APEX DA-600A - Technical Information
If you have comments, email me at 
Pictures of the inside of my Apex are located here.
Update: Feb 27, 2000: Today, I did some experimenting with SVCD's and
SXVCD's. The Apex can easily play SXVCD's at 720x480 at 5, 6 or even higher
Megabit! I copied DVD's MPEG2 streams over to a SVCD disk (using TMPEG) to
add the SVCD stuff and multiplex in MPEG1 audio and it worked PERFECTLY!
Here's the story. I had one particular Madonna video I really liked. My friend
brought his DVD over that had the videos on it and I ripped the one I liked
off it using a DeCSS prorgam.
So now I had the VOB on my hard drive. The file was about 280 megs (a little
over 6 minutes long) and had LPCM audio.
Wanting to make a SVCD or something of it so I could watch it again, I began
messing with TMPEG.
I extracted it's audio into a Wav file (using Graphedit.) Once that was done,
I pointed TMPEG to the VOB, added the WAV file for audio (since TMPEG doesn't
support LPCM audio) and told it to encode a SVCD MPEG2 VBR stream. Well, after
fiddlign with bitrate settings and rencoding, I noticed the file size never
changed! Also, the encode was really fast -- about 1 minute for 6 minutes of
video. My Athlon 700 is fast, but not that fast!!
What I figured out was TMPEG wasn't rencoding at all, it was repackaging the
existing MPEG2 data into a new stream. No matter what I did, I couldn't change
the bitrate or frame size.
Jusging by the size, the average bitrate of the file was 4.5mbit not including
the sound. Well, when burned onto a CD-RW in SuperVCD format, it would play
PERFECTLY in my Apex (With Toshiba DVD-ROM) !!! Except for a couple of times
where the video momentarily speeds up for some reason...
Not bad for a SVCD (or XSVCD) of 720x480x29.95fps @ ~4.5mbit!!
So I found some more VOB's I had. One was a preview for Run Lola Run at
720x280x24fps with AC3 sound. I had to convert the sound to a WAV and then I
created a SVCD file. Burned it and it played FLAWLESSLY.
I am totally amazed the Apex can play DVD bitrate MPEG2 files off a regular CD
without problems! Perhaps my madonna video playback glitch is due to CDRW... I
don't know. On the Madonna file, the sound it perfect.
Also, it properly supports MPEG2 audio at 48khz... everywhere I read said
44.1k was needed.
Now I just took some randon MPEG1 file I had on my hard drive and
"converted" that into MPEG2 SVCD stream. The filesize didn't change (of
course) and I just burned it. It played PERFECTLY, though my player switched
to PAL because I see the original res on the file was 352x288 ... PAL. I'm
just so surprised all these files play.... (Ahh, I had my player on MULTI. Set
to NTSC, it doesn't change when the clip starts.)
So I guess it's safe to assume the APEX can play XSVCD's at 720 res up to 6 or
so MBPS. Oh yeah, the parts in the Madonna video that skip are very high
motion parts, so I would assume the bitrate jumps at that part. I need to find
a program that can graph the bitrate of a video stream for me. Anyway, that's
the news.
The Apex totally kicks ass. I wonder what other kinds of streams I can play?
Oh, I burned a VOB right onto the SVCD disc and it recognized the disc, but it
woudln't play. (No picture.)
Update: Feb 26, 2000: Today I broke my internal DVD drive in my APEX. But
I replaced it with my TOSHIBA DVD-ROM SD-M1202 (Firmware v.1026) that was in my
PC. Guess what? It works and it fits! And the Apex works MUCH MUCH better than
it ever has!
The Toshiba was an older unit. I think it's a 6x DVD and 32x CD-ROM. Dual laser
setup to read CDR, CDRW, etc etc. I was thinking of getting a new drive for my
PC anyway, so I don't mind moving it over.
You wouldn't think it would work, would you? But it does. PERFECTLY.
CDDA -> Perfect
DVD -> Perfect (and FASTER seek time! Yep, faster!!)
VCD -> BETTER
SVCD -> Infinitely better
XVCD -> 720x480x2.5mbit playback off a CD-RW!!!!
Region 0 playback -> Perfect
WIth the new drive, it reads CD-RW's perfectly now. SVCD's burned onto CD-RW
from Nero read flawlessly. It couldn't read them at all before --- that's why
I killed it.
