Apex 1500 vs. Apex 500w

[Marlowe]

I know some of you might try to steer me into another brand, but if I had to get one of these do any of you have experience with both and have a preference?

So far I know that:

500w
-Looks better
-Region Hack
-Plays DVD-RW

1500
-Smaller
-Newer
-Plays SVCD subs

None of these really matter to me (playing the widest range of formats with the best quality is), but if I had to decide with my limited knowledge, I'd go with the 500w, since it looks more like a real DVD player. I don't want to make a decision based soley on that. Any advice?

[El_Mero_Zooter]

a buddy o mine had some cdr/cdrw media compatibility issues wit da 500w.
If the macro/region hack is essential, go for da 500.

I like da 1500, it's played all ive thrown at it, vcd,xvcd,svcd,sxvcd,xsvcd,dvdz,audio cd/cdrz,mp3'z on cd/cdrw, even raw mpg filez. Could use a headphone jack though.

my 2¢z
zTr

[Kdiddy]

Well if the choices are just those 2..

definitely NOT the 500W

[DiViNeLeFT]

ive been interested in the 1500 as well... i havnt heard one person say anything bad about it.... one thing i was curious about... what kind of jacks does it have to hook up to other devices. anyone have a picture of the back of the thing???

[Battra92]

I have a 500W and here is my personal opinion...

YOu get what you pay for. Now that can be good and bad.

First the Bad.
1)VCD's don't look nearly as good as they do on my Pioneer DV-333
2)cuts off the last half second of a VCD (Arggh, I've learned to add an extra second at the to avoid that headache)
3) DOA problem. I had no problem with mine but then I bought mine just as Wal-MArts were getting them in my area (before Apex's mad dash to make as many as they could)
4) Picture Quality on DVD's(it stinks on my 27inch TV. looked good on my 1980 Sylvania) but last night while watching Endless Waltz I could really see pixelation in the dark areas.
5)No Mini-DVD (I don't know if the 1500 has this either)

The Good
1)XVCD's? You bet your bippy. It plays things that no other DVD player I tried would.
2) Region/Macro Hack. None for the 1500 yet. I personally have hacked my 500W via a chip replacement and that is the reason I bought it. (So I can watch imported discs from Japan and Hong Kong)
3) Good Price! For 100 bucks I guess its worth what I paid for it (though I hear the $100 daewoo is better 'cept no Macro hacks)

In conclusion if you want to get a 500W make sure the serial number ends in ED04. Mine said ED03 and boy was I mad to find out I didn't have the newest version. But a chip replacement made it all better

its up to you depending on what you want but I have yet to find a great quality Apex.

[MovieLover]

I bought an Apex 1500 player about a month
back. I was impressed by its abilities to
play anything that I throw at it. VCD/DVD/MP3
playback is excellent. It does not have
optical outputs but I can live without it.

One fine day it locked up. It would not open/close
but will just power up. I returned it and got
a new piece. Seems to be working fine so far.

My advice for you is to go for it.. but
buy it from a place with a very good return
policy. Reliability has always been an issue
with Apex.

[thxkid]

Look the 500W is $98 at Walmart
The 660 is $99 at Sams
Advantage of 660 it has a flash rom chip so you can burn the region/macrovision hack onto a CD-R and change it without ever opening the top.
I had the 500w returned it for the 660, much happier with 660, plays anything I throw at it, but NO DVD-R.

[Marlowe]

Thanks for all the input! I was gravitating toward the 500w, but changed my mind based on your suggestions and the offer below. I'd also considered the Daewoo, but I don't have a Sam's Club card (though my mother-in-law could take me *shudder*.)

I'll go with the 1500 since Circuit City is giving them out free with a Sprint PCS cell phone purchase! It says you need to buy and *activate* the phone, but this is untrue; just buy the phone and they give you a free 1500. They also say they have to be over $100, but the web site lists some at $99.99 with free DVD. I'll sell the phone and hopefully save some bones.

Update: I bought the phone and walked out with the DVD player. I paid $105.99 with Michigan sales tax. This could be a good deal if you need a phone or can sell it.

[Marlowe]

* Correction to above: * I was the fortunate victim of a mistake. My friend did the same thing but was told he had to buy the 1500 and send in a $99.99 rebate after paying full price for the Apex 1500. The Touchpoint 2200 that I used for my deal was $99 online, but $158 in-store. He wound up buying the Touchpoint 2110 for $129.99 and walked out with the Apex.

So, buy cheaper online, get a rebate. Pay more in-store, walk out with your Apex.

