problem with SVCD and apex ad-5131

[MASK666]

I read all the reviews here and everyone said this player worked great and supported SVCD. I had a pioneer dv333 before which played every one of my svcd fine and still does now. I hooked up my new apex player and tossed in a SVCD and it would not play at all (just said it was an auto cd and did nothing). Now my question here is am I doing something wrong? Do i need to burn them a different way for this player? Or did I just get a bad player? (VCD and DVD works fine as far as I can tell..)

Thanks

[sommersby]

probubly a bad player, apex have about a 1 out of 6 failure rate out of the box.

[Maui_Lover]

Could be the media. I know I have the Apex 1500 and some MP3s I have on Imation 74 minute cd-r's won't play on the unit. Others I had on memorex 80 minute cdrs play fine.

[next]

It could be the player but I doubt it. The reason I mention this is because if both VCD and DVD play fine then an equipment failure for simply SVCD would be hard to imagine. Not impossible though. But I think its probably more of an encoding and combatability issue.

Now my bad news comment. As far as Apex goes I think you have better choices than the 5131. It is pretty much an orphan of the Apex line and not the most popular. It's not really one of those 'play anything' Apex models. It is manufactured by the same company that makes the 703A for Apex. The 703A is another model that is not popular among the Apex line. For example nerdout.com has a grand total of 51 posts in their forums on the 5131/703A's and thousands of posts for other Apex models.

As far as failure rate comments I think its starting to get a little old. Apex uses various manufacturers to produce their products. They market alot more than DVD players. They are low end for the most part but actually offer some higher quality stuff as well. They can offer any quality they want because they are nothing more than a marketing company. They have used a price point niche in order to gain brand awareness. The quality issue became a problem because they swamped the manufacturers they deal with with orders. They were almost too successful. Plus the hacker community brutalized the DVD players in the early days.

For the Pioneer lovers I'll add this comment. You can thank Apex for those nice low prices on the 343's etc. It's called competition and Pioneer marched their prices down in order to compete. As soon as a Pioneer can handle higher bit rate mpeg2 I'll give them another look. Right now they're off my list though. Oh...and mini-dvd too.

Pioneer, JVC, Sony, etc better be careful though. I think somebody is going to simply come out with a "player". By that I mean an mpeg player. Not as tightly restrictive as the current models as it realtes to bit rates etc. Price points are like $150 for a dvd player that does a fairly decent job now. The technology is not rocket science.

Nine months ago on this board I got flamed because I said three things. One, XVCD and XSVCD are good. Two, buy a DVD player not a VCD player. Three, pretty soon will see off the shelf cheap software that will get rid of 20 hour encodes. I think we're getting closer.


Oh, sorry, for those who have great success with the 5131 congrats. But it would not be my choice.

[MASK666]

oddly, I took one of my SVCDs that did not work and reburned it with nero 5.5.5.1 (I dragged the old dat file to a new SVCD layout.) and it worked perfect. I do not remember what was used to make the first copy of this SVCD but it must be something the apex did not like. I only hope that my finding might help anyone else who gets this problem.

Thank you for all your comments

[next]

Good news Mask666.

I'm sure you'll figure it out and it will be fine. I think the nerdout group doesn't favor it because it can't be hacked for regions and macrovision. Perhaps my comments were wrong as it relates to the interests of this forum. Glad you made it work!

If a Pioneer couldn't play it it would be ho hum too bad but Pioneer is great! Because it was an Apex it's "APEX SUCKS!" LOL

I really like Pioneer by the way. Just waiting for them to get a bit more flexible.

[db02]

i am having this same svcd problem

the ntsc sample worked
and im trying the nero thing (extracted with cdrwin then encoded to mpg now gonna try to burn in nero 5.5.4.0 =P) ill see

[db02]

ok... that worked but its a big hastle =[ is the Apex AD-1500 better? is it worth returning it for it

[markm]

One thing I've noticed about the 5131 is that it doesn't seem to recover from errors very well. If you play a disc and it gets a read error, depending on the severity, the stream will usually not come back into sync. Stopping and restarting the disc won't fix it either, you need to power cycle the player.

So if you're experimenting, and something doesn't work, make sure you power cycle before trying something else. Don't use the remote to cycle it either, that simply puts the player in standby mode, use the front panel power button. This is one feature I do like about the Apex, a REAL power switch. When my Proscan screws up, I have to unplug it to reset it, the power button just puts the player in standby mode.

[ejai]

I also own an Apex 5131 and love it. I've had no problems playing anything I put in it. I must admit that my first try at authoring SVCDs was a bust. I was using Nero and had problems with FF and Rewind buttons. I began using Ulead's DVD Factory and all my problems went away.

I find that the Apex 5131 is a more than decent player that will make many people happy they purchased it.

[ApacheWraith]

I have one too (Apex 5131) I have burned test cds up to 8000 bitrate and they play without a hitch...... mpg1 mpg2, mpg5, mpg82, shit anything, plays stuff that doesn't exist.............

Apache

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