JVC Hard Drive VCR
Pepe Duran
http://www.jvc.com/product.jsp?productId=PRD4602000
Opinions wanted good or bad.
Kevin Reilly
>Anybody have one of these JVC Hard Drive VCR as shown at
>http://www.jvc.com/product.jsp?productId=PRD4602000
>
>Opinions wanted good or bad.
I briefly dallied with the HDS1EK, which is the European model, but it
gave me all sorts of grief and it's going back.
If you record widescreen material onto the HDD then try to use either
Instant Edit or Assemble Edit to copy it to the S-VHS deck, you lose the
widescreen switching signal. The deck effectively edits it out,
presumably as part of its digital timebase correction. If you edit
manually this doesn't happen, but then you're throwing away two of the
deck's best features.
It took me some time to convince both JVC and my vendor that this was a
problem and not an acceptable design feature. The European catalogue,
which JVC eventually sent me, does actually say in the technical
specification appendix that the HDD isn't widescreen compatible (even
though it actually is, providing you don't try to dub). But the specs
listed in the main body of the catalogue aren't specific. They just say
that the machine is 16:9 compatible, and it demonstrably isn't.
It's fair to point out, though, that this problem might be limited to
the PAL machines where the WSS bits are transmitted at the beginning of
line 23 and presumably lost as part of the timebase manipulation. On
NTSC machines the signal is down on line 500-and-odd, so might well pass
through all the digital trickery unmolested. This is certainly my gut
feeling; I can't believe that the deck would have got through quality
control in Japan and the USA if this problem was apparent on NTSC
signals.
If in doubt, try before you buy.
Another problem became apparent when I was erasing all of the VHS
navigation data prior to boxing the machine up for return. When I'd
finished, although the Cassettes tab of the navigation dialog was empty,
selecting the Date tab (which should list programmes chronologically)
brought up a whole array of corrupted data. Truncated programme titles,
crazy record times and durations (a two-and-a-half-day recording on a
four-hour tape!) and even corrupted graphics when I tried to select an
invalid entry.
This second issue is potentially even more serious than the first,
because there's no way to 're-boot' or otherwise remove corrupted data
from the HDD. I have no way to tell if it's repeatable, though. It might
just have been a one-off with my particular machine.
Either way I'm less than impressed. The overall feel is of a product
that's been rushed to market without a serious, aggressive testing
period. And the lack of widescreen dubbing is unforgivable.
If you want my opinion you're better off with a TiVo and a mid-range
VCR. More reliable, more versatile and probably cheaper.
--
Kev
__________________________________________________________________________
"Beware! To touch these wires is instant death. Anyone found doing so will
be prosecuted." Railway station sign
Rog
these various "consumer-type" digital VCRs off the market until
adequate "safeguards" could be worked into their designs so the rich
can get richer. Haven't you wondered why everyone who edits digital
video nowdays is forced to use their DV camcorder as a record/playback
device?
In any case, before buying such a unit I'd want to be certain that it
has an OHCI-compliant IEEE 1394 I/O port so that it could be used for
editing purposes. I would suspect that many of these units are
grey-market offerings that aren't permitted to be openly marketed as
consumer appliances. Also examine the specs carefully to see what
restrictions are placed on duplication of digital tapes, since it's
likely that they incorporate some kind of SCUMS-type function similar
to that used for minidiscs. In other words, BEWARE!!