picture quality, dependability, ease of use, major bang for the $$$.

none

response to nov 25 '99 review by jeff martinson.... you must just have bad luck, or be using worn or poor quality tapes, or a child that squirts cheese whiz in the tape door or something.... mine has performed without a twitch of trouble for 3&1/2 years now; use it for major timer recording, not much for video rentals anymore since dvd took over; was so impressed i sought out another on ebay, and would only accept a 3500; not a 3600,3800,4500 all essentially newer versions of the same unit. finally found a mint 3500, paid less than $100 on ebay shipping included, and it performs exactly like my 1st one, that being "perfectly". i could switch locations of the vcrs from main ent ctr to bedroom and eventually lose track of which one i bought 1st, they perform so identically.

Similar Products Used:

jvc hrs 6200u, jvc hrs 4700u, mits u53

Cheap price

lack of features on VCR

The one thing that I did not know is that once you record on the SVHS setting with a SHVS tape, you can only play it back on a compatible VCR which can decode SVHS tapes. For this reason, I now have to record on non SHVS tapes with SVHS et setting which defeats the purpose of having a SVHS. Also SVHS tapes are way overpriced.

Automatic clock setting

Poor video stability

Well it was two lemons in a row.Both with the same problem,poor video stability.This could easily be seen when viewing dark scenes such as the sinking sequence in Titanic.The night sky would change contrast from black to grey and back continuously with a faint white horizontal bar scrolling from bottom to top.This was not visible on my older JVC but was on both of the new ones.Very disappointed! Other chat pages have identified this as a failure in the Macrovision copy protection ciruitry.Oh well,the people at Powerline replaced it with a Sony SLV-799HF which I am now evaluating.
Thanks for the time...

Similar Products Used:

JVC HR-VP66

This review is for the 3600U, which is the more recent edition of the 3500, I believe. I just received this from www.cameraworld.com today for $229 shipped, which is a very good price. The best price I found at local stores in St. Louis was $256 + tax at a Best Buy.

Unfortunately I received a lemon. My unit's audio features must be damaged or defective. The sound is distorted when playing reprecorded tapes. I tried recording a program on a SVHS tape and the sound was virtually unlistenable. Listening to the TV through the tuner is just fine though. This unit replaces a no frills four head hi-fi unit that involved the same connections, so I know it is installed correctly. It's just a bad unit.

This is the first time I ever bought a component through the mail and it has really soured me on the experience. Cameraworld promises to refund my return my return shipping costs once they confirm that the unit is defective, but it is still a headache. Ugh.

Excellent EP playback, Split-Video Connections.

Grainy Picture, No Sharpness Control, Blochy Reds, Only Average Tracking, No Tracking By Remote, Only Average Sound.

I bought one for my parents over a year ago. They've been recently having a lot of problems with it.

Similar Products Used:

Sony, High End JVC.

Cheap S-VHS

Picture quality is really bad.

I got the HR-S3600U yesterday from Sears and I am going to return it today. I bought this unit to replace an 8 year old Panasonic VCR which is having problems with the Hi-Fi tracks.

To my surprise the old damaged Panasonic has a much better picture (it is not S-VHS) even when using the antenna cable against the JVC connected with a high-quality S-Video. The image quality of the JVC resembles that of very old two heads VCR's.

This is the second time I make the error of buying JVC and its the second time they fail badly (the other was the DVD player). However, this time I have plenty of time to get my money back.

Similar Products Used:

Panasonic, Sony, Sharp, Memorex

SVHS(ET) AV Compulink, price, quality of recording

I think it might of ate a expencive SVHS Tape or damaged it

Never had a problem with it, Right away when I bought my JVC AV-32985 I bought the vcr and some monster cable type s-vhs cable and rca cable. I got a SVHS tape with it as well.

Now I don't do much else but rent movies, and some times record stuff off the tv. I have never had any picure quality problems. I never used the supplied svideo cable, in fact I didnt even know if it came with one. I figured dont take chances, buy good cables now. I wanted a good svhs with out the editing features as I'll never use them. I connect the vcr to the svideo in the tv and rcs only. I noticed that the picture was wicked when I bought a video instead of renting one.

Recording. using a normal vhs tape (well I always buy high end tapes anyhow a gold something. the picture was AS good as the tv. svideo works great but now 1/4 of the tape i have doesnt record well anymore. from the vcr? dunno.

I love the features, (rewind etc) and I cant understand how everyone says that it sucks so hard. my tv has never given me a problem Ither. one thing I noticed though is if I am watching cable on tv and then I switch to the watching the same channel on the vcr the picture on the tv is slightly brighter. (more white say). but when I watch movies it is so clear I'd think it is a DVD.

I am interested in buying a dvd now and I am scared away of buying ANY DVD because of all the reported problems of them.

is it just that you guys are wearing out these units by playing 2 many dvds or what? I am thinking of buying the JVC XV-D721BK DVD player when it becomes availble in july. it has some progressive scan type deal in it. Any comments?
Please drop me a message at darrell@mag-net.com
thanks

Oh yeah. my dads older then crap SVHS Hitachi vcr I feel is still better then mine but it is worth like 1800 (candian)
and it is still running perfect.

Similar Products Used:

Hitachi SVHS (old 8 or so years old)

This unit can record using either regular VHS or SVHS and can achieve pretty good results in both.

Didn't play on rented tape and a small blured line.

This is the first S-VHS that I've ever used. So far, I had it since the summer of '99. No problems so far except for one time it wouldn't play a rented movie. It would just "spit" it back out. Second, there is a blured line that runds horizontally across the screen. I can't notice it unless the scene is panning up towards down and you would star at that same spot. Not to bad, but worth mentioning. I haven't recorded any movies on this machine since I don't care to. So far, I've watched quite a few movies on it and the picture is very clear and sharp. I use the S-VHS cable that was supplied with the unit. I believe the viewer below me who mentioned that the cables that came with the unit sucks. They do, so replace them ASAP! Using the S-VHS cable works but I'm sure if I replace it with some very nice cables they picture would be better. Also, I have friends who comment on the picture being very nice. So, I don't understand as to the difference amongst the players. Possibly bad units "Lemons". There is no way there can be so much variance in quality. I'm just glad mine is working. Let you know when/if it doesn't. Got mine for $200. Considering it is a S-VHS, this is a good price.

Similar Products Used:

Mitsubishi

Cheap

Video quality bad

This vcr is only good to watch rented tapes or prerecorded movies. After recording in SVHS from Directv or DVD the result is lots of video noise, or dot crawl, I can stand it... if anybody is interested in it, I'll sell it for a good price...
If you want quality recording, buy a different brand, this is jvc's super low price svhs and in this case I got what I paid for...cheap vcr...

Similar Products Used:

Mitsu, Panasonic

Cheap price for S-VHS

Picture quality, Noisy

I bought this a few months ago and am regretting it. Granted it says that it's a Super Hi-fi vcr, but there's nothing super about it at all. Except for the price.
Picture quality is very poor. Everytime I watch a movie that has a high contrast scene. Such as a window scenes with blinds. The light coming in from the blinds creates a very irritating glare which is very noticible.
I would return this, but it's a little too late. Be warned that this thing is a piece of S@*#.
3 for value. 0(if I could) for overall rating/satisfaction.

Similar Products Used:

Sony