Slashdot Mirror
First Certified DivX/DVD Player Released
An anonymous reader writes "According to this article, a company named KiSS Technology announced at CeBit that they are releasing the first certified DivX DVD players, the DP-450 and DP-500! They are supposed to be able to playback ALL versions of DivX content and digital rights management. I'm completely stoked on this, I would buy one of these in a snap. This could make the purchase of dvd burners slow down in my opinion." (And Yes, it plays Ogg Vorbis, too.) Ebay imports, anyone?
-=SiGH=-
Nothing like being sold something you could build yourself in a few hours...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Why? Why do you need a player that plays DivX movies when the main thing people use DivX for is to rip DVDs and trade them? Are you going to rip your own DVDs and watch them in a crappier format?
"This could make the purchase of dvd burners slow down in my opinion."
Why? You need a burner to make the DivX DVD, don't you?
Now I can play my downloaded movies the way they were meant to be seen!
good thing that it's not coming out in US, too, or the company that produces it (KiSS Technologies) would be sued out of existence.
Is there some sort of reward for pointing out that something is "old news"?
I'm wondering because every single slashdot story has at least one person declaring the subject to be old news.
I have a nice little black box that sits on my desk next to me that does DivX playback, Ogg, MP3. You name it. DVD playback works also. I can run MAME on it, and play console games from tons of different consoles including Xbox. Not to mention the ability to run Linux, doubt that dvd player can do that.
Now I can watch all the pr0n I download on a nice bigscreen TV instead of my 19" monitor. Ron Jeremy, here I come!!!
I was just looking for a player that could handle DivX and happened across this page of comments from users who already have one of these units. Sounds interesting, although hopefully the codec support can be upgraded by the user.
I wonder if it will support playback of "ogm" files? If not, what format should I be using that can handle vorbis VBR audio and subtitles?
Lets hope it is flexible on how the CD is burned/formatted so it will work with my existing collection of single CD Divx movies. It would be a major pain to have to re-burn them with a standalone compatible disk structure.
What post? The one you're carrying inside your rusty innards!
Ebay imports, anyone?
If you buy a DVD player from another continent, which I assume is another region, won't that screw up your chances of playing the DvDs you bought in this country? I thought there was some sort of protection against that, or does this player get around that as well?
SecondPageMedia - Wha
Please, everyone swarm to try and convince me that DivX players will be used to play something other than pirated DVD and VCD recordings. How transparent.
--sdem
Company homepage is here.
One of my collegaues have actually ordered one. It is based on an arm processor running uLinux & IIRC you can actually flash the firmware youself, and it is running some sort of mplayer. (AFAIK, the software is somewhere to be found on their homepage.
The FAQ is
here.
And, a homepage for kissdvd (the player?) - you need flash. So, that will probably survive a looong time...
Mads Bondo Dydensborg
Like, I thought DiVX was either (a) a dll ripped off from microsoft or (b) a group of open source coders tracking a moving target. Who 'certifies' that this works?
I stopped downloading DivX movies a couple years ago when I got a DVD player capable of playing SVCDs. The first generation of DivX movies came on 1 CD, but the high quality ones are 2 CD, the same for most SVCD releases. Still, SVCD is good enough for me.
So why not say "DVD quality DivX movies"?
I've had a DivX DVD player for years. I got it cheap from CompUSA after DivX went out of business.
Oh, thatDivX...
Never mind.
Slashdot article refering to this review
Yes, this article minus the "We're releasing it now" was posted on /. a while ago.
*Hears the sound of a thousand geeks screaming with joy*
The question is, with dvd burners, can this bad boy play a DVD burned full of ogg/mp3s? Can it play DVD full of DivX movies? I can fit between 5-6 movies or more on a DVD.
- tristan
could someone buy me one ?, pretty please ?
I don't know too much about this specific player, but I bought my first DVD player from KiSS about three years ago - a cheap player, around $200, which also played mp3s, vcd and svcd. And it is probably the worst DVD player I have ever used.
The DVD image and audio quality was very, very bad (jerky playback, unclear image, lots of jitter etc), and it wouldn't even play half of the VCDs I tried. It also had a very "plastic" feel to it, and I suspect it used a standard IDE DVD ROM with some very cheap chips for playback.
This new player may be good, but after my experiences with their earlier products I would approach this one with caution.
What would be REALLY nice is a net connected player that could update its firmware when a new or better codec is announced. O, wait, there already is such a thing, its called a PC. Silly me.
Even if this is going to ruin my karma, but, YOU'RE DISGUSTING YOU DUMB FUCK!
= better. Nuff' said.
Considering even the cheapest PoS DVD player that redneck billy bob bought at Wal-Mart will play both VCDs and SVCDs that are burned on plain ordinary CD-Rs using any run-of-the-mill burner found in your HP Desktop that redneck billy bob also bought at Wal-Mart, the real question is:
Why? Why need support to play DivX format in a DVD player?
Is the DivX format any better quality than SVCD? Using standard CD-Rs, you are going to use close to the same amount of discs to get the same amount of video at the same quality.
DivX may have better audio than SVCD...but nothing will ever provide the DD 5.1, DTS, and 6.1(7.1???) sound quality of real DVDs.
Scan have had loads of offers of KiSS players in the recent past, here in the UK.
I can't quite remember if they were KiSS players per se or Scan ones, manufactured by KiSS.
Either way, I bet that these new players will be available there soon...
/. Where the truth
Bullshit. %99 of people couldn't build this if they're life depended on it. And those that can, already have.
With all these Divx players coming out, I hope that there will still be a market for OGG/Theora (which, if you aren't already in the loop, is essentially VP3 video plus Vorbis audio in a new file format that is MUCH more flexible than AVI) when it's released.
Karma: Excellent (fuck, even in the future moderation doesn't work!)
Xbox $200
Modchip $40
For $240 you have yourself a little box that will play anything with Xbox Media Player. The biggest advantage of this is all you need to do is plug it into your router, and stream media off your computer. Cheap and effective.
"They are supposed to be able to playback ALL versions of DivX content and digital rights management. I'm completely stoked on this, I would buy one of these in a snap. "
Now we have the answer to "how will DRM be implimented?".
So does that fact make both you and Timothy "sheep"?
BTW Has anyone noticed that some posts you can reply to, while others you can not?
I think Digisette is/will be offering these.
I don't know about divx.. the thing that is very interesting to me is the network port. So, I can theoretically access my Linux file server, which has my MiniDV movies, exported to DVD VOB format. Also, as part of my creation process, I can watch them over the network, rather than burning DVD's as tests. And, once I'm done, I can have an easily accessed home movie archive via the network server.
It could also access my MP3 library on that Linux file server.. Could be a nice, small, quiet media server to replace most of my HTPC (Home Theater PC) functionality (everything except the HDTV receiver/recorder).
I bet that a fairly large % of the people that read
Thus, it isn't bullshit. We're not talking about "people", we're talking within the context of
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
So, not cheap, but if the guy's gotta have it...
True. However it would be nice to have a standard sized/colored unit that you do not have to wait to boot up, or worry about crashing. Especially if you are running Windows on your media box. Also hopefully you will not have to worry about things such as power supply problems, fans going bad, etc.
Shouldn't that read all current versions???
in the shops here in Germany. For 299 Euros in the MediaMarkt for example.
FWIW, they are absolutely not the first to produce these. Several companies has been OEM'ing these in China using the same Sigma 8500 decoder for months. Some answers to questions: 1. It it firmware upgradeable? Yes. 2. Region Codes? These units are 'all code' out of the box. Is this illegal? 'Kindof' 3. Can it play a DVD full of mp3's. divx movies etc? Yes. 4. Why this and not some crap from Walmart? Well, this is progressive scan, for one thing. (In built in the Sigma) 5. Can I send you one? No :)
KiSS Technology DP-450 and DP-500. There are even efforts underway to dezone the 450 and 500.
I've had one on order for almost two weeks and the delivery date is slipping a day per day. Has anyone here actually got one?
I really dislike that these things are called "DivX" players when they should rather be called mpeg-4 players. As far as I'm concerned, DivXNetworks is still trying to appropriate all the goodwill/badwill generated from the old divx 3.11 codec through a weak trademark. 50 million downloads of DivX a month they claim. Alright, how many of that is Xvid and 3.11? Most of them.
But can you build it in a form factor as small as a normal DVD player? Will it stick out like a sore thumb in your living room like a bog-standard PC would? Will the fan be incessantly humming? If you can really meet these criteria point me at the motherboard and especially the case.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
no,sir!
divx looks far better than svcd, even 1 svcds compared to 1 cd divx. svcd is just low bitrate mpeg2, how could that look nearly as good as mpeg4?!
Unfortunately, that is not entireley correct. DD 5.1 can definitely be encoded and used on DivX, Xvid and Ogg encoded movies. I have seen several of these formats that used the AC3 codec on them and did in fact contain all 5.1 channels of audio. As for DTS, well...I imagine you should be able to do that as well. While I have not seen a DTS encoded DivX et al....I have seen DTS encoded audio in "wav" format.
"The strong will do what they want, the weak will do what they must."
-Thucydides
Recent DivX versions are getting closer to SVCD quality. Sadly, not quite there yet. As for why?
Hmm.. 1 cd for almost any decent DivX rip. 2, 3, and even 4 cds for even the shortest movie encoded using SVCD. Not only do you save on cds (and the associated storage space), but you don't have to change discs midway into a movie (several times in some cases). Sucks if you don't have a changer, I'd imagine.
Oh, and as for every DVD player playing VCD/SVCD.. those claims are way overstated. AFAIK no Toshiba player handles SVCD. Many Panasonic models can't handle it either. I won't even go into the low end stuff like Samsung...
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
If you already own a PS2 and a network adaptor, you can play media files on your TV with Q-Cast Tuner. However, this does require you to have your PS2 on the LAN with your PC. The files are streamed off of your computer to the PS2 which then decodes them and plays them on your TV.
Really? I can't say that I've seen too many people wanting a DVD burner to pirate DVD's. The things are so cheap (the DVD's, not the burners) that when you take into account the time it takes to rip the thing, well it's like that wise old saying, 'Linux is cheap if your time is worth nothing'.
> I won't even go into the low end stuff like Samsung
Your insight is astounding. Those "low end" brands were the pioneers of (S)VCD, offering support way before the namebrand vendors were even aware of the market. Even today most of the high-end gear that's older than a few months doesn't support it.
I really like the idea, DivX player in a standalone device, but what about piracy?? i mean, we'll know that people needs it to play DivX traded on the Internet, for example in Mexico we have a hard time with piracy, DVD copies for 5 us dlls, VCDs, SVCDs, antipiracy laws doesnt work on Mexico, they even want to put a special tax to the CDR media to gain something, no one can stop them!!!!
Now, if they release this device here or probably anywhere else, this will be a total chaos, it can carry several implication to Sharing Networks, IRC and stuff, if we see problems becasue we can BUILD a player like this, now in hands of the vareage consumer?
And the problems will start when this player starts to raise in USA.
When I read the article I was put off a bit by the following part: ..fully support digital rights management technology... Does anyone of you guys know more about this DivX DRM technology? It does not sound like the player will be able to circumvent this technology but more like it will abide by the set restrictions.
Any opinions? - thanks!
Basically, the DP-450 it is a VCR-sized box with a 150Mhz StrongARM running Linux 2.4.x + busybox + custom software + custom hardware helping MPEG2 and MPEG4 decoding + a (Toshiba?) DVD drive + remote control. No ethernet on the DP-450 (but it is there on the DP-500). No fans :-)
Just insert a CD/DVD and it starts playing what's on it (but press the load button: just pushing the loading bay is not enough):
Briefly said: this is an MPEG2 and MPEG4 player (hence DivX 4 and 5; old DivX 3 is out of question), and as of now just MPEG4 Simple Profile features are supported (thus it won't play everything out there, as of now: be warned).
Image quality is nice, but not excellent (blacks aren't so... black). Firmware upgrades on the DP-450 are performed by downlowading an iso image (of a couple of megabytes) from the manifacturer website, and then booting the player with it.
All in all, a nice piece of hardware, easy to use, somewhat expensive (I purchased mine for 400 Euros). But it sits there beside your TV set and it just works.
I have squashed into divx a few of my favorite movies for the same reason that I've squashed a lot of my CDs into ogg files: because it's easier to access them that way.
;)
If I had an infinite hard drive and a large television, I might want a bit-for-bit copy; since I'm more likely to use a PC monitor to watch movies, and since even my largest hard drive would only hold a handful of movies at DVD-size, I compress. I've never downloaded warezed movies, nor do I put mine of a big anon. ftp site
But when I feel like watching a few minutes of "Barcelona," I can do it without putting the original disk in the drive. (Which I think is a good enough reason all by itself to compress, anyhow.)
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Corrupting young minds everywhere...dang, someone must have beat me to /.
Even right there in your own question, the answer is obvious. Say I've ripped my DVDs and traded them with somebody. I'd like to play the ones I got in return, wouldn't I?
I'll give you another scenario. I rip recordings off my TiVo, encode them to DivX, and store them in a much smaller form on my file server. It would be great to have a device to play these back again on the TV, instead of just on a computer.
Doug
than having to make VCDs. (Even newbie guides can be a little cumbersome)
This brings up an interesting point
VCD is an old format that's been popular in Asia for many years. All of the Japanese companies are certainly "aware" of it.
The reason 'high end' players don't support it because there's no real demand for it in the US market. VCD was introduced in the US with the 3D0 console and the Phillips CDi, and it bombed. Meanwhile the low-end players are just repackaged asian models and VCD is a free feature.
n/m
hella interesting!
Actually this device (or a close relative with a network plug) was mentioned in an article in danish PC World a while ago. A housing complex set up a switched 100 mbit network with drops in every apartment. They'd really like to end their crappy cable contract, but they would wait for this thing to surface.
They also decided that they weren't ready for voip, so they actually spend the extra money to wire up for phone, also. Thats just too bad. Or maybe it's because voip phones costs 100s of $$ when a simple analog is $10..
Go watch your uncompressed movies, listen to your uncompressed wavs and uncompressed bitmaps. Technology moves forwards, do you seriously expect people to not be interested in using state-of-the-art compression technology? Whether it is for home videos or their l33t DVD rips, you want it smaller, faster and better right? If nothing else you'd want a HDTV DVD using mpeg4 instead of a NTSC/PAL DVD using mpeg2.
