JVC XV-SA600BK VS Panasonic CP-72K (1 Viewer)

[Patrick TX]

Well, I have had a chance to do some initial comparisons between these 2 units. First let me say I'm not a fanboy of either company. Both companys make some damn good low cost DVD players. I currently have both players feeding a progressive signal directly into an uncalibrated '02 Mitsubishi WS-55511 HDTV. The TV has around 80 hours on it, so picture quality will surely improve. I will post some early impressions on both units.
Build quality
The JVC gets my nod here. The Panny has a cheap overall feel to it. The carousel drawer is not aligned properly. The JVC has nice feet (the same as the panny, yet oddly enough the same kind of smoky mirror faceplate. The JVC has a black drawer, unlike the silver drawer pictured on the net.
Both units are available in black or silver. Must be the same company, LOL. No visible defects on the JVC. No operational defects on either. The JVC has a large blue dot matrix display than can be easily viewed from 8-10 feet away. The Panny has a SMALL box that has plain LED information. One has to be right on it to read it.
Remote
No contest. The remote on the JVC is light years better than the Panasonic. Simply put, the Panny has the crappiest remote that has ever graced my Home Theater. The JVC has glow in the dark buttons, and will control multibrand TV's as well. Progressive scanning can be activated via remote as well. The buttons are nicely spaced, and the unit is nicely rounded. The JVC also came with a Component Video cable, which was a surprise.
Inputs
No contest. The JVC has optical AND coax digital inputs, as well as 5.1 inputs for DVD-Audio. They are all gold plated. The JVC also has an AV Link jack for communicating with other JVC gear.
The Panasonic has only optical & 5.1 digital outs, no gold plating. NO COAX.
Size
The JVC is a little shorter than the Panasonic, by a 1/4". It is MUCH more shallow, by a whopping 5.5". The Panny's front feet barely fit inside my entertainment center. This caused it to protrude out farther than the rest of my equipment. This is not acceptable. My 400 CD is the same size nearly! This size issue may cause major problems for those seeking this player. Be sure to factor in the power cord & cabling adding another 1" nearly.
Now to the good stuff, picture quality!
Progressive Scan Video
I watched snippets of Monsters Inc, Toy Story, & Ice Age, & AOTC on both players. The Panasonic has a clearer, more RAZOR SHARP picture on this sort of material (except AOTC, where I saw no difference). The JVC looked great as well. It was more sharp on the Panasonic. Neither player exhibited the dreaded "Chroma Bug" on the Toy Story menu, or the Fifth Element button. The Panasonic was a Ferrari on these Video based DVD's, the JVC was a mere Porsche.
Progressive Scan Film
I was hard pressed to see any difference watching film based DVD's on both machines. LOTR EE looked flat out beautiful on both players. I also watched portions of The Fifth Element, Unforgiven SE (DARK scenes), & Diana Krall Live in Paris. I found the "lighter" setting was needed on the Panny, especially watching Unforgiven. I would bet most people wuld have one hell of a time picking which player was which in a blind test.
Interlaced performance
IMO, neither player impressed in this area. My Sony DVP-S7700 killed them both. I will never go back to interlaced after seeing these 2 players in action. I would say it was a push.
Audio
My ear can tell no difference on either player, DTS or DD 5.1. I'm using my Receiver to decode. As far as a CD sound is concerned, I havent listened yet.
DVD-Audio
I am going to go get one today hopefully. I DO notice that both units offer BASS MANAGEMENT for DVD-Audio. NICE. Size, level, delay, and test tone on both. The JVC will scroll the bitstream onscreen if desired, not sure on the Panny.
Features
JVC wins here, no contest. It has a 14 step zoom on the remote, AND the zoom icon disappears in a couple of seconds. The Panny simply wont zoom/scale. The RP91 does, and that's it. I was watching LOTR EE in 2:35 and hitting the zoom button made the bars go away. Some may call this heresy, as the director wanted it to look this way. I want to be able to control this function! My TV will not scale/zoom a progreesive signal.
The JVC also has settings for Gamma and a few others. JVC also has a bookmark feature (NICE), and will play JPEG files on CD. This is neat for doing slide shows of the kids from my digital camera!
The verdict?
JVC for Me. Most of the movies I watch are film based, and I simply could not live with the shortcomings of the Panasonic. The JVC was also $10 less after the Panny's $30 rebate, with 2 free DVD's by mail. The carousel was slow to load, and difficult to skip between discs. It wanted to load & read each disc instead of skipping it like most carousels do. In all fairness, a RP82 would have given the JVC a better run for the $. I am elated with the JVC so far!
Here is a comparison between the Panasonic & the JVC.
Panasonic
http://www.prodcat.panasonic.com/sho...goryId=%202977
JVC
http://www.jvc.com/product.jsp?model...L026936&page=2
My Equipment
Receiver - Yamaha RX-V1
HDTV - Mitsubishi WS-55511
Main Speakers - B&W CDM 9NT's
Center Speaker - B&W CDM CNT
Surrounds - B&W LM1's
Subwoofer - SVS 2531 PC+
Progressive Scan DVD - JVC XV-SA600BK
Progressive Scan DVD carousel - Panasonic CP-72K
Interlaced DVD - Sony DVP-S7700
400 CD/MP3 Jukebox - Sony CDP-CX455
Sony PS-2
Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8000 PVR

