JNL 7001 DVD Player

What's In The Box

• The player itself
• A remote control with batteries
• An S-Video cable
• A 3-way AV cable
• A 39 page manual in English
• A sheet explaining how to change the player's region coding
• A warranty card

Front Panel

    The JNL-7001 utilizes one of the standard chassis designs commonly used by players in this price range. Build quality is passable for the price point of the player. I have seen some worse, and I have seen quite a few better.

    The hard-wired on-off switch is on the left side of the front panel. The player nominally has a stand-by mode which it enters after the player has been in stop mode for a period of time, however, stand-by mode cannot be entered via the remote control and a DVD idly displaying its main menu will not trigger this mode. Once in stand-by mode, pressing any key will reactivate the player, but not act on the keypress. This particular behavioural quirk got quite annoying very quickly, particularly given the very lengthy time this player takes to fully power up and become responsive to commands.

    The center of the panel carries the disc tray and the non-dimmable fluorescent display. The disc tray is quite slow to open and close and periodically extremely noisy whilst playing DVDs or CDs. The transport is a Raite DVD-ROM transport, one which I have seen in various low-end DVD players, and one which I have never been overly satisfied with. The transport takes a very long time to recognize inserted media, often taking 15 seconds or more to discern the disc format.

    The right side of the DVD player carries a well-placed OPEN/CLOSE button along with basic DVD navigation buttons and two Karaoke inputs with matching level controls. The DVD player seemed to take an inordinately long time to respond to keypresses on the front panel.

Rear Panel

    The rear panel of this player is equipped with a comprehensive selection of outputs, albeit slightly unusually configured. From left to right, the player features;

• Component video outputs. The Y output doubles as the composite video output connector depending on the configuration of the player.
• S-Video output.
• 5.1 analogue audio outputs.
• Coaxial and optical digital audio output connectors.
• A wired-in 240V AC connector.

Remote Control

    The focal point of this remote control is the arrow key mechanism. Whilst this mechanism is adequately laid out and responsive, the rest of the remote's layout is quite poor. The ENTER button is placed in a non-descript position below the arrow keys, making it very hard to find. The PLAY button is similarly badly placed non-descriptly above the arrow mechanism, buried amongst the other DVD navigation keys.

    The subtitle and audio keys are not only mislabelled but also seemingly arranged with no thought given to the ergonomics of their placement. The key labelled AUDIO does not change the current audio track - that is the job of the key labelled LANGUAGE, located next to the AUDIO key. In fact, the AUDIO key is used to select the audio playback configuration when playing Karaoke discs. It will also not be immediately obvious that the key labelled CAPTION is used to select subtitles.

    The operating range and angle of operation of the remote control were below average, with the player seeming to be very fussy about any deviation of the remote in the vertical plane, particularly at longer operating distances.

Manual

Set-Up Menu

    There is no meaningful control over the inbuilt Dolby Digital decoder, with the only available option being one to indicate to the decoder whether or not a subwoofer is present.

Video Playback

    The JNL 7001 produced a generally acceptable video image. Whilst not the sharpest I have ever seen, it is certainly adequate for the job-at-hand. Finer image details were lost on this player. The player did, however, suffer from a few image anomalies, in common with many budget players based around the Zoran Vaddis III decoder chip. It would occasionally drop frames, resulting in a minor but noticeable image skip several times during the course of a typical movie. It also exhibited an occasional vertical skip, less frequently than the dropped frames problem, but nonetheless noticeable. Oddly for a Vaddis-based design, this player was not capable of passing an NTSC blacker-than-black signal.

    The level of exhibited chrominance and luminance noise was perfectly acceptable.

    The review player was marked as a Zone 4 player and initially only played appropriately zoned DVDs. Following the included instructions (1. Open Tray;  2. Press 2180X on the remote, where X is the desired Region code 1-6 or 9 for Auto;  3. Close Tray), I placed the player into Auto Multizone mode. This allowed the player to play back discs from all zones, including the RCE-protected The Patriot R1.

    The fast forward and fast reverse functions of this DVD player are available in four speeds; x2, x4, x8, and x20. They are of average smoothness.

    RSDL layer changes resulted in a noticeable pause of around 1/2 a second.

On Screen Display

    The DVD player knows a comprehensive number of language names, displayed as three character abbreviations. The JNL-7001 was only the second DVD player that I have tested that correctly recognized and displayed the names of all of the subtitle tracks on my St Elmo's Fire test disc.

    Functional key-presses on the remote are accompanied by various on-screen icons and text messages, often to the point of excess where menu navigation was marred by unnecessary pop-up text messages.

Standards Conversions

CDR & Video CD

Audio Playback

   Subjectively, I noted no audio sync problems with this DVD player, an observation borne out by the objective analogue vs digital delay measurement of 11 milliseconds.

    DTS digital bitstream output is supported by this DVD player. MPEG audio bitstreams are output digitally as either raw MPEG audio or Linear PCM audio depending on the setup of the player, although setting MPEG audio to be output as Linear PCM also entails forcing Dolby Digital to be output as Linear PCM, which may be less than ideal in many circumstances.

MP3 Discs

    The on-screen display for MP3 playback simply displays the current Track Number and the Total number of Tracks on the MP3 CD.

    There appeared to be no shuffle function for MP3 playback, so playback will only occur sequentially.
 

Test Disc Format (all Princo CDRs)	Results
108 MP3s in 7 subdirectories	Found all files.
108 MP3s in root directory	Found all files.
128Kb/s, 256Kb/s, 320Kb/s and Variable Bit Rate	Unable to play back Variable Bit Rate MP3.
Multisession CDR (4 sessions, each with one added MP3)	Interpreted CD as Video CD. Unable to play back at all, not even the first session.

Disc Compatibility Tests

Disc	What Is Tested	Results
The Matrix R4 Follow The White Rabbit	Tests active subtitle feature and ability to load hybrid DVD/DVD-ROM	Video and audio pause momentarily just before the White Rabbit symbol appears on-screen although branching works correctly otherwise and disc loads fine.
Terminator: SE R4 Menu Load	Tests ability to load complex menu
Independence Day R4 Seamless Branching	Tests ability to handle seamless branching	Audio skip on return from branching point in Theatrical Version.
The Patriot R1 RCE	Tests ability to handle RCE protected DVDs in Auto multizone mode.

    No other DVD that I tested with the JNL-7001 had any specific playback problems other than those referred to in the Video Playback and Audio Playback sections of this review.

User Convenience Features

Screen Saver/Auto Power Off	Limited Auto Power Off (see review text for detailed description)
Zoom

Overall

The Good Points

    Plays CD-Rs and MP3s.

    Multi-region, RCE compatible.

The Bad Points

    Poor remote control.

    Annoying video and audio skips.

    Unsatisfactory PAL-50 conversion.

Features At A Glance

Video	Component Output		RGB Output
Audio	DTS Output		MP3 Playback
Plays CDRs
Conversion	PAL-50 (but output is unusable)
Inbuilt Decoder	Dolby Digital

In Closing

Performance
Build Quality
In Operation
Compatibility
Value For Money

© Michael Demtschyna
31st May 2001