Reaching the Apex...

The chairman of Apex Digital has been arrested for fraud in China because the company owes money to a Chinese TV manufacturer.

I know nothing about the inner workings of Chinese TV manufacturers or the balance sheets of Apex. I am familiar with Apex, though, as I own two of their products. My first DVD player was an Apex 3201 that I got for $40 or so after rebate from CompUSA when they first started selling DVD players. It's cool, because it's hackable - punch a few keystrokes into the remote and it will become region and macrovision free. I still have it and it works, but I don't use it anymore because I bought a GoVideo streaming DVD player (that has a network card in it). I also have a 20" Apex TV that I use as a second TV in my kitchen/common area, and for playing video games on.

I would go as far as to say that Apex is in part responsible for the popularity of DVD's. They were one of the first companies to make a DVD player that played MP3's, and were selling $99 DVD players when other companies wanted $300 for one. They paved the way for a bunch of other cheap dvd players, and thus made the big guys bring their prices down as well.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised if they were losing money on TV's - $99 seemed really cheap for my 20"-er, which is actually a pretty solid and feature-rich TV that only cost a few bucks more than a 13". But it would be a shame if Apex goes away - and it may mean higher electronic prices at the lower end of the market if someone doesn't fill their shoes.