The reason why my internal drive died was I tried upgrading it's firmware. I had
everything right (I used the LD firmware as I have a drive with LD firmware.)
I did the CD-R update method and everything seemed fine.... it opened and was
programming ... then it said: INVALID ENTRY.
OH NO! I powercycled after a while and the drive would no longer respond. The
APEX would come on but the screen on the unit would be blank and it wouldn't
say anything on the TV except the Apex background. So I tried the new drive
for the hell of it... and presto, it worked.
It cannot be screwed in because the holes are different... So I got lazy and
just put some rubber feet on the bottom to hold it up to the right level.
(Two feet stacked -- total of 8.)
I pulled the front bezel off the Toshiba and the little cover on the front
of the slot and wouldn't you know it, the APEX black front cover fit on th tray!
I couldn't believe it! And with the drive sitting in there, when it closes, the
front panel lines up almost perfectly! You can barely tell!!!!
The only giveaway is when it opens the tray is white. You also have to slide
the disc in a little more as the Toshiba doesn't come out as far.
Pretty cool, huh???
SO, if you have a dead drive in your Apex, go buy a new DVD-ROM and try it. Fry's
here in LA sells the drives for like $50 for a 10x DVD-ROM. I'm sure an older
slower model would work perfectly, and they are even cheaper.
Pictures? There are some on my picture page.
I still have A6 ROM. I'm going to upgrade to the newest N1-2 I think and
try to patch it to give Regeon free playback. My kick-ass JVC SVHS VCR has
a built in time-base correcter that filters out Macrovision! What a bonus!!
Anyway, the new rom fixes all the sync problems, gives better branching
and fixes MP3 playback problems. Or maybe I'll just do the dual rom
setup. To use the new rom, you have to remove/disable the Karaoke chip.
OHHH WELL. I never used it anyway. I would rather have good playback. I
still like my Apex. Oh, if you burn a new rom, change the logo too! The
blue picture is a little bright. I want with lots of color and less
garish.
This is the most kick-ass Apex site I've ever found:
http://www.dvd-wizards.com/darrenk/A600/A600.htm
Go visit him!
I bought my Apex DA-600A from Circuit City on Tuesday, Feb 29, 2000.
It was $179 and the store was here in Los Angeles, California.
The date of manufacture is 9/99 .. as is everyone's else. The loophole
menu hack works perfectly. MP3 playback works perfectly. VCD playback
works perfectly and I even burned a VCD using Adaptec CD Creator and
it played great.
NOTE: You have to have an older Apex with A6 or A8 ROMS to have this
menu. It was taken out of newer models... but newer roms have other bug
fixes that eliminate the problems with the Apex players. (Sync, etc.)
Check http://www.dvd-wizards.com/darrenk/A600/A600.htm for more
information.
Update: Dan Shapella (dshapella@hotmail.com) bought his Apex in New
Jersey for $179. Same manuf. date, same loophole menu. He pulled his apart and
has found out more juicy information. You can find it at the bottom of this
page.
Ok, here's what I found:
The Apex DVD player uses an Analog Devices ADV7175 chip to encode the video.
This chip takes the digital data and converts it to a Composite, RBG, Y/C
(s-video), or YUV (component) signal. The comosite uses a 10bit DAC as does the
Y/C output. When running in component mode, it uses 8 bit DACs. Basically,
10bit DAC means better quality. This chip takes in a CCIR:656 4:2:2 signal
which is basically digital broadcast quality. The ESS Mpeg decoder outputs this
16bit signal.
This chip can output a SCART RGB signal, but the BIOS of the DVD player would
have to set the registers in the chip to do this. This chip also have
programmable Notch and Low-Pass luma filters. I'm not sure how this operates on
this player, but maybe a change in it's setting would clean up the blacks a
little. When compared to my other player, the output of this one is sharper and
more defiend ... but that shows the video noise a lot more.
If you want to read the datasheet, here it is:
http://www.analog.com/pdf/adv7175.pdf
The ADV7176 chip is EXACTLY the same except it doesn't encodethe Macrovision
signal. If it weren't possible to defeat this in the menu, swapping this chip
on the board would have the same effect.
Other chips on board are a BIOS (ROM) EPROM. It's in a socket so it can be
dumped and hacked! Haha.
There are som RAM chips (4).
There is a 27Mhz crystal that runs the MPEG2 decoder and the Video encoder.
