We we given this DVD player last year as a Christmas gift and now it has stopped reading the disks. And to repair the product APEX wanted us to ship it back to them for $39.00 labor charge and additional fee for shipping (we pay shipping) and wait 3-4 weeks for it to be fixed and shipped back. I could purchase a brand new DVD player for that price.

-3 disc changer -mp3 playback -vcd playback -optical out -component + svideo out -cheap price

-has to scan for discs on startup instead of taking the disc is already has loaded -flaky operation after 3 years -no special raised buttons on remote

Great DVD player but now flaky as hell. Worked flawlessly back in the beginning but now, it hangs on operation. I have to turn it off and on to get it to start working again. I get the occasional artifact in a few DVDs but otherwise the picture is clear and crisp. I bought the unit because of its MP3 and VCD playback but I haven't used those options since 2000. Would I buy this again? Maybe, since there is nothing better than lying down on the couch to watch 6 hours worth of DVDs without having to get up to chnage any of them. However I was hoping to get more than 3 years out of this player.

IM STILL DEBATEING

NOT HACKABLE YET,DONT KNOW IF ITS GOING TO BE ,THIS ONE HAS THE NEW VIDEO PROCESSER IN IT

WELL SO FAR THIS PLAYER SEEMS TO PERFORM OK,PLAYS EVERTHING I HAVE. BUT I CANT BELIEVE APEX FORGOT SOMETHING LIKE THE TRAY ADVANCING TO THE NEXT DISK.WHATS WITH IT AUTOMATICALL GOING INTO PLAY MODE WHEN YOU TURN IT ON?AND IT WILL NOT STOP TILL IT REACHES THE MENUE.SO IF YOU LEAVE A DISK ITHE MACHINE,THE NEXT TIME YOU TURN IT ON YOUR FORCED TO WHATS ON THE DISK TILL YOU GET TO THE MENUE.AND HOPE YOU DONT HAVE ONE OF THOSE PIZZA HUT DVD GIVEAWAYS IN IT .IT WILL NOT STOP UNTILL YOU MANUALLY ADVANCE IT.

Price Features

Remote is a bit cluttered but not bad

For the money you can't beat the features of this player. Plays every format available including SVCD's. Has both Digital Coax and optical audio out as well as component video and S-Video outs.

Similar Products Used:

Toshiba Players Sony Playter

3 disk changer, Kodak/JPEG playback, reads almost everything.

Poor audio response even when connected digitally. Does not handle gapless cd's well nor does it handle DVD slideshows well. Does not randomly play MP3 CD's recursively (doesn't play mp3's in sub folders unless you navigate into them). Will not automaically jump to the next disk in the carousel (not so important with DVD's but very important with CDs).

Not a bad player but missing some convenience features and a few problems with audio. All-in-All the player is worth the 119.00 I paid for it at the time. It provides some really useful features like MP3 CD playback, SVCD, DVD+RW, DVD-R compatability. It has digital output (SPDIF and Optical). It plays just about everything I can throw at it with only the problems noted below. If you really want to use the 3 disk changer to automatically skip to other disk's this may be a unit to pass up. I'm currently saving up for a replacement unit since I can't stand the weaknesses it has.

Similar Products Used:

Sony PS/2, Sony DVP 5300, Toshiba 2109, Apex 703.

Price, Features

Quality control, grainy image, and very dark image

I was attracted by the low price and a lot of features like MP3, JPEG, and KaraOke. Somehow the unit I bought fails to deliver the basic feature of any DVD player, the picture quality. For my unit, the picture is very dark and biased to blue. Since I have DirecTV, I know what color and brightness adjustment should be. My Apex is way too dark. The graininess makes this Apex hopeless. The quality of my DVD looks like VCD. I have used Toshiba 2109 and 2715. I thought that these days the image quality of all brands should be the same. Obviously I was wrong.

Similar Products Used:

Toshiba

Compatability with lots of formats. Picture quality great.

