I've owned both. Neither were keepers, but I enjoyed JM way more than DW. I hated how important video mode was in DW. It's not a bad video mode, it's just way too frequent and important for a good score. JM's video mode was also bad, but you can avoid it, and it doesn't happen too often. Loved the flow in JM, but eventually the whole "spinner millions" exploit kind of got to me.

Maybe you'd score higher if you used a video mode strategy

You're right, video mode itself is not worth that many points. However, it's a cheap and easy way to collect doctors, which help immensely with scoring. On ball one, select video mode doctor and take safe shots into the pops, start video mode, collect doctor. Rinse and repeat until you have doctor 6 collected, then build up multiplier and go for more video modes/ multiball. The final video mode wave is worth a lot too, especially if you have 4x multiplier going.

Well, whether the ball pops back out of the shots will vary by machine, but even if it's 1/3 of the time, that's 2/3 it's returned right back to the flipper. On a machine where the ball is chronically out of control and you are frequently sending wild shots at a center target bank, those aren't bad odds. I had lightning flippers and factory ball save time on mine, fwiw.