There is also a Yamaha chip of some sort... A Yamaha YSS903-M. This is the chip
that handle the Microphone input.
Here is a snippet from Yamaha: (it's for the 915 but it says the 903 is
compatible.)
YSS915 (KP2V2) is an LSI for digital signal processing that is best-suited to
VCD/DVD "Karaoke" systems. This LSI has an A/D converter (1 channel) for the
microphone echo, and a memory for the microphone echo and key control, and has
achieved low cost 28 pin SOP package. The Karaoke program mode of this LSI that
faclitates use of carious Karaoke functions, and its Movie & Music program mode
that helps to create a higher quality surround allow the designer to construct
a simpler but higher performance Karaoke systems. YSS915 is compatible with
YSS903 (KP2V) for the pin arrangement and registers, thus it can replace YSS903
without changing the board and software.
The other chips on the board are simple LS74xxx chips it seems. Pretty simple
stuff. It's cool that the ESS VideoDrive obviously has the IDE electronics
built in to run the DVD-ROM drive.
The DVD ROM drive inside is just a standard IDE drive and is manufactured by
DVS.
http://www.dvs.co.kr/product/prod.html
The MPEG2 Decoder chip used on the Apex is the ESS ES4308 chip. Their
website has no information on this chip, but has information on an earlier
chip, the ES3308. Here is the spec sheet:
http://www.esstech.com/Product/Video/pb3308.pdf
From a press release at ESS:
http://www.esstech.com/Newsroom/2000/1-11-00pm.html
"I am very pleased at the speed that our customers have adopted our new DVD
solution," stated Robert Blair, President and CEO of ESS Technology. "Our
3rd generation DVD chip provides the lowest cost, high-performance DVD
solution available today."
I assume they are talking about the ES4308 chip....
More from their site:
"About the ESS's DVD Solution
ESS's DVD solution is designed to offer a highly integrated and
cost-effective DVD player solution with new levels of digital video and
audio performance for the Consumer Electronics market. It is based on the
production-proven Programmable Multimedia Processor (PMP) core architecture
consisting of a 32-bit RISC CPU and a 64-bit Video Processor Engine. Key
features include a built-in CPU for DVD navigation, MPEG-2 video & Dolby
Digital decoding, sub-picture decoding, Content Scrambling System, On Screen
Display processing, NTSC disc to PAL display (and vice versa) with
SmartScaleT, Virtual Surround, DTS audio, digital out and Karaoke."
That sure sounds like the ES4308 as it seems to list all the features of the
Apex!
Hmm....:
http://www.esstech.com/Newsroom/1999/10-27-99.html
Looks like the Denon DVD-1500 player also uses teh ES4308 chip!!! And who
says the Apex is crappy quality!?
Seems like the ES4308 is also called the Swan chip:
"ESS' SwanT DVD solution, the ES4308, is designed to offer a highly
integrated and cost-effective DVD Player solution with a new level of
digital video and audio performance for the Consumer Electronics market. It
is based on a production-proven Programmable Multimedia Processor (PMP) core
architecture, consisting of a 32-bit RISC CPU and a 64-bit Video Processor
Engine. Key features include a built-in CPU for DVD navigation, MPEG-2 video
& Dolby Digital decoding, sub-picture decoding, Content Scrambling System,
On Screen Display processing, NTSC disc to PAL display and vice versa with
SmartScaleT, and S/PDIF digital audio output.
The ESS SwanT DVD solution is fully backward compatible with the SuperVCD,
Video CD 2.0, and Interactive VideoCD 3.0 standards, as well as the Audio CD
standard. This allows consumers to enjoy the new DVD entertainment
experience and still be able to play all the existing video or CD titles on
the market."
Anyway, enough of that, back to the Apex.
I hooked up the DVD-ROM drive from the Apex to my Win98 computer and it
worked great. It seemed to be a 5x or so DVD-Rom drive but when I put a
CD-Rom in it, it seemed to be really slow. Probably 1x or 2x. Not sure why
it was so slow in CD-ROM mode. I tried running benchmarks but for some
reason the benchmark program wasn't working right. (Could have easily been
my Win98 box...) I took a screenshot of the Win98 properties page.
