Three years ago, I bought a JVC DR-MV5. I consider it the finest set-top consumer DVD burner ever made. Being a lifelong JVC customer, and needing a quality VHS machine to make dupes of my old VHS tapes (all recorded on a JVC), I bought the JVC DR-MV100B combo deck. I have never seen a more ridiculous drop-off in quality in my life -- specifically the tuner in this deck. It is an embarassment for JVC and I am boxing it up now for return. The tuner in this deck, when connected to RF coax and going through Ch. 3, is completely unusuable. The graphics are so poor and blurry, that an A becomes indistinguishable from an E or O. The menus are equally blurred. We also ran it through the composite video using RCA cables and it was a slight improvement, but still unacceptable.

There is no S video input on this box and no other connection is possible. Of course I am immediately now trying to find a good condition JVC dr-mv5, which isn't easy. My girlfriend has a Panasonic Combo deck (model unknown) and I am not impressed with it at all. To top it off, the JVC 100B has a flawless DVD player and VHS machine, but it's not much good when you are making crap recordings.

I have been working with VHS since 84, so I know what a tuner is supposed to do in a recorder. I would welcome any thoughts and if anyone knows a place where I could possibly get a drmv-5 new in the box? Also not sure what the difference is between the JVC DRMv5 and MV5S.