DISC MECHANISM: Thanks to the independent tray loading system JVC has developed, this player fits seven discs into the space of five...and allows you to open the drawer and change every disc except the one currently being played without interrupting playback. Tray opening/closing and disc selection are both a little slow, but the high capacity more than makes up for it.

LASER ASSEMBLY: Part of the reason I bought a JVC is because they just seem to have better laser setups. Playback--whether it be audio CD, DVD, MP3 disc, or a homemade VideoCD/Super VideoCD--is consistently flawless, with no stutters or glitches even when the disc has small smudge marks or blemishes.

AUDIO PLAYBACK: The audio is crisp and clean, which is very important to me as a musician/music teacher. Since my amp is older, I use the analog outputs. I have also tested the digital audio functions with a friends equipment; the quality is perfect, with no static or signs of audio compression. True, you cannot hear MP3 playback over the digital stream, but that is due to copyright issues regarding the MP3 file format, and JVC had no control over that. Also, some complain that the randomized/"shuffle" playback only works on one disc at a time...but, given the way CD changers work, the pause between songs is excruciatingly long when the player has to switch discs after every track, so the exclusion of this feature is understandable.

VIDEO PLAYBACK: This player has the best image quality I have seen thus far on a DVD player. For those who have the proper equipment, this player is one of the few models that has a true, "digital-direct" progressive scan mode (which means that it reads the high frame rate straight from the disc, rather than trying to reinterpret the extra frames back into a standard-quality scan). Even with the composite out, the picture is crisp and clean. This player also has a better-than-usual video filter, which results in a smoother image on large screens or with low-quality source material. (This is easily seen when you zoom in on the screen image, or when playing back a VideoCD).

REMOTE: The remote is lightweight and easy to use, and it doubles as a universal remote for whatever television you may have. The fact that the "key" playback controls glow in the dark is a nice feature; my only complaint is that it does not have any VCR functionality (Im not a fan of juggling remotes).

EXTRA FEATURES: This player provides easy and high-quality playback of all major formats you might expect to use: DVDs, audio CDs, Video CDs, Super Video CDs, and MP3 discs. It will also read CD-R and even CD-RW discs without any problems. Also, the user-adjustable video filter is great for those who like to tinker with things in quest of the "ultimate" quality setting, and the ability to zoom in and out on the image is quite fun...and useful, if youre trying to find something specific in a scene. You can zoom in up to 1024x, and the image stays remarkably clean, and you can zoom out to 1/8x (although I have yet to find any reason for doing this).

PRICE: This is not an inexpensive unit. But there are several out there that are more expensive, and--in my opinion--no player currently on the market offers you a better movie experience. If you are looking for a high-end DVD player, or especially if youre looking for a device to serve as the heart of a home audio/video system, look no further.

CD: I have owned other multiple disk cd changers and other reviewers are correct about the random capabilities. This is not important for me. I mostly use it for DVD watching. Even on other muli units owned, I didnt much use the random feature due to time involved in changing disks every song.

Strong player with great features.

Overall, Im impressed with this JVC product. It has all the bells and whistles that you would expect from a high-end DVD player, including Progressive Scan. There are dozen of functions to choose from, and on-screen direct programming of most settings. The remote is laid out well, and is easy to use. The seven-disc capacity allows you can listen to one CD right after another or watch one DVD after another, which means you dont have to stop what youre doing to change CD/DVDs. Another nice function is the ability to change discs out while one is currently playing. All six of the non-playing discs are available to swap out.

Shockingly, this unit does not have a "true" random mode of selecting any song from any disc. It pretends to have a random mode, and will play all the tracks on one CD in a random order before moving onto the next CD in line and repeating the process. My 5-disc changer had a true random mode, and I know their 200-disc changers have a true random mode, but this one doesnt. Im sure that this was done because of all the moving parts for changing discs. It appears to be a mix of the carousel and cartridge type CD loaders. The only thing that worries me about this device is that the more moving parts there are, the more chance for something to break.

If youre a movie buff, and are buying this to stack up the movies, I say you cant find a better deal. Even if youre looking for a device that can play CD/DVDs equally, check this one out. If youre going to use this as a CD player and occasionally watch movies on it, save yourself some money and buy a single tray DVD player.

Ok, first of all, neither mp3 playback nor DVD-Audio function through what JVC calls the "Digital Output" (read Toslink/Optical/Coaxial) channel. If you want those features youd better make sure you have a receiver ( such as Harman Kardons AVR7000 or AVR8000 ) thats capable of six individual composite/RCA hookups that send the signal to the left front, center channel, right front, sub-woofer, left surround, and right surround speakers (JVC calls this the Audio Output). The six previous mentioned cables are not the traditional composite/RCA jacks that you are used to seeing where you have the video, left audio, and right audio.

I always run all of my components through optical/toslink cables if the hardware supports it, so I was a bit perplexed to learn that the optical/toslink cable would not suffice when playing mp3 music or dvd-audio.

The mp3 player feature was pretty weak. Unless your tv was turned on, you will not be able to see any track information on the panel of the dvd player. As well, you could not fast forward through an individual track while in mp3 mode.

The progressive scan features were fairly impressive, however, with so many other obvious negatives, Id stay away from this player and wait until they can deliver a more robust and dependable product. Ive been a longtime fan of JVCs products, however, this attempt at being the swiss army knife of dvd players falls quite a bit short.