If you go by that twisted logic, Ferraris should be outlawed because they make it much easier to break the speed limit. And sharp knives because they're easier to stab people with, as opposed to dull knives. Nevermind all the reasons the Internet shouldn't exist, enabling lots of warez/appz/mp3z/kp trading to name a few.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
My brother has one, it might be an older model but it's from the same company and plays DivX and XviD CD-Rs just fine. It's pretty slick, the image quality is good and the controls are just like the ones you see on DVD players. The firmware is upgradeable, and the company is supposed to release new versions for future codecs. I opted for a mod-chipped XBox and Xbox Media Center instead, though.
Well, the players have been out for half a year now, so there's nothing new about them, actually...
What kind of dog barks "BOFH! BOFH!"? A rootweiler of course...
Yeah... But then you'd have a loud computer standing next to your tv and have a kludgy interface that probably would make you have a keyboard there too.
:/
Not to speak about boot time, shutdown time, fsck time, etc.
It's the same as the difference between using your computer as a dvd player/cd player vs using a dedicated dvd player to watch your dvd's and play your music cd's in your livingroom.
I haven't read the article, but I'll wager that it doesn't have a ethernetport though...
That would be the major problem with this player. That you have to burn all your movies to cd before watching it.
I'd love to have one of these that was also capable of playing movies and mp3's over the network from my fileserver...
Think about it.
Sit in your sofa, turn it on using your remote, 4 seconds later your browsing through your movie collection, 10 seconds after turning it on you start viewing your recently downloaded Hikaru no Go episode. =)
You probably could do something like that using a "Linux in BIOS-eeprom" installation (to get fast boot times) and autoload some kind of special software that let you use a remote to browse the local harddrive or mounted nfs or smb shares.
But I'll bet that doing this would take more than a few hours *and* probably cost more than the Kiss player.
There are only a few select mainboards that work with the eeprom loaded linux, so you'd probably have to buy some new hardware to build a machine like that.
And it would probably not be fan-less or harddrive free either. (Thus not being quiet enough to run while listening to music)
Or you could get a X-box, chiping it and then install that mediaplayer thingie...
But that's also expensive and loud. (The X-box makes a terrible racket compared to, say, a dvd-player)
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
Hi.
Relax a bit on the Kiss box. It's *just* a Linux box. Last I saw it it was based on the Sigma Design Netstream Console (i.e. slow X86 compat National processor and hardware decoder for MPEG-1/2/4 and AC3/Dolby5.1. I'm surprised they got Vorbis to work. I met with them last summer and they hadn't even heard of Vorbis at that time. I'd assume their Vorbis support is only for local playback/download and perhaps (evil) simulated streaming (http based).
--PMM
I'm more interested in that DVD player that is being imported to the U.S. that has the internal hard drive provision on its motherboard.... and it has enough room inside the case for a hard drive to be popped into it by the user. Anyone have info on this?
Or perhaps I should just upgrade my TiVo with the Home Media option and stream my MP3s to the TiVo...
The Lynxpro
(forgot my password again)
Come on, tell us how you really feel.
So I'm a pervert. Welcome to the Internet.
A year ago I would've bought one of these in a snap. Now I have an Athlon 1200 with 200gb of storage, canopus firewire transcoder, DVD-ROM drive, networked to my main server.
Oh yes, and it has a nice vacuum florescent display on the front to show me stuff as it's performing different media tasks, DIVX, DVD, MP3, etc. With a logitech cordless desktop for a remote control, it's great!
Aside from portability (which doesn't really matter for me), I can't think of any other advantages of the KISS unit. A cheap PC can be had for about $400, and is infinately extendable to deal with new media types, etc. And no need to change media.
N.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
See: http://www.digisette.com/en/products/dv450.aspo r information
f
http://www.broadq.com for details
I've been waiting for digital rights management forever! Thank god I can finally get it imposed on me while watching TV too. Wow!!! Yippie!!! Kowabunga!!!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
VCDs are MPEG too - MPEG-1. I worked on some of the first encoders back when real-time required specialist DSP hardware. At the time it was technically amazing that you could encode acceptable full video and stereo soundtrack into a standard 1x CD bitstream. Quality however is *very* variable dependent on source material and encoder software... but generally shitty! Also a movie takes 2 (sometimes 3) discs, and getting up to change them is a real pain in the arse.
- Hosting Guide http://www.mirical.co.uk -
Children in the back cause accidents. Accidents in the back cause childr
there is a version with an Ethernet Port
So there you go
I used to play previously recorded music clips, films thraillers (arg, sluggish english) e save some record public TV transmission
sign(c14n(envelop(this)), x509)
So I can take my movies, re-rip them into an inferior, lower-bitrate, non-standard format and... uh... ...what was the point of this again?
