Not bad, not bad at all (JVC XV 523)

Member Name: Gordon Woodbine

Product:	JVC XV 523
Date:	28/06/02 (352 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: good picture quality, decent remote control

Disadvantages: prone to skipping

I bought this player about a year and a half ago for 200 pounds after buying a cheap player which turned out to be useless. I'd seen a good review of the player in a magazine, it was in my budget and available in my local Dixons, so it seemed like a good purchase and indeed for the most part it has been.

I've found the picture quality to be excellent, noticably better than players in the 150 pound range. I've always noticed problems with dark sections of the screen on the cheaper players, but this JVC shows no sign of that. It also feels like quite a sturdy piece of kit, although I'm quite kind to my equipment so I haven't really put this sturdiness to the test.

Sound quality has been good, although for the most part I've just run it through my hi-fi speakers, as being a skint student I can't really afford a nice 5.1 set up.

The remote control for the machine is pretty decent too, the shape fitting nicely into the hand. The only problem I've had with it is that to operate some of the controls you need to press two buttons at once, which can be an inconvenience.

For those who care, the machine is not multi-region out of the box, and I have yet to see a fix to make it multi-region.

Now, the only real problem that I've had with the machine has been a slight over-sensitivity to dirt or scratches on the disks. On more than one occassion I've had to stop the playback of a movie as it's been skipping and clean the disk. Mostly this solves the problem, although I've had one or two disks where the skipping persisted.

Nowadays I think you can pick up a much better player if you have 200 pounds to play with, and the new slimline JVC and Sony models do make my mouth water. However, I have not been tempted to upgrade my machine, and I can't see I will need to any time in the near future.

For anyone considering buying this player I can recommend it to you as a decent
, reliable machine.

Summary: