Does any DVD player have more features than the APEX AD-800?

WHAT IS THE APEX AD-800?

A DVD/MP3/VCD/SVCD/CD/CD-R/CD-RW/HDCD player. (OK, I need some help with HDCD, anyone know what that is?) I would be surprised if there exists another DVD player near this price range that matches the AD-800's list of features.

UPDATE 2/13/02 The AD800 is available at Amazon.com for $129.99!

HOW IS IT SUPPOSED TO WORK?

Hook this unit up to your television and sound system and use it to play back virtually any digital video or audio disc you might own. Hooking this DVD player up to my TV was not difficult. The player comes with a 40 page owner's manual, quick start guide, and the necessary audio (RCA) and video (video and S-video) cables. To get it going, all I had to do was hook up the included RCA type audio cables and video cable to the inputs on my television, and put the included batteries in the remote. I used the standard "Right and Left" audio cables and Yellow video cable to hook up to my TV, but this player also includes S-Video and component video outputs, and outputs for the built in Dolby 5.1 decoder and digital and optical audio out hookups. Diagrams in the owner's manual clearly explain the alternatives and rate them (ie using the video out gives you "good" quality, using the S-video out is better, and component video is best).

DOES APEX AD-800 WORK?

The short answer is yes. I have tried many of the features, but do not have the hardware to try them all. Here are the hilites:

MP3 playback:

Works well. I burned a few CD-R's and CD-RW's and tried them out. The blank cd-r's were cheap 12X versions bought on sale for $10 for a shrinkwrapped pack of 100 at Compusa. The APEX AD-800 had no problems reading any of these cd's. After reading the cd, a list of about 10 file names and/or directories are shown on your TV screen. Only the number of files is displayed on the DVD player itself. Once a song starts playing, the track number and elapsed time shows on this display. On the TV screen, you can scroll down the list of file names and directories using the remote to see additional names. The "full" file name is shown (well, at least the first 32 letters, all that fit on the screen), not just the DOS 8.3 version I was afraid I might see. The playing time of the selected song and the total number of songs shows at the bottom of the screen. Scrolling is a little slower than it is on your PC, but not too bad. Other than choosing the first song to be played, I have not determined how to control what songs the DVD player plays, it starts playing the song you select, and when finished, goes to the next song in the directory your are in. If there is a way to create a playlist or set for random playback, I haven't found it. You can switch between directories, so you can control playback to a small degree by putting different songs in different directories.
I could not find any published information related to sound quality, such as signal to noise ratio, but I did not notice any hiss, and I found the sound quality of listening to mp3's this way almost comparable to listening to music cd's.

(UPDATE - I recently encoded an mp3 file at 320 kbs - no reason to really do this, but was trying it out, but it will not play in the AD-800. Variable bit rate (VBR) mp3's also do not play. This player did handle mp3's encoded at bit rates from 64 to 256 kbs, which covers the vast majority of mp3 files.)

VCD/SVCD Playback

Works well. I wanted to save episodes of TV shows I had recorded to CD-R's for future playback. (To do this, I "captured" the episodes from tape to my PC's hard disk using an ATI video capture card, and then encoded the resulting video files to VCD compliant MPG files. These were burned onto CD-R's using VCD option in Roxio's Easy CD Creator). Once the VCD's were burned, the APEX AD-800 handled them without problems. I do wish you could just hit the fast forward button to move ahead in a vcd, but this doesn't seem to work in VCD's I have burned. To skip ahead, first hit the "Stop" button, then hit the "Go To" button, and then enter the time elapsed point you want to go to. For example, if you want to go to the mid point of a 40 minute VCD, you would enter 00:20:00 using the number pad on the remote (0 hours 20 minutes 0 seconds).

(UPDATE: What I originally called the fast forward button on the remote is actually a chapter advance button that takes you from one chapter to the next on DVD's There is also a "forward" and "reverse" button on the remote that will "fast forward or reverse" several frames at a time. This works for VCD's , SVCD's and DVD's)

I have also burned a couple of SVCD's (using Fireburner) and they also played back fine. Video quality of these are highly dependent on the quality of the original recording and subsequent encoding, but typically VCD quality is similar to home recorded video tapes.

(UPDATE I have now also burned and played back SVCD's with NERO Burning Rom)

DVD Playback

So far, the AD-800 has played back all the DVD's I have tried (Matrix, Galaxy Quest, Miss Congeniality, among others). As expected, picture quality was much better than I can get from a VCR or broadcast TV. Frame by frame slow motion, and other features I tried worked as advertised.

S-Video/Component Video/Dolby ProLogic Surround Sound/Digital/DTS/ Playback/Progressive Scan

My TV does not have S-Video or component video capability. However, since other epinion reviewers have described problems with S-video, I did find a way to test S-Video by connecting the S-Video cable to the S-video input of a PC video capture unit (Dazzle DVC Creator) that I borrowed for this test. I was not able to get the S-Video to work with the the video capture unit, although the standard video connection that I use to connect to my TV did work with the video capture unit. I tried several settings to get it to work, with no luck. Today I emailed Apex to request help with this and will update this review in a couple of weeks after I hopefully resolve this issue. Apex does have a web site (www.apexdigitalinc.com), and there is a small, but ultimately inadequate, amount of technical and troubleshooting information on this site. Hopefully the email tech support will be good, and that would be big advantage for APEX). I have not tested the Component Video or the built-in Dolby Digital Decoder(5.1) or Progressive Scan.

(UPDATE: APEX answered my question about S-video after about 10 days, but the answer was a canned response that didn't help)

WOULD I BUY IT AGAIN?

Yes. This unit was purchased for $199. at Sam's club. I am very pleased that it handles all the cd-r's and cd-rw's I have tried, and handles homemade VCD's, SVCD's, and MP3's more than adequately. S-Video output is a concern with this unit. Apex DVD player's do not have a reputation for quality, but the build of this model, and the remote are more than adequate and comparable to other brands. This DVD player has many other features I did not go into, progressive scan, digital audio outputs, Karaoke capability, echo and pitch control, Vocal assist, two microphone jacks w/volume control, surround sound, NTSC and PAL capability, fast motion forward and backward, parental lock options, multiple angle view with capable DVD's, frame by frame slow motion, programable playback sequence, screen saver, zoom, upgradeable firmware, and HDCD (high definition compatible digital) capability. If you are looking for a DVD player that also handles CD-R's and CD-RW's, VCD's, SVCD's, and MP3's, this unit is a good choice.

(UPDATE: After 5 months of use, I am still very happy with this DVD player)