The death of an appliance
Right on the heels of the last post, it looks to me like I'll have to get rid of my first DVD player: an Apex AD-600A. It worked fine for years, then it suddenly started screwing up on DVDs that used to work. The audio would stutter at random. I ended up replacing it with a Philips DVP-642, which can at least have the region turned off, but it doesn't (yet?) support nifty things the Apex did via ROM hacks, such as playback control/defeating UOPs and RCE defeat (though one DVD I have that I know has RCE played anyway when the player's region was set to 0, so...). The new DVD player is somewhat of a compromise. It will do all of the non-DVD things (like play MP3s and DivX video) nicely, though.
I'll just have to hope for a firmware hack for this player. The Apex was a great player, but now it's dead as a doornail.
I'll just have to hope for a firmware hack for this player. The Apex was a great player, but now it's dead as a doornail.