Never mind.
The is more than the two player of DivX. Here is a link to the search results on VCDHELP....h p?DVDname=&di vx=1&Search=Search&Submit2=Search
http://www.dvdrhelp.com/dvdplayers.p
Anyone have any links to places in the US to buy a DP-500? Any reviews of the new features (networking, mostly) in the DP-500? I've done some Google searching, and found some good info on the DP-450. I've even seen some stuff on the DP-500, but just from people using it as a (standalone) player.
I'd like to know what protocol(s) it uses, etc.. Also, the comments from users over the last several months (mostly about the 450 or prerelease 500s) talk about a lot of deficiencies. Since the firmware to support the networking has to be at least somewhat updated, does anyone know what else has been changed or improved? (For example, there were a lot of comments about the older ones supporting a very narrow set of Divx;) versions, contrary to what the new press release implies.)
I believe this was a mistake and they should have made the network port a WiFi (802.11b or better).
Also it's progressive scan capable too for those with HDTV screens. Only problem is you need a European SCART connector with RGB outputs to use it, thats their other mistake.
Otherwise - nice toy I'd like one (if they make it WiFi).
Bah. if there was a decent toolchain for DivX encoding, a cohesive codec, and a standardized set of codec settings (to accomplish the usual sp/lp/ep quality-vs-size tradeoffs), there's no reason why you can't have a set-top box that does well.
Infinite flexibilty is nice on computers, but its also a pain in the ass. Just because you have a hundred dials to spin doesn't mean you should.
I have a number of VHS tapes that I'd like to get into digital format. It'd be nice to beable to cram of few of them onto a single DVD since VHS quality isn't really that great anyway.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
Buy a TV out card and there ya go. No need to worry about upgrading the box (or dumping it) when DivX version x.y will be out.
.avi .mov .mp3 too...
Oh and your PC can do
Isn't it amazing?
-- Leeeter than leet
If you're talking about building a media system, yes, it is possible for most people on /. to do that. But the cost effort involved in getting, for example, component video output or with good resolution working with linux drivers (i.e. has to be supported by X drivers or V4L or any of that) (I'm not going to make any dedicated/embedded system Windows if I can help it - much easier to customize a linux system appropriately).
All in all, while you can make a working one of these in a few hours, odds are, you can't make a consumer-grade one for less than the cost of something made for a consumer market (I didn't see any mention of cost, but I wouldn't expect to drop more than a few hundred on this when there are fairly decent DVD players on the market for less than $50).
http://hijacker.rpc1.org/kiss/
How about those of us who record shows via a capture card and end up compressing them into divx? I dont even have a VCR anymore, but its essentially the same deal. Unless you consider that "piracy" too.
Just because its digital and easier to share doesn't mean its illegal or should be made illegal.
Ideally, I'd like to converge my Tivo/PC/DVD player into something simple and usable and this device is a step in the right direction.
I'm sure the device will be used for copyright infringment somehow, but it does have legitimate uses. Not to mention just about ANY video device can be used for CI.
Yeah... I actually took the time to read the article later.
Right in my face. =)
So now I only have to wait for it to appear in a shop near me. Or maybe I'll take the train to Kopenhagen (30 minutes travel) and buy one there.
I saw that they where selling a cheaper OEM version of it in some stores in Denmark...
This version seem to have been on the market for quite some time, but with the old firmware the ethernetport hasn't been enabled and it couldn't play divx 3.11.
Those are recent additions to the capabilities of the player.
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
I bought one a few days ago. It plays DivXs better than my computer does.
Yes, the case quality is still the same, and yes, it uses a standard Toshiba DVDrom.
Playing a 1.4G Xvid (with AC3 audio) in comparison to the DVD and I couldn't tell the difference!
It requires a bit of software running on a Windows PC to select which files you want available.
However, once you have it running on a PC, you can have the files on a network drive.
Yes, I have done this - connected to a Samba share on an Mac OSX machine and played them via the PC.
it only plays Divx 4/5 files, not the hacked divx3 version, so all of you people who have a nice dvdrip divx colletion are out of luck, it does play Xvid though
I made mine regionless last night. All it requires is to flash the Toshiba DVDrom drive to RPC-1, and then use the hidden menu to select which region or all.
Comfort are selling the devices, now shipping, see their website.
And yes, it took a couple of weeks to be delivered. :(
Check out Qcast for PS2.
It lets you do all of the stuff you mentioned over ethernet on your PS2 (assuming you already have one). If I still bothered to actually rip mp3's, divx movies, etc. I'd have one of these in a second. They sound terrific
Qcast tuner
"Anyway, long story short... is a phrase whose origins are complicated and rambling...." - Abraham Simpson
It plays Xvid, ogm, and all reports say it plays DVD+Rs as well.