The RF Shield covering the chips seemed to do double duty as a heat sink
too. It touches two of the chips but it barely touched them. When I opened
my unit, the heatshield was warm, so I guess it was doing it's job. When
reassembling the unit, I put some silicone transistor grease on the flaps
that touched the chips and bent them to make better contact. Not sure if
these chips really run hot or not, but it wouldn't hurt.
Also notice the EPROM is socketed ... great! In case people start getting
units with newer Firmware which don't have the cool Loophole menu features,
a new chip can easily be burned using a simple EPROM writer. I don't have
one or I would have dumped it to a file. It would have been cool to fool
around in there. Perhaps a new Logo could be inserted, etc.
Also, when I put my unit back together, I swapped the ugly silver front feet
on the bottom with the ones from the back which are simply black. They swap
around perfectly. (There is even a little cutout on the front feet for the
front bezel .. and the back ones have it too!)
One other thing I thought of trying was hooking my Toshiba DVD-Rom drive
that's in my computer to the APEX to see what happens... but I was too lazy
to rip it out.
Oh yeah, the display on the front of the Apex is made by Toshiba. I have a
Mitsubishi DVD player which is made by Toshiba, and the display is almost
identical. I mean almost. Since my low end Mitsubishi player doesn't have
VCR or Colorstream outputs, those two icons are missing... but everything
else is identical. Cool, huh?
Update: April 1, 2000 (and this ISN'T an April Fools joke!!)
Ok, here is what Dan Shapella found out about his Apex
and sent to me. (Thanks Dan!)
According to the spec sheet, the ES3308 runs at 80 MHz. I wonder if the
chip or the main board has a clock multiplier (3 X 27 = 81)?
As I expected, the ES3308 spec sheet didn't have any programming info (e.g.
instruction set, registers, I/O addresses, etc). So, I tried to call ESS
and was met with an endless phone menu system. I finally got a tech support
email address, and I mailed them a request for a data book. We'll see if I
get a response, let alone a book.
The ROM is an Atmel AT27C040 512K one-time programmable. I haven't checked
to see if the pinout matches a standard 512K EPROM, but I bet it's exact or
within a pin or 2. Here's the spec sheet:
http://www.atmel.com/atmel/acrobat/doc0189.pdf
I found three other IC's on the main board, as follows:
Burr-Brown PCM1720E Stereo Audio Digital to Analog Converter. Here's a link
to the spec sheet:
http://www.burr-brown.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/BurrBrown.woa/wa/
displayProductFolder?productName=PCM1720
Then, there was a Texas Instruments 310506J (20-pin) chip, and an Atmel 936
(8-pin) chip. I don't think these are 7400-series chips, but I couldn't
find any info on either of them on the web. I'd check to make sure I didn't
get a lot number by mistake, but I don't feel like removing that RF shield
again.
The DVD-ROM spec sheet says it's a 6x DVD / 32x CDROM, so your sluggish CD
access is even more puzzling.
I plan on dumping the ROM and taking a quick look.
Thanks Dan! Great info. If anyone else has interesting information, feel free
to send it to me and I'll put it up too.
Update: April 22, 2000
Ok, I just got an email from someone complaining of the way the Apex plays
PAL DVD's here in the US. You get a slight aspect ratio error -- a slight
letterboxing of the picture.
"Why?" he asked.
Well, I thought about it for a second and figured out why. Here's what I
wrote back to him:
A-HA!!! I just figured out why the Apex does this!! Some simple calculations
show it uses the same 1.2 times reduction in scan lines to convert 16x9
Anamorphic content to 4:3 mode.
Here is why:
Anamorphic NTSC Content: 720x486
Anamorphic content on 4:3 TV: 720x405 (after reduction)
Pal content full frame: 720x512
Pal content on NTSC TV: 720x426 (After reduction)
See, it applies a 1.2 reduction for use in anamorphic content on 4:3 TV's.
Well, when playing PAL content, it just uses the same programming (as it's
already there) to convert the PAL content to fit on the NTSC screen. That
explains the slight distortion you get.
I knew math classes in school was worth something!!! Haha.
Obviously there is nothing to be done about this. It's just a way they
simplified programming to keep costs down. They would have had to use a 1.05
time reduction to get the proper aspect ratio of PAL to NTSC. I bet when you
play a NTSC disc on the player in PAL mode, it just shows NTSC without
stretching it at all, so you get black bars too. (My TV cannot show pal.)
There you have it. Email me at if you have any questions
or comments of want to add anything to this page.
-Adrian
