Very good Picture Quality, Nice features.

Cables provided are garbage.

I purchased this VCR after my old Studio Standard Fisher bit the dust. The price was right, and the S-VHS was attractive. Well, my first impression was one of great disappointment. The picture bled around the edges of things on the screen, and the overall color/contrast accuracy was less than stellar. I came in here to look around to see what others had to say about the unit, and found mixed reviews. I also found others with the same problems I was experiencing... a rotten picture. I was ready to pack the unit and return it, when I decided to try better Cables, namely ones I purchased from Radio Shack for around 10 bucks a pair. These are heavily shielded,and have gold plated ends/connectors. The difference was dramatic! My Piece of #$%^ VCR turned into a gem! What a difference in picture quality. For those of you who are experiencing picture quality problems, take the cables provided with the unit and throw them away! Spend 15/30 dollars on some good cables and prepare to be very pleased. When it is possible to count the hairs on a persons face, see separate blades of grass well defined (Dances With Wolves), and see lines and skin texture clearly, you have a good picture. Accuracy of color is also extremely good.
I can't comment on the remotes features, as I have not had the unit long enough to make a judgement call. This kind of thing is not important to me anyway.... I am primarly concerned with the picture. The bottom line is, I fully intend to keep this unit! I'm quite pleased. Had the company provided good cables in the first place, I would have given it a top rating. (the sound quality is quite good as well)

Similar Products Used:

Fisher,RCA,Panasonic

Excellent value for a less than $200 unit, extremely low video noise.

None really for this price.

This is for the HRS-3600. I have had JVC's best the 9600 for about a year and it is just a hair better than my Toshiba S-VHS VCR. Picture quality has always been very critical to me, I have had S-VHS VCRs and laserdisc players for more than ten years. I bought the 3600 because we have four TVs in the house and the only place I could play the S-VHS tapes was on the best AV setup (the Toshiba is hooked up to the JVC 9600 for dubbing). I didn't feel it was worth over a thousand dollars for two or three more 9600s so I decided to give this machine a try. I first had it hooked to a pitiful excuse for a TV a Panasonic superflat. It has very low resolution, on DSS it makes white foggy areas over the places where it can't reproduce the fine details(the high video frequencies of the input has exceeded the TV's bandwidth). So when I popped in a S-VHS tape it exhibited this phenomenom, but was the TVs fault. I next moved the 3600 to a five year old 27" Hitachi, a much better set. The picture improved of course. Then I did the real test. I hooked it up to my main TV, a one year old 36" Hitachi UXB to do an A-B comparison against the JVC 9600. I inspected three S-VHS recordings in several different kinds of scenes. The difference was definitely there, the 9600 having just a little better detail, but it did not make the 3600 look terrible by any means. The difference was there but not huge, just enough to notice. What surprised me the most was that both machines had virtually no noticeable video noise which shows up as spots of a different color in a field that you know should be another color.

Some people have remarked that the ET mode is over-rated. It is true that the S-VHS picture recorded on a VHS tape is only slightly better than a regular VHS recording. But it is still better and the tape didn't cost you any extra, so it's not a huge improvement, but it is still an improvement and remember we are talking about a $200 machine.

I became an electrical engineer for this very purpose, to continue to bring good products to market that make the average person's life a little nicer. This doesn't always happen because of the corporate execs who would rather sell you bull$h!t and rip you off, but sometimes we sneek one by them.

So if you want the ultimate recorded picture from DSS or
DVD, get the 9600 for about $400. Or settle for slightly less and get two of the 3600s.

I haven't tested the Toshiba W808 S-VHS VCR with ET, but I would suspect that is at least as good as the JVC 3600 and probably a little better. I have owned several Toshiba video products and they are always top-rate. It is about $250.

Similar Products Used:

Toshiba top-of-the-line S-VHS, JVC HRS-9600 S-VHS, Canon's best VHS, some Hitachis.