While it's by no means perfected, it plays my Xvid and Divx4/5 files fine, and they are giving us new firmwares every couple of weeks.
I have to say to all the people bitching that his computer already does all this and that, that some of us (for whatever reason) don't have a computer at home and still would like to watch DVD's , DivX, listen to mp3's, watch pictures... The noise factor also makes a computer very unappropriate. And the quality of a TV-out output of a regular PC card cannot be compared to progressive scan over a SCART (euroconector) cable.
As for the capabilities I can see there's a lot of confusion around. I do own a DP-450 since 2 months ago. I've already upgraded the firmware about 3 times, only to add new features. It's good to see that the lastest firmware upgrades are able to handle some features like GMC encoding (not just Simple Profile). Some will appreciate the possibility to add subtitles to their DivX movies, recently added, just by dropping a file with the subtitles next to the video file in the CD-R. And new features (like the promised DivX3.11 compatibility which is not out yet) or the Ogg Vorbis support are added frecuently.
And make no mistake (I actually hate this phrase since Mr. Bush speeches) This is the kind of equipment you can confortably hook to your audio and video hi-end equipment. I'd never do that with a computer with all the noise and electrical spikes coming from fans, hard drives, power supplies...
For those of you that want to know all the capabilities of the player, and be up to date to the latest firmware, http://www.kiss-technology.com is the place to go. BTW.. the possibilities that having Linux inside brings are very interesting. And since it's got an IDE DVD drive, I'd guess it would not be so hard to put a HD inside and have the total jukebox. KiSS technology itself will be releasing this device in a few months (the awaited DP-600).
That's true, too!
:)
...)
When I was small, my brother "forced" me to watch Pee Wee's Big Adventure. The quotes are there because in retrospect I shouldn't have been such a couch potato that it mattered what movie was stuck in the VCR, but Hey, at the time, it was heavy oppression
I like people being able to choose what / when / how they watch. It's true (trivially true) that compression as applied to movies / music does make them easier to copy in violation of copyright, but that's because they make *lots of things* easier. The fact that milk does not weight 20 pounds per cubic inch makes it easier for milk thieves to evade the sheriff. (Oh, well. Head 'em off at the pass
Also, I don't like to have more screens than necessary here in front of me -- I just ejected from my possession a borrowed TV/VCR thing because it was making my office even more crowded than it is anyhow. DiVX compression means I can watch Casablanca without another box of electronics in the room, sucking up electrons.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
It took a couple of weeks for it to arrive, but it finally got to me.
.iso that is used to update the firmware.
First thing I did was to make it regionless - Region free Kiss DVD
Next, due to lack of the software CD, I had a hard time working out how to get the ethernet port to work - luckily, a nice person on Kiss DVD forum pointed out to me that the software was also on the same
Once software was installed, and the IP of my windows machine entered into the Kiss DVD setup, I was able to play all of my files that were Divx4,5, Xvid, mp3 etc.
It requires a windows machine to stream the data through, but if you can share a drive to it eg, samba, then you can share from non-windows platforms.
In fact, it plays them better than on my PC (Athlon 1600, 1G DDR, GF4-Ti4200).
So far, the promised Divx3.11 support is not yet with us, but indications are it will be with us in a few weeks. Once it has, it will make the noisy computer beside my TV redundant!
While I do recommend this to the people who need to be on the leading edge, I wouldn't recommend it to someone who doesn't have a CDburner - though who would buy a Divx player who didn't?? -due to the need for frequent firmware updates.
> because there's no real demand for it in the US market
That's what I said. And there's no demand because there's no awareness. Most people that I make aware of SVCD burning and how easy it is to make CDs of your home movies, TV shows etc, that can be played back in many (most?) DVD players get very excited about it.
Kiss DVD Region Free
The only downfall of using an 802.11b connection is the limited bandwidth. You put your connection on 802.11b that means you have 11mbps of bandwidth at half duplex, so effectivly 5.5mbps, and that is assuming nothing else is transmitting on the wireless network, and that the frequencies are clean. In some cases that might not be enough to stream a video file to your player. the a and g standards tho might be able to handel it.
This is not new, you have been able to buy them for a while. And in Denmark the copyright holders of movies are examining wether or not they are able to have the player banned. (I could provide a link, but only in Danish ;)
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I haven't gotten it (yet), but QCast for PS2 with online adapters looks like a good way to access networked digital media. Now I just wonder if I can leave my PS2 online all the time without getting annoyed by the fan noise. :p
A compromise might be Sigma Designs REALmagic XCard it's a 'multimedia playback card' - you can watch it on your PC if you like, but you don't have to. The point is to watch stuff on the tv. It can play DVD's, Divx, Mpeg4, Mpeg3,mpeg2, mpeg1. For outputs it has S/PDIF, S-Video, RGB, VGA and Composite. You run a player on the computer which sends the movie to the card, ie, you are not sending your computer picture, but the movie directly, so you can use your computer for something else while its playing. Included is a little infrared detector and a remote, so if you don't want to sit at the computer and control playback (using the player app), you can lounge around in your sofa and remote control it. Kinda a nifty.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
2. Region Codes? These units are 'all code' out of the box.
Pardon my stupidity, but I don't understand what you mean by 'code out of the box'? That they only implement region coding in software?
