My apex ad703 worked just fine on hacked hardware for over a year, playing pretty much every cdr or cdrw I threw at it. Now, however, it can't read a single cdrw I put in. It started being flaky (play for a few minutes, then audio/video hangs or something) now it just tries to load the disc forever. CDR and all pressed discs still work just fine.

Has anyone else had this problem? I'm thinking the laser is falling out of spec, so it's not worth trying to reflash the thing. I haven't tried reflashing or playing cdrw burned at 1x, but I don't think that's really the problem. If anyone knows of a way to restore it let me know... otherwise I'm assuming it's just cheap components and I'm screwed.