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Tom's Hardware Reviews First Player for DivX Video

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the that-other-divx dept.

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.

3 of 244 comments (clear)

  1. There's more by BusterB · · Score: 5, Informative

    It also supports ogg/vorbis files. Ogg Traffic

  2. subject by Inf0phreak · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    --
    ________
    Entranced by anime since late summer 2001 and loving it ^_^
  3. It runs Linux! by Taurim · · Score: 5, Informative
    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.