APEX 660 deck

[Dr Mordrid]

I picked up one the other day. Nice player. So far I've made VCD, SVCD and MP3 disks and they all played perfectly.

I'll try some extended VCD formats later on, but for now it's doing great.

miniDVD did not play by itself, but the APEX did put the directory structure on the TV. Browsing to the *.vob's was easy and they played when selected.

Dr. Mordrid

[wkulecz]

What does the manual say about playing DVD-R?

I've looked at the various Apex models at Circuit City -- they played my VCD and SVCD disks written on both CD-R and CD-RW with Nero5 and "joliet" CD-R of MP3 songs.

I'm waiting for the DVD-R issue to be resolved/verified before replacing my first generation Toshiba which can't handle any CD-R or CD-RW :-(

I almost bought one for the MP3 playback feature but it seemed to lack a random or "shuffle" mode and the user interface seemed really awkward. Basically I want easy access to one of three playback modes for MP3. Top priority is random play of all the songs on the disk. Second priority is play all songs "in order" within a directory automacially navigating the directory tree in any reasonable order. And third play all the songs in order in a particular directory tree ignoring any directories on a higher level (really only a subset of the second mode). The sales droid was totally clueless and of no help what-so-ever as to showing me if it could do these things. Since I could't figure it out after five minutes and he couldn't produce a manual, I put the credit card back in my pocket :-)

--wally.

[jeffw]

Hey Doc,
I'm really interested in this player.
Do you have any more info about it?
Did you try any extended VCD?
Are all the 660's good, or do you have to worry about which firmware you get?

Assuming I have an extra $40 burning a hole in my pocket: Is there any reason not to get the Apex AD703?

Thanks,
jeffw


[This message has been edited by jeffw (edited 12 February 2001).]

[wkulecz]

Doc,

Does your Apex 660 do fast forward/reverse on VCD and SVCD?

I stopped buy Circut City again and tried some more homemade disks, they played OK but the remote wasn't working. Buttons on the front just start stop and do previous/next "chapter" (file). Sales droid was unhelpful as usual. Either he knew the (negative) answer and was hoping I'd buy it anyway or he lost a sale by not coming up with a pair of AAA batteries.

Jeffw,

http://209.216.233.229:8080/forum/index.php?f=0 has some discussions of the various Apex models and which firmware. Aparently the newer ones can be flashed with updates from a CD-R.

--wally.

--wally.

[Dr Mordrid]

1. it plays xvcd on GOOD CD-R's (PNY, Memorex & Imation work here). I've used 1700 and 3500 kbps.

2. it plays MP3 on Joliet formatted CD-R's

3. it does not play miniDVD but it DOES play *.vob's on a disk. You get what looks like an explorer window and you just click on the one you want to play.

4. some burns FF and RW, some don't. I haven't figured out what's going on with that yet, but I'm sure it's related to the burning software.

5. if your stars are in alignment and inframe motion isn't causing problems you can get XSVCD out of it (SVCD with rates up to 4400-4800 kbps). Again when it doesn't work I think it's related to the burning software.

6. pause, slowmo and frame step work regardless if anything else works or not.

7. inframe zooming works in all modes.

8. I have version 660-8-AM of the firmware.

Did I forget anything?

Dr. Mordrid

[IM_Riktar]

Just a point to note is that if MP3 is not a big concern the Apex 500 plays back homemade SVCD's just fine. It does seem to suffer from the same stuff the Doc said about FF and RW not working on some. The big thing that is great about this unit is the fact that ANY and I mean even the cheap CD-RW's that Comp-Usa sells play back just fine in this unit.

The fact that this model can be had for under $100 is a plus as well.

[jeffw]

I checked at that "Apex Phorum" link.
Apparently you can play .MPG files right
off a 9660 disk without messing with all
the "VCD" particulars (as long as it's a VCD resolution). Anybody here try that?

Here's the link:
http://209.216.233.229:8080/forum/re...17&i=361&t=349

jeffw

[Dr Mordrid]

Yup.

I'm beginning to think the APEX AD-660 will TRY to play anything you put on an ISO-9660 disk.

