Great Value Quality XV-S40BK

Author's Rating:

Pros: Ease of use, Remote control, Quality design

Cons: Instruction manual in English only

The Bottom Line: 
A lot of features, great quality, solid performance and that warm fuzzy feeling that your money was not wasted.

Author's Review
The model of this player is XV-S40BK

I wasn't going for this one but the salesperson recommended it. I was going to get a cheaper JVC model. This is my first DVD player and I did research it a little bit, but I was basically at the mercy of the sales guy.

After connecting it as recommended by the manual, I popped in a movie and tried it out. Nothing came up on the screen, it was like I hadn't plugged it at all. Before panicking I read the troubleshooting section. All it said was that I didn't connect it properly. Well I did. What it didn't tell me was to make sure my TV was set to receive the video input from the connection that I was on. Of course this is probably the responsibility of the TV manufacturer but it could have at least mentioned it in the manual. After switching the video input of my TV using the TV's remote, the movie came up on the screen. Again I'm a beginner when it comes to DVD players.

The remote is universal has a button for everything, as well as movie features such as angle, zoom, play mode, sound mode, title (shows the text at the bottom of the screen when the volume is on mute) and whatever else DVD movies are capable of.

Fast forward is between 2X to 60X which is great. There is slow motion frame by frame movement also. The unit never actually turns itself off, it only goes on stand by mode, which I found weird. I guess you have a to spend a few extra pennies per year on your utility bill (hehe).

The construction is very solid. It actually has my big cable box and my VCR stacked on the top of it.

The instruction manual was only available in English which doesn't bother me because that is my first language, but it was unusual. For beginners like me it didn't really provide any introduction to DVD players, such as the little bit of info that I didn't know about how you don't need a coaxial cable to send the video signal to the TV. The only thing you need are the red/yellow/white video and audio cables that come in the box. Too bad they don't provide the S-Video cable, which my TV set accepts. I have to buy that separately. The S-Video cable is not required but supposedly improves the image quality.