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Yes, quite noticably so.
Except, oh, Ogg Vorbis. It supports up to 256 channels (IIRC), and my decoder understands it having lots of channels, and sends them off to my speaker system just fine. Thus my rips have AC3 as well as multi- & dual-channel Ogg Vorbis for the audio tracks.
James F.
This has been on sale for ages (before Christmas) as I was thinking of getting it just before the New Year.
Scan's DVD Player Page
Have been selling them in the UK.
--
Website Templates
--
But then you'd have a loud computer standing next to your tv and have a kludgy interface that probably would make you have a keyboard there too.
I've always felt that TVs look terrible. Blurry and icky, shadowing...bleh. DVDs on the computer monitor, that's the way to go. Then I have my big leather computer chair with maybe some snacks...mmm....
May we never see th
I used to burn CDRWs to watch movies on my bigscreen TV. It's a pain. The disks get scratched, takes time to write them, have to carry them betweenn the computer room and the living room.
Now I use BroadQ Qcast using my PS2 and it's network adapter to stream divx/mpeg/mp3 from my desktop to the bigscreen. Now all the files can remain on the desktop, and I can scroll through them all and decide what I want to watch.
In fact I use the PS2 for video more often than playing games. I don't understand why this does not get more press. It does not require any modchip, supports most formats, software gets updated automatically.
It's fairly new, so still has some issues. Like no FF/RW (coming in April) and trouble playing some high resolution files.
But I think it is the best thing I've purchased for the PS2. I first thought I'd use the network adapter for playing online games, but streaming video off the PC is a killer app.
-W
The form factor is very small -- go to the hardware section for pics of various cases. People have even modded them into old game console cases and the like. The ones powered by the VIA Eden processor have no processor fan at all. The motherboards have built in sound, video (including TV out) and network. Drop in some RAM (the latest models take DDR2100), a hard drive, a slimline DVD-ROM drive, and a TV tuner card, and you have a combination DVD/DivX/MP3/OOG/VCD/whatever player with music visualization, network streaming, and PVR capabilities.
The recent trend in the 'scene' is also to release DivX (or Xvid) with a 5.1 AC3 audio track.
I beg to disagree.. When properly encoded, SVCD's leave DivX FAR behind. I have SVCDs that I can honestly say look nothing different from DVDs. Just because 4 > 2, doesn't mean that all MPEG4 is better than MPEG2 (in quality alone, not in quality/size ration). I will agree that I have also seen a few high quality DivX files, but they are not always flawless. And VCD's are badmouthed just because in the pirate world, they're rarely encoded at high quality of motion-precision from a high-quality source. They're actually pretty good, and definitely better than the "average" DivX file floating around in IRC (not to say that VCD is better than DivX.. it isn't).
Yes, and as I am beginning to realize, the word 'certified' in the article may mean that the Kiss unit,as opposed to the models being made in China - is 'certified' because it has been coded ONLY for the USA DVD's. Of course as someone else has posted, a circumvention to this is being 'worked on' - which would probably take the form of a firmware update.
Hmm... thanks, these don't look too bad at all. One of these may be a part of my living room if I ever get any real free time.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
You're getting old; when I was in high school I used a 2x CD-R for that!
I could honestly see this type of player create a new marketplace niche if they released a line of decent digital camcorders that actually saved in DivX format natively.
Right now, DV camcorders are great - but it seems like most people spend a lot of time doing format conversions on their PC before they get to their final product.
DivX would be a pretty good default for a relatively space-saving format - assuming the compatibility on the set-top player end of things. Right now, it really sucks to download a video off my Sony camcorder through firewire, only to churn the results through all sorts of data conversions, to get a SVCD or VCD file out of it in the end.
here and here. you decide
Wow, thats alot of assumptions on your part... so you mean there's no way I can build a box myself that will do this without having a loud computer next to my TV, a kludgy interface, and a keyboard?
Damn, and here I thought I could hook up my nice quiet laptop w/ TV-out and wireless compact keyboard to my TV/stereo. Yup, the signal reciever would have to be somewhat close to get the data from the remote, but it's very small and unnoticeable. My laptop, with the lid closed, takes up very little space, and does not even have to be visible.
Not to speak about boot time, shutdown time, fsck time, etc.
Boot time? Shutdown time? Why would I bother turning it off? Mine has been on for a few weeks now, still running like a champ. Even when I was running a windows box I built from crap parts to do this it was slick, easy and non-obtrusive.
