JVC XV-N420B DVD Player

With the addition of a JVC XV-N420B, I now have four functioning DVD players. The reason why I have so many is a long story but there are a couple of short reasons why I wanted the XV-N420B: progressive scan and compatibility with my other JVC products. Well, one out of two ain't bad...

Features

The JVC XV-N420B is a tiny little table-top DVD player that is perhaps 1/3 the size of the unit it's replacing. It has a front-panel readout with playing time and other useful information, as well as a good complement of front-panel buttons that will allow you to play a DVD if the remote control is lost or broken. Also on the front is an on-off switch and, of course, the drawer into which you put DVDs.

The back panel has the usual assortment of connectors and outputs, including analog component video (Cr/Cb/Y), S-Video, composite video, two sets of analog stereo audio outputs and a single RCA connector for digital (surround-sound) audio. The power wire is hard-wired into the back panel of the unit.

The DVD drawer has a cool blue glow around it when the unit is turned on and the entire tray glows blue when you press the eject button. I suppose this makes the tray easier to see but my guess is that the blue lighting is an affectation intended to be more impressive than practical. It does look pretty neat, though.

The remote control is small and hand-friendly, and the dark writing on it is easy to see against the remote's light-gray background. The remote on this JVC DVD player is MUCH easier to use than the one with my old Apex player. The JVC remote has fewer buttons and they are labeled more logically. Operation of the unit from the remote was intuitive from the start and I didn't have to bother with the manual. The remote uses standard AA batteries.

The JVC XV-N420B will output progressive-scan component video, also known as 480p. This means the image consists of 480 horizontal lines, progressively scanned. (Normal NTSC video in the US, Canada, Japan and other countries is interlaced and referred to as 480i. This means images of 480 lines with interlace scanning.) Although progressive scanning at 480 lines is not considered "high definition," it is observably better than standard definition. The big reason why I wanted the JVC XV-N420B was for its progressive-scan capability.

(I should point out that progressive-scan DVD players are now common and inexpensive. I could easily have chosen a progressive-scan DVD player from any of several brands.)

To see 480p signals, you must have a video monitor with progressive-scan capability, such as virtually any high-definition monitor. I have a 27-inch HD LCD monitor that easily handles 480p signals.

The JVC XV-N420B can playback a wide range of still-image and audio formats, including JPEG, WAV, MP3 and WMA files. Of course, the unit will also playback standard audio CDs.

In addition to the DVD player and the remote control, the box held a standard video/audio cable as well as batteries for the remote control.

Firing It Up

The brief and slightly confusing manual lists a variety of steps upon first powering up the JVC XV-N420B. What actually happened is that the unit fired up and stepped itself to the correct initial menus. One of these allowed me to select the 16:9 aspect ratio for my HD monitor and another selected the digital audio format most compatible with my surround-sound system.

The bottom line with setting up the XV-N420B is: Don't worry about it. It's much less of a hassle than the manual leads you to believe.

The JVC XV-N420B is tiny. I have this on top of a stack of much more robust-looking components. I would not want the tiny and somewhat fragile-looking XV-N420B at any other location in a component stack.

Watching Pictures

The last DVD player I used with this system (a five-year-old Apex unit) never worked well from the get-go. It frequently glitched and got hung up, often freezing so badly that the only cure was shutting the unit down and restarting from scratch. Occasionally it would simply refuse to play a DVD and we had to make alternate viewing plans.

So far, I have played four movies on the JVC XV-N420B and all played with only a tiny visual problem that I will detail in a moment. This JVC player works far faster and more predictably than my old Apex unit.

The front panel display on the JVC XV-N420B lists the playing time as well as a couple other bits of information. One icon on the display tells me that I have the unit in progressive-scan mode. Another readout states the digital audio format encoded on the DVD. Both these are good things to know to optimize the viewing experience.

In all four of the movies that I've watched, there was a momentary flicker of blockiness in a small part of the screen. With the movie that I watched last night (Assault on Pecinct 13), this happened once during the film for a fraction of a second; it did not impair the viewing experience at all. In one other movie I watched, this fleeting blockiness occurred three times. Again, it comes and goes so quickly that it barely registers before it's gone. It is not an ideal situation but it is far from a show-stopper for me.

The image quality of the progressive-scan picture is very good and it looks fine on my HD LCD monitor. The night I brought the JVC XV-N420B home, I watched excerpts from the movie Winged Migration, which looked delightful at this resolution on my HD monitor. (I highly recommend the film, by the way.)

The improvement over standard-definition 480i signals is small, actually. However, there is an improvement and I appreciate it. (True HD looks MUCH better, by the way.)

Other Things

I have a JVC surround-sound receiver and a JVC VCR, and I wanted a JVC DVD player so that I could use one remote control to handle these three components. Since the receiver's remote works perfectly with the VCR, I figured that it would also work perfectly with the DVD player. However, once I got the DVD player home and connected, I found that the receiver's remote has no provision for controlling a DVD player. And the new DVD player's remote has no provision for controlling the receiver or VCR.

So it goes... I still have to use a pile of remotes to watch a DVD. (I have had little success with generic remotes that are supposed to control several things.)

On the positive side, the JVC DVD player's remote is very easy to use and figure out. For example, it is far easier to find the "pause" button on this remote than the one for my old Apex DVD player, and the JVC makes an absolutely pristine pause when I want to stop and read the credits at the end of a film.

Summary

I like the JVC XV-N420B DVD player. For a cost of $60, this unit significantly improved the image quality and ergonomics of my home theater system. So far, it has played all DVDs with virtually no flaws and it is easy to use. In particular, the remote is hand-and-eye friendly and a snap to figure out. I also like that the remote uses standard AA batteries instead of the somewhat harder to find AAA batteries.

The JVC XV-N420B has everything I wanted for my fairly modest DVD needs: clean progressive-scan images, audio compatibility with my surround-sound system and an easy-to-use remote control. I have experienced some very minor blockiness; as long as this gets no worse, it's negligible as far as I'm concerned.

I recommend the JVC XV-N420B.