JVC DRMV1

JVC DRMV1 - The only problem with this unit is this overheating issue which can seriously interrupt your use of the unit. Frankly, if I knew the extent of this problem at first, I would NEVER have purchased it. I am into my 6th month with the unit and will be calling JVC on Monday to discuss getting a new unit. I don't necessarily mind the unit being serviced to fix the problem, I just don't want this to be a recurring issue. I want the problem fixed permanently. Because of this problem, I am truly very disappointed in JVC and its apparent lack of product testing and/or quality control.

In my opinion this was too quick to the market - The JVC DRM-V1 had faults with overheating, with disks getting hot when reading or writing. The overheating eventually results in a "LOADING" message which shuts the machine down causing corruption to disks currently being written to. A recording session of no more than 40 minutes caused this on five occasions. My retailer reported several units being sent back with this fault. I had the unit repaired (a one-off fix they promised) and the same fault came back days later. The on-screen menu system appears clumsy to me and I found navigation to the function I required was a bit hit and miss. The user guide instructions for recording to DVD have printing errors (you get nowhere if you follow them).

On the positive side, the tape player has good image quality and dubbing from tape to DVD (when permitted) was no problem. The hand control is very easy to use, with easy to see button text and good sized buttons (unlike the Toshiba D-VR3 I have now). If you like being bathed in a bright blue neon light then you'll like this unit.

I hope they get the overheating and user guide problem fixed, because the features make this a worthy purchase (otherwise, I would have said YES to recommend to a friend).