JVC DR-MV1SL Combination DVD recorder + HiFi VCR

Merging operationally independent DVD and VHS videocassette recorders/players in one space-saving component, JVC's DR-MV1S is a must for 21st-century media mavens. You get hassle-free, 1-touch dubbing from VHS to DVD or from DVD to VHS tape (where Macrovision copy protection allows) and the ability to record to DVD while playing a VHS tape--or to record to VHS while playing a DVD. With its 2 NTSC tuners, you can even record 2 different programs simultaneously: one to DVD and the other to VHS. For the first time, progressive-scan video outputs extend to both DVD and VHS playback via JVC's VHS Progressive technology, which upconverts VHS material to 480p resolution. Progressive scanning, referred to as 480p for the number of horizontal lines that compose the video image, creates a picture using twice the scan lines of a conventional DVD or VHS picture, giving you higher resolution and sharper images while eliminating nearly all motion artifacts.
With its front-panel inputs and multiformat recording and playback, the DR-MV1S is perfect for archiving home videos. For DVD recording, the unit can record to DVD-RAM, DVD-R, or to video-mode DVD-RW, letting you pick the format that's best-suited to a given application. As a player, it handles everything from VHS and multiple DVD formats (including DVD+R/+RW) to VCD/SVCD to recordable CDs filled with MP3 music files and JPEG digital images. And, to simplify advance recordings, the unit comes with VCR Plus+ and a 1-month, 8-event scheduler.
DVD-R is like a higher-capacity CD-R--and almost as widely playable. DVD-RW is rewriteable up to 1,000 times, and--like DVD-R--offers the widest compatibility among existing DVD players and computer drives. Rewriteable discs are superb for time shifting your TV viewing, since you can use the same disc week in and week out. DVD-RAM (DVD random-access memory) is a rewriteable format that uses magneto-optical (MO) technology to offer superb access times, making it great for on-disc non-linear editing. The DR-MV1S lets you fast-forward, rewind, and play a DVD-RAM disc even as you're still recording a program in progress.
Blank DVD media comes in 2 capacities: single-sided, 4.7 GB (holding about 17 times as much as a CD and around 2 hours of high-quality audio and video) and double-sided, 9.4 GB.
The DR-MV1S offers several technical features to boost image quality, including JVC's Super MPEG encode pre-processor, a 3-step process that takes place before MPEG-2 encoding of a given input signal. A time-base corrector eliminates jitter, a frame synchronizer provides frame normalization, and motion-active noise reduction provides a clearer image than do conventional frame-noise reduction techniques (such as 3D noise reduction).
Super MPEG Post-Processor enhances playback image quality through block noise-reduction circuitry. Color DigiPure provides 3D noise reduction along with color and detail enhancement, and Hadamard noise reduction eliminates so-called mosquito noise.
Conveniences include live memory, which allows fast forwarding, rewinding, and slow replay even during recording (DVD-RAM only), and DVD Navigation, which stores information for around 1,300 recorded programs. Navigation data includes disc number, title, and other details. Load a disc, and DVD Navigation will display a thumbnail of recorded programs to help you easily identify content. The thumbnail image can be animated with sound when selected with the cursor.
Other DVD features include quick skip for skipping 30 seconds forward, instant/one-touch replay that replays the last 7 seconds of a given program, natural reverse playback, and a multi-brand remote control.
Connections include an IEEE to i.LINK (DV) input for direct digital connection with a compatible camcorder; front and rear S-Video and composite-video inputs with accompanying stereo analog audio inputs; video outputs for component-video, S-Video, and composite-video; and one each optical and coaxial digital-audio outputs for Dolby Digital/DTS 5.1-channel passthrough to a multichannel audio/video receiver and speaker system.

