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JVC XV-D723GD Progressive-Scan DVD Player (Gold)

JVC XV-D723GD Progressive-Scan DVD Player (Gold)

List Price: $799.95
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Great while it worked...
Review: I bought my Mitsubishi Widescreen TV in 1999. I had a regular Sony dvd player for the next 2 years. I decided to go progressive in 2001 and purchased this unit. It was great and had the best picture ever. The full screens were adjusted to be full screen with black bars on the side which didnt bother me, and it kept it progressive. One drawback was the sound button, I believe its the VFP or Audio or something like that. Sometimes you get the movie with no sound or just music, so you have to go and manually set it to Theatre, Action or Cinema sound setting. That is a little annoying, since you figured you last set it so it should stay.

The biggest problem is after a couple of years, with hardly any use at all, it stops playing after about 30 minutes like a previous reviewer mentioned. It starts garbaging and locking up, until it finally just freezes still and theres nothing you can do but shut it off. It looks to me like some kind of overheating problem. I really would like to get this fixed, but Im sure it might not even be worth the price. I paid $299 at the time for this in 2001. It is probably worth $80 nowadays if that. But I have a new Pioneer DVD player now and it is great with all the latest DVDs, except the older ones. The fullscreen ones end up getting 'stretched' and you cant change the settings to correct that. Even some widescreen ones in 2.35:1 get stretched, so you can imagine how ugly it looks, but new DVDs do look awesome.

On the JVC, it would do all the adjusting for you perfectly. So Im stuck on whether I should get it fixed, and I also hear about the bad JVC customer service.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Excellent DVD for 16X9
Review: I own 3 DVD players. A Toshiba SD-3109, a Pioneer DV-434 and this JVC XV-D723GD. This is by far the most functional DVD I've ever own. I agree with all the words spoken of by the Editor's Review. I can add a little more input by saying that I have the JVC XV-D723GD on my 1999 model Elite (Pioneer) 65" Widescreen High Definition TV. The JVC DVD player replaced my Toshiba.

The audio is better than the Toshiba. I am a audiophile however, my wife and mother are not who also noticed a difference as they mentioned it first to me before I commented on it. I liked the five analog connections for the audio in the back and the player translated the audio with theater like fidelity. I have a 5 speaker setup (2 front, 2 rear, 1 center) but no subwoofer attached to a pretty decent Onkyo Receiver you can find today for around $.... My Toshiba wasn't bad with the audio setup, but I had to disperse the sound in all five speaker to get the clarity I wanted in contrast with a true 5 speaker setup. On the JVC, I just needed to set the speakers in the menu in expert mode (easier than you think and explained in the manual) and the focus of the Center speaker meshing with the front & rear speakers became as good as if I was sitting in a new AMC Theater. One thing I did not like is that if I put in a pair of head phones to my receiver, the player didn't adjust to "headphones" but stayed on a 5 speaker setup. This made voices and sound to distant and indiscernible. I had to stop the DVD, go to setup and change audio to 2 speakers, then restart with scene selection on the DVD movie.

The Video quality are the best colors I've seen on DVD. In fact, with "progressive scan" on (you must use the three Composite Video Cables *not* provided in the retail box on a Widescreen TV to get "progressive scan"), the picture got rid of all the "jaggies" (round shapes that are not smooth looking on the screen). For instance, the movie Mulan shows many "jaggies" clearly seen on many of the characters shoulders and heads when "progressive scan" is not used. The JVC XV-D723GD removed these to be not visible nearly all the time. The fidelity is so clear, it took me several hours to get used to the blacks or shaded scene shots. It took the clarity of this JVC DVD player to notice that some movies are more gray scaled in black. Mulan for instanced is much more shaded in it's blacks than Tarzan (Disney). I thought it was foggy at first, but it became apparent that it only had this affect on me on the more faded black and shaded movies. A good contrast on this point for me to tests this was with the movie "X men" (excellent brilliant blacks and shades) and the movie "Finding Forrester" (very gray scaled blacks and shades). After putting in over 20 different types of DVDs it became apparent that it pick up the Blacks "more true" than the Toshiba did. The only drawback I have not like on the JVC XV-D723GD is that the player takes over my Elite Widescreen TV. After setting the control of the DVD menu to see a "16X9 auto" display, it would play a "standard format" or 1:33 to only show up in "Full" mode on my TV. For those without experience with a 16X9 TV, this means people and objects on the screen become a little oval due to the wider screen. We remedy this by changing the TV mode to "Natural Wide" however the DVD would lock me out from doing this task on my Widescreen TV. I simply set the DVD control panel to see a 16X9 normal (or fixed) Display and the standard format or 1:33 DVD movies would play with black bars on both horizontal sides instead of top and bottom. No biggie to me on a 65" widescreen, but it may bother some for various reasons which is why I am pointed it out.