[Terry Hagerty]

The Apex 1500 is great! It plays everything with great speed, VCD,SVCD,XVCD,XSVCD,MP3,Audio,individual MPG and VOB files (no need to make a formated CD) and does all the above with CD-R and CD-RW no problem. Also does the menus and picture CD's no problem.

My only wishes were that I would have liked it if you could have looked at picture files from the file menu (the same one that lets you play MP3s and MPG files). This way you could organise your pics into folders. Does anyone know how to do this???

I know you can make an SVCD for your pictures and use menus, but you seem to be limited to 99 pictures and MPG files that way.

The only major thing this doesn't have is component video out and optical audio. I does have S-Video and composite video as well as analogue and coaxial digital out. In my opinion this is all you need.

Great player for the price!!! The cheapest I've seen out there!

[sportfisher]

Is there a chip available to defeat Macrovision copy protection on the Apea AD-1500?

[El_Mero_Zooter]

sportsf,
i was tempted to source out a chip fo da 1500, till a buddy o mine had one put in and nothing worked (mind u it was probably a hacked job {no pun intended}or da guy didnt know what t.F. he was doing).
Now i just run it thru my tv. Aud/vid out from 1500 to tv. then aud/vid out from tv to vcr. Press Record n enjoy da show. Good way to backup other vcd's n shiet too.

my 2¢
Zooter

[rqtball]

actually I bought 2 sprint phones today from circuit city...I walked out with 2 dvd players at NO charge....didnt activate the phones yet either

[quote]
On 2001-09-21 15:03:01, Marlowe wrote:
* Correction to above: * I was the fortunate victim of a mistake. My friend did the same thing but was told he had to buy the 1500 and send in a $99.99 rebate after paying full price for the Apex 1500

[Marlowe]

rqtball, If you ordered from the web last week, they had several phones that were $99 with a $99 rebate for the DVD player. That offer was different than the store offer. Since I already have a Sprint PCS account, I can't get the rebate on the Sprint phone. So, I wanted to go with the lowest priced phone before rebate.

This week select phones get you the DVD player.

[ilc]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-09-26 07:21:58, sportfisher wrote:
Is there a chip available to defeat Macrovision copy protection on the Apea AD-1500?
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

No, and I doubt there will be such a chip anytime soon, because the firmware chip is soldered ("glued" to the circuit board. If the chip was in a socket, someone could easily pull it out and get the firmware extracted...it would then be a matter of a firmware patcher altering the Macrovision code accordingly.


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: ilc on 2001-09-29 13:09:25 ]</font>

[ilc]

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On 2001-09-21 12:34:06, thxkid wrote:
Look the 500W is $98 at Walmart
The 660 is $99 at Sams
Advantage of 660 it has a flash rom chip so you can burn the region/macrovision hack onto a CD-R and change it without ever opening the top.
I had the 500w returned it for the 660, much happier with 660, plays anything I throw at it, but NO DVD-R.
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

Another reason to get the 660: it has a much better MP3 menu than the 500W. This same MP3 menu allows you to play MPG and VOB files -- this is not possible on the 500W.

An additional advantage of the flash rom chip on the 660: you don't have to spend $15-$20 on a replacement chip (like you on the 500W...) and you don't have to worry about damaging the warranty sticker.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: ilc on 2001-09-29 13:09:53 ]</font>

[ilc]

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On 2001-09-21 10:09:00, Marlowe wrote:
I know some of you might try to steer me into another brand
(snip)
Any advice?
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

If Macrovision isn't an issue, and if you don't mind a backlit green LCD display, go to Sam's and get the Daewoo DVG-3000N. It has some of the best traits of the 500W and 1500, including a region hack (plus the 1500/660's better MP3 menu, which allows MPG and VOB playback). Not sure if it will play DVD-R/DVD-RW.

Plus the Daewoo looks very much like a "real" DVD player (except for that LCD display.)


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: ilc on 2001-09-29 13:23:21 ]</font>

[bachelor]

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On 2001-09-21 11:23:23, DiViNeLeFT wrote:
ive been interested in the 1500 as well... i havnt heard one person say anything bad about it.... one thing i was curious about... what kind of jacks does it have to hook up to other devices. anyone have a picture of the back of the thing???
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

Bestbuy.com has a pic of the back of it.

[sracer]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-09-21 12:34:06, thxkid wrote:
Look the 500W is $98 at Walmart
The 660 is $99 at Sams
Advantage of 660 it has a flash rom chip so you can burn the region/macrovision hack onto a CD-R and change it without ever opening the top.
I had the 500w returned it for the 660, much happier with 660, plays anything I throw at it, but NO DVD-R.
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

You forgot to mention another "Advantage" of the 660. There is a bug in the 660 firmware that automatically turns on subtitles for all discs. You have to manually turn off subtitles every time you watch a movie.