Examples;

MP3 audio: played

level II audio file @32kbps mono: played

25fps 176x144 MPEG-1 @234 kbps: played 1/8 screen (APEX background flickered)

30fps 320x200 MPEG-1 @967 kbps: played 1/4 screen (APEX background flickered)

VCD MPEG-1: played

SVCD MPEG-2: played

xVCD and xSVCD not tested yet.

A conventional VCD/SVCD menu isn't really necessary since the APEX uses its MP3 browser menu. All you do is move the highlight to the file you want and hit Play.

Sheesh....

Dr. Mordrid

[wkulecz]

Cool, but what about fast forward/reverse play?

I can live without menus. What is important is to be able to jump to scenes with the the "next/previous chapter" buttons and then to be able to fast forward/rewind within a scene.

"Standards" are very important as making disks that play in only a single brand of player makes little sense to me.

--wally.

[Dr Mordrid]

With the oddball setups the FF and RW functions don't work. With the standard setups they work sometimes. I think it has something to do with the burn, but I'm still playing with it to figure out if there's a specific fix.

Dr. Mordrid

[kleinbull]

I just purchased the Apex AD-703, and I love it. My first real test was MP3 on CD-r. Holy Cow, I can't get over seeing 194 titles on 1 disk. I went for the 3disc Apex for convenience and it was only $30 moe than the 660. Guess I won't eat out for a couple of weeks.


My next real test is to create some VCD's or SVCD's using my G400dh w/RR-G. Got any suggestions? Please check out my post at

http://forums.murc.ws/ubb/Forum2/HTML/005725.html

Thanks again

[Greebe]

.

[Dr Mordrid]

I think most here know I was an early adopter of SVCD, but I have to admit the quality of VCD created with YUY2/HuffYUV captures, encoded with TMPGEnc, burned to a PNY disk with Nero and played on the APEX is enough to make you wonder.

Just for the helluvit I captured two episodes of BattleBots (not exactly a low motion program) and burned them to a VCD using the highest quality settings. You can't tell it from a good videotape on SP. Not too shabby.

The APEX must be doing some filtering because it sure looked good on a 25".

Dr. Mordrid


[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 19 February 2001).]

[cjyo~]

I'm not sure about the 660, but I have the classic 600A (loopholes and all) and it plays just about everything under the sun - ***EXCEPT DVD-Rs***.

We have a couple APEX 600A's at my office, and it does not read any DVD-Rs from the DVR-S201 drive. We use it mainly for testing foreign region check discs (replicated), since it has the handy multi-region function plus built-in PAL to NTSC conversion.

I have made VCDs and a few test SVCDs with great results (using TMPEG).

Of course the 600A is an early model, so I would be interested to hear if anyone can confirm that the 660 plays DVD-R...

[wkulecz]

Doc, Great minds think alike :-) I too recorded some clips with HuffYUV (640x480) of Battlebots last week and made VCD & SVCD with TMPGEnc using what I thought was the "best settings". I'd rate it about VHS SLP quality -- meaning plenty good enough for watching but not as good as VHS can deliver.

What is your VCD template settings? I set motion estimation to "highest quality" but left everything else at the VCD template defaults. I'd like to be sure I've got every bit of quality out of TMPGEnc.


Of course another possibility is Time-Warner digital cable only delivers SLP quality video:-( I see little quality improvement recording cable TV shows with SP vs. SLP, whereas recording DV from my camcorder analog out its obvious SP is better. I've also noticed quite a bit of MPEG artifacting on some of their "digital" channels. But, Battlebots was on an analog channel here. Didn't you say that you have satelite? Noise that's not readily visible on live TV can sure mess up video capture and especially MPEG encoding.

But I agree that on Battlebots at least, the difference between VCD and SVCD is probably not worth the loss of playing time and reduced set of players that'll read the disk.

On DV original SVCD is clearly better than VCD so I'm guessing that noise in the broadcast signal is surpressing the potential quality improvements from SVCD.

What does your APEX 660 manual say about DVD-R? 703 owners? Enquiring minds want to know.
--wally.


[This message has been edited by wkulecz (edited 19 February 2001).]