The remote is very well thought out in "terminology", colors and grip, however, it is small. On my Toshiba DVD, the buttons were far enough apart with infrequent buttons hidden in a slider compartment. This meant that in a dark room, I could just grab the controller and easily learned to feel my way to the "pause", "enter", "play", "next" "menu" or "stop" buttons. The remote on the JVC player is not like that at all. I don't believe I can master this remote in the dark, but will have to turn on the lights most times when trying those task. On a good note, the "round speed dial" is big enough to grab the remote quickly in order to back track (for those, "what did he say moments" in a movie) simply by turning the dial. This feature will act like a VCR's forward or backtrack.

OK then, to rap up, everything worked for me out of the box and I am thoroughly delighted with this product. I can live with the minor flaws that are happening with my personal home audio/video system as they really don't get in my way enough to bring much frustration to me.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Excellent DVD for 16X9
Review: I own 3 DVD players. A Toshiba SD-3109, a Pioneer DV-434 and this JVC XV-D723GD. This is by far the most functional DVD I've ever own. I agree with all the words spoken of by the Editor's Review. I can add a little more input by saying that I have the JVC XV-D723GD on my 1999 model Elite (Pioneer) 65" Widescreen High Definition TV. The JVC DVD player replaced my Toshiba.

The audio is better than the Toshiba. I am a audiophile however, my wife and mother are not who also noticed a difference as they mentioned it first to me before I commented on it. I liked the five analog connections for the audio in the back and the player translated the audio with theater like fidelity. I have a 5 speaker setup (2 front, 2 rear, 1 center) but no subwoofer attached to a pretty decent Onkyo Receiver you can find today for around $.... My Toshiba wasn't bad with the audio setup, but I had to disperse the sound in all five speaker to get the clarity I wanted in contrast with a true 5 speaker setup. On the JVC, I just needed to set the speakers in the menu in expert mode (easier than you think and explained in the manual) and the focus of the Center speaker meshing with the front & rear speakers became as good as if I was sitting in a new AMC Theater. One thing I did not like is that if I put in a pair of head phones to my receiver, the player didn't adjust to "headphones" but stayed on a 5 speaker setup. This made voices and sound to distant and indiscernible. I had to stop the DVD, go to setup and change audio to 2 speakers, then restart with scene selection on the DVD movie.

The Video quality are the best colors I've seen on DVD. In fact, with "progressive scan" on (you must use the three Composite Video Cables *not* provided in the retail box on a Widescreen TV to get "progressive scan"), the picture got rid of all the "jaggies" (round shapes that are not smooth looking on the screen). For instance, the movie Mulan shows many "jaggies" clearly seen on many of the characters shoulders and heads when "progressive scan" is not used. The JVC XV-D723GD removed these to be not visible nearly all the time. The fidelity is so clear, it took me several hours to get used to the blacks or shaded scene shots. It took the clarity of this JVC DVD player to notice that some movies are more gray scaled in black. Mulan for instanced is much more shaded in it's blacks than Tarzan (Disney). I thought it was foggy at first, but it became apparent that it only had this affect on me on the more faded black and shaded movies. A good contrast on this point for me to tests this was with the movie "X men" (excellent brilliant blacks and shades) and the movie "Finding Forrester" (very gray scaled blacks and shades). After putting in over 20 different types of DVDs it became apparent that it pick up the Blacks "more true" than the Toshiba did. The only drawback I have not like on the JVC XV-D723GD is that the player takes over my Elite Widescreen TV. After setting the control of the DVD menu to see a "16X9 auto" display, it would play a "standard format" or 1:33 to only show up in "Full" mode on my TV. For those without experience with a 16X9 TV, this means people and objects on the screen become a little oval due to the wider screen. We remedy this by changing the TV mode to "Natural Wide" however the DVD would lock me out from doing this task on my Widescreen TV. I simply set the DVD control panel to see a 16X9 normal (or fixed) Display and the standard format or 1:33 DVD movies would play with black bars on both horizontal sides instead of top and bottom. No biggie to me on a 65" widescreen, but it may bother some for various reasons which is why I am pointed it out.