I haven't read the article, but I'll wager that it doesn't have a ethernetport though...
Great job doing your homework before spouting your uneducated assumptions to us:
In addition to supporting all versions of DivX video technology, the DP-500 offers a number of cutting edge features including progressive scan, Ethernet 10/100, support for DVD, SVCD, VCD, CD, MP3, Ogg Vorbis, CD-RW & DVD-RW playback, and a photo album feature that enables users to view digital photos on a television.
Why is it that insecure geeks such as yourself feel the need to spew forth discouraging comments when you are not in full posession of the facts? Oh well, only people like yourself would listen to your senseless rant and mod it up
Umm, that's easy. Why would I bother converting all my DivX movies to svcd (not a quick process) when I can just burn and play them, or even play them over the network?
DivX may have better audio than SVCD...but nothing will ever provide the DD 5.1, DTS, and 6.1(7.1???) sound quality of real DVDs.
Wow, thanks for that insight. The AC3 Audio codecs are made by Dolby, and it sounds quite good in my opinion. Not to mention they are used in many of the movie rips that can be downloaded from the net.
I have one too. I bought it for 300. Today, the DP450 is 296 and the DP500 is 313. DivX 3 is not out of question anymore. They seem to be willing to implement it now but I wonder when the firmware will acutally be available...
You can encode a DivX from the DVD and keep the DD 5.1 soundtrack as-is in the DivX (it will just take more place, DD 5.1 = 448 kbits/s).
The Kiss DP 450 plays perfectly this kind of DD 5.1/DivX.
True there is a version called DP-500 with an ethernet port? But the manufactures site doesnt claim that the device can play files located on a remote server. If it could, wouldn't they state so? And the say it comes with PC-software? Whatfor? So that you can remote control the KiSS player from the PC I presume, but I'd bet it is windows-software and even if it wasn't then I still dont get the point. I might call them up and ask.
Great. This just means that I can now play all those movies with broken/missing audio codecs on my DVD player.
Music wants to be free.
Multi-channel Vorbis isn't there yet. Coupling only works between right and left. They could get much much better quality - 128kbps nominal 7.1 being acceptable - by coupling them all, with the high redundancy. This is currently being worked on as a Vorbis 1.1 feature along with correct progressive encoding for perfect quality peelability. The resulting streams will be fully backward compatible with Vorbis 1.0 - it will just be a smarter encoder. Just so you know.
I haven't had my SVHS deck plugged in for ages, because I use one of my computers for recording. 45 minutes of much-better-than-SVHS video per CDR, with no jamming, tearing, dropouts, tape stretch, head alignment problems, dirty heads, etc.
None of my 800 (or thereabouts) CDs of DiVX were downloaded from the net. They're all just capped and archived from regular broadcasts, my old VHS tapes, and satellite.
I suppose you could use it to mail copies of movies to friends who are too far away to borrow the DVD, but I think it'd be quicker to just rip the DVD to an old hard drive and mail them that instead.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
There are a lot of movies floating around out there in SVCD format, and with very few exceptions, the movie fits on 2 or 3 CDs. Off the top of my head I can recall a 148-minute movie that fit comfortably on 3 CDs.
Interesting idea. Two questions:
(1) Would it degrade video quality to have cables this long? I'd probably need 50 feet.
(2) Anyone know offhand of an S-video out card that's an add-on, not a replacement for one's main video card?
Why? Because I can't get six episodes of an hour long TV show on one SVCD.
Seriously, you say "billy bob" and "Wal-Mart" and then start talking about DVD quality? I bought my $68 DVD player at Wal-Mart. It was a colossal bargain though the remote sucks. I've been using VCD's to burn episodes of TV shows I want to save. I see video on CD's as an upgrade from 6-hour VHS tapes, not as some kind of new home theater gadget. I don't have a home theater system, I have a TV like about 90% of the population.
Truthfully, 80-128Kbit DivX 5 video with 96Kbit audio is certainly no worse than SP mode VHS tapes, and the media's a whole lot cheaper, smaller, and random access. If these things will read DVD-R's, I'll be getting a DVD burner so I can throw an entire season of any show I want on one disc. I'm surprised no one else has brought up this point.
Everybody but Sam had signed up for a new company pension plan that
called for a small employee contribution. The company was paying all
the rest. Unfortunately, 100% employee participation was needed;
otherwise the plan was off. Sam's boss and his fellow workers pleaded
and cajoled, but to no avail. Sam said the plan would never pay off.
Finally the company president called Sam into his office.
"Sam," he said, "here's a copy of the new pension plan and here's
a pen. I want you to sign the papers. I'm sorry, but if you don't sign,
you're fired. As of right now."
Sam signed the papers immediately.
"Now," said the president, "would you mind telling me why you
couldn't have signed earlier?"
"Well, sir," replied Sam, "nobody explained it to me quite so
clearly before."
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...