Customer Reviews

Apex GB55HD09W 55-Inch Projection Widescreen HDTV-Ready TV

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

TV just broke, but thanks to the 4 yr warranty I purchased, COMPUSA is going to be replacing the TV with a comparable model, or giving me a credit to purchase another TV...so...looks like I'll be going flatscreen! Apparently from what COMPUSA says, Apex no longer makes parts for these tv's, so they don't even bother fixing them, they just throw them out. Oh well...I stand to gain so won't complain...

(...) I watched the TV in the store and it was somewhat grainy, but the salesman said that the in-store model should have been adjusted more, and that the TV really did have a good picture. They had an 47' Panasonic and a few other models with smaller pictures for around the same price (+/- $200), and he said to stick with this one. Every sales person I have spoken with has said that the Apex TV's are pretty good, but that apex DVD and VCR's aren't so hot. However, they all said that their TV's have been improving lately, especially since they started doing business in the US. Basically, Apex's sales design is to deliver more quantity, while still emphasizing quality, but doing away with a lot of the options that only audiophiles really need. For instance, this TV does not have the plug that allows you plug your home theatre into a computer (PC) based setup from what I am told. However, it hooked up perfectly fine to my surround sound setup.
Now onto the good stuff. The TV arrived, we let it warm up a bit, and then turned it on. I was going to set the cable up, but decided to go straight to DVD as I just bought a new Toshiba progressive scan player (4900 model). I put in Top Gun, and the picture was horrible! I thought to myself, what did I just buy??? Well it turns out the TV requires some adjusting. First you need to set the convergence, which requires you to be sitting in front of the TV, at the level you would normally view the TV at. Do not do this standing up (more on this later...)! It will throw the convergence off and the picture won't be so great when you're sitting down. So I performed this easy adjustment (you just use the remote buttons, nothing really technical). Then I decided to try out Finding Nemo, the animated Disney movie. Nemo has a lot of color complex scenes, with quick movement and I figured this would be a good test of the TV. Well, Nemo looked horrible still! The orange fish appeared to lack a clear border, almost as if the pixels were not where they should be. Well turns out, I initially did the convergence standing up, and when I sat down and readjusted, it was off by a good bit. So I redid that, and the picture improved considerably. However, the colors were off, and the clarity wasn't there yet. Turns out you need to set the TV to use the DVD player's progressive scan function. So I did that, and the picture got better again. Still, wasn't totally thrilled with the color and clarity, but then I turned on another option on the TV that sets it to theatre mode, and the picture looked incredible! Not a pixel out of place! Fish were swimming around the reef and the colors were awesome. I put in Gladiator and watched some of the fight scenes, and they are crisp, clear, and impressive.
Yesterday we watched the Super Bowl with about 25 people coming over, and I swear the TV got even better over the course of those few hours. Everyone there thought we had the HDTV broadcast of the game on, but we had the standard digital cable. How's that for reviews. My buddy has a Mitsubishi and said this TV looked better than his (to be fair, his is about two years old, the new Mitsubishi's are better than the Apex models, but also about twice as much). However, I am going to get the HDTV cable box, it's only a one time $10 fee from my cable company, and that will improve picture clarity even more. I'm looking forward to it!
All in all, I am extremely pleased with this TV. A few things to keep in mind: If you are checking this out in the stores are not impressed, ask the TV salesperson to tune it up, many times from being moved around they don't display the best picture. Also, the stores lighting will wash out the colors. Bring a good DVD to test out the TV's, preferably something with vibrant colors and lots of action to see how the progressive scan works.
Check to see that there is a local Apex certified TV service area around you in case something does go wrong with the TV. You can do this from the apex digital website. In my case, $100 for the 4-year warranty was the way to go. They will come out, pick up the TV, and repair it. When you get it home, make sure to adjust the settings, there is a few presets that you can just set with one click of the remote. Then, you can fine tune it off of the basic presets if you desire. I found the "movie" preset needed some color added, but looked great with that one adjustment.
The TV does feature a number of screen formats. The standard wide screen is great for movies, but many TV programs are not in widescreen just yet. So, this TV offers a few different options. Once stretches the TV picture to fit the screen, but makes some objects appear out of round. However, there is another stretch function that alleviates this problem, and everything appears in normal size again. There is also the standard 4:3:4 aspect ratio, which will place black bars on the side of the picture and display the screen as you would normally see it on a standard TV.
But you will definitely need a progressive scan dvd player, which all dvd players now on the market are. However, if you have an older model, you'll need to upgrade to even watch a dvd on this tv (or any other large screen dvd player). The one drawback to this tv is that when you see a persons face taking up the entire screen you can see the pixels and it appears "digitalized" sometimes. Its nothing horrible, and it certainly does not ruin the experience, its just one of those things that the more expensive TV's seem to take care of. I have also been asked about the reflective screen and window glare. I have the tv in front of the windows, so thats not a problem for me, but this screen isnt quite as reflective as some of the other models. I would say its semi-reflective. I am going to turn the tv around to face the windows and see if its still viewable (more on that next week)
All in all, I am very satisfied with this TV. It has all the necessary options for your typical homeowner, and the picture is very good. For the price, I don't think you could go wrong. My thoughts are that plasma's are going to come down in price, so if I have this for 3 years and turn around and sell it, I will have paid a small price for the satisfaction this TV is going to provide. Looking forward to going home and watching some more movies and I don't normally watch movies a second time!

