So I was over at the Ax-Man in St. Louis Park last night and they have a ton of these puppies. The guy at the counter turned around and informed me that none if them worked (which I did not believe) They wanted $4 and he said they played CDs so what did I have to loose. Sure enough, they work. I'm guessing they tried a DVD and then assumed that they where broke (as opposed to old) Looks like they will do karaoke disks as well.

If anyone can think of a fun hack for one, they are not running out any time soon. I have an old VCD unit at home that was used for a kiosk. I know we are loath to acquire CRTs but one of these things and a CRT off the side of the road and you could have a demo video going. Happy Hacking!

I've done a little Internet research on this item. From some forum posts, it seems success with the players may depend on the brand of CD-R disk used, burn speed, and luck with read head alignment on the device. The "not working" claim from Ax-Man might also be due to these factors, esp. luck of the draw with read head quality.

I'm pretty sure it was not that scientific. I talked to some folks there and they seemed to agree that the buyer likely tried a DVD and called them broke. I just took some random media and burned a VCD of Star Wars Revelations (the FanFlick) including a hirez still for the first track and it played just fine.

I'm quite sure if you got one and for some odd reason it did not work, they would swap it, course, its $4.

I told them they should just get a CRT and have one on display (loop an Ax-Man ad or the like.) If someone has a 13" they want to see go away, we could prolly convince them to set up a 'display').

... and of course, one could use a vidcap card on a computer to get playback on an LCD. I actually have one that works very good for up to DVD resolution.