We picked up an 1130W on BF and it's turned out to be a pretty good little unit. i'm using it to replace an old Panny A120U which will not play anything other than pressed DVD media. It's very small, but it still has that annoying red light on the front that Apex is known for. I hate that thing. Not a huge deal though.
It's played almost everything I've thrown at it. CD-R, DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD+RW, DVD-RW, JPEG, MP3, DVD-MP3, VCD, SVCD, XVCD.
As far as playing unauthered video, it will not play DIVX or MPEG4, but I really didn't expect it to for $27. But it plays Mpeg1 and Mpeg2 just fine.
I haven't messed around with any region hacks or anything like that because I don't have any of those disks and really have no intention to. However being that it's an Apex I'd almost bet it's very hackable.