JVC XV-N310B DVD player.

Manufacturer: JVC Company of America, 1700 Valley Road, Wayne, NJ 07470; 800/537-5722

Price: $100 (purchased for $69)

Source: Reviewer purchase

A short while back the mid-priced Sony DVP-S360 DVD player in my main system, a unit my wife and I primarily use for CD playback (a THX Ultra certified Onkyo player in that system is for video work), began to occasionally emit abrupt "snapping" sounds when playing recordings. At first, I was not sure just what the problem was. I knew it did not involve mistracking, because the player could still track clear out to level four of the Canadian "CD Check" disc. It also did not involve the DA converter, because the artifact showed up with both the digital and analog hookups. The converter is bypassed with the digital output.

In order to validate my suspicions about the player and make sure the anomalies did not involve my Yamaha RX-Z1 receiver (Issue 93), I swapped it with the equally mid-priced Panasonic DVD-RV32 player (issue 95) in my living-room system. We do not play discs on the living-room system all that much, and it was not until somewhat later that I realized that the "snapping" sounds were still there and were coming a bit too frequently for comfort. It was time to retire the Sony and get a replacement.

The problem with coming up with a replacement was threefold. First, I did not want to spend a lot of money on a player for that rather basic AV system. Second, I needed the player to be a low-profile item, because there is not a lot of vertical shelf space available for the device in the equipment console under the TV monitor. Third, all of the other components in that rack, including the TV monitor's screen frame, are black-front items, and I wanted the player to be that way, too.

Unfortunately, these days it has become quite difficult to find a low-cost DVD player that has a black front panel. Most are silver, and I suppose this is primarily because most TV sets and monitors have silver- or aluminum-colored screen frames and cases. However, after a bit of hunting I finally managed to find the JVC player being reviewed here at a local discount shop. While the $100 list price for this Chinese-built version is low enough, the actual sale price at the shop was only $69. Who can turn down such a deal?

OK, now for that kind of money we have to realize that the XV-N310B is a pretty basic player. Indeed, it was given a mid-pack rating in the December 2004 issue of Consumer Reports magazine, probably because of its limited features and not because of its audio or video performance. However, although good video performance is a given these days (the player even has progressive-scan option component outputs), audio enthusiasts would want to make absolutely sure that the player could deliver the sonic goods, particularly with CD source material.

The XV-N310B has a front panel readout that is quite basic, but no more so than the $450 Yamaha DVD-S1500 player I reviewed for this magazine a while back. Among other things, the panel will indicate whether a disc is generating Dolby Digital or DTS signals, and will also indicate whether or not the player is in its interlaced or progressive-scan video mode. As with the Yamaha player, you have an either/or situation with the track and time readout, but you can check on either of those with the push of a button on the remote.

The front panel has only a limited number of operational controls (the usual drawer-open, play, stop, pause, and scan buttons), but the remote control is loaded with features that more than make up for this limitation. Indeed, the remote has more operational features than the one that came with the Yamaha player mentioned above. For one thing, it has separate buttons for the skip and scan modes, and you can do slow motion with a lot less effort than what I found with the Yamaha player. There is even a button you can press to dim the front-panel indicators.

The rear panel is typically basic. There are the standard stereo audio-out jacks, a trio of composite-video jacks, an S-Video jack, and a component-video jack for hookups to older TV monitors. There is also a coaxial digital-out jack (for PCM, DD, and DTS sources), but there is no alternative fiber-optic jack. The back panel also includes a "video-signal" selector switch that allows the user to configure the player for either interlaced- or progressive-scan outputs from the three-jack component hookups. Interestingly, while some other players have to always be manually configured for either of those modes by that kind of back-panel switch, this JVC player has a third switch-position option. This setting, called "remote," allows the user to toggle back and forth between interlaced and progressive by merely pushing a button on the remote control. Under some viewing conditions this could be a useful feature. The only other item on the back panel is a non-detachable power cord.

I indicated previously that this is a low-profile player. How low? Well, try 1.75 inches. The width is a bit over 17 inches and the depth is a bit under 8 inches. The weight is a feather-like 3.6 pounds and the unit consumes 11 watts of power when in operation and 2 watts in standby mode. The onscreen menu is easy to use (considerably easier than the one on the above-mentioned Yamaha player, although the manual is sometimes typically vague about how to navigate the screen), and the playback options, although limited, are more than adequate for any typical movie or music lover.

