[geeks] Appliance Mods

[Joshua D. Boyd]

Refering back to the previous discussion of appliance mods, I just bought
an Apex AD-500W dvd player ($98 at you local piece of hell, err Wallmart).
In addition to the usual macrovision and region firmware mods, it looks
like this thing would be reasonable for other mods to.  Off the top of my
head, adding RGB out should be a pretty easy task.

I think I'll wait till at least the moneyback guaranty expires before
considering such action.

BTW, the sales idiot at hell (err wallmart) desperately tried to sell me a
significantly more expensive machine (albeit one that didn't have any
extra features over the Apex).  He told me that the video quality was
crap.  So far it looks just fine on a viewsonic projector and on a 27" TV
using the s-video connectes on both.  

He also told me that the digital audio was crap.  Now, am I mistaken here,
or is digital audio digital audio?  I mean, assuming that it is standards
compliant (which should rule out ground loop possible problems), how does
the digital out on a cheap DVD player differ from the digital out on a
cheap sound card or the digital out on an expensive DVD player?  I guess
some of the pricier sound cards and dvd players use fiber optic instead of
copper, but is there any quality difference here?

I don't use the digital audio transports on any of my sound cards, nor on
this new DVD player.  If linux would support the digital in jack on the
Live Drive upgrade for the SB Live series, I'd consider getting that and
performing the digital out hack for Playstations (my playstation's audio
output is annoyingly noisy).

--
Joshua Boyd