The APEX AD-2500 - A DVD player w/almost every feature, but where's the WMA support?
Written: Jul 06 '03 (Updated Jul 07 '03)
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Pros: Great support for all types of DVD's and VCD's, also plays MPG video files
Cons: Not compatible with latest WMA standards, Remote won't turn on player
The Bottom Line: An inexpensively player, with the looks, performance, and features of high end players.
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| nc10's Full Review: Apex Digital AD-2500 DVD Player |
The AD-2500 is a progressive scan DVD/MP3/WMA/VCD/SVCD/JPEG/Kodak Picture CD/CD Audio/CD-R/CD-RW player, marketed by Apex Digital. And though its not listed as a feature, the AD-2500 will even play back mpg video files that you’ve burned to CD or DVD, but be aware that almost all the player's controls (like FF or RW) won’t work when playing mpeg files. Even though the AD-2500 lists WMA (Windows Media Audio) playback as a feature, it turns out that it will not playback WMA files encoded with the newest version of Windows Media Player (9), a serious problem for a few users.
Around 3 years ago (in early 2000), Apex Digital shook up the DVD market by selling a line of aggresively priced DVD players, with features, such as MP3 and SVCD playback and CDR/CDRW support, focused on attracting the attention of computer/video enthusiasts. Initially their combination of low pricing and mp3 playback features allowed Apex to quickly gain marketshare, now to the point where Apex has become the best selling brand of DVD players in the US, in terms of units sold, though Sony still leads in terms of total dollar value of units sold.
Initially APEX DVD players were black, “boxy” looking, with somewhat “difficult to use” remotes. Their website, if you could find it, wasn’t too helpful. Over the past year, APEX has released a line of really attractive, easier to use DVD players, still aggressively priced with features aimed at computer/video enthusiasts. The website now appears professionally designed, and includes information about all of APEX’s DVD players, as well as their new lines; televisions, home theater systems, and digital cameras.
I recently received this model as a gift (purchased from Amazon for $59) on father’s day, and have connected it to a 25” television in our bedroom. We use this player not only to play DVD’s, but a lot of VCD’s, SVCD’s, and DVD +R/RW disks I have burned.
Setup
In the box is the AD-2500, a remote, two AAA batteries, composite A/V cables, a b/w 42 page manual and a 1 page color quick setup guide. The AD-2500 has enough connections on back to satify all but the most serious videophile. There are clear color coded pictures on the setup guide showing how to hook your DVD player to your TV, through a RF modulator (needed for some old televisions that only have antenna hookups), to a High Definition TV (HDTV), or to your television using the composite or S-Video connection. In addition to these options for hooking up your television there is a second set of RCA style analog outputs (a really nice feature if you put your DVD player in a entertainment center and want to connect it to the TV and a stereo), as well as digital audio coax and optical audio outputs for tying into high end sound systems.
Given the included manual, cables, remote, and batteries, and one page quick setup guide, this DVD player only takes a few minutes to get set up and going.
Performance
The Apex AD-2500 work quite well. The DVD player itself is silver, attractive, with a blue/green LED display, and is fairly thin, about 3" X 12" X 17". The build seems solid and the door opens and closes smoothly and promptly. The AD-2500 is firmware upgradeable via a cd, although APEX has not released an upgrade for this unit. Its key features include:
DVD Playback
We’ve had this player for about a month and we’ve watched about 15 different DVD’s, rentals and ones we own. All have played flawlessly, no errors or skips experienced thus far. As you expect from DVD players, colors are very bright and distinct, pictures are sharp, considerably better than broadcast television or VHS video tapes. My AD-2500 is hooked up to 5 year old 25” Panasonic television using composite video, and would need a newer model with S video inputs (or a HDTV) to maximize this player’s output, but even with this television it looks great. This DVD player offers most of the standard features and a couple of new ones, most accessed only through the remote;
- The FF/REV buttons on the remote allow you to move forward and backwards at 2X, 4X, 6X and 8X of normal speeds. Even at 8X speeds the video continues to play fairly smoothly. Picture quality is not noticeably compromised by FF or REV playback.
