Apex AD-3201 DVD Player
Nice picture but very poor quality
I bought this for one reason only - my friend told me it could be made 'region free' without even having to mess with changing the firmware.  This is true - there is a 'trick' you use on the remote control that turns off region locking.  Very cool.  I bought it and was immediately playing my DVDs from the UK (PAL/Region 2) on my standard US TV (NTSC).  <br />But - this player locks up when playing Apollo 13 (at 44:02, precisely!).  Search on the web for this player, and you'll see forums that list lots of movies that all fail.  I downloaded patches and applied them but the problem remained. Other than the lockup, it has great image quality!  The lockup is severe - must power down the unit!   <br />This unit has very nice features for the price - dedicated r,g,b outputs, optical audio, coax audio, etc - but, the lockups on mainstream movies tell me it's just not worth it. <br />I was able to watch my UK DVDs but the quality was not good - I noticed poor display quality when there was movement in the image.  Searching around, I discovered this is due to the PAL->NTSC conversion that the unit is doing.  Not too bad, but noticeable.  I also bought the APEX 1500, and it does a better job of this for some reason, although the overall image quality of that unit is not as good.