Lasonic versus Apex

[alfa]

I'm debating which to buy, any suggestions? The Lasonic is 79.86 at K-mart, I can pick up an Apex 500w for the same price.

You're talking about the DVD-1100 aren't you?

I just bought this one yesterday and am ecstatic with it.
It plays every single RW I've thrown at it AND every single Recordable I've thrown at it as well. Even my SOLID BLACK Memorex's too!!

It play's DVD's, VCD's (v1 and v2), Audio CD's, Mp3 CD's iwth no particular format, and apparently it will even play Karaoke CD's. It has the buttons for it on the remote but the manual (which leaves alot to be desired) doesn't show anything for it.

I got mine yesterday and payed $93 for it but I don't mind since the way my luck works is if I waited until today there wouldn't be any left when I got there.

Hope this helps!

Steve

[gedrean]

Only thing I can say is that I've tried an AD-1000 (equivalent in manual and remote control and most other features to a 1500) and a Lasonic 1100.
Lasonic's main drawback is it's MP3 name size. It's also unable to play some mp3 bitrates, mp2's, and some other files.

Lasonic's machine can only display 6 letters for a name for each MP3, and most of these names are ignored and replaced with "MP3001" "MP3002" etc. or something of the sort (mp3_01?). Apex's machine will display up to 11 chars.

The browsing system for the Lasonic shows you the current directory you're in, and a list of the MP3's in that directory. If you go to the end of the list and continue pressing down, you get to the next directory. On regular play, the Lasonic will jump to the next directory after playing hte last song in that directory.

The browsing system for the Apex sorta resembles a strange version of a windows explorer. Once you have selected a directory in the right pane, the left pane will display that dir name along with the dir names of the other directories in that directory. So, if my structure goes:

Music
Country
Blah
Blee

And I select Country, the left pane shows Country, Blah and Blee. However, the update on this system isn't too great, if you go to the ".." (prev. dir) selection on the left side, it doesn't update, but if you go to it on the right, it does. The right pane is where you see both directories and music files.

The Lasonic will not play MP2's, nor will it play some bitrates, other bitrates it will play very oddly (at high speeds).

The Apex so far has proven itself to play some MP2 files (not all) and most of the bitrates on the CD that the Lasonic would not play, the Apex swallowed easily.

Sound quality is comparable, in both, to the standard PC and it's speakers, playing with Winamp.

On the Lasonic, I have noticed some slight misbehavior with a few of my VCD's, primarily ones made elsewhere. One of the VCD's was scratched, so I did not count it's behavior in EITHER player. Another VCD seemed to dislike the Lasonic, particularly that it froze several times on one section and could only be corrected by fast-forwarding past that part.

On the Apex, the scratched disc was not played. The VCD that the Lasonic disliked seemed to cause a bit of a quirkiness in the Apex for about five seconds, wherein the video paused for a brief time, around one second, and then continued playing at that very spot. Subsequent attempts yielded similar results. I have to consider the possibility of damage to that VCD as well, however the Apex seemed to handle the situation better than the Lasonic.

As for DVD's, both players handled all three DVD's thrown at it in perfect fashion.

On a final note, I had to consider the Apex to be a better choice because of it's less-difficult behavior with the VCD's and MP3's.

This has been a semi-unbiased test (I did, after all, purchase the AD1000 while my friend purchased a DVD-1100.)
Thank you.