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Review NaN of
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$0.00 Summary:
Apex players are a breed of their own. They sell for rock-bottom prices, are very unrefined in terms of their operation, and have some of the worst picture and sound quality ratings in comparison to just about any other DVD player.
When the video and audio are professionally analyzed, there are several notable shortcomings. Sometimes various colors and black and white ratings are either too hot or unacceptably below SMPTE specs.
To add insult to injury, the AD-3201, or at least the model I auditioned, uses the Zoran Vaddis IV MPEG engine, which is known to have a problem with chroma upsampling. However, it is usually only noticable with high resolution video equipment. Bad chroma upsampling can manifest itself as missing lines and jagged lines on boldly colored objects, like a red apple. On a red apple, you could see red lines protruding from outside the apple and some missing red lines in the apple itself. This is one example of bad chroma upsampling, where the incorrect upsampling formula is implemented for the chroma channels. (DVD video is inherently a component video source, with one separate greyscale signal with sync (Y) and two separate color channels (Pb and Pr). Now, the Apex isn't the only player with this problem. Loads of other players, including some well-known name brands, like Sony, Toshiba, Pioneer, and the Microsoft X-Box, also have the problem. Some actually cover up the problem through filtering, while others make the problem painfully obvious. But it is an asthetically serious problem with many DVD players.
Other times, you may have problems with audible distortion due to the poorly designed power supply and a poorly designed audio section.
Also, this thing cannot maintain a straight line from 20Hz to 20KHz when analyzing the frequency range, which indicates a very spotty and an overall awful frequency response. Dynamic range and signal/noise ratio also have low ratings.
Now, that we have established the idea that this player is a terrible choice for a serious home theatre setup, let's see how it fares as a cheap, just-play-a-DVD kind of player.
In my opinion, you can do better than this.
The only saving grace for this player is that you can disable region restrictions and MacroVision completely using the remote and without doing any modifications to the player itself. This means that you would be able to play a DVD from just about anywhere on the globe and would be able to run the player through a VCR without suffering from picture degradation (usually appears as flickering brightness or a REAL dim picture) from the effects of the MacroVision AGC spike that the DVD player would normally put on the video at the vertical blanking during playback. This spike is designed to confuse the video AGC (auto gain control) in a VCR, making it think the picture is too bright so it pushes the gain down, making the video look dim. All VCRs are affected, but some are only mildly affected to the point where it's not noticable. Regardless, you can turn off MacroVision in the player if you wish.
The build quality is okay, but the quality of the power supply circuit is of concern. The board looks cheaply fabricated and cheap parts are used. There is a serious question concerning this module's reliability.
The actual mainboard appears okay in design. The board does not appear to be cheaply designed, but some cheap electrolytic capacitors are used, which has the potential to be a reliability issue as well.
The DVD drive uses a standard IDE interface, so you could actually take the drive out and hook it up to your computer! However, the drives that are typically used are also of questionable quality. More notably, the optical pickup is known not to last very long under normal use in most cases. The only upside to the drive quality is that it employs brushless motors (which will last longer than standard motors that are sometimes used on a few DVD players) and also operates at faster transfer and access speeds since the drive is a DVD-ROM drive. However, the screw mountings for this drive are non-standard, so a modification is required to mount a new DVD-ROM drive bought from a store into the player.
The remote control is just downright terrible! The buttons are not logically arranged (the Play key is all the way to the bottom of the remote), are overly small and crowded (which can be frustrating when looking for a specific key to use a particular function), and have a very mushy feel to them when they are pressed (very bad tactile feedback). There are also a lot of non-standard labeling for the DVD functions. For instance, pressing "DVD Digest" brings up the DVD menu. Other players simply label the same key as "MENU" on their remotes.
Overall, you're better off paying more for a quality Japanese brand DVD player, even for the kids! As the saying goes, you get what you pay for. Apex players do everything, but they don't do a stellar job at it. Strengths:
Region code/Macrovision easily defeatable
Fairly solid construction
HDCD support
Drive firmware may be updated through your computer since it is standard IDE compliant.
Extremely fast seamless branching, layer transitioning, and seek and scan. (When the drive is working)
CD-R, CD-RW support Weaknesses:
Poor video and audio quality for a DVD player. With this kind of quality, HDCD support won't do much to improve the sound quality with HDCD encoded CDs.
Cheap power supply circuit design
Zoran Vaddis IV chipset has a problem with chroma upsampling
Terrible MP3 support
Terrible DVD-ROM drive (the pickups used in the drives that are most often installed in this model have a tendency to fail in a short amount of time)
Terrible remote Similar Products Used:
Sony DVP-S360
Sharp DV-S1U
Pioneer DVL-700
Panasonic DVD-RV30
Panasonic DVD-RV41
Panasonic DVD-A110
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