I Can't Believe It!!! I Bought An Apex!!!

I was at a department store yesterday, and I found myself at the (what a surprise) electronics department. I wasn't looking for any thing particular and I certainly wasn't there to buy anything. I was looking at all the different DVD players, and I came across an Apex that had the HDCD logo and a DVD-A logo. I never saw a unit that played both HDCD and DVD-A. This Apex is a Progressive Scan DVD player that plays just about anything you throw at it. CD's, DVD Video, HDCD, MP3's, DVD-Audio, Kodak Picture CD, CD-R, CD-RW and it's JPEG Readable! It also has a S-video out jack. 5.1 analog out jacks, both optical and coaxial digital out jacks.

All the DVD players around it, are priced from $25.00 and up. Of course the Apex I'm looking at isn't priced anywhere. I go to find someone who works there, so they can tell my more about the unit and maybe give me a price on it. I can't find a soul to help me. In the mean time, my wife comes by and I show her the Apex and start explaining to her, what the unit can play. She tells me to throw it in the cart and we can do a price check at the front of the store. We get up to the front and I tell the woman there, that I need a price check on it, before she starts ringing up are other items. She scans it, and it comes up $29.97! I could not believe it !!! Sold!!!

I hooked it up this morning and I'm rather impressed at this machine. The draw opens fast and closes fast. It's also runs very quiet. I'm not using it as a DVD player at all. The manual states that the factory default is stereo. So I hooked it up at my tape 1, tape loop. I put on one of my Door's disc's from the box set and sure enough the HDCD light, lights up. The disc sounded great. I played a few CD-R's that I have and they played very well also. So all in all, I never thought I would seriously buy an Apex, but the price was right! It sounds fine to my ears, and its a cheap back up, if my Sony DVD player ever goes out.

So now I'm able to dabble with some DVD-A titles! Between my Sony DVD/SACD player and now this Apex player, I can play everything to my hearts content! JOY!!!

 

You can't beat that price!

 

The Apex players are highly regarded, and I've had one. They're very inexpensive players, but big on performance. You'll really surprise yourself in the years to come.

They last thru quite a bit of use too. Baffles me how they can sell them that cheap.

 

You should have bought some electrons. You'd get a bunch for your money and they'd be real easy to carry.

 

best laff of the day Geoff

 

Electrons weren't on sale, but neutrons were available with factory rebate.

 

$29.95???!?!?

That's the price of a MoFi SACD!!! Yikes!

I want one!

 

Ok, fellas! I fixed it!

 

How so, was it broke?

 

Joe, I think the Apex is a multi region player, do you know if that's true?

 

It shouldn't be. Some Apex decks can be modified either with a chip or firmware update to MAKE it region free. It comes region 1. I believe you can't sell a region free player in this country as-is.

 

So what's the model number for this player? I've read that with Apex, you get what you pay for. Many Apex machines are known to break down. You generally can't expect first-rate quality control at their low prices, but perhaps this new player breaks the mold.

 

Right you are Sckott!!! It is a region 1!

I'm a firm believer that you do get what you pay for. That's why I was so surprised how this player feels and sounds. But, hey, if I get a year or two out of it, and I'm able to build a little of a DVD-A collection, that's fine with me.

The model number is AD-7701 and it is a discontinued model, another reason why it was so cheap. What was more surprising to me is the size of the player. Every cheap player I've seen, is real small. This player is a full size DVD player. Hell, its larger than my Sony DVP-NS500V.

 

In my original post, I typed electrons instead of electronics! And the boys were ribbing me! So I fixed it! I guess you had to be there!

 

I remember when this player came out roughly 2 or 3 years ago (I think). It was supposed to be the first "Universal" player (which I believe it was)...

For around $30.00 you can't go wrong, but I clearly remember that a lot of people had issues with this player doing SACD and DVD-A right. If I remember correctly from what I read, SACD discs would lock the player up, and DVD-Audio playback was marred by very distracting crackling noises. I am not sure everyone who bought one of these players had these problems, but I do remember quite a few people on different web sites having similar problems. (I am only going from what I remember reading - as I never owned one of these players myself.) Hopefully these problems won't show up in your player, but hey for $30.00, as I said, you really can't go wrong if it even works as merely a DVD-Video player! For $30.00 I would probably buy it also just because.

The original selling price for this player was around $300.00.

Keep us appraised of your experiences when you get to test out all it's functions!!!

 

Thanks for the info, Mike. It's funny you brought this up. I wanted to try to find out how much this player retailed for. I couldn't find anything out about this player. Until I found some information on Amazon.
Apex AD-7701

My player will not play SACD so this must be a second generation player or something to that effect. My player looks exactly like this, but like I said, no SACD capabilities.

 

DVD players are certainly getting cheaper and cheaper. Got my Rat Shack catalog, they sell a small-footprint sized player for under $40.

For Radio Shack, that's LOW!

 

Amazing price for a DVD player. I'm totally embarrassed to reveal what I paid for my first DVD player back in early 1998.

 

I have a client in the film industry and he needs international dvd players. I just got him one from a place called www.dvdoverseas.com. It was a Toshiba SD-4900 and was under 250.00. I got it in a few days, so they're definitely domestic.

 

You supposedly can't sell a region free player in any country. Yet just about every DVD player sold in New Zealand is multi-region. In fact, it's all but impossible to sell a DVD player here that isn't multi-region.

 

Interesting...

Did a little search on the DVD-R forum and the reviews, albeit few, were not very good for this player...

http://www.videohelp.com/dvdplayers...it=Search&Search=Search&country=&orderby=Name

But, for $30 your not taking much risk with this one....

 

Ah, yes, the '7701. It was one of the first universal players, and it wasn't on the market too long. All sorts of reliability issues were reported on Audio Asylum. As others said, though, it's worth a try at $29.97.

 

The 7701 was sold in limited numbers through J&R in NYC. It cost $250.00 or so plus shipping. They took them all back, no questions asked. I went through 4 and all were highely defective.

One way APEX sold so cheap was they the Chinese vender behind them failed to pay for any technology licenses. Sony pulled the plug on the SACD board they misused.

Richard.

 

Ah. It's certainly a discontinued player. Pitty.

Where'd you get that one, Joe? Walyworld?