Things you find out once you can't make something work and then read the manual...
1. There is no native 720p. It downscans it to 480p.
2. The PIP, auto-off on no-signal, and double-display and still-screen functions only operate on tuner input and Svideo. If you use the progressive inputs NONE of those functions will work.
3. The TV powers on in tuner mode (not in "last source used" mode). It takes 8.5 seconds (timed by my Pronto) from hitting the power button before you can switch it to any alternate input source (Svid, RCA, Component...)
4. The sound output (monitor outs) do NOT work when the component video inputs are selected. In other words, if you use Svid to feed the sources, you can use the TV to feed audio as one source to your audio system. If you use Component, you have to individually feed the audio directly into your audio system and separately switch them.

Mine was ordered 3/22, given to shipper 3/23, delivered
4/7 (yes, it took over two weeks), and the shipper tried
to do a curbside delivery until
I "explained" that they could either do the white glove
delivery that was called for and paid for, or they could
take it back.

It's a good interim until plasma HDs come down in price,
but if you're looking for a long term HDtv, you may want
to wait for true 720p, 1080p, monitor-out on all sources,
powerup with previous source selected, multiple saved
convergence settings (standing, sitting, couch-right,
couch-left, etc.)

E

Picked this one up for the Super Bowl at Comp USA on sale at $999.99. It has all of the technical specs I was looking for (3D comb, 3:2 pulldown, 3 AV and 2 component inputs, dual tuner, picture&picture and PIP, HD ready ETC..). Only has manual convergence but only needs to be done once (very simple and only takes a couple of minutes). Picture quality is as good as or better than others at twice the price. I would rate this one as a best value even at the regular $1599 price.

For the $$$, there is nothing better out there. Looked everywhere before buying and this set just simply blows away the competition. Great value and I am sure you will agree once this bad boy is sitting in your living room

Just received my unit from Amazon. The set is much better than expected. Picture compares to my 55" Toshiba at a much better cost. If you are looking for a great deal, this is the one.

It was finally time for me to buy a new TV. After deciding to go with a big screen TV, I found this Apex 55 inch widescreen tv on amazon.com for $1099.99. The price almost seemed to be too good. I was pretty hesitant about it because of the brand name. I thought about it for about a month, then went ahead and ordered it. Although amazon.com says it usually ships in 24 hours, it took almost a week to ship out. During this time I was almost regretting ordering this tv. The thing was, is that I wanted a tv that was that was going to last me a while. I'm not planing on getting HDTV cable service right now, and I didnt want to watch everything in stretch mode. On the other hand I didnt want to watch it in the standered 4:3 mode because I've read that the black bars can burn into the screen permanently. Before the tv was delivered I was thinking I made a bad choice and thought I should have probably ordered a standard big screen TV.

So almost a week later the delivery company calls me to set up a delivery time. The gave me a two hour window for delivery. On that day they showed up within at that time frame and unloaded the TV out of the truck. They removed all the boxing and my first reaction was, "wow!" It was huge! They moved it into my living room and I hooked it all up. Regular TV looked pretty good. The TV has a few different ways to watch tv. I have mine set on wide zoom. What that does is it cuts a little bit of the picture off of the top and bottem, and zooms in on the picture a bit. That way it fits the whole screen and looks awesome! Later that day I put in the DVD Finding Nemo(as another reviewer did). I have a Toshiba progressive scan DVD player, and the movie was absolutly amazing. I've never seen a TV that looked so clear!