(fixed typo)
Apparently, the 9MM firmware patch will fix this problem. (just don't hit the PAUSE button. )

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: sracer on 2001-10-01 05:26:56 ]</font>

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: sracer on 2001-10-01 05:40:09 ]</font>

[next]

The subtitle bug patch for the 660 has been available for a couple of months now.

[toms31]

October 1,2001
Yesterday I went to Circuit City and looked at DVD Players. I bought the Apex AD-1500 liking its $100.00 price and small size. I took it home and hooked it up. I once hooked up a Phillips DVD player to my Sony 27 inch Tv and it played perfect. Am I wrong but is the quality a bit less with the Apex? I know that one post mentioned this. Am I imagining some decrease of quality? I am now playing a MP3 disk my friend gave me and it is great!

[House de Kris]

I was going to start a thread called 'In Praise of the AD-1500' but saw this one and decided to post my comments here.

I bought my Apex AD-1500 over a month ago becuase I needed a cheap DVD player that I wouldn't care too much about to take to the desert and expose it to the elements for a week (Burning Man). First off I noticed that it can recognize a disc in about 2 seconds. Other players take a long time, especially for VCDs.

So this weekend I am cleaning off the thick film of crud from the 1500 and I decided to see if the MP3 menus are more readable than on my Apex AD-600A. Not having any MP3 discs handy, I stuck in a disc full of MPEG-1 videos used for making VCDs. Whoa! It played it using an interactive Apex menu. Only problem was no FF/REW. Then I stuck a disc in with MPEG-2 video files made for DVD creation. It played those files as well! Excited, I put in a mini-DVD. It played the movie file but couldn't handle the menus, you still selected files to play using the Apex menu. Again, FF/REW didn't function. With all this success, I stuck in a disc full of AVI files. It played it as well! OK, I was just joking, it won't play AVI files, I just wanted to see if anyone was awake and/or reading this.

That's about all I wanted to share, the AD-1500 will play just about everything. Oh yeah, the MP3 menu is much better than my earlier Apex. It now recognizes Joliet file names and is readable by mere mortals.

[ilc]

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Am I wrong but is the quality a bit less with the Apex?</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

I'm sure that the quality is a bit less with the Apex. You can't expect name-brand quality from a $100 DVD player.

Most people seem to buy Apex players for the any or all of the following reasons:

1. Price
2. Compatibility (with lots of different video formats)
3. Hackability

I'm guessing that most Apex buyers are willing to sacrifice some quality if it means satisfying the priorities listed above.

If quality is the top priority, definitely stick with the name brands.

[thxkid]

If you want quality buy a name brand above $200, it will play DVD a whole lot better than a Sub $100 off brand like APEX, but it won't play MP3's, and only certain VCD and SVCD's if any at all.
Do what I did, I bought a ausome Toshiba 2050, DVD's look fantastic and a APEX 660 $99, plays MP3's great and any VCD or SVCD I throw at it, solves all my problems, oh yeah, My sams club was getting rid of the Toshiba 2050 for $67 - what a deal!...

[next]

I guess the name brand concept is a valid one. But I have not necessarily found it to be true in all cases. Some of the cost of these "name brands" involves the cost of advertising and not always better quality. The lower end and mid range "name brands" in my opinion do not perform any better than many of the "no names" which are cheaper, and often include many more features.

I've tested many DVD players. And not just by running a few disks through a player at a retailer. I brought them home and ran them through their paces on the same A/V equipment. I tested Pioneer, Panasonic, Philips, Apex, Sony, Sanyo, GE, RCA, Hitachi, and a few others. I was interested in DVD, (x)SVCD and (x)VCD playback. MP3 didn't matter. I didn't test all models by each brand name but I tested those within the $100-$200 range with most around the $150 range. I ran these tests after already owning an Apex660 and an Apex703.

Every player had its problems. Most had problems with SVCD in general and usually with SVCD and bit rates above 2.5mps. Alot had problems with VCD and XVCD. Except the Apex. The quality of the DVD playback on my equipment was similiar. It was very very hard to tell a difference between any of the models. I've got a 32 inch TV and was feeding it through good quality s-video cables. I can't attest to how any of them would compare on a larger screen setup.

My decision was hands down the Apex models. Both the 660 and the 703. As a matter of fact I picked up an additional 660 and an additional 703. They are all macrovision/region free and have all of the updated patches. The new 703 can also play miniDVD. One 660 cost me $79 after rebates and my last 703 was $113 from a Sams Club auction. And they can play everything.

