To Purchase AD-500w or Not To Purchase...

[Krajensky]

Ok, here's a quickie:

I'm buying my first DVD player, and all I plan to do with it is play R-1 DVDs and xVCDs. Is the Apex 500w a good buy, or can it not handle children well (flimsy tray)?

If it is not a good entry-level player, please refer me to one you'd suggest, preferrably under $200. And no, I'm not really interested in a DVD changer -- the xvcds will only have 45 minutes of video on them
Krajensky

[Erwin]

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On 2001-09-07 12:42:53, Krajensky wrote:
Ok, here's a quickie:

I'm buying my first DVD player, and all I plan to do with it is play R-1 DVDs and xVCDs. Is the Apex 500w a good buy, or can it not handle children well (flimsy tray)?

If it is not a good entry-level player, please refer me to one you'd suggest, preferrably under $200. And no, I'm not really interested in a DVD changer -- the xvcds will only have 45 minutes of video on them
Krajensky
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Well, here are some things to consider:
1.)The Apex's weakest feature is probably it's weak laser DVDROM drive, but if it goes bad you can buy any PC DVDROM for a low price.
2.) It seems to be more durable than some players.
3.) It's only $98 at Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart has a 90 day Return Policy (that's being way to generous if you ask me; some places won't even give your money back once you open the DVD player).

Here is one player to consider- Here is the review:
www.vcdhelp.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?topic=58139&forum=8&0

[JW]

The AD-500w is a decent player for its low price but the video quality is poor. If you don't need region hack, consider the Sanyo DWM-370. You can get it at Walmart for $139. It plays Mp3 with bitrate up to 256kbs both variable and constant and it has component out if your TV supports it.

I tried several AD-500w but all the units had the same video problem. The 500w video was too sharp and it had a hard time holding black, especially black on black. The unit would often pixelate when faced with displaying dark or gray background. It was really noticable in light transition area. I tried recalibrating my TV but I just couldn't get the 500w to work correctly. For anyone that ask, I used Video Essential to calibrate my TV and DVD player. After my third return of the 500w I pick up the Sanyo. The difference was really noticable. The Sanyo's vido quality was better than my old DVD unit, a panasonic A110. As far as the audio, both unit had similar audio quality. I tested Mp3, regular CD, DD, DTS and DTS audio. The results were similar.

[Erwin]

I thought the Sanyo DWM-370 was an excellent DVD player when I threw a few XVCDs at it. Problem is, it won't show it's weaknesses until you completely watch the XVCD because it will do strange things like repeat a frame (very noticeable) once or twice and the audio will do strange things like make beeping noises or annoying humming noises as someone raises their voice on the XVCD. The mp3 player is extremely slow, and I thought this was just me reporting this until I read other reviews. It's a very nice looking DVD player that plays DVDs fine, but I would not say it's a good XVCD player. It seemed to mess up on any XVCD I gave it, and it messed up even more on VCDs that were supposedly set by VCD compliant standards. GET A CURTIS MATHES DVD PLAYER, this could be your answer.

[JW]

Strange, I've had my unit a couple of weeks now and I've watched alot of VCD, XVCD and DVD without any of the problems you mentioned. The VCD, XVCD comes from overseas and I haven't tried any homebrew yet. As for the Mp3 playing extremely slow, can you elaborate. I know that if I screw up my burn and not use ISO standard I get read error or long load time.

[Erwin]

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On 2001-09-08 13:35:06, JW wrote:
Strange, I've had my unit a couple of weeks now and I've watched alot of VCD, XVCD and DVD without any of the problems you mentioned. The VCD, XVCD comes from overseas and I haven't tried any homebrew yet. As for the Mp3 playing extremely slow, can you elaborate. I know that if I screw up my burn and not use ISO standard I get read error or long load time.
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If your not having problems with your Sanyo, I may be open to try it again. I did like the player and it certainly seems like a reliable player, but I just don't know why the player would perform the way it did. As for the mp3s, there is like a 10 sec gap between each track(file) and it seems to take longer than most players to bring up the initial files.

