damn fine unit. The IR blaster is a cool feature, the picture is fantastic for a vcr. It's not quite dvd, but it's getting much closer to it than conventional vhs ever could. Its set up is easy, and the plug and play worked flawlessly. That noise though. That damn noise. So I am looking at a Panasonic 9670 now.

Picture Quality in playback of ep mode. Recording quality

No features located on the front of the VCR. Almost everything that needs to be adjusted must be done by the remote. God Help You if you lose the remote.

The picture quality on the JVC 4600 is quite good. Getting Super VHS thrown in for around $250.00 made me buy this VCR.

This is the first year in a while that JVC has added features to upgrade their VCR's. The past few years they have been cutting back on options and quality. The front a/v inputs are nice, but you need the remote to turn them on or off.

The down side to this VCR is that almost all functions must be programmed from the remote control. This VCR has no TV/VCR or hifi/stereo/R/L buttons. Almost every command must be done through the annoying on screen menu with the remote. God help you if you lose or can not find your remote. Did JVC save money by dropping the buttons, if so this was a major mistake. I was also surprised at the type of plastic JVC used, it gave this VCR the appearance of being cheap and light weight. I did not feel that this VCR was any noisier that any of the manufactures that I have owned.

I recently rented a movie in which the tape had some calibration problems (or the tape had stretched)and my JVC kept flashing "AUTO CALABRATION" through the entire movie. Who the hell want's to see that flashing all throughout a movie. This VCR should have adjusted the auto tracking without FLASHING the announcement like a good little VCR.

Similar Products Used:

I have owned the following VCR's Mitsubishi, 3 different Sony's, RCA, Zenith, NEC, Sanyo and a Sharp.

Great Picture and Recording Quality

Noisy, Loud, Noisy, Extremely Loud.

I admit I have good hearing but I can hear this thing from 30 feet away in a quite room. I called a JVC service center. They admit to no problems of this kind. LIARS! All units of this model are the same. I have checked around the net for reviews and checked 10 different units at 3 different stores. If you will need to turn your sound down to not disturb someone sleeping you had better shut this baby up in a cabnet. I am keeping my fingers crossed and hoping JVC comes out with a replacement soon.

Good tuner. S-Video inputs. Automated functions. Solid tape transport. Good color saturation.

Playback. No passive passing of the s-video signal.

I do not like to post negative reviews. Maybe I got a bum deck. The playback was unacceptable. There was noise in the picture even after switching to a high quality tape. The picture also seemed to jump from time to time. My wife didn't seem to care, but I couldn't watch it. I returned it to Circuit City.

Similar Products Used:

Hitachi, Panasonic PV-9664

Recording Quality even on normal VHS tapes.

few seconds gap between recordings, portability of SVHS tapes

Very good reproduction of picture quality. My friends couldn't tell the difference between the cable broacast and the one recorded in the VCR. You do not have to buy SVHS tapes, it can do SVHS on normal VHS cassettes.

I do not know why some people complain about the noise, I did not get any. I have open cabinet and do not get any niose at all. Actually the rewider in the VCR is intellegent, it slows down when it comes to the beginning of the tape to prevent damage to the tape. The other good feature is indexing or marking. Every time you record something it marks something on the tape. You can jump to specific index. So if you record three episode of Friends and you want to watch 2nd episode you can jump at it by saying the VCR to forward to two index.

The problem,
It leaves a gap of 3 seconds between two records. So if you are making a tap of songs from MTV. Between two songs there will be a gap of 3 seconds. So if you start recording, stop it and without doing anything start recording again, there is a gap of 3 seconds. I did not like this at all.

Other problem your recordings are not portable, once I recorded a program and my friend wanted to watch it, he had normal VHS VCR. I recorded the program in SVHS mode. He couldn't play that on his VCR. Finally we ended up watching that program at my place together.

S-VHS, S-Video inputs (including front), solid overall performance

S-VHS ET quality doesn't strike me as much better than recording in SP mode

A good VCR overall, but the selling point of the S-VHS ET may be over-rated. A good value for the relatively low prices at which it can be found.

Good quality low priced SVHS deck

Noisy, not in the video but in the tranpoort noise

I picked this up while my 4500 is in the shop for cleaning. The first thing I noticed is that the deck is audibly noisy. As soon as you insert a tape and play there is a high pitched whine from the transport mechanism. My 4500 did not do this, not even when i first bought it. I figured that maybe the machien just needs to be broken in but I've had it for two weeks now and have recorded about 50 hours of material and the sound is still unbearable.

As for video quality things are about as good as the 4500 but JVC has made some improvements with this picture control and have altered the number of scan speeds. On the 4500 deck there were 5 scan speeds, on this deck there are only 3. But I prefer the 4500 deck not because there are more speeds but because the 2x scan on the 4500 looked flawless, on the 4600 there is a bit of jitter in the picture and snowy lines at the top of the screen.

I plan on taking this unit back and trying to get a 7600 to see if it's better. If not I'm going to hunt down a last years model, the 7500.

Similar Products Used:

JVC HR-S4500

Good picture quality and sound.

Too much noise in the picture when recording in EP mode even with expensive SVHS tapes.
Noisy playback motor!!! How come I can not program to record only Monday-Friday??? Every cheap crappy VCR has that! You can only choose between daily (every day incl. Sat. and Sunday) and weekly. This is annoying!
Also, I don't like it that I explicitly have to turn the "Timer" on if I want it to record a program. Why doesn't it just automatically record the events as others do? Sometimes, you easily forget to turn the Timer mode on, and then when you come home, it didn't record anything!

I am a little disappointed as I expected better quality from SHVS vs. standard VHS. Especially if you record in EP mode, there is a lot of noise. In fact, when recording in EP, there is less noise when recording in VHS mode than in SVHS mode.
In addition, as stated many times before, the playback is very noisy. I guess this would be acceptable for a cheap no-name unit but not in this price class. I guess the only solution is to put it into a cabinet with a glass door, or just turn the TV volume louder.
Also, when playing VHS tapes recorded on my old Sanyo VHS VCR, the sound was very muddy, the picture was ok. But I honestly wonder why I replaced my $99 Sanyo with something twice the price and it is hardly any better, even worse in some respect, e.g. the noisiness.