Price/Value

Super VHS ET Over-rated

Overall very good value for the money. Picture quality is very good and comparable to the Mitsubishi HS-U650 I also use regularly. SVHS picture quality is also very good. Though it doesn't have a flying erase head, edits are very clean and sharp... I can't tell the difference from my Mitsu that does have the FEHs. The Super VHS ET recording option didn't really seem to get me any better resolution on regular VHS tapes, so I pay a few bucks more and get SVHS tapes. Easy to use programming and remote control. When linked to a JVC DV camcorder, editing is a breeze using the remote/pause cable. SVHS (400 line) recordings of DV (500 line) recordings are very good, though you can see the difference.

The only things I would add would be an S-Video input on the front panel, and a jog dial on the remote (comes in handy when editing camcorder tapes).

Similar Products Used:

Mitubishi HS-U650

excellent picture. good price

some difficulties with the remote button placement/controls

the HRS3600 is a good unit for the price. My previous SVHS JVC (HRS4700U) wnet many years before giving any trouble but finally needed to be replaced. The new unit is a cheaper model and does not have all the bells and whistles of the previous unit but does a good job. The picture quality on Super is (as usual) excellent but it cannot be recorded over and over on anything less than top-shelf tapes without wearing the tape out quickly. The controls are a bit confusing but do a pretty good job. The price was very good for a SVHS model. Best of all my previous remote (with the extra buttons and clear cut functions) works on the new unit perfectly - even functions that the new remote does not have (like eject) work fine.

Similar Products Used:

SVHS JVC'S

price and svhs recording ability using s-vhs tapes.

anything recorded in s-vhs et mode

Best vcr I've ever owned despite the fact that I bought it based on sales gobaligook that it records s-vhs quality using regular vhs tapes. Oh, ya--it does record but picture is lousy especially when you record in et mode. Where the vcr does shine is when you record on svhs tapes. The resulting picture is close to laser disc quality. For regular everyday recording I use Maxell HGX-Gold tape over any other brand. It's slightly more expensive than regular vhs tapes but for movies or concerts that are special to me, I go with the Maxell S-VHS tapes-2 for $12 at BestBuy.

Price

Horrible reliablity

I can see why this unit was marked down to $75.00. It's well worth it, if you plan to use this unit for 6 months and then throw it away. I have had mine in the shop twice and it still continues to skip. I have had nothing but trouble from this JVC VCR. I also have a friend who owned one. He solved his problems with his JVC by throwing it into the air, sweeping up the broken pieces, and placing them into the trash.

Similar Products Used:

None

Front A/V SVHS input. One button REC LINK feature.
Auto time set. SVHS-ET records SVHS quality on NEW standard
VHS tapes.

After heavy use, my one button REC LINK has been acting stubborn, I often have to hold it down for 2-3 minutes
before it activates.

Plenty of AV inputs/outputs.

No major complaints, nice recording and playback.

Picked it up pretty cheap, under $200.

Similar Products Used:

None.

picture; tracking; recording quality; convenience; features; smooth, fast high speed rewind

none that i've found so far; seems to be much better than the jvc hrs7200u that i have that listed for 3 times as much in '96, and at least as good as the jvc hrs5800u i have from 1991 (all s-vhs) also have an excellent mits u53 from 91,and this is as good or better than any of them.

picked mine up as last floor model from service merchandise. was clearance/final sale marked $169; bargained with the audio manager down to $75! rating *****

S-VHS,S-VHS ET,PRICE

NONE SO FAR

I like S-VHS picture better than S-VHS ET,has less video noise,but S-VHS ET is still supeior to plain VHS.

Similar Products Used:

SAMSUNG

PRICE,PRICE,PRICE.BEST SVHS VALUE DECK FROM THE LEADER IN SVHS TECHNOLOGY

CAN'T THINK OF ANY!

THIS DECK HAS EVERYTHING YOU NEED AT AN AFFORDIBLE PRICE. YOU DONT EVEN HAVE TO BUY EXPENSIVE SVHS TAPE TO ENJOY THE SVHS BENEFITS. IN THIS DIGITAL AGE YOU SHOULD BUY A SVHS DECK TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF BETTER VIDEO SIGNALS!!!

Similar Products Used:

OWNED 3 DIFF. SVHS DECKS. ALL HIGH END.