Poor quality in cd audio playback. Remote is confusing and difficult to use. Discs do not automatically advance.

The AD5131 is worth the price! So far everything I threw at it works very nicely. However, a svcd or two I played seems to glitch every once in a while, perhaps due to poor quality recording or media. The audio quality leaves a little to be desired and the remote is confusing and difficult to get use to. One other small gripe is the fact that dvd's, vcd's, etc. do not automatically advance to the next disk when finished. But these complaints are very minor and can easily be excused due to the fact of the sweet price. I highly recommend this unit to anyone!

Reads all media and files short of WMF and AVI files (next generation!), cheap, holds three discs, fast tray and disc loading, upgradeable, features like equalizer and echo/pitch.

Cheap construction, poor audio CD quality.

This is a *cheap* unit that is fairly large, but it is very, very versatile. Build quality is so-so, fairly solid, but obviously void of "top notch" touches - the display is poor, the remote is non-intuitive and weak, and audio quality for regular CDs is notably below that of my Toshiba 2700 or Sony CD player. Video quality is good. The units occasionally "glitch" and won''t start a CD, forcing a power cycle. Best to get the $29 3-year no hassle replacement warranty for this one. Composite out is provided, but only one pair of analog audio outs means we needed some creative wiring to allow the non-techies to hear the DVDs on both their TV and the stereo without having to re-learn what buttons to push on the receiver. ;-) We have bought THREE of these now, for myself, my sister and GF. The JPG compatibility gives a whole new meaning to owning a digital camera for the novices; no longer do they complain that those "darn electronic pictures can''t be seen anywhere except on the computer screen". I send them CD-Rs with the newest trip pictures, and -voila- they have an instant slide show. Very cool. Plays MPEGs, but as previously stated, the scaling is off and you might only see it on part of the screen. JPG speed is not a problem for me, interlaced pics might take 3 seconds to load, but that''s no big deal. Most appear immediately, and the instant rotation and pause feature is enough to make it useable as a true slide show. These units still have some weaknesses like the non-functional manual slide show and the lack of random play or even automatic disc switching - it will NOT start disc 2 when disc 1 is done. This is a major problem for some users, and Apex should outline this in their description of the player!!! Lots more info on these players and hopefully an updated BIOS for region-free DVD compatibility and a macrovision disabler, all at: http://www.nerd-out.com/forum/ BIOS updates might also be found at: http://www.apexdigitalinc.com/html/

Similar Products Used:

Toshiba SD-2700, Sony 300 DVD changer (gone, no CD-R reading!), Apex 1100W

Plays everything that it said to play! Decent features and a nice price!

Nothing really...

This one is a good buy! I dont really have any problems with it, it plays everything I feed it. Karaoke works well although I dont really use it that much. It got some decent features for the price!!

Similar Products Used:

n/a

PAL conversion, VCD

Audio quality even from a digital output, inability to parse directories automatically searching for MP3

Not an audiophile quality unit, but a great deal for most users.

I had the product for only two nights and will be posting a more detailed review later.

I used Genica's Kalua DVD player which had a lot of bugs in software causing it to freeze. But it had some features I was looking in other players. Unfortunately this Apex does not have some of them.

Apex cannot parse directories on MP3 disk. I'd like to be able to use it as MP3 player without having a TV. On Apex I have to select a particular directory to play a list of files.

Quality of the sound playing audio CDs and MP3s is not perfect. It is very noticeable on high-end systems. I believe this is a problem of most current players on the market that have many features. The unit does change the volume on a digital output and has even an equalizer that affects output. Obviously it goes through a circuitry that adversely changes the sound. The software of the unit greatly resembles many other models I came across, probably the same library was used during a player design. I wish it had direct digital output though without any controls.

Component video, S-video, and regular video output all produce good quality picture.

Similar Products Used:

Kalua, Sony, Daewoo