We all thought APEX DVD Players where the brand to buy. Those APEX's were cheap and they played our homebrewed VCDs and SVCDs. But then we bought an APEX that didn't wanna play VCDs or SVCDs. And then the APEX players started frying on us, one by one, until they were all just a stack of bad tech. On the other hand, our Yamakawa DVD Players continue to run, and they'll play almost any disk we throw into it. DVDR/RW +/-, SVCD, VCD, CD,etc...