Product Description
DRMV1S DVD Unit with recording capability with VHS Progressive, Dual Tuner Recording Capabilty ( Silver )

Product Description
The A/V world needs more solutions like JVC's DR-MV1SL combo deck. This single component lets you watch and record both DVDs and VHS tapes! It combines DVD recording, DVD playback (including progressive scan for your HDTV-compatible TV), plus all the functions of a standard VCR. Whether you want to record your favorite sitcoms or archive precious home movies, the DR-MV1SL is a feature-packed video recording "toolbox" with everything you need. JVC designed the DR-MV1SL to be both super-versatile and super-easy to use. Auto clock and channel set make initial setup goof-proof. You get cool conveniences, like one-touch dubbing from VHS to DVD, or DVD to VHS. You can even watch a DVD while the VHS deck records a TV show. And this is the first dual-format recorder we've seen with dual TV tuners -- you can simultaneously record a program to DVD off one channel while recording another to VHS off a different channel! The DR-MV1SL can control many brands of cable boxes and satellite receivers using an optional "Cable Eye" controller (a mail-in certificate for a free Cable Eye is included in the box).
Amazon.com Product Description

JVC DR-MV1SL Combination DVD recorder + HiFi VCR

Test Report

STUCK in the "LOADING ZONE", April 24, 200 5Reviewer: Rod Serling (DISNEYLAND) - My JVC mv1su gave me trouble right out of the box. Initially, after plugging it in and turning it on I received the "HELLO" greeting on the display. It accepted both a VHS tape and a DVD-R disc I tried the one touch dubbing function but nothing happened, as if the button was just a prop for looks only and non functional, absolutely nothing. I was able to play the vhs tape but I couldn't get it recorded. I tried switching back and forth between DVD and VCR, nothing helped. When I tried to take the DVD out the tray wouldn't open and that was when I entered the "LOADING ZONE". Brand spanking new and I can't do anything with it because it is stuck in the "LOADING ZONE" blue lights flashing and the display flashing "LOADING". Unable to even turn the power off, much less record anything, I unplugged it. When I plugged it back in it was still stuck in the "LOADING ZONE". I don't care how many tuners the unit has that doesn't mean anything when even the most basic functions aren't operable.



Be Afraid -- BE VERY AFRAID!, April 18, 2005 Reviewer: Randy S. Roth (APO, AP USA) -
This machine just doesn't work! The first unit we bought jammed up and froze the very first time we tried loading a VHS tape to watch! We kept getting the word "loading" flashing in the front panel, and no other action. The whole thing reminded me of a computer crash! Unplugging the unit and plugging it back in did no good, so we took the unit back to where we bought it. The sales representative was able to get my tape out for me, then insisted I send the unit into the JVC service center for repair and upgrade. I reminded him that this is a brand-new machine on which we just spent $379.00 the day before! I was told, "that is what warranties are for." To make a long story short, I went to the store manager who replaced the defective unit with another brand-spanking new JVC DRMV1S. However, after less than a week of use, the word "loading" flashed on the front panel of the new unit while everything else froze up, locking in another of my tapes and a half-recorded DVD. I took the equipment back, and was offered yet another JVC DRMV1S as a replacement by the store manager. Instead, I got our money back, then turned around and bought the Panasonic DMR-E75V. Since then, I have been able to put all our home movies on DVD without a single hitch, glitch, problem or concern -- the picture and sound quality resulting from that Panasonic are GREAT! The Panasonic was also able to erase the portion of the DVD that the JVC messed up, so I was able to use the rest of that disc for dubbing!

I went back to the store 2 weeks after the last incident and saw they had a whole pallet full of JVC DRMV1S on sale for $99.00 each. I wondered at the time how many people will be made angry even at that price! Over a week later, pratically all the units were still sitting on that pallet! Evidently, word-of-mouth got out on this loser and folks are staying away in droves. I suggest you do the same!

I went to the JVC website and the company knows this "loading" freeze problem exists. Even on their site, they suggest returning your unit to one of their service centers for repair and upgrade. Why would anyone expect a customer to buy something brand new, then expect them to send it somewhere else to be fixed before they can use it? Why doesn't JVC just recall this garbage and apologize to their customers? I also now wonder why stores still carry it based on the reviews here.

Due to this incident, and because of problems other folks and I have had with previous JVC products in the past, I intend to never buy JVC again. Wish I could give this item zero stars.


