Home > Consumer Reviews > JVC TH-M45 5-Disc Progressive Scan Home Theater System (Silver)

We bought this home theater system for Christmas and have been nothing but impressed. The sound quality is absolutly wonderful. I highly recommend it if you like things loud. Plus I didn't think that we would use the 5 disk DVD player, but now I find it useful and glad that we went with the 5 disk DVD player.

I bought this model about a year ago. A year ago, I'd had given it 4 stars. I liked that it is small, and the blue lights on the face are very attractive. The speakers sound good and the DVD player functioned fine at first.

The thing I noticed immediately was that the JVC XV-THM45 would stall during DVD play if there was the slightest blemish or dirt mark on the DVD. Never had that problem with my old Panasonic (which I gave away to my parents). And when I say stall, I mean it will pause with a jumbled picture for a few minutes sometimes right in the middle of a movie. I have to stop, start the movie again from the beginning and skip past the blemish if I can't clean the disk adequately enough for the machine. Sometimes, there isn't even anythign visibly wrong with the disc.

Another difficulty I had was I could not receive even the strongest radio stations adequately on the FM radio, and I live in a major metropolitan area. So I went to Best Buy and bought a $60 powered FM attenna and attached it to the attenna jack in the back. It did not improve the signal whatsoever, not a bit. Well, I had another radio in the living room, so I was annoyed that I had wasted the money, but could get past it.

Then about 6 months after purchasing the player, I noticed it would often stop recognizing DVD's if they were inserted into the 1st disc position. Any other slot worked fine. Whatever, it's annoying, but I could live with it - it just became a 4-disc changer instead of 5.

Now, it's a year into it. Tonight, I went to play a DVD and the machine does not respond to certain buttons on the remote - namely all the buttons that control the DVD player. All the menu and navigation buttons, pause, rewind, play, stop, etc. The volume and power buttons work fine. That means I can no longer navigate DVD menus. That is not a workable situation.

So in short, this product has major durability issues. I didn't have anything against JVC, and this was the first time a bought a JVC-anything, but it will be the last. It's extremely frustrating when an expensive piece of equipment craps out left and right. It wouldn't make economical sense to fix it. So I spent ~$200 on a piece of equipment that lasted a year.

So here's my advice to you:

1. Definitely do not buy a JVC XV-THM45

2. Don't buy a product unless you read several reviews that comment on it's long-term durability (I guess 1 year is long-term). Let's face it, most things work fine out of the box, and everyone is proud of the decision they've made, so they'er going to rate it high. But if no one is saying "it's been a year and I love this product", think twice.

Now, onto my search for a replacement DVD player.