Im planning to buy this mini DV deck. Do you guys have experience or comments about this deck?

Im planning to buy this mini DV deck. Do you guys have experience or comments about this deck?

JVC HR-DVS3U Dual-deck DV/S-VHS VCR

I've had one for two years and it has been a dependable workhorse for me, even though it's the least expensive DV VCR. If I'd known how well it would handle my DV camcorder tapes, I probably wouldn't have bought a more expensive Sony VCR in addition to it. It plays my Sony VX2100 and GV-D1000 recorded tapes (even those in LP) and is recognized and controled by my XP computer and my Toshiba HDD/DVD recorder, over FireWire.

It does not display timecode frames, just hours/minutes/seconds, but it does record frame numbers and passes them through, to and from outside equipment. I haven't been able to get it to respond properly to synchro-edit commands from my Sony machines over FireWire or with IR control, but they don't talk straight to each other, either.

The S-VHS drive is very handy, as I've used it to internally re-record numerous old S-VHS tapes onto DV. It did a good job of playing several 17-year old S-VHS tapes I thought had died of old age and rescued some of my early productions I thought were lost. Its time-base corrector (TBC) and DNR clean up analog recordings and make them look better than ever. It doesn't play back DVCAM recordings, but if you need to do that, you might consider getting JVC's professional version of it, for about $200. more. Although this VCR uses mini-DV cassettes, it is big and heavy.

Do a Search by its model number on this forum and read the several previous threads about it.

I would like to keep my options open. I heard bad reviews about it. But I also heard that they have no problems with this model? Its just that this JVC deck is absoulutely the cheapest on I could find.