Michael Black wrote:

"Steve Reinis" ) writes:

Considering an Apex DVD player is now $29.00 (!!), a repair is not even
sensible. It's wasteful to not repair it, but that's what you get these
days with Korean/Chinese ultra-cheap electronics.

You can either buy a $99-200.00 Sony/Panasonic/Etc and hope to expect years
out of it, or just get another Apex and use it till it dies. It's pretty
much a crapshoot... I've got an Apex AD-1500 that is now two years old and
still going fine with moderate use.

-Steve


I haven't paid full attention, but I'm sure I read something somewhere
about how some DVD players use IDE DVD-ROM drives, and if I did read
that, it was in reference to some of the cheaper machines. If that's true,
that might be a decent repair option, since in many cases it will be
the mechanical drive. Not an outright cheap solution, but it's an
idea. Of course, if the story is true, then surely the cheap DVD-ROM
drives one can buy wouldn't be that different from what the cheap DVD
players are using.

A friend recently put a Toshiba 16x DVD-ROM into his Apex 600A - not
because the original drive was faulty, he just wanted a region-free player.

Google can find the instructions.


Michael


"xepa001" wrote in message
...

I'm writing this as a post-mortem, but I secretely hope I'm wrong...

I spent thousands on computer crap, and now I'm broke. I had to promise I
quit it, and then a $50 APEX DVD player stuck to me at Wal*Mart. I took it
home, faced the music and after many moons I was forgiven. The DVD
collection began growing.

At some point it stopped working. It got progressively worse: gets stuck

at

a scene, then it would recover, then it didn't on some DVDs, then it

didn't

on most DVDs, then it ceased loading the root menu.

I tried to clean the lens. It didn't work with the "lens cleaner" CD, but
then I heard it rarely does. I opened the box and went at it.

It still didn't work, but testing it with the lid off, I noticed a nasty
"grinding" sound in the vicinity of the spindle. I put a drop of gun oil

and

it got better, but I'm afraid I got to it too late: it's plastic on
plastic... I think the increased play suggested by noisy operation causes
loss of positioning accurracy, which leads to loss of tracking, especially
on used DVDs which are already scratched and dirty.

Theoretically I should change the worn parts, but they seem to not be

easily

separated from the rest. Plus how long will it last again? Not to mention
difficulty to find parts, cost and the chance it won't fix things after

all.

So it would make more sense to just get another one, with better quality
parts - so more expensive. But that has to wait I'm afraid.