Phillips Audio Apex DRX9000 Progressive-Scan DVD Player/Recorder

Amazon.com Product Description
Archive home videos and share them with loved ones on a shiny DVD using the APEX DRX-9000. This DVD recorder features a built-in, 181-channel NTSC tuner so you can burn of-air programming right to write-once or recordable media, freeing you from reliance on poor-quality, hard-to-navigate VHS tapes. It comes with DVD editing software to help you make more professional-looking discs.

The DRX-9000 also happens to be a first-rate DVD player, offering high-end progressive-scan video outputs (viewable on high-definition and HD-ready TVs), JPEG image and Kodak Picture CD playback (watch a slideshow right on your TV!), and full compatibility with home-burned MP3 and WMA (Windows Media Audio) CDs. Whether your living room is currently home to an HDTV or you're merely thinking of "someday," the DRX-9000 stands ready to deliver the full potential of DVDs. Progressive scanning, referred to as 480p for the number of horizontal lines that compose the video image, creates a picture using twice the scan lines of a conventional DVD picture, providing higher resolution and sharper images while eliminating nearly all motion artifacts. In any case, standard composite- and S-video outputs bring compatibility with nearly any television, and APEX's active full screen function (AFF) helps resize widescreen (16:9 aspect ratio) video images to fill 4:3 aspect-ratio sets.

For sound, a set of left/right analog-audio outputs channels audio to Dolby Pro Logic receivers and stereo televisions. Both Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1-channel surround-sound signals can be routed through the player's digital-audio outputs (one each optical and coaxial) for direct connection to a full-featured audio/video receiver.

Customer Reviews

APEX DRX9000 DVD Recorder
For the features and price the DRX9000 DVD recorder is a very good buy. It has a great picture plus digital sound. It is even better when used with HD progressive scan TV. Audio CD's sound great played on this unit too.I have not had any problems recording or playing back the DVD+R or +RW disc. Also, the recorded disc play just fine in my computer DVD drive.
There is one thing I would like to say to potentail buyers, or someone who has just purchased a new DRX9000. There is a hookup flyer that comes in the box with the DRX9000, that states, Do not connect this DVD recorder to a VCR or TV/VCR combination, it will cause picture distortion. APEX has addressed this problem with a firmware update. You can download this file off their web site and burn your own disc, or contact them by telephone and they will send you a disc with the new firmware update on it. This update takes about 20 to 30 seconds to do, and it works.
Anybody thinking about purchasing a new DVD recorder that has great features and good price. I would highly recommend the APEX DRX9000.

A computer in a set-top case
This machine is good for the money, but don't expect it to be fantastic. DVD set-top technology is still immature and this machine is initially quite confusing to use. I had the Philips/Magnavox DVD+RW unit prior to this and it was much more intuitive, just more ugly (and it died totally after 2 weeks, which is why I exchanged it for the APEX). The APEX has worked fine for a month now, and overall I'm pleased with it.

So what is it? I opened it up (I don't care about the warranty sticker) to find it's a basic computer NEC ND1100A DVD+RW drive exactly as you'd get in your PC, complete with IDE connector and standard power plug. The rest of the circuitry is LSI and effectively an embedded PC/Display unit. This is why it takes fifteen seconds to "boot" when you power it on. It also has one really nasty feature that you don't know about till you get it home - a huge noisy fan on the back which makes it sound like having your PC on all the time. I plan to fit a quieter fan.

The manual is amusing. The writer clearly doesn't speak English and it is full of inaccuracies.

Regionalisation is an issue for me, I have R1 and R2 DVDS (lots of them). This unit is strictly Region 1 and so far there is no region patch. I suspect that there never will be, because that PC DVD+RW drive is internally regionalised (RPC2) and the average set-top user will never know how to put it in a PC and patch its firmware. I did - it's RPC1 now - but the APEX still refuses R2 discs so I guess its own operating system needs patching too.

Interestingly, you can both record and play (multi-region) discs with a PAL signal, the circuitry handles the color perfectly but you lose the bottom 100 lines of the picture.

The mpeg-2 compression is performed on the input, so you can see on your TV what your picture will be like before recording. The APEX brightens the picture and can "flare-out" on very bright shots. Recording from digital cable, which is already mpeg2 compressed, can be somewhat disappointing occasionally. A bad cable picture is made marginally worse. A good cable picture doesn't show degradation at all.

Quality overall is very good; I would like the ability to choose other compression levels since EP is not quite good enough and SP doesn't record more than 2hrs 10 minutes. A halfway setting would be great. The forgetful memory is no problem if you invest in a cheap computer UPS ($40) to power it.

I'm very happy with my unit despite its limitations. It has enabled me to save all my precious VHS tapes to DVD without messing with PC capture cards, which are still too flaky to be valuable despite the marketing blurb. For recording programs off cable it's great. Its compatibility with set-top and PC is first class and you can manipulate its VOB files on your PC with no trouble. I know if its drive packs up, I can just buy another one and put it in the case.

Another couple of issues - it will only FF/FRW its own DVD+RW discs at 2x. This is odd, commercial DVDs can be FF/FRW at 16x, and the +RW work at any speed in other players. And I don't like having to switch through all the inputs to go from play mode to monitor/record. The Philips "monitor" button was great. Also don't expect to insert a blank disk and hit record, you have to press record about three times with a wait inbetween each press before it's ready to go. I usually record a little video and then re-erase the disc before recording anything important so I know it will record without delay.

APEX still produce their units with a poorly designed remote control. Sling it out and buy a learning universal remote.

One last gripe -that big blue power LED is just too bright! Mine is covered with a piece of black sticky tape.

Bottom line - if you can put up with the noisy fan, R1/NTSC only, complicated menu and forgetful memory, it's great value for money. However if you don't need a set-top DVD recorder just yet, wait six months or so and the technology will have matured. Prices should fall too. But don't invest in DVD-R or DVD-RAM, those formats are already losing ground.

If anyone from APEX reads this, take heart - it's a good product, just spoiled with irritations. Fix those, and you've got an excellent machine.

GOOD for ANT Recording, REALLY BAD for VHS conversion
I bought this unit...with hopes of having a faster way of converting home movies to DVD faster than it would take using a computer capture card and program and waiting for it to render the entire DVD movie.

The manual was confusing to figure out how to setup the player/recorder and once I got my vcr to send a signal to the DVD recorder it ended up looking like a cable box signal when it's scrambled. The picture quality wasn't quite as bad as that but it certainly jumped around and flickered in and out. Definitely not something people wanna watch. The picture input was not stable at all coming from a vcr and I do not mean copyrighted materials, but personal home movies. However its ability to take antenna signals and save them to DVD was great. I had no quams about that part.

The user-interface was quite confusing. One thing I did NOT like about recording to DVD on this machine was that there is no way of telling the recorder to start a new dvd chapter as you're recording. You have to hit stop recording and then start again, which does not make for a seamless footage dvd...