JVC DRMV1S Progressive-Scan DVD Player/Recorder and VCR Combo , Silver
For those curious about all the features
What caught my eye about the JVC DR-MV1SL was that it boasted VHS playback in progressive mode! There are S-VHS VCR players that will playback an S-VHS tape in S-VHS mode (400 lines of resolution). But these VCRs will play regular VHS tapes like any ordinary VCR player, with just 230 lines of resolution. When you have an HDTV (mine is the 50\\" Samsung DLP HDTV), the lower resolution VHS tapes really start to look bad.  So, coming back to the DR-MV1SL, the specs say it can play a regular VHS tape in progessive mode, which is 480 lines progressively scanned (not interlaced, like S-VHS or regular VHS). This should account for a really good picture. And that was my primary reason for buying this DVD/VCR combo. Here's some very useful stuff I found out:    1) The unit does indeed play a VHS tape in 480 progressive mode. But the quality was not always much better. The picture was somewhat sharper, and more full of color. But I also started to notice a lot more jagged lines. In defense of this unit, there's really only so much you can do with a lower quality signal. This unit tries its best to upgrade that signal - but the end result was not so spectacular. A little better, but not much.    2) Limited use of dubbing VHS tapes due to copyright protection. You were probably aware that this unit would not dubb VHS tapes onto DVD if the tape had a copyright signal on it. But did you know that ALL Disney and Pixar tapes are copyright protected? My wife has almost a 100 of these Disney animation tapes and I thought I'd pick our favorite ones to backup onto DVD. Surprise, surprise, not ONE could be copied. Even the old Disney tapes like Cinderella, Lion King, etc. - none of them could be copied.    3) But if you're lucky enough to find a tape that you can copy onto DVD, the results are very good. I managed to find 5 VHS movies that I could copy onto DVD (Mission Impossible, Jumanji, etc.). 4 of them came out perfect, just 1 of them had a 3 second skip in the middle of the movie. But that VHS tape was very old and poor quality.     4) Recording TV programs onto DVD is nice and easy. The resulting picture also looks quite nice, sometimes even better than the original TV broadcast signal.     5) The unit will only record on DVD -R, -RW and -RAM formats. It won't record on any of the +s (I tried a DVD +R and it didn't work). Also, the recording speed of the discs doesn't seem to matter (nothing is mentioned about disc speed in the manual). I tried a 4x and an 8x - no difference in terms of recording time and end quality. Also, the unit will playback almost ALL the formats (I tried a recorded DVD +R and it worked fine).     There were few more minor details (like the blue light, which can be totally dimmed, the remote which can get confusing since the buttons double up for the VCR and DVD - but this is probably true of all VCR/DVD combos and you eventually get used to it). But I figured the points I mentioned above were the most important and most useful (at least to me) and they were not really mentioned clearly anywhere else.     Summarizing: Picture quality is great with the DVD, VHS tapes look a little better using the progressive output. Copyright protection of tapes (like with Disney) make it impossible to backup tapes onto DVD.     Overall, I think this is a very nice unit with lot of packed features in it. However, I returned mine back to BestBuy primarily because I couldn't backup my Disney collection, because VHS playback was only a little better, and because the price I paid was a little too much (around 400). If this ever went on sale for less than $300, I'd seriously consider buying it and keeping it.    UPDATE (11/17/04):    I still think this unit is very nice and I'm sticking to my 4 star rating. However there were some things I forgot to mention before and some new information about OTHER products (from JVC) that I think would be useful to those shopping around.    1) I forgot to mention that NO AV cables come with this unit (NoRCA cables, no S-Video cables). Only 3 (that's right, three) RF-cables and an RF splitter. At first I thought this was a mistake, but then I checked the manual and it confirms the same.  I thought that that was bad of JVC. This unit is noted for its progressive output - they should have at least included one component video cable!    2) JVC also has another new model out right now - the DR-MX1S which is basically this unit (DR-MV1S) + an 80GB hard drive. So essentially, it's a 3 in 1 - sounds very nice. Depending on where you look, the MSRP of the DR-MX1S varies - the JVC website has the MSRP at $999, Amazon has it at $1099 and I've seen some other websites that list it as high as $1299. Of course, MSRP doesn't matter that much as long as you can get a good price. Amazon currently has it listed for a fairly competitive price of $699. I suspect it'll go lower in time.  I would love to try out the DR-MX1S since I think a hard drive is best for daily recordings of TV shows. But I'm waiting for it to be available at my local store first.    3) JVC also has an OLDER model - the HR-XVC37U that supposedly does the SAME thing as this unit (the DR-MV1S) in that it can display VHS in progressive mode! It's also a DVD/VCR combo like this unit, but it's also a lot less expensive since it does not have the capability of a DVD recorder. Amazon has it listed as the HRXVC37U, in case you want to search for it here.    So, there ARE other options. An older, less expensive JVC model (without DVD recording capability) or a newer, more expensive JVC model (with an added hard drive). Just thought some might find this information useful. Happy shopping!