[Krajensky]

Will this Curtis Mathis player work well for scratched DVDs (i.e. rented/borrowed)? I'm going tomorrow night to make my decision...

Krajensky

[Erwin]

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On 2001-09-08 18:07:26, Krajensky wrote:
Will this Curtis Mathis player work well for scratched DVDs (i.e. rented/borrowed)? I'm going tomorrow night to make my decision...

Krajensky
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Well, I played some (4 so far)DVDs that I rented the other night. Some of the movies were atleast a year old and scratched. They played fine. Try it out. K-mart has the usual 30 day return policy(opened or not).
Earlier, I would have recommended the Apex 500w, but now, I don't know. Today, the Apex 500w that I have been using has been constantly displaying this "audio dropout behavior". At first I thought it would only do it one time per disc (still annoying but OK). But no, it does it several times per disc now for some reason. So far, it only does this with DVDs and not XVDs. Even with my DVDROM, this takes place. So, it couldn't be the drive causing this to happen.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Erwin on 2001-09-08 18:40:11 ]</font>

[JW]

I just check the load time for Mp3. For CDr with 146 Mp3 in the root directory, the player took 14 sec to display the dirctory from the time the cd tray is closed. The gap time between songs, measured by the time display resting, is approximately 5 to 6 seconds. This was measure with five different Mp3 CDs. The 10 sec gap you're see might be the result of a bad burn or a wrong setting in your burner program. I used the latest Nero with the following settings.

no multisession
Finilize disk
Disk at Once
file/directoryname lenght ISO level 2 (max of 31 chars)
format mode 2/XA
character set ISO 9660
Joliet
Relax ISO Restriction Allow pathdepth of more than 8
Allow more than 255 char.

One thing I did notice during my tests was that if you broke up the Mp3 files into different directories the gap time came down to about 3 sec. But the disadvantage is that the DWM-370 will not branch into other directories. When the last song on the current directory end it will stop. Hopefully, the DWM-370 is firmware upgradeable and that sanyo will come out with a patch to fix the gap and directory problem

[Erwin]

JW, do you play XVCDs that have the compliance turned off when created in NERO? Because most of the time, this is the only way I create XVCDs. The settings I have are correct for the VCD white book, (you know: 1150Kbps(VDR) 44100/224Kbps (ADR)). It's going to take ALOT for someone to convince me that I should encode with TMPGENc. So far, I pretty satisfied with skipping this step and leaving the compliance off.

[thxkid]

APEX, simple.... plays anything you throw at it, reliable, Have a APEX 600a- bought 14 months ago, no probs, bought APEX 660 at Sam's Club for $99 downloaded the macrovison firmware hack from internet popped in CD-R with hack, now macrovision free, its 4 months old now still works no probs.
Daughter Apex 500w - walmart $92 - 4 months no probs
Uncle Apex 500W - Walmart $98 - 2 months no probs
Dad APEX 600a - Circuit City $169 - 12 months no probs
Picture Quality - Average 36in screen and above
Great 32in screen or below

[Krajensky]

Ok, you've sold me on the Sanyo DWM-370. I'm picking one up later today, assuming the box doesn't mention anything nasty

Krajensky

[sracer]

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On 2001-09-09 02:25:50, thxkid wrote:
APEX, simple.... plays anything you throw at it, reliable, Have a APEX 600a- bought 14 months ago, no probs, bought APEX 660 at Sam's Club for $99 downloaded the macrovison firmware hack from internet popped in CD-R with hack, now macrovision free, its 4 months old now still works no probs.
Daughter Apex 500w - walmart $92 - 4 months no probs
Uncle Apex 500W - Walmart $98 - 2 months no probs
Dad APEX 600a - Circuit City $169 - 12 months no probs
Picture Quality - Average 36in screen and above
Great 32in screen or below
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The Apex 660 has a nasty little glitch of automatically turning subtitles on by default. This means that you have to manually turn them off each time you play a disc.... this grows tiresome very quickly. The 600 has a few little wrinkles as well. Check out http://www.nerd-out.com/ for all the info...warts and all on the entire Apex line.