Apex AD-1600 DVD Player
True work-horse
I love Apex, I've been buying Apex players for years now - and I've convinced many, many friends to follow.  There are more features in this player than just about any high-end player for three times the cost.  I always feel bad when a friend buys a player w/o talking to me first, especially Sony - as they don't handle VCD's that well.<br />Just a quick word on VCD, SVCD format.  You may have never heard of them - but it's the MP3 of the future.  On your home computer - with nothing more than 50cent CDR's, a video capture card, and a cd burner you can be creating your own movies!  It's wonderful!  Then you burn them in VCD format and Apex players will play them (not all Sony's, even those that say \\"VCD\\" work with home media).<br />I'm slowly converting all my home videos into VCD format - that's why I'm such a big proponent of these players.  I want all my friends and family to be able to enjoy the home videos that I produce.<br />Another application for VCD format is Digital Cameras.  I can put all my new photos into a VCD formated disk (once again - 30-50 cents each) and it will play in the Apex player like a slideshow.  You can even zoom and pan through the photo.  It's so much nicer to view digital pictures in your living room rather than dragging everyone to the computer.  This Apex player is truly the media hub of my living room.<br />Plus - MP3 format - for parties, I just burn a few disks that have up to 10 regular ablums on them and I leave them in the living room.  I don't have to worry about people messing around with my cd collection - and you can create a single disk with 10 hours of music on it and never have to worry about changing disks again!