APEX 1500 serial number question

[crashEM]

I went to Kmart and the a lot of Apex 1500's. How can I tell the serial number without opening the boxes. I saw a number on a tag but does not look like a serial number.

[Urbs]

Why do you want to know the serial number before you buy it?

[crashEM]

Certain serial numbers allow the unit to flashed by a cdr to disable macrovision and turns off regiion checking. Read the hack for the model in DVD Players.

[crashEM]

Here's the description:

not for serials starting with SV or no letter at all.
yes for serials starting with A, B, C, D as of

- Defeat Macrovision
- Enjoy DVDs from anywhere in the world
- Change the boring, factory background image.

[oldfart13]

Wal-Mart (Canada) has tons of the "D" serial number Apex 1500s. If you are in the States, try Best Buy. The units are $69US. There are several sites up with the downloadable firmware upgrade software as well as the backround changer tools. I'll be buying a unit soon to replace one of my old RCA DVD players that I gave to a friend. Once I can get an LG DVD burner I can start to burn my own DVDs and play them on the 1500 which is compatable with DVD-R...

[MITSUI_1]

The Apex 1500 firmware hack is particularly cool because it disables not only macrovision, but also the digital CGMSa signal. That means you could take a set-top DVD recorder and hook it to the Apex 1500 and "dub" dvd to dvdrw with NICE NICE quality, in REAL time and without encoding or any other crap. As soon as the Panasonic DMR E20 comes down another couple of hundred bucks, that's what I'm going to start doing. And that'll be the end of VCDs and SVCDs for me.

[Ibme]

My experience with the serial numbers:
The D-models have the serial number on two (opposite) sides of the box, in the lower left corner.
The SV-model (the one you don't want) only has one serial # label, on one side of the box.
Its about half way between the top and bottom of the box. slightly left of center.
Just for the record; I purchased & hacked 5 of these units for myself and friends. Works great.

I forgot to mention; I had to show the sales people where to find the serial #.
They tried to tell me they were not on the box.
At CCity, I called and asked for the warehouse, for a stock check.
They told me over the phone how many D-models they had in stock.