Poor sound, lack of features, unfriendly design

Author's Rating:

Pros: Upscaled video looks good
Good construction
Non-proprietary speaker connectors
Nice design

Cons: Atrocious sound quality
Minimal sound adjustments
Inept software and hardware design
Bare minimum feature set

The Bottom Line: 
Do yourself a favour: Spend the extra $20 or $30 and get a different system. If you absolutely must purchase the JVC, prepare to be underwhelmed.

Author's Review
I had set a budget of no more than $300 before taxes for a home theatre in a box. All the systems in this price range have the same basic features: 1000 watts, 5.1 Dolby/DTS, 1080p up-conversion, HDMI out, one or two auxiliary inputs, etc.

Systems in the same price range (depending on what's on sale) can include Sony Bravia DAV-HDZ278, Philips HTS3555/37, LG HT963PA, Pioneer HTZ-370DV and Samsung HT-Z310.

The JVC was on sale when I purchased it, and seemed to offer a good combination of value, performance and a good name behind the brand. Unfortunately, it only took a few minutes of using it to realize JVC has simply stamped their name on a lackluster system.

Pros:

Video quality: 1080p upscaled video output via HDMI was very good.

Good construction: The speakers themselves are magnetically shielded and have a decent amount of heft.

Non-proprietary speaker connectors: The speaker wires simply clip into the back of the unit, making it easy to replace the speakers and speaker wire.

Nice design: The blue glow from the volume knob and control buttons looks good.

Uhhhh: The owner's manual is easy to understand and the remote is logical. The system comes with batteries...I'm grasping at straws now.
Unfortunately, that's about it for the benefits.

Cons:

Atrocious sound quality: This is a low-end system, but I was shocked at how terrible the sound is. The satellite speakers are acceptable, though they're a little shrill. The subwoofer is absolute torture: It barely attempts to make itself known and, when it does, the sound that comes from it is muddy and weak. The sound quality is by far the major flaw of this system.

The sound adjustments are minimal: There are no EQ presets, nor are there just simple bass and treble settings. There is no bass boost/loudness control. You cannot adjust the output of the subwoofer, though you can adjust the satellites.

There are no ProLogic II effects: In a nutshell, you can set the system to Bypass (Stereo), Movie, Music or Matrix.

There are no EQ effects: There's nothing like Hall, Church, Room, etc.

Inept software design: The system doesn't remember which surround mode it was in when you turn it off and defaults to bypass. You can only adjust the speaker settings through the on-screen display, which obviously requires your TV be on. The MP3/WMA player can't handle long filenames. The picture viewer can't handle files with a .JPEG extension.

Inept hardware design: The disc tray takes forever to open, but responds to the eject button immediately, so you're never sure if it's opening, thinking about opening, or closing because you've pressed the eject button again while waiting for it to open. Dimmer and sleep are the same button on the remote; to turn the dimmer back on, you have to flip through sleep times first: Dim, 180, 150, 120, 90, 80, 70, 60, 50, 40, 30, 20, 10, Off, Bright.

JVC went absolutely bare minimum on the features: For example, the Sony, Samsung, LG and Pioneer can play DivX movies. The LG, Samsung and Philips all come with an iPod cable; the Samsung and LG even display the iPod screen on your TV. The Samsung can use optional wireless rear speakers; the LG comes with front tower speakers. The Sony and Pioneer have both FM and AM tuners. The Sony comes with a microphone that can set up the speakers for 5.1 surround automatically. The Pioneer can play MPEG-4 AAC music. The JVC can do none of these things.
When you compare sound quality, price and features, the JVC comes up dead last. This system is not even remotely in the same league as the others I've mentioned; it's on par with sub-$200 systems from other manufacturers.

In conclusion...Do yourself a favour: Spend the extra $20 or $30 and get one of the other systems I've compared the JVC to in my review. If you absolutely must purchase the JVC, prepare to be underwhelmed.