Apex AD-600A DVD Player
Quirky, but useful DVD player.
I bought the Apex AD-600A when the &quot;loop holes&quot; menu was still available.  By the way, I understand the Sampo brand of DVD players still has this loop holes menu.  I wouldn't buy a DVD player without the ability to turn off macrovision and region coding.  That was my main draw to this machine.  Also of interest was the ability to play CD-R and CD-RW discs.  It can play just about every format you can think of including MP3 formatted CD-ROMs, Video CDs (VCDs) and Super Video CDs (SVCDs).  If you have the equipment you can even turn your home movies into S/VCDs!  Visit my web page (members.home.net/babymac) to learn how to do this with a Macintosh computer.  The picture quality produced by the Apex was initially somewhat disappointing, but I discovered that a lot of it depends on the calibration of your TV.  I now have NO complaints about the picture.  My Apex has had some quirks.  Sometimes (rarely) the machine will lock up, almost like a computer.  There are certain DVD titles (Stuart Little, What Planet Are You From) that trigger menu problems with the Apex, but I've always been able to work around those problems (use the resume button on the remote instead of play!).  Sometimes audio and video sync can be a problem, but this is slight and becoming rarer with newer titles.  The only truly annoying problem with my machine is one that relates to the &quot;anamorphic&quot; widescreen feature.  Certain titles (like The Sixth Sense and Toy Story 2), will pop into anamorphic/widescreen mode without warning.  This causes the picture to look vertically stretched on my normal TV set.  In order to re-set the screen I have to pause and then unpause (using the Setup button) the movie.  It's a rare problem, but it is the most annoying one.  The only other problems that I can mention with this machine relate to enhanced CDs with computer data.  The Apex is the only modern machine I know of that will actually play computer data as audio!  When it does this (try the FooFighter's &quot;Nothing Left To Lose&quot; CD), the screeching that comes out of your stereo will give you a heart attack.  It could also damage your speakers.  Also, I have found one enhanced CD (The Squirrel Nut Zippers &quot;Hot&quot;) that absolutely refuses to play on the Apex.  However, that is the only one out of 500+ CDs that I own.  As I said, this is a quirky DVD player, but the benefits FAR outweigh those quirks.  99% of the time I am in love with this machine