 

[JasonLC]

Patrick,

Excellent and fair review of both players. BTW the CP72 can also show the bitstream info. I do love the huge LCD that the JVC players have over the smaller Panasonic ones. The RP82s LCD display really isn't too bad, but the CP72's is way to small and cheap looking. I also feel like you that the CP72 is way too deep even for a 5 disc changer and won't fit in most AV racks without adjustments.(Hung over the edge in my AV rack) The JVC along with the Panny CP72/RP82 also have excellent sound DVD-A DACs so you will enjoy DVD-A. Go buy Bjork's Vespertine DVD-A disc. It will blow you away. Your finding are exactly how I think when I compared my JVC XV-S500 & JVC XV-SA70 to my CP72/RP82 when it comes to Progressive PQ. Pixar animations are much sharper and more 3D looking on the Panasonic RP82/Cp72 then they are on the JVCs because of Panasonic's MPEG Decoder and Sage Fli2200 DCDi deinterlacer of course. On LOTR and Fifth Element I still found the PQ to be slightly sharper and more 3D then my JVC XV-S500 and JVC XV-SA70, but it wasn't night and day. Like you said some people might people hard pressed to see the PQ difference on some FILM DVDs. I would also say that the JVCs are built sturdier then the Panasponic CP72/Rp82. I know my JVC SA70 has stood up well in its 1.5 years of existence with no hiccups on any material. Just like the Panasonic CP72/RP82, you will find that the JVC will play any format you give it on any type of media and burn speed. From what I have heard the only thing the JVC doesn't play that the Panasonic CP72/RP82 can is the DVD-RW and DVD+RW formats. It will play DVD-R and DVD+R though which are the primary formats anyways. Once again I thank you for your review because it also verifies my findings on the 2 players as well. I say definitely keep what suits your need, and the JVC will be wonderful player for you for many years to come.

 

[Adil M]

I'd like to "testify" once again and say that I did the same test w. my JVC XVS70BK vs. the Denon 1600(RP82 clone). The JVC beat it hands down in every category as the above review stated, but got it's ass handed to them on VCD's. There was a significant difference in video, but the JVC was a very good picture as well, far from "unwatchable". I have been very happy w/ my JVC, but will look closely at the new units w/ the FLI2300 chip. These will allow scaling.
*Both players were using the same Bettercables silver serpent component cables and had been standardized w/ Avia. I then switched inputs to compare on the exact same dvd's.