The remote is very well thought out in "terminology", colors and grip, however, it is small. On my Toshiba DVD, the buttons were far enough apart with infrequent buttons hidden in a slider compartment. This meant that in a dark room, I could just grab the controller and easily learned to feel my way to the "pause", "enter", "play", "next" "menu" or "stop" buttons. The remote on the JVC player is not like that at all. I don't believe I can master this remote in the dark, but will have to turn on the lights most times when trying those task. On a good note, the "round speed dial" is big enough to grab the remote quickly in order to back track (for those, "what did he say moments" in a movie) simply by turning the dial. This feature will act like a VCR's forward or backtrack.

OK then, to rap up, everything worked for me out of the box and I am thoroughly delighted with this product. I can live with the minor flaws that are happening with my personal home audio/video system as they really don't get in my way enough to bring much frustration to me.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: JVC review
Review: I've been using this unit after purchasing it from a Best Buy store for 200.00(customer return) and am pleased with both the picture quality(S-VHS output only) and the audio quality-optical inputs for surround and Audioquest Topaz for 5.1 outputs into a Sony DA 333 ES reciever w/Audio Physic Virgo(mains) and Alesis studio monitors for center and surrounds. I purchased Bela Fleck's 'Planet" DVD-audio and was impressed with the spatial depth and breadth of the recording. Individual breaths of the performers could be heard and the noise floor was well below the perception of my feeble hearing. If anyone has any recommendations to some quality disks, please inform...

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Laser went out on mine . . . customer service is HORRIBLE!!!
Review: nice player for about 3 months then dvd's stopped playing. player was under parts warranty but just out of labor - so brand new laser cost me (for) labor and the part (...) was jvc's responsibility. they've had it now for 2 weeks, and no sign of getting it back soon. their customer support is terrible. i've been transferred and referred to 3 different locations, all of which knew absolutely nothing about the problem. i finally got to a customer service representative manager who is supposedly rushing the player through service. my daughter is about to have a cow since she can't watch her shrek dvd . . .

i have no idea about other companies (sony, panasonic, toshiba, etc.) customer support, but i should've waited until outlaw audio releases their dvd player (the best customer service in the business!)

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Laser went out on mine . . . customer service is HORRIBLE!!!
Review: nice player for about 3 months then dvd's stopped playing. player was under parts warranty but just out of labor - so brand new laser cost me (for) labor and the part (...) was jvc's responsibility. they've had it now for 2 weeks, and no sign of getting it back soon. their customer support is terrible. i've been transferred and referred to 3 different locations, all of which knew absolutely nothing about the problem. i finally got to a customer service representative manager who is supposedly rushing the player through service. my daughter is about to have a cow since she can't watch her shrek dvd . . .

i have no idea about other companies (sony, panasonic, toshiba, etc.) customer support, but i should've waited until outlaw audio releases their dvd player (the best customer service in the business!)

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: great performance(
Review: The first thing that i woul like to say about jvc is that you could pay twice or maybe more for this sound this good ,I have compare this dvd audio with other much more expensieve dvdaudios and i can say the the sound is as crisp and acurrate as the other system that i compared to.
the front panell is tastefully minimal,with only a power button and flip-up door hiding wchich give a very elegant look.

i highly recommend this product

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: great performance(
Review: The first thing that i woul like to say about jvc is that you could pay twice or maybe more for this sound this good ,I have compare this dvd audio with other much more expensieve dvdaudios and i can say the the sound is as crisp and acurrate as the other system that i compared to.
the front panell is tastefully minimal,with only a power button and flip-up door hiding wchich give a very elegant look.

i highly recommend this product

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Perfect for any DVD experience
Review: This is the perfect model for people who wants the most of their DVD player. It has built in Decoder for AC3, DTS and DVD Audio. You dont need any separate decoder it handles anything on its own. And the sound... Dont even get me started on the sound. Its perfect!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Mine Stopped Working, too!
Review: While it worked, the player output a decent picture. However, it didn't take long for the unit to fail. It now plays movies for about 30 minutes before it begins to pixellate and finally freeze up. After cooling down, the unit can again play for about 30 minutes. It's pretty useless now and the warranty has expired.

I have been a life-long customer of JVC (camcorders, stereos, etc.)... I'll never buy one of their DVD products again. They have produced a golden piece of junk here.


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