First Impressions

The machine arrived in two separate packages, one containing the unit and its associated gubbins, the other containing a UK to US power converter. This power converter is necessary as the machine is a direct US import and still features the American 2 pronged plug. The converter is a fairly bulky unit and is somewhat rickety to use, with the prongs of the plug wobbling about quite a bit and it is not something I would trust to leave plugged in 24 hours a day. However, it does its job perfectly well.

After opening the box, first impressions of the machine weren't too favourable. The machine is entirely black and fairly featureless to look at, sporting on the front six identical buttons, a power switch, two microphone inputs and two microphone level dials and it is here that the first problem lies. Because the six main buttons on the front of the machine are identical, you need to get up close and personal to find out what you are prodding at. This would be bad enough, but one of the identical buttons is the 'Open/Close' button and this is unforgivable. In my opinion (and most hardware designers for that matter), the 'Open/Close' button should be separated from the rest of the buttons, or at the very least a different shape. Minor admittedly, but annoying nonetheless.

Next up is the remote control, which again was fairly nasty looking. It is packed full of tiny little buttons and it is extremely difficult to see what each one is when the lights are down. To be fair though, the directional buttons and 'Stop' and 'Play' buttons are chunky enough to use regardless of light levels. It also has separate buttons for fast-forward, rewind and step forward/back, which is somewhat of a rarity these days, and definitely a bonus.

Also in the box is an S-Video cable, 3 RCA cables (left and right audio and composite video), a manual and batteries for the remote. It's important to point out at this point that the machine doesn't have any SCART sockets due to its US origins and this could be a major setback for those of you without S-Video or RCA inputs on your sets.

The back of the machine has component, S-Video and composite video outs, 2 analogue audio outputs and a digital audio-coaxial output. It doesn't have an optical out though, and some people may view this as a disadvantage. The Apex supports both Dolby Digital and DTS.

Ease of Use

After plugging the Apex in and powering up, I was greeted with a rather snazzy title screen with a nice blue gradient background. After searching on the overly complex remote (this really gets on your nerves for the first few hours), I found the 'Setup' button and checked out the menus. These were fairly plain affairs, but very easy to navigate. All of the standard options you would expect were there, along with options to convert the outputted video signal into either PAL or NTSC. There is also a screensaver facility, as with most DVD players these days, but it has the annoying habit of popping up after about 20 seconds of inactivity. I found this rather annoying, but it is easily turned off.

Performance

Onto the main feature then, how does the machine perform? The quick answer is admirably and it played everything I threw at it almost perfectly. I started with The Matrix (R1), a notorious problem disk, but the Apex handled it with ease. I then moved onto There's Something About Mary (R1) and was greeted with the parental control screen and was instructed to enter a code to continue. A quick scan of the manual revealed this to be 3308, a strange default code, but once entered, the disc began playing and all was well. The parental control is set to PG-13 by default and is probably best upped to Adult immediately to avoid these issues.

Next up, my girlfriend decided she would watch her Friends DVDs, which were Region 2, so we duly popped them into the machine and sat back. At this point, the message 'Wrong Region' appeared on the screen in big white letters. The machine, whilst being multi-region, is apparently not so straight out of the box but a quick trawl on the internet revealed the code for the secret menu and details of this appear later. After changing the machine's region, all was well once more.

I then tried out the machine's ability to convert the video signal on the fly between PAL and NTSC. I put Galaxy Quest (R1) in the player, started it up and changed from Multi (auto selects format), the default, to PAL. The first thing I noticed was how much nicer PAL looked over NTSC, this could have just been my TV, but the colours looked much more natural and less over saturated in PAL. The second thing I noticed were the lip-sync problems which occurred quite noticeably after changing the format. I'm assuming this is because of the slight delay whilst the machine converts from one standard to another, but I don't know for sure. I do know that the lip-sync is enough to detract from the viewing of the disc, and as such I turned it back to Multi.

I mentioned the 'secret' menu earlier, so let's take a quick look at that. The code to get into the Loopholes menu is as follows;

• Turn on the machine without a disc in the drive
  
• Wait for 'No Disc' to appear on the screen
  
• Push 'Setup' on the remote
  
• Push 'Step' then 'Skip Back' then 'Skip Forward'
  
• The secret menu appears

In this little treasure trove of goodies, you have various dubious options such as Macrovision disable, CSS disable and Region select. Amusingly, there's a nice disclaimer at the bottom of this menu stating, "You should not be here!"

The region select menu gives you a choice of regions from one to six, plus the option to bypass region locking. The bypass option seemed to work fine with all of the discs I checked although it could be problematic with new DVDs that attempt to check the region of the machine before playing. Should this be the case though, you can manually select the region yourself.

Disabling Macrovision allows you to tape DVDs directly to VHS (of course this would be illegal with copyrighted discs) and the CSS disable potentially allows you to copy entire DVDs and remove the CSS encryption in the process. Why you would want to do this is for you to decide.

Other Stuff

Of course the Apex doesn't just stop at DVDs, oh no, it goes on to play various other media as well. I started off with an MP3 CD-R which prompted the player to bring up a directory listing of the CD on screen. After browsing to the relevant tune and pushing select, lovely MP3 music blared forth from my TV. You also have the option of setting the machine on shuffle and it will trawl through every MP3, even those in multiple directories, in a random order. This means you could have a CD full of MP3s sat in the player on random and have music for some 11 hours. This would be absolutely superb for parties.

The only problems with MP3 playback were that you could not fast forward or rewind the tracks, but could only skip entire tunes. The Apex is limited to filenames with 8 characters and replaces the extra with the familiar '~1' notation with the '~' replaced with an 'N'. This can be problematic when using a CD full of similarly named files although I found myself putting in a CD and pressing shuffle. Also, the player took umbrage at one particular CD that contained MP3s buried deep in some sub-directories.

Unfortunately, I didn't have any VCDs to test on the player, but it alleges to play them with ease (well it would, wouldn't it?).

Conclusion

This player is a more than able machine and will play nearly everything you care to try with few to no problems. There are minor lip-sync issues under certain conditions, mainly when converting video standards, but these are more than outweighed by the machines plentiful features and capabilities.

The unit itself is fairly 'cheap' looking in my opinion, but again, this is irrelevant really as the machine does exactly what it claims to in a more than competent manner. Ionark are also one of the few remaining companies (if not the last) selling the 'secret menu' enabled machines. The MPAA over in the US would rather you not have access to some of the features that this particular section offers and as such, these players are becoming increasingly rare, yet another bonus for these players.

In summary, I would recommend the Apex to anyone looking for a player at present. It performs far better than I expected it would (in all honesty, I expected to be slating this machine), has functionality very few other players have and copes with problem discs commendably. It is on a par with nearly all machines in the same price bracket and offers far more functionality than all of them.

To paraphrase a certain TV advertisement, "It does exactly what is says on the box."

Carl Prescott

Back:

Pros

Plays everything under the sun including CDs, CDRs, CDRWs, MP3s and all regions of DVD Multi-region

Cons

Cheap looking Overly complex remote No SCART socket No Optical Digital out

Ratings

Build quality: 3/5 Fairly cheap feeling, seems robust enough though. Ease of use: 3.5/5 Menus easy to navigate, let down by over complex remote control. Performance: 4/5 Does everything claimed very well. Plays all problem discs tested. Some minor lip-sync issues. Value for money: 3.5/5 Not cheap, but does more than any other player in the same price range. Overall: 4/5 Surprisingly good machine with few problems and loads of features.