GOOD FOR A SHORT TIME ONLY, April 12, 2005 Reviewer: wbora - See all my reviewsI found that dubbing my old home movies to DVDs using the JVC DR-MV1S rather confusing but produced good results. Unfortunately, I no longer can play the DVDs I created on this unit. It has gone into a constant state of initialization where the unit display flashes 'LOADING' over and over. This is the second unit I have had as I had to return the first one because it would not eject the VCR tape without unplugging and replugging the electricity to the unit. Before going into a constant state of initialization, the second one also developed a high pitch noise when playing DVDs and then it would only play some of a DVD before the picture would become garbled. Essentially, I can't get it fixed and I've only had it for 9 months so I'm out $450. I recommend Amazon.com not carry the JVC DR-MV1S. In any case, I recommend strongly against buying the JVC DR-MV1S. I have had 2 and both failed to operate.




For those curious about all the features, November 9, 2004 Reviewer: C. Fernandes (Columbia, MD United States) - 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 (No RCA 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!




Great Features - Many Problems, September 13, 2004 Reviewer: Ls "LS" (Cincinnati) - This unit has many great features. The problem is that there are way too many problems with the VCR. First unit, a VCR tape got stuck within one month. Took unit to dealer. Unit was repaired. Within 2 weeks another VCR tape got stuck. Dealer replace the unit with a new one. Within one month a VCR tape got stuck. I was told by the dealer, that 3 other people had similar problems with their units. Appears that this is way to common



Great Ideas, Good Implementation, Poor Quality, October 18, 2004 Reviewer: Tom Harper "berkeleyfoo" (Berkeley, California USA) - Ok, so I bought this unit to have a combo unit that could playback and record vhs tapes and dvds. The dubbing stuff is a bonus but I don't use it.

First, in my testing, the DVD recording works great- you can write to almost any format and mastering into DVD format is simple and fast. I would argue that the DVD recording is better than the VHS. Supposedly you can also record DV from your camera. There is even a feature to record a DVD and watch and earlier part of what you are recording simultaneously.

The unit is a little difficult to figure out- you definitely need to read the manual before you try to do anything.

Now for the bad. After owning the unit for several months, it suddenly started stopping in the middle of dvd playback, loading, or recording, and started flashing "loading". It will eventually turn itself off, or you have to unplug the unit, plug it back in (it will still flash "loading" for a minute or so) and let it shut itelf off.

I haven't tried to fix it yet but i have found the best solution so far is just turn the unit off completely and let it rest, and it will start working normally again (for awhile).

Anyhow the fact that it broke is what got it 3 stars instead of 5. If JVC helps fix it I might rate this a 4, otherwise a 0! We will see...



Top notch and easy to use, August 19, 2004Reviewer:Charles Marvin - I've owned the JVC DRMV1S for about a month. Even at SP (2-hour mode), the results are indistinguishable from the source material (recorded from DirecTV SAT receiver). I have already created about 15 DVD-R's to archive TV shows that I'm interested in saving from VHS. I have also created 3 DVD-Rs from my Sony TRV-315 digital camcorder.

Overall, I would give JVC an "A" for this unit. Results are of very good quality.


JVC...Thank you! This is great!, August 19, 2004Reviewer:Todd Michaels (Seattle, WA) - The JVC DRMV1S includes a HiFi Stereo VHS VCR and a DVD Recorder, both sides have their own tuner so that you can record two different television shows at the same time. It was very easy to transfer my old VHS tapes to DVD and one of the coolest things is that this unit has a single progressive component output for both the VCR and DVD...no more switching inputs,on my TV,back and forth, which always leads to family confusion.

Highlights:

Dubs VHS to DVD and vice versa
Excellent progressive DVD Player
Very responsive VCR transport

Of course, I'm nowhere near finished dubbing my prized VHS collection to DVD, but I've made a good dent in the project. I'm very happy that JVC has introduced this product, which not only makes tape-to-DVD copies and records broadcast TV, but it also provides a top-notch VCR and progressive DVD player in the bargain. I'm sold!

JVC DR-MV1SL Combination DVD recorder + HiFi VCR

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