apex owner writes: "Check out the APEX AD600A DVD player, sold at Circuit City for only $170. Among other unique abilities, it can be programmed to ignore a DVD's copy protection bit and output without Macrovision at all times. "

While this was true for the original Apex 600As, models manufactured the past 18 months or so no longer give access to the "loophole" menu needed to turn macrovision off. Due to pressure from the US film industry, APEX had to remove this capability, and any new unit acquired today will not have this capability. When these units showed up on ebay, Hollywood went after them, too, and ebay would not allow 600s to be sold there if the loophole capability was mentioned. I myself am also an APEX 600 user, and purchased an older model with loophole capability specifically because the APEX will also allow the playing of DVDs from any region code. Excuse me, Hollywood, but I don't understand how it can be considered a copyright violation to play legal DVDs that I purchased on my own DVD-player just because they come from different regions! The DVDs I was interested in were ONLY released in Europe (region 2), so there was no choice in even buying a region 1 DVD. But, I guess it's a good way for Hollywood to keep those darn ferrin' films out of the states!

For those of you interested in the Apex, and probably how to acquire one with loophole capability, visit this site:

http://www.nerd-out.com/