Now, unlike many of the more expensive DVD players out there, this JVC unit will not play DVD-A or SACD discs. Well, that is not precisely true. It will not play the DVD-A or SACD tracks on those discs, but it will play the surround DD (or DTS) tracks on the former and the stereo CD tracks on the latter. It can do these functions very well, and of course it also does a superb job with DVD video materials.

The DA converter used for PCM work in this player is an AKM 4385V1. To quote Dr. David Rich, who did a bit of research on this chip for me: "The chip has a slow and fast rolloff filter. (The slow is really slow: starting from 8 kHz it is down 3dB at 18.2 kHz. The fast is flat to 20 kHz +/- 0.05 dB. The stop-band attenuation is -54 dB.) The fast mode has typical performance for this class of chips. We do not know which filter is used in this D VD player. If they used the slow one it may sound different. Here is an idea if it uses the slow filter. Let's scrape the guts out of this box and put it in an exquisite machined metal enclosure and sell it for $20,000."

"Except for the full-scale THD, these are typical numbers for a DAC found in $200 players and $300 A V receivers. It is likely (but I have no spec in the data sheet) that the THD is typically down to 16 bits at -20 dB, and thus would expect the chip's distortion related limitations to not be audible. A low-end amplifier will not ordinarily generate better than 13-bit performance full scale, anyway. Again, the THD at 5 kHz is not given, and this would ordinarily be a critical number."

Given that this is a $100 player (discounted for $69, yet), the fact that Dr. Rich says it would be typically found in $200 players and the DAC circuits in $300 receivers, says a lot about the bang-for-buck quality of this device. Interestingly, he also went on to say "I do not know how they can do this at $69. These DA converters alone should be $3 to $6. Typically, materials cost would be multiplied 4 to 10 times before the consumer gets the thing (retail price). Add in all the digital chips, the discrete components to control the motors and lasers, and then add the cost of the optics and the mechanics themselves as well as all the licensing fees and I cannot understand the under $70 discount price at all."

I have my own opinion about the international impact of consumer-product devices like this. I wonder how American industry can possibly compete in a world where obviously complex players (and VCRs and TVs and receivers) from China and other cheap-labor countries cost less than a US made kitchen faucet assembly or toaster oven.

Actually, things may be even worse. In late winter of 2005, I saw a Best-Buy ad for a Chinese-built Toshiba player that had it selling for $49. Worse, a non-mainstream, Chinese-brand player being sold in the same store had a list price of $39, and a clerk in that store told me that the week before it had been on sale for $29!

Getting back to this particular JVC player, when I opened the unit up to look over the innards I discovered that in terms of visual appearance the Chinese-assembled build quality was impressive. The transport is mostly plastic, but the circuit boards were tidy and the workmanship was surprisingly good. While not as solidly structured as something one would find on board of the Space Shuttle, the internal quality of the device was decent.

The compact disc music sound I got from the player was as subjectively precise as what I have heard from any other players--at any price. I gave it an error-tracking test with the Canadian "CD Check" disc (DR-2002) and it tracked to "level three" without a hitch, while levels four and five generated substantial mistracking.

However, it is important to remember that all a player must do to handle most real-world disc blemishes is track level one cleanly. I have two older, LD/DVD players that can do no better than handle "level one" and they have never had problems with any normal music CD I have played on them. (One of these players, the Pioneer DVL-700, was reviewed by me in issue 66.) In addition, while some of my other players have been able to track to level four, the $450 Yamaha player mentioned previously, like the JVC player, could track no higher than level three. Neither could the $1,800 Onkyo player I reviewed in Issue 86.

However, going the budget route has potential pitfalls. The first JVC XV-N310B sample I purchased had a problem develop only an hour after I fired it up. The coaxial-digital feed hookup I was using eventually went silent. The analog outputs were fine, however, and I assigned the blame for the problem to a probably defective RCA jack on the back panel, or perhaps a solder connection related to that jack. I exchanged the unit two days later and the replacement has been operating quite well for some time.

Do I recommend this player? Well, notwithstanding the defect with the first unit, at the price point I paid I certainly do. The replacement has a very fine video picture and delivers Dolby Digital and DTS audio as good as any other player I have encountered. It also has CD sound as subjectively clean as any of my other players. It's low price notwithstanding, I believe that with DD, DTS, and PCM (CD) source materials of even fairly high quality this unit would be audibly indistinguishable from even the most expensive other players available.

It may not hold up as well as some ultra-expensive players over the long haul (although there is no telling about this, really), but at less than $70, who could possibly complain? Not I.