 

[Patrick TX]

The JVC 600 scales as well. I don't own any VCD's though, but it claims to do S-VCD's & VCD's.

 

[Kwang Suh]

Scales as in zooming, or as in aspect ratio control?

 

[JasonLC]

Aspect Ratio control. The JVC also has excellent zooming in increments up to 1024X!!!

 

[Benny G]

Patrick, thanks for the wonderful comparison. Would you mind naming the retailer providing the 2 free dvds?

 

[dpippel]

Great review Patrick. I've been comparing the SA600BK and the RP82 and have come to the same conclusion. I just couldn't live with some of the usability issues the Panasonic has, and believe it or not in my system the JVC edged it out in PQ. Add in the SA600BKs superior tweakability, build quality, and scaling abilities and I decided to keep the JVC.

 

[george kaplan]

I have a question about the scaling.

I have a lock in full RPTV, and currently have the RP91, and need true scaling.

I would also like to use it for non-anamorphic 1.66 titles, which I currently watch with black bars on all 4 sides, to only scale up so there's only black bars on 2 sides.

I'd also like to scale other films down to get rid of overscan on the sides, which would mean increasing slightly the size of the black bars on top & bottom.

In order to do all that, I need to be able to scale such that you can make the picture a little bit bigger or a little bit smaller.

Can you do that with the JVC 600? Or is the smallest increase 2X, and the smallest decrease 1/2X?

 

[dpippel]

George - What you're describing is referred to as pixel scaling, and the SA600BK does not have this feature. As far as I know, the only players that do are made by Malata. If you search the forum you should be able to find some info on them. They're very popular with people who need region free and PAL conversion operations.

 

[Brad Newton]

How does the Sony 755 compare to these two units? Has anyone done a side by side comparison?

 

[dpippel]

I haven't looked at the 755, but I do believe it "features" the Chroma bug. Niether the JVC nor the Panasonic have this problem.

 

[george kaplan]

Well I wasn't really expecting it to do pixel-level scaling (although why no major dvd player does this yet is beyond me), but I was sort of hoping the scaling/zoom would have smaller incremental steps (say 10% increase each time), rather than doubling each time (which really is zooming, not scaling).

 

[dpippel]

It seems to be either/or. Malata seems to stand alone in this regard, but I understand some of their players have quality issues. And I agree that this is a feature many would find useful, yet isn't offered by any mainstream manufacturers. Maybe something new in this area will come out of CES this year...

 

[Patrick TX]

I would LOVE to have a player that zooms at even 25% increments. The JVC's 1X is as most as I'll ever use, unless it's porn. JUST KIDDING!

 

[jeff lam]

I have been doing a little reasearch on the JVC and it does look like a winner. I found an article from S&V mag that may be of interest here, it's a DVD player shootout (sort of) of the JVC XV-SA600, the Panasonic DVD-XP50 (much like the RP82), and the Sony DVP-NS755V:
http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/art...&page_number=1

 

[Jay_E]

I DO notice that both units offer BASS MANAGEMENT for DVD-Audio. NICE. Size, level, delay, and test tone on both. The JVC will scroll the bitstream onscreen if desired, not sure on the Panny.

Unfortunately neither player offers bass management for DVD-Audio. The features you describe are for DD/DTS output via the 5.1 outputs. Currently only a very select few DVD players on the market offer bass management support for DVD-Audio. Hopefully this feature will be more common on future DVD players.

Jay

 

[Patrick TX]

I stand corrected. THEY call it bass management, lol.

 

[AaronJB]

I have a JVC 723GD (the prior version of the 600?) and am also very pleased with it for both audio & video, as well as features.

 

[Benny G]

Just a note to say that the JVC XV-SA600BK is on sale for only $174.xx at vanns.com right now! It's an authorized dealer with great customer ratings. I just went online planning to buy it for $199.xx - already on sale with free shipping - only to see it down to $174.xx for some reason!! Here's a great chance to order it!!