Quirky But Works
The bottom line with this machine is that it works. We've been able to record OTA and cable broadcasts in standard definition and HD to DVD-R and DVD+RW discs and we copied a VHS tape to DVD-R. All have worked well.
The ATSC (digital) tuner works great but the NTSC (analog) tuner seems a little poor. We only get basic cable so we expected to use the NTSC tuner and had tested the ATSC tuner for OTA signals for a few days. The NTSC output seems a little fuzzy though that might be due to its A/D and D/A conversion since we're using the digital output to our receiver and then component video into our standard definition TV. (The ATSC tuner output was observed through this same connection as well as via HDMI to a 22" LCD TV.) It turns out that we have digital channels often two corresponding to each analog channel in our cable lineup so we're using those channels instead.
One of the first things you notice about this machine is that access to the Setup menu is awkward. You press the Home button on the remote and the Setup menu is selected but not opened. You must press the center (OK) button to open the setup menu. If you want one of the other menus you merely press the left or right cursor button and the menu is selected and opened at once. Why wouldn't the setup menu be visible immediately!
Another awkward thing about the Setup menu is that it contains normal use and setup controls. One normally relegates rarely used functions to a setup menu because they are set-and-forget options right? Sadly in this machine you must navigate past such options to use common functions such as for finalizing or labeling a disc.
Another frustration about the design of the user interface is that common operations for a DVD recorder like finalizing are not the first that appear when you invoke the menus with the Home button and are not accessible from the remote any other way. The principle operations of a device like this should be close at hand and those used less frequently should be accessible but require extra steps to reach.
My final complaint about this machine is that it will begin recording a timer program whether the machine is on or off and if on seemingly regardless of what you may be doing with it at the time. No VCR would start recording when the machine is on. It will complain when it is time to record but will wait for you to turn it off before recording. A DVD recorder should be no different and this was just stupid on JVC's part.
An interesting behavior of this machine which is unlike any DVD player I've ever owned is that it will automatically load and begin playing an inserted DVD just as a VCR would start playing a prerecorded tape when inserted. That's a nice touch.
The channel editing feature is very nice too. When editing which channels the machine should recognize or ignore it uses a picture-in-picture style arrangement to show the channel in the upper left corner so that you can navigate from one channel to the next while deleting or enabling them. Our LCD TV by contrast pretty much requires selecting a channel navigating the menus to the channel editor and then adding or deleting that channel for each channel you want to change. A button on the remote to access the add/delete functionality is probably the simplest approach with analog TV but that is harder to use with digital signals because of the fractional channel numbers.
This machine has a good ATSC tuner records as expected and so deserves four stars for function. If JVC were to upgrade the firmware with a smart frequency of use based menu layout it would deserve five stars.
(By the way we've had no problems with the machine freezing up on us. If yours does exchange it.)More detail ...
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