So now its been about four days that I've had this TV, and I couldnt be more happier. Its big, the picture is very clear, and the sound is good. I still havent figured out the PIP yet, I'm still working on that. If I had to be extremely nitpicky the only thing thats kind of annoying is that changing stations are not instant, there is a brief pause while changing stations. But like I said, thats being real nitpicky. If your considering getting this TV, do it. Its way less expensive that almost every other widescreen TV, but looks as good, if not better.

If only it was football season....

If you have any questions about this TV please feel free to email me at: lifeandhowtoliveit@yahoo.com

Those of you who purchase any product from APEX, be very afraid. I purchased the APEX 65 inch widescreen TV. I have had nothing but, actually nothing from their customer service department. I have not been able to find not even one service person that is willing to work with APEX at all. I even went out of my state boarders to find someone, with no luck. I have received about 20 emails from them with the same response each time. I really like the television but the service is not good at all. "I VOWED TO LET EVERY CONSUMER OF THERE PRODUCTS, KNOW HOW BAD THEIR SERVICE IS". BE CAREFUL, BUY IF YOU WANT!!!!

I love this TV. The HD picture is phenomenal and the price was fantastic. After a year of ownership, I'm as happy as I was when it was brand new. As most folks who own the tv know, for some odd reason, when you turn on the tv, it always starts on a particular input (cable), so if you use a HD input, you have to cycle through virtually all of the inputs to get it to the right input. That part sucked, but was easily resolved with a spiffy Theatre Master programmable remote. Now, with one button press, the tv turns on, pauses the requisite amount of time, cycles through the inputs, turns on my receiver, switches the input to TV/Sat and turns on the cable box. Spiffy, huh? Anyway, the TV gets lots of comments about its enormous screen and great picture from friends and family. Sometimes I forget who great the big picture is as I have grown used to it... If you can find one of these, snap it up.

Based on the reviews I read here I went out and bought this Brand New from Comp USA for $999.96 + $77tax + $99.00 for a 4-yr In-Home warranty. Not a bad price if you ask me. I almost bought a 50in Toshiba Refurbished for $1200 + $250ship from eCost.com. Needless to say I could not be happier with this television. It is huge (55in) and the picture is crystal clear after making a few minor easy adjustments via the remote. Don't be disappointed at first because an adjustment will be likely before it looks great. The packing was outstanding so it was easier to move into my house without damaging it. It is heavy and took three strong guys to complete the move. Once out of the box it is easy to move around because it has wheels on the bottom and it also came with coasters to put on the wheels for thicker carpeting. At first I couldn't find the remote and manual but when I looked harder I found it taped to the bottom of the TV. The remote is a little cheap looking but it gets the job done and it doesn't bother me much since I will be using my other learning remote to operate it. The picture-in-picture works great with the double tuner the TV comes with. The sound is amazing despite a little hard to hear hiss I hear from the TV that might just be coming from other components I have. My progressive scan Panasonic DVD recorder compliments this TV perfect. Since I only had the TV a few day I cant give much more info. If you can get your hands on this HDTV I would highly recommend it. This TV is replacing a 36in Sony TV I had from 4 years ago.

I purchased my Apex GB55HD09W 55" Projection Widescreen HDTV-Ready TV by APEX (...) I hooked it up to the regular cable conection from my Dish Network System and was blown away with the colors of the picture. Just plain awesome!!! I did find that in order to receive stereo I had to use the S-video output from the Dish Network Receiver to the S-video imput on the TV. But the already great picture got even better!! Next I hooked my my "Cheap" Apex 2600 DVD player and once I used the component hook-ups so as to enable the progresive scan of the DVD player the picture was again unbelievable!! For a Low cost HDTV receiver Lots of neat features and ease of opperation , this set is amazing.
I know this review sound like I work for Apex, but I'm really impressed with this set and if you are looking for a very nice unit at a low cost I can't see how you could go wrong. Now, that I've said all of the above only time will tell if the unit keeps preforming well. ??? ...

Update!!!
I did have one problem with this set. After it was on for about 30 min's the picture would go out and only the sound would stay on . I would use the remote and restart the the set and it would come back on but would lose the picture in about 30 minutes again. I found the problem to be with the ON button on the front of the set needs to be pressed in all the way in and my problem went away. This ON button will work if you just brush it but will lose its picture if not properly pushed to complete ON position.