DVD-/+R's & DVD Players
Posted: Mon Aug 02, 2004 9:50 am
I've been recently backing up my DVD collection (something new to me) and noticed that my DVD player wont read any of my DVD+R discs. I went over to a friends house and neither would 2 of his houses 3 DVD players. Some of these DVD players were less than 6 months old...
So out of four DVD players (Toshiba, Apex, kawasaki, and Sony) we only got the Sony to read/play our movie. The rest acted like and said that no disc was present.
I've been told by others at trade shows that Apex DVD players are the best because they will read anything and are the cheapest. So I headed up to the store and looked at DVD players. Before I went I noticed that all the DVD players on APEX's DVD Product Website state that each play can play "DVD-SVCD-CD-CD/R-CD/RW & MP3's". The funny thing is that when I got to the store that only the highend models had the CD/R & CD/RW labels on the price tag and box. I asked the sales person if the entry level DVD players could play burnt DVD's and he said no you have to go high end for that feature and showed me a $90 DVD player that would be best suited for the job. I smelled bull$#!^ so out of curiosity and fun I picked up the cheapest APEX DVD player there is the Apex Digital AD-1100W.
I took the $36 bad boy home and hooked it up. Not only does it have faster load times than my few year old $200 Toshiba model, but it plays all my burnt movies.
Now if you are still reading this I am amazed... LOL
Once I got my burnt DVD+R DVD's to work I wanted to see if I can get the DVD player to play the DVD movies I bought on my recent trip to South Asia. So I wanted to update the firmware on my player. To my dismay I found out that I cant upgrade my firmware on my model to "unlock" the regions. But in my search I ran across a very detailed page on how to get around it. While the DVD is shown to be "loading" on screen just hit a number (for example I hit 1111 a few times) and and boom it works!! It will also load my other region DVD's like a charm.
So for under $40 I can play all my DVD/R/RW movies, plus my out of region DVD's. Not a bad deal for one of the cheapest DVD players on the market.
So out of four DVD players (Toshiba, Apex, kawasaki, and Sony) we only got the Sony to read/play our movie. The rest acted like and said that no disc was present.
I've been told by others at trade shows that Apex DVD players are the best because they will read anything and are the cheapest. So I headed up to the store and looked at DVD players. Before I went I noticed that all the DVD players on APEX's DVD Product Website state that each play can play "DVD-SVCD-CD-CD/R-CD/RW & MP3's". The funny thing is that when I got to the store that only the highend models had the CD/R & CD/RW labels on the price tag and box. I asked the sales person if the entry level DVD players could play burnt DVD's and he said no you have to go high end for that feature and showed me a $90 DVD player that would be best suited for the job. I smelled bull$#!^ so out of curiosity and fun I picked up the cheapest APEX DVD player there is the Apex Digital AD-1100W.
I took the $36 bad boy home and hooked it up. Not only does it have faster load times than my few year old $200 Toshiba model, but it plays all my burnt movies.
Now if you are still reading this I am amazed... LOL
Once I got my burnt DVD+R DVD's to work I wanted to see if I can get the DVD player to play the DVD movies I bought on my recent trip to South Asia. So I wanted to update the firmware on my player. To my dismay I found out that I cant upgrade my firmware on my model to "unlock" the regions. But in my search I ran across a very detailed page on how to get around it. While the DVD is shown to be "loading" on screen just hit a number (for example I hit 1111 a few times) and and boom it works!! It will also load my other region DVD's like a charm.
So for under $40 I can play all my DVD/R/RW movies, plus my out of region DVD's. Not a bad deal for one of the cheapest DVD players on the market.