Its about time the I gave my review on the JVC XV515 DVD player. A budget machine with quality features. I purchased this machine from Comet superstores early December, for £250 with 3 free films. Bargain!!

What really attracted me to the machine cosmetically, was it's off gold colour and sophisticated looking jog dial (rare in that price range). When I got it home, I plugged in all the necessary leads and switched on. "Hello!" it said, I was hooked. The front panel of the machine is large, displaying a huge spinning DVD disc symbol and equally large graphics showing the speaker positions being used. This may be distracting to some but I was grinning from ear to ear. Set up was straight foward for a novice such as myself. The machine itself is sturdily built, with a design that is different yet appealing.

Performance
This budget machine is a gem in the performance stakes. The machine reads discs quickly and QUIETLY, flicking through menus with the greatest of ease. It has no problem reading troublesome discs such as The Matrix and Co. Which is a thumbs up in my books. Layer change is half a second, uniform for all discs I have played on the machine. The menu system is excellent, with the film and menu icons doing a kind of picture in picture style which works really well. Also I have been assured the machine has a good audio range in comparison to other JVC models and hence plays CD's rather well.

Connections
Switchable S-Video, 2 phono outputs, Optical output only and a scart connection. The scart connection is unfortunately not RGB, and this no matter what anyone says is a bummer (A JVC representative I contacted said the reason for this omission is that the average person does not have an RGB input on their television - hmmmm).

Features
Zoom(x4), Strobe, Digest, Outputs Dolby Digital/DTS and all the other usual stuff DVD players have in this price bracket.

Quibbles
No bloody audio button on the remote control - Jeez!! - you have to enter the menu system to change audio functions. No bookmark facility, but then it has a resume feature which works even if you turn the machine off. A bit on the large size too, but then they say "Size does matter".

Bonus Features
Top stuff - Enter the machine also translated as invalidate the warranty, snip a wire, enter a password - MULTIREGION BLISS. This alone makes up for any quibble I may have.

Picture = 9
Using the S-Video connection you cannot go wrong, region 1 or 2, the picture is sharp and colourful, fullstop.

Sound 9
Great stuff, from a basic surround system to a top of the whack D/D amp and speakers (alright that last line came from a magazine).

Looks 8
It grows on you, thats if your not already hooked like I was from the start.

Trick Play = 8
Fun stuff that does the job well.

Value = 9
As far as the budget range goes, this is tops for me, Multi region, jog dials, JVC label and reliability.....I'm a happy man.

Rugrat.