Apex Digital, Inc. is an American electronics trading company based in Walnut, California founded in 1997. It distributed high definition and LCD panel televisions, DVD recorders and players, and other digital items including photo frames and bookshelf audio systems. It also has an office in Ontario, California. In 2010, Apex filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which finally closed in 2018.
History
1997-2003
Apex Digital, Inc. was co-founded in 1997 by David Ji (President), Wasim (CEO), and Ancle Hsu (Chief Operating Officer). In 2000, it introduced its first DVD players – the AD-600A – to the US market, which became successful due to their ability to play MP3 files; used to download music files off the internet during the height of the Napster controversy. By the end of 2001, Apex was the second leading marketer of DVD players in the US after Sony.
In 2001, Apex became the first company certified to produce DVD players compatible with Eastman Kodak’s picture CDs and its ViDVD player enabled users to connect to the internet. Changhong became Apex's largest supplier of DVD players. In January 2004, Apex introduced the "ApeXtreme" console for playing PC video games on a television screen. During this period, Ji was arrested in China on fraud charges against Changhong.
On October 23, 2004, as Apex was in a business dispute with Changhong in which the two companies argued over hundreds of millions of dollars, as Ji was in China on a business trip he was arrested by Mianyang police in his hotel room in Shenzhen, China, near Hong Kong, 500 miles away from Shenzhen. Changhong accused Ji of defrauding them through bad checks. Charlie Wang then conducted a second taped deposition of Ji.
However, as of May 10th 2026, the California Secretary of State Bizfile online website has stated that Apex Digital is an active business.
In 2019, Apex Digital entered a partnership with Bluestar Alliance, a private equity firm, to purchase Brookstone's online and wholesale businesses. Brookstone is a retail chain that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2018.
Controversies
A programming loophole in Apex's first DVD player model meant that users could circumvent regional lockout and Macrovision's copyright protection, meaning they could play DVDs from any region globally and record them onto videocassettes. Apex quickly discontinued the model, and this problem was resolved in subsequent manufacturing.