Any Apex DVD Owners Here?

[AzNKiD]

How long have u had it now? i was dissapointed that it crap out on me already after two years of usage and about 300vcd. its no longer picking up any cds i insert now, including burned, cdrw, and orginals. it just spins and spins forever. sometimes it says no disc, and others it just locks up and continues to spin. sounds like the laser is bad? i checked their site, and guess whats the first answer for their FAQ? http://www.apexdigitalinc.com/html/support.html yup, my problem is first, probably means this happens alot then. anyways, does any1 know what i need to do to re-align the lense? they got no local number and probably aint worth the 80buck i paid for this console to be fixed by others. i got nothing else to do, so any1 with suggestion on things to try? i already open it up and used a cotton ball to wipe the laser lense, no luck so far.

 

[Demosthenes]

Mine died after about two years of usage too.... so I ripped it open, took the drive that's in there out and stuck the one from my computer in there. It fits in perfectly.. has normal PC power and IDE connector.. and now it's worked flawlessly for about 6 months.

 

[bmacd]

Originally posted by: Demosthenes
Mine died after about two years of usage too.... so I ripped it open, took the drive that's in there out and stuck the one from my computer in there. It fits in perfectly.. has normal PC power and IDE connector.. and now it's worked flawlessly for about 6 months.

are you being serious? I didn't know that they were the same size/type of drives. What make/model do you have? Is this a universal practice where any IDE drive can pop into an APEX player or any other brand for that matter?

-=bmacd=-

 

[kami]

You get what you pay for

 

[XMan]

Originally posted by: bmacd

Originally posted by: Demosthenes
Mine died after about two years of usage too.... so I ripped it open, took the drive that's in there out and stuck the one from my computer in there. It fits in perfectly.. has normal PC power and IDE connector.. and now it's worked flawlessly for about 6 months.

are you being serious? I didn't know that they were the same size/type of drives. What make/model do you have? Is this a universal practice where any IDE drive can pop into an APEX player or any other brand for that matter?

-=bmacd=-

I'd like to know too.

 

[PG]

Apex DVD players have a huge following not only because they are cheap, but lots of them can be hacked and they play things that some much more expensive players will not.

Here's a great place for info: nerd-out

 

[DanFungus]

Originally posted by: bmacd

Originally posted by: Demosthenes
Mine died after about two years of usage too.... so I ripped it open, took the drive that's in there out and stuck the one from my computer in there. It fits in perfectly.. has normal PC power and IDE connector.. and now it's worked flawlessly for about 6 months.

are you being serious? I didn't know that they were the same size/type of drives. What make/model do you have? Is this a universal practice where any IDE drive can pop into an APEX player or any other brand for that matter?

-=bmacd=-

I'm pretty sure he's telling the truth..I think I read somewhere that when you flash the drive, you need to disconnect the IDE cable, and that it had a 4 pin molex on it too (computer inside power cable). tempted to open it up and see what's what in my 3201.

 

[TNTrulez]

Hate it when hardware breaks down, especially hard drives.

 

[Pabster]

Yes, guys, most of the drives in DVD players are nothing more than PC IDE DVD-ROM drives. I replaced the one in my Apex 600 a while back and it is much speedier and even reads more formats and more media

 

[dman]

What model DVD player do you have? Some of them are fetching decent prices for parts, folks who've blown out their firmware that have good drives might be interested. Check out the nerd-out forums for details about your specific model. Nerd-Out Forums

 

[Yossarian451]

Yep, the el-cheapo walmart one can easily be hacked, granted you get the 1mb model, so it plays on any tv and any region all for 68 bucks. I made me happy to watch stuff on the TV-VCR combos since 4/5 tvs I have access to are TV-VCR combos.

 

[Ameesh]

just buy another one, they are soo cheap any way.

 

[AzNKiD]

i have the 600a one, and they no longer sell this model. also, the only model left in apex that offer the vocal assist (for dual asian languages vcd) is in the 100+ range

i been researching online for a pioneer model that offer this mono mute feature for asian vcd, but have no luck on finding out yet..... heard good things about dv-333, but not sure yet. does any1 know which pioneer model has audio section feature? somewhere around 100-120 price range at max.

oh well, i guess i got my money worth on the old apex, it did had to play over 300vcd for me

 

[TCPpacket]

you can get the Apex AD-1500 for sub-100 and it plays chinese vcds with the audio selection. i have 2 of them with the circuit city 3 year replacement plan on each. nothing like trading in your dvd player every couple months, hehe.

 

[waggy]

i had a apex 500w and it died after a year of use. i took it back to wal-mart and complained and they let me exchange it for the new one they had. 1350 or somthing like that. anyway i got on nerdout and got the upgrade (1meg ver) and it works great.

if i had known that you can just pull out hte DVD on it and throw it in a computer i would have did that. the only thing that was wrong on it was that it would not do sound. it played fine just no sound.

no i know! and knowing is half the battle!