JVC HV-32P37 - User Review

cerebros

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Styling & unit design

Make no mistake about it; this set is quite an imposing presence in the living room. I didn’t think it looked all that big in the showroom I saw it in, but when in a real lounge it’s quite wide – especially as the front frame extends 13cm either side of the screen.

The styling of this unit makes more sense when the set is on top of its stand, a there’s a kind of boomerang shape on top of the main unit which mirrors the sets shape underneath the screen and the front of the stand.

As with all TV stands (especially on TV’s whose specification means they’d appeal to home cinema buffs), only those people with small centre speakers will be able to fit theirs on the stands shelving. Thankfully the boomerang part comes in handy here (especially if, like me, you’ve got a centre speaker previously used on a shelf with sticky stubs underneath) as you can fit a reasonable sized speaker on it. As my speaker had stubby feet on, a dab of blu-tack in a couple of places was enough to secure the speaker on top of the TV.

The stand comes with 2 glass shelves. These are held in place by 2 plastic pieces one the rear section, and balance on 2 rather insubstantial looking protusions. While one of these shelves happily held an X-box and digital STB while I had the set, long term I don’t think I’d be happy trusting the stand to last.

The set does protrude quite a bit backwards, and the rear does seem to find favour with pets of a feline variety (despite looking extremely uncomfortable). Fortunately all the vents exit out of the rear with top upwards facing vents, so blocking of essential cooling by a cat shouldn’t be an issue.
 
Connectivity

Connectivity is very good, with 3 SCARTS, 2 RGB capable, and component inputs. The usual front AV inputs are actually located behind the speaker on the right of the screen. AS I’ve never had cause to use the “front” AV inputs, this wasn’t an issue for me, but it may be for some people.

The component inputs will accept PAL & NTSC in interlaced and progressive formats, as well as 1080i, thus ensuring a degree of future proofing for HD-DVD or Euro1080 perhaps.
 
Other features

The set features the second generation of JVC’s DIST technology which upscales inputs to 900i (PAL) or 1125i (NTSC). Also present are Digital VNR (noise reduction), Super Digipure (Detail enhancement), Colour Digipure (Colour enhancement), and Movie Theatre (to display the picture in films more smoothly).
There’s also a picture & picture function, giving the choice of either 2 “live” pictures side by side, or 12 pictures from a scan of signals currently being received from the TV’s tuner or AV inputs.

For zoom modes, the set has Regular (for viewing 4:3 images in the correct shape), Panoramic (stretches the edges of a 4:3 picture to full up the screen), 14:9 Zoom (zooms up a 14:9 picture to full screen height), 16:9 Zoom (zooms up non-anamorphic 16:9 picture to the full screen), 16:9 zoom subtitle (the same as 16:9 but with space for subtitles to appear at the bottom of the screen), and Full (for anamorphic signals). Finally there’s an Auto mode which will switch between Full and either Regular, Panoramic, or 14:9 Zoom mode depending on what you set.

Finally there a 3 picture setting modes, 2 of which can be customised to your own preferences (* I was never able to get the Standard setting to retain my settings - whether this was a fault on the sets I had or by design I’m not sure)
 
Review

User Interface

Unfortunately this is an exercise in minor frustration. To select a picture zoom mode, you have to go via a menu, rather than being able to cycle between them. However, this is only an issue when using the component inputs as the Auto switching doesn’t function here.

If you want to select one of the AV inputs, you either have to keep pressing the Program Down button, or go via the information button menu. The latter was preferable as there’s a slight delay between changing channels. While there are codes about on Remote Central for selecting the AV inputs directly, these only cover the first 3, so you can’t directly select the component inputs. The same issue is present with selecting the picture mode – you have to go via the sets menu system.

There’s also not much you can adjust in terms of image geometry from the standard menus – in fact only the picture tilt. To adjust overscan, image size & position, and the vertical edge shape for 4:3 pictures, you’ll have to go via the sets service menu (which naturally isn’t documented in the normal user menu).


Remote Control

Aside from not having dedicated buttons to cycle the zoom, picture mode, or AV inputs the remote control is generally OK (although as a Pronto owner, I didn’t use the sets own remote much). On slightly annoying aspect is the apparently limited angle of the remote control signal receiver.


Picture

The niggles with the remote control and the user interface are just about bearable when you take the picture into account. Boy what a picture!

You will (like with any TV) need to spend a few minutes calibrating the brightness, contrast and colour using something like Digital Video Essentials, and I found I got the best results with sharpness set all the way down to zero and with Super Digipure on Minimum. I also found that I needed slightly different settings for component than I did for the RGB feeds from my Nokia 221T and X-box – basically the colour setting needed reducing (I assume you can adjust this because of the additional image processing pictures go through with DIST – there was definitely a difference in picture quality between composite and RGB when compared) to less radioactive levels.

When set up the picture from good sources is stunning. While images actually seem a touch soft without Super Digipure, with them they’re superbly detailed with no noticeable processing artefacts. I’m not going to say that it’s like looking through a window (basically because I regard that comparison as nonsense), but older films do look like they were filmed only yesterday. Modern films look quite simply awesome.

JVC’s DIST scaling does the business as well. Even with my face right up close to the screen I couldn’t spot scan lines anywhere.

Of course, you do have to feed the set good pictures. I’m not in a position to comment on analogue reception on this set as I don’t have good analogue TV reception to begin with. My main source of TV viewing is from a Nokia 221T with Freeview. Low bit-rate channels look rough yes – but no worse than they would on any other 32” widescreen. High-bit rate channels, and especially broadcasts of programmes shot with high production values, look as good as recent films on DVD.

The only slight downside is the Movie Theatre mode. I tended to leave this on Auto, but whenever I watched something like The Simpson’s, there were frequent combing effects visible that were quite distracting and had to turn it off (which meant a trawl through the menu system).
 
Conclusion

Do I like this set? Yes – the image quality, when set-up correctly is superb. The user interface is a bit annoying, but I personally could just about put up with it.

Why do I no longer have one of these sets? Basically because JVC, as with just about every other manufacturer if you read the posts on this forum, seem to have some rather lax quality control.

The first three sets of this model I had exhibited problems with the geometry with the image either curving upwards in the top half of the screen, or downwards in the bottom half. This was not correctable via either the tilt control or the geometry settings in the service menu (in fact none of the service menu options affect the horizontal line shape of the image).

The fourth set, the first with acceptable geometry, died within 36 hours of receiving it.

Personally I found this unacceptable for a set that costs upwards of £800, and as I was getting fed up with having to wait in for an exchange, I decided to get my money back.

If you get a set without the geometry problems (and one that doesn’t die in under 2 days), this is a great performer, with a very low price for the spec (considering you get a degree of future proofing with the ability to accept 1080i)
 
What would I change about this set?

1
Discrete codes to select AV inputs, picture mode, zoom mode (or at least the ability to adjust these using a combination of button presses on the remote which could be learned by a Pronto).

2
Put screen geometry adjustments in the user menus where they belong, not in the service menu.

3
Integrated Freeview tuner (although I believe JVC have announced a new range of sets with integrated Freeview and DIST/Super Digipure).

4
Additional component inputs perhaps?
 

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