Tom's Hardware Reviews First Player for DivX Video

Idimmu Xul writes "Tom's Hardware has a review of the DP-450: the first player for DivX video in Hi-Fi format! Until now, movies in space-saving DivX (MPEG-4) format could only be viewed on a PC. The KiSS DVD player is the first standalone device for TVs and projectors." Very cool, although it will render my stacks of VCDs obsolete.

Comments

Great!

[Omkar]

This is a step forward for DivX. I don't think most normal people know much about DivX though - perhaps this will help. Did any of you know there's even a DivX dev kit for the GameCube?

DVD player info page

[mr.henry]

This page has a huge database of players and tells you how well they play VCD, SVCD, XSVCD, DVD-R, etc. I used it recently to make sure my new Panasonic could player SVCD's.

There's more

[BusterB]

It also supports ogg/vorbis files. Ogg Traffic

subject

[Inf0phreak]

From what I hear, it doesn't work quite as well as one could hope. First of all, it doesn't support DivX3.11 so all those illegal DVD-rips won't play on it. Second: It doesn't support MPEG-4 Advanced Simple Profile, so if you encoded your video with Quarter Pixel Motion Estimation or Global Motion Compensation it won't play. And finally, I've heard reports that it doesn't work on MPEG-4 compliant videos encoded with XviD, so I'd say that it is pretty much a piece of crap. And don't forget that its MPEG-4 decoding chip was made by Sigma Designs. The very same company that stole code from XviD. I won't EVER buy anything made by those thieving bastards. And my last gripe: If it isn't region free, then it's worthless.

Re:subject

[number]

That is a limitation of the AVI format, which people continue to stuff MPEG-4 video into for reasons unknown. It requires that you write "FourCC" identification codes, and those codes are what determines which codec is required to decompress it.

XviD will decode AVI files with the FourCC IDs XVID, DIVX or DX50, whereas DivX only decodes its own DIVX/DX50. FFvfw (a VFW port of libavcodec) will decode XVID, XVIX, DIVX, DX50, FVFW and a number of other FourCC codes which all identify video that is purely MPEG-4.

The MPEG-4 systems format (i.e. *.mp4, just as *.mpg is for MPEG-1/2) is what MPEG-4 video is supposed to reside in, and once you mux an XviD/DivX/ffmpeg MPEG-4 stream into it, the FourCC mess is left behind, and any spec-compliant MPEG-4 decoder (say, Envivio) will be able to decode it.

Re:How is this possible?

[Zillatron]

Divx was created as a means of dvd rentals on the first generation of DVD players. I think circuit city came up with the format. Get the disc, watch it for a week, then it wouldnt work anymore, so you threw it away. My friend has a DVD player like 4 years ago that played Divx discs.

While true in and of itself, this is not at all the same thing as the DivX video compression codec that enterprising people are using to store their videos now.

Some folks are kind enough to help us see that distinction by refering to it at DivX ;-) You can grab the codec over at http://www.divx-digest.com/software/divxcodec.htm l if you want to take it for a test drive.

Re:Doh.. no xvid?

[tempmpi]

It supports all real MPEG-4 Codecs as long as they only use Advanced Simple Profile functions. As long as your XVID Video doesn't use QPel motion compensation or global motion compensation your xvid file will work. (You also can't use these features in DivX 5.0 files if you want to play them on this player.)

It runs Linux!

[Taurim]

I have my DP-450 since 1 month.

First of all, this DVD/DivX player runs Linux kernel 2.4.17.
If you did not believe me, download the ISO containing the firmware upgrade on the Kiss site :

http://www.kiss-technology.com/support/DRIVERS/450 fw261.zip

Unzip it, mount the ISO, retrieve the romfs.bin file, mount it and check it's content :

drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 32 jan 1 1970 bin
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 32 jan 1 1970 cdrom
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 32 jan 1 1970 dev
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 279064 jan 1 1970 fileplayer.bin
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 7063 jan 1 1970 fipmodule.o
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 32 jan 1 1970 img
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 308894 jan 1 1970 khwl.o
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 310850 jan 1 1970 linux.bin.gz
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 114392 jan 1 1970 mpegplayer.bin
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 32 jan 1 1970 proc

zcat linux.bin.gz | strings | grep Linux
Linux version 2.4.17-uc0 (kiss@localhost.localdomain) (gcc version 2.95.3 20010315 (release)) #1 Wed Jan 22 15:30:35 CET 2003

This player works perfectly with any MPEG-4 file. Mencoder (part of MPlayer) with libavcodec creates files compatible with the DP-450.

The image quality when playing a DivX (on a Sony 32" 16/9 TV) is FAR superior to the quality of the same file played on a PC hooked to the TV. (I made some comparisons with my Linux PC + NVidia GF4200, S-Video + MPlayer and a friends PC running Windoz + WMP + ATI Radeon card + S-Video link)

I know there is the 3.11 issue but it's really simple to convert films to MPEG4 to make them compatible with the Kiss player.

Re:This is useless.

[specialized_sworks]

I'll differ with you on this...
With *the same data rates* the divx encoding will provide better video. It's a more efficient compression scheme which allows *more* detail to be encoded.

The issue is that many people encode at abismal data rates so the quality is bad. The file size is 1/2 of the MPEG2 but the quality is worse. Given the same file size in MPEG2 or DIVX and the DIVX will look better.

-Dubya