- Pressing the pause button once pauses the picture, subsequent presses advance frame by frame
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- A slow button allows you move forward or in reverse at ½, ¼, or 1/8th normal speed
- A zoom button allows you to 2X or 4X digitally zoom in on a picture. Once zoomed in, you can use the up/down/left/right keys on the remote to move to different parts of the picture
- An AFF (Apex Full screen Function) key on the remote stretches 1.85 aspect ration wide screen movies to eliminate the black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. With 2.35 aspec ratio films the black bars are minimized. Though Apex makes a fairly big deal out of this, I don’t like it much, everthing on the screen looks stretched out when you use this.
- A display button that’s really useful, letting you know how much time is left or elapsed on what you’re watching. Pressing once shows the number of the title being played and number of total titles (3/5 for example), the number of the chapter being played and the total chapters, and the elapsed time. Pressing again shows the remaining time in the current title (displayed in white text on top of the TV screen picture is Title 1:00:03 remain, for example, as well as on the player’s LED display), pressing again shows time elapsed in the current chapter, and pressing one more time shows time remaining in a current chapter.
Music and MP3 CD's Work Well and WMA Playback Doesn’t
WMA and MP3 are formats for compressing music digitally. Music on audio cd's requires about 10mb of space per minute of music. Using compression algorithms defined by the MP3 and WMA formats, you can compress a 10mb/1 minute audio file down to 1 mb or less with very little loss in quality. WMA (Windows Media Audio) is Microsoft's version of digital audio compression and is built into Windows Media Player. MP3 (MPEG-1 Audio Layer-3) is a similar, but more widely used standard for compressed digital audio.
The AD-2500 handles MP3 playback from cdr's or cdrw's pretty well. Unfortunately, the AD-2500 will NOT play wma files that are created with the latest version (9) of windows media player. Once you have upgraded your Windows PC with Windows Media Player 9 (WMP9), you are stuck with it, Microsoft has decided it will not provide an uninstaller for this upgrade (though using system restore to revert your system to a time before the WMP9 upgrade was installed will be an option for some).
When you insert cd contain mp3 files (or wma files encoded with earlier versions of Windows Media Player), you’ll see a two column display on your television screen. On the left side is a list of directories on the cd, and once you choose a directory by using the up down keys on the remote, a list of files is shown on the right side. In each column, you’ll see a list of only 6 file names, and you’ll need to scroll to see the rest. Only the first 11 chararcters of each file name is shown on the screen, making it difficult to fit both the name of a song and the entertainer, that’s meaningful and can be seen on the screen. Below the list of file names is another input block, allowing you to choose playback mode, with the choices being:
- Folder – plays through a folder sequentially once
- Folder R – repeats playback of files in the selected folder
- REP-ONE – repeating playback of a single file
- Single – play a single file once
- Shuffle – random playback
Sound quality is as good as you’ll get from your PC. If you hook this DVD player up to you good sound system, you'll have an excellent way to get your digital audio files playing back on your stereo system without tying up your PC.
The AD-2500 can be a pretty good cd player. Music cd's play when loaded, sound very good, and most of the remote's functions work with audio cd's. You can fast forward, skip to the next song, show elapsed or remaining time for a song or the cd, etc. The AD-2500 also plays HDCD (High Definition Compatible Digital) CD's and Karaoke CD's, which are supported by two microphone inputs and volume and echo controls for the mic inputs.
