JVC DR-MX1S DVD Player/Recorder, Hi-Fi VCR, and Hard Disk Recorder
Good performance, poor user interface
Quick Summary: Excellent performance; sub-average user interface and manual resulting in steep learning curve; questions about future viability.    I have used this unit for about 5 months now, so feel competent to comment on its strengths and weaknesses. This unit does what it sets out to do very well. It combines record and play capabilities for VHS tape, DVD, and Hard disk in one compact stylish unit. It also has very flexible dubbing capability: VHS / HD / DVD in any to / from combination. Pretty impressive - 5 stars here. Video and audio are very good to excellent. I have no problems with the quality of the results - 5 stars here, too.      The problems come with the on-screen user interface and the user manual, which combine to produce a steep learning curve. I have owned many JVC components in the past, and unfortunately these areas have not improved over the years. Navigation through the multilevel menus is cumbersome and not only non-intuitive, but in places counterintuitive. For example, when you finally figure out how to get to the menu where you can stop an in-progress recording, \\"Cancel\\" means Yes, stop the recording. But in most other cases \\"Cancel\\" means No, don't do the action in question. Another example: After dubbing material from hard disk to DVD you need to \\"finalize\\" the DVD disk to make it playable. You would think that this action would be accessible from the \\"Dubbing\\" menu. It's not. Each time, you have to go to the \\"Setup\\" menu, which is normally used for the initial setup of the video tuners and default values of record/playback preferences. Another thing I find cumbersome is the \\"action priority\\" organization of the menus. You cannot choose an item, then choose what you wish to do with it. For example, If you choose the \\"Navigation\\" button on the remote to view a list of what you have recorded on HD and you see that several of them are no longer of interest and can be deleted, you have to back out step by step from the \\"Navigation\\" set ofmenus, then press the \\"Edit\\" button to first choose an action (delete) then get the same list of programs to choose the ones to delete. Two stars for the on-screen interface.    The user manual also gets 2 stars. The table of contents (buried 5 pages in) is marginally adequate for locating major topics. For finding details the one-page index in the back is just plain pitiful, especially given how easy it is to generate a comprehensive one with index-generating software that I first used 20 years ago and is undoubtedly much more powerful today. Once you find the right topic the instructions themselves in the user manual are very (sometimes overly) detailed. For example, every key press of the up/down/right/left arrow keys to navigate to a selection on the screen is commonly given. On the other hand, you are often required to flip back and forth to steps referred to in other sections of the manual to complete a simple action. Some sections are just plain poorly written and confusing. I still don't know what they are talking about in the section on \\"Live Memory Playback\\" (watching the beginning of a program while later portions of it are still being recorded) although I figured out how to do it on my own.    Another consideration is the future viability of this relatively expensive device.  Although it has separate tuners for VHS and Hard Disc/DVD modes, neither tuner can receive HD-TV signals or even digital cable signals. You are restricted to recording analog channels or digital channels fed from a separate digital tuner. A relatively minor related limitation is that the \\"Universal\\" remote control provided does not control many of the functions (most importantly aspect ratio) of my Panasonic HD TV.