I also own a higher end Proscan. It has all the bells and whistles - even component out. But it can only play DVD's. When I do a test between it and the Apex' for DVD quality it is very very very tough to tell a difference in quality. Period. I don't think anybody could walk into a room and say "looks like an Apex to me".

If you are looking for a player within a reasonable budget range give the Apex 660 or 703 a try (it's tough to find one cheaper). The many many features are tough to turn down. The 703, which is a three tray model, even has a built in digital audio decoder.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: next on 2001-10-01 17:37:23 ]</font>

[Erwin]

Does this "audio dropout" problem only appear on the Apex 500w?
In partial agreement with next, I find it odd that there is little to no BIG name DVD players that can play XVCDs. JVC is the only one that I have seen that can play XVCDs (as long as they are compliant), VCDs, mp3s, and DVDs(even better than a Proscan )

[Hollywood004738]

XVCD is not a standard...thus no file could be 'compliant' unless the JVC has a set of rules specifically for non-standard formats

[Erwin]

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On 2001-10-01 20:15:22, Hollywood004738 wrote:
XVCD is not a standard...thus no file could be 'compliant' unless the JVC has a set of rules specifically for non-standard formats


</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

I type very fast and I try to correct my posts, but occassionally, I forget to use the term "homemade VCD" or whatever one uses. You know what I'm getting at though. I know your kidding though, Hollywood004378.
No, XVCD is not standard, but that doesn't mean it cannot be played on a DVD player.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Erwin on 2001-10-01 21:09:50 ]</font>

[sracer]

No offense intended, but if a person can't tell the difference in playback quality between an Apex and a Pioneer, (high-end) Toshiba, or Proscan, then I suggest that their equipment is either faulty or in need of calibration.

With one possible exception (bitrates over 2.5k) Pioneer players are so heads and shoulders above the Apex in playback quality that anyone doing a side-by-side comparison would easily agree that the $40 difference in price is well worth it.

I mean, the difference is not even close.

I used to recommend the Apex to budget-conscious friends, but with the price drop in the Pioneer units and the difference in playback quality, I'm recommending to friends that they simply wait a paycheck or 2 to make up the difference and get a Pioneer...or better still, compare the various units themselves.

The bottom line is that people should compare for themselves to see if the differences are worth it. Perception of playback quality is highly subjective.

[next]

No offense taken. I tested the Pioneer 343. The first unit was DOA. The second unit I tested was fine out of the box but the it probably disappointed me the most out of all the units I tested. I had heard so many great things about it but there was no real difference in playback quality. Perhaps my expectations were too high. SVCD's over 2.5 mps choked on it but I did see a slight improvement on VCD playback. But not enough improvement to warrant keeping it. The unit did not have a quality feel to it. It just felt like another $150 DVD player. Nice little unit but nothing special. Another problem was that I had to run my SVCD through fix12c in order to get full screen playback. Without using fix12c the SVCD played back in a little box in the upper left hand corner of the screen. But for simple VCD playback it performed the best.

I have not tested a Toshiba but based on my research I would not expect a $150 Toshiba to leap ahead of the other dozen or so units I tested. Perhaps I neglected to test the "holy grail". I doubt it but I'll give it a try.

The Proscan I have is a great unit. But in a side by side test it did not provide signifiant improvement over any of the units I tested. I provides beautiful DVD playback but when switching between the Proscan and the other units with an A/V switch it was virtually impossible to pick it out. The test was with the s-video out not the component out though. Out of all of the units the Proscan feels to be built with more quality. The others all felt and looked the same as far as quality.


It wasn't simply my opinion either. I had help. It was one of those "ok now leave the room and come back and tell me which player it is or which do you prefer". Not really scientific but good enough for casual viewing. I was dissapointed in general because I was looking for an opportunity for improvement or at least one unit to stand above the rest.

The result was that players in the price range I tested generally performed about the same for DVD playback. For the ability to play other formats the Apex was better - well actually superior. Both the 660 and the 703 could handle a 3.5 mps SVCD without a hitch. None of the other units could even play it let alone play it poorly. I stayed with the Apex 660 and 703 because they blew away the others when it came to features and ability to play various types of media and formats as well as being macrovision and region free after a simple CDR patch.

If I had found a unit that was superior I would have kept it - it was the reason I tested all the players. Instead I went with two additional Apex units.

sracer - I agree with your comment about playback quality being highly subjective. That is a perfect statement. But features are highly objective in nature. The Apex models I chose (660 and 703) offered alot more features.