The convenience of having three separate loading trays means that one disc can be playing while the other two are being loaded; not really very useful for many people, I've noticed, but very handy when you're browsing through those multi-disc DVD packages. I've had some people complain about the lack of eject controls on the remote, but I've never considered that to be a significant problem--it's not like you can accidentally record over a DVD, like you can a VHS tape. Incidentally, the loading mechanism is hardly quiet, but it's not all that difficult to ignore--it's not really as loud as other reviewers make it sound. It's not the fastest loader I've ever seen though.

The picture quality is excellent, although I haven't seen a top-of-the-line system to compare it to, and I've had no complaints about the audio (note, I have this hooked up to a JVC 31" S-Video TV and a JVC Dolby Surround 2.0 4.1 [3.1 technically, with a subwoofer crossover] channel component stereo system; the S-Video hookup makes a significant difference in picture quality, especially on those freeze-frames; incidentally, this unit outputs video on both the S-Video and RCA-out connectors simultaneously. I assume it also outputs on the component connectors too, but as I don't have a component TV, I don't know).

I don't know how well CompuLink works with this unit, as I have an older JVC stereo system that doesn't recognize the DVD player as a component.

The unit is trivially easy to set up, especially by comparison to the rest of my setup, but I still recommend reading the manuals (all of them, including for your TV and stereo components) before starting to set it up--it may save you some grief, and might also remind you of features you've forgotten! Make sure you match up Left/Right pairs properly!! That's about the only tip I can offer.

This unit has only ever had problems with a tiny handful of discs, out of the hundreds that I own; I have played both region-locked (region 1) and region-free discs without any problems. Actually, I've had problems with two discs, but the second one turned out to be defective; the replacement worked perfectly. The only other discs that have given me *any* problems were 'Key The Metal Idol' discs one and two--and that was just in the menus. Disc three worked perfectly. I have also played VideoCDs on it, although I had to use a CDRW disc, rather than a CDR disc; it doesn't seem to like CDRs. It tended to lock up after finishing playing VCDs, however, and I had to eject and reinsert the disc before it would recognize it again.

I've had the unit lock up on me very rarely, and the few times it did all I had to to was turn it off (it did take a while to actually turn off--about 20 seconds) then on again--I have never had to unplug it or contact JVC, and I hope I never will.

The fallbacks are: It is very noisy in changing disk (other reviews are not kidding), Most movies playback with the image brightness dimming slightly and then brighting every 2 seconds, The inconsistancy of Menu/Title is annoying (but this is the falut of the movie makers not the player), The CD-Audio support is missing the ability to program/repeat without using the remote and having the tv on, other CD-Audio "features" require the tv on to know what is going on (this is annoying), the unit gets very (very very) hot during playback, and (not finally but...) I hate having to be forced to view the copywrite information and some "preview ads" without the ability to scan passed it like on VHS - this may be a fault of the movie makers though - but it would be nice if this player allowed that. Final comment: you need an electronics degree to read the manual on how to get the best sounds with your stereo system - and I AM a technical person already!