VCD/SVCD Playback
With fast cd writers selling for under $50, DVD writers under $200, TV tuner cards for $30, and affordable digital video cameras and other video creation tools, just about anyone who can afford a PC can afford to create digital video’s to play back in their DVD player. The easiest route to create videos for your dvd player is to create Video CD’s (VCD’s), a format that can be created with most cd authoring software packages (like Nero and Easy CD Creator Platinum), as well as most DVD players. A blank 700 mb recordable cd can hold about 70 minutes of VCD quality video, which, at its best, approaches VHS quality. A higher quality version of the VCD format is called SVCD. An SVCD can hold about 40 minutes of video, but this format is compatible with fewer DVD players (SVCD compatibility is selling point of APEX DVD players), and fewer software tools support creation of SVCD’s (one of the notable weaknesses of Easy CD Creator Platinum).
If you read the APEX promotional literature, you won’t find any mention of its ability to playback VCD’s, though SVCD’s are mentioned on the website. I’ve tried a lot of different VCD’s and SVCD’s in the AD-2500, burned on CDR’s and CDRW’s with Nero, Easy CD Creator Platinum, VCDEasy, MyDVD Plus, and Pinnacle Expression. The AD-2500 handles them all cleanly. Most of the features available with DVD playback are available here, including
- FF 1X to 4X speeds, REW 1-3X
- Zoom 2X and 4X
- Slow motion
- Pause or frame by frame advance
Notably, if you have widescreen formatted VCD or SVCD video, the AFF function to fill your screen will not work. Playback quality is VCD’s and SVCD’s is very good, if the original video source used to create the disk was good. I don’t see unusual artifacts when playing back any of the disks I’ve tried, and the AD-2500 never looses A/V sync. With this model it seems Apex has gotten VCD and SVCD playback nailed.
JPEG/Digital Picture Playback
If you insert a CD or DVD of JPG files (digital pictures) into the AD-2500, the will start playing on your screen as a slide show. Using the resume key, you can select one 12 different slideshow transition modes ( wipe from bottom to top or a combination of random modes, for example). You can also rotate or “mirror image” pictures on your TV screen, or zoom in on pictures. Quality of digital photo’s shown on your television is respectable if the originals are good, but they won’t look as sharp as they do on your computer’s monitor.
Recordable DVD’s
I’ve recorded about a dozen DVD video’s on DVD +R and +RW disks from Verbatim, Fuji, and Memorex. The AD-2500 plays back both of these formats, both in terms of features available and quality, as if they were commercial (pressed) DVD’s. Though I’ve haven’t tried –R and –RW disks, most users report they also work.
The Remote
Though this remote is miles ahead of the ones sold with their early models it does have a couple of problems. You have to be within a couple of feet of the DVD player to turn it on with the remote. All the other functions, including turning it off, work ok from across a room. The back of the remote has a “concave” shape. This means if you set it with one end hanging over the edge of the dvd player or the edge of the table, it has a running start and will continue to slide off.
Other than those two items, the remote is pretty good. Its big enough that the buttons aren’t cramped together, and the buttons are laid out fairly well. It even includes a volume control and mute button to control volume coming from disks being played.
Would I Buy It Again?
Maybe. I am hoping APEX’s new model works with all WMA files, and it might be a better choice if WMA compatibility is important. Otherwise, I highly recommend this player. This unit was purchased for $59.00 from Amazon.com, and is a good choice either for a primary DVD player or second one for office or bedroom. Playback quality is great, and with two sets of audio output connections, it easily will fit into your entertainment center. Not only a DVD player, it handles all the types CDR's, CDRW's, and recordable DVD’s I have tried (except for the wma files). Apex DVD player's do not have a reputation for quality, but I have owned two other APEX DVD players (an AD-800 and AD-1500) one for almost 3 years, without problems. The unit comes with a 1 year warranty for parts, 90 days for labor. The warranty is poor, but you expect some tradeoffs with a price this low. Consider an extended warranty if the price is low, but most extended warranties run $20-$30 a year, a lot of money to protect a $60 player. Email support is available through the Apex website (www.apexdigitalinc.com), and a toll technical support number (in Canada) is available. I’ve requested more info about the WMA playback issues from APEX, will update here as I get more information.
MFR Website
http://www.apexdigitalinc.com
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 59
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