When I was asked to review this DVD player my thoughts were "just another player to review".
I unpacked it and the first thing that hit me was the Design it is neat, clean cut and uncluttered unlike any other DVD player I had come across. The front panel is completely flat with the top, centre and bottom having a metallic grey plastic finish with all else being a black gloss transparent plastic. The front controls are a row of circular buttons to the right of the DVD tray.



The power button is situated on the leftmost part of the centre panel under which there is the full list of all the formats this will play.



This is where the difference between this and other players becomes noticeable the following formats are supported.

DTS - Compatibility allows the DVD player to pickup and output DTS (Digital Theatre System) 5.1 channel audio signals for decoding by DTS-decoding receivers. The sound of DTS is three-dimensional with a wide dynamic range and a minimum of compression artefacts.

Dolby Digital - When connected to a receiver or amplifier with a Dolby Digital or DTS decoder through either the optical or coaxial digital outputs, you can enjoy the phenomenal experience of sound through five discrete full range channels, whether for stunning sound effects or crystal clear dialogue.

Compact Disc Digital Video - Video CD

Compact Disc Digital Audio - Audio CD

Real Magic - Real Player files

DivX Video MP4 - ISO MPEG-4 and DivX are very well known formats on the Internet. The format gives you a high picture and sound quality, which comes very close to the quality of a DVD movie.

Progressive Scan - Progressive Scan creates a picture signal with double the scan lines of a conventional DVD, resulting in higher picture resolution and sharper image quality.

JPEG - You can enjoy watching digital photos on your TV. You can navigate though the pictures just by using the remote control.

Rear Panel



S-Video Output
Composite Video Output
RGB SCART Output
Analogue stereo RCA Audio Output
S/PDIF Outputs both Coaxial and Optical giving
Dolby Digital/DTS/MPEG 5.1 Digital Output

Features
Full DVD/MPEG-4/DivX ver. 4 and higher
VCD/SVCD/CD/MP3/CDRW/DVD-R/DVD-RW compatibility
JPEG Picture CD viewing
Progressive Scan Video Out
Time Search
Playback Control : Play/Pause/Stop/FF/RW/NEXT/PREV up 48x speed playback
Repeat Playback
Slow Motion
Title/chapter select
Parental lock, Multi Language, Multi Subtitle, Multi Angle
Remote Control
TV Type PAL and NTSC, NTSC conversion to PAL 50
Configuration Setup Menu
Aspect Ratio (4:3 Pan and Scan, 4:3 Letter Box, and 16:9 Wide)
S-Video Output
Composite Video Output
RGB SCART Output
Dolby Digital, MPEG Audio Decoding
Dolby Digital/MPEG 5.1 Digital Output
Optical/Coaxial S/PDIF Outputs
Analogue stereo RCA Audio Output

The player supports DVD-R/RW and CR-R/RW media but does not support DVD+R/RW media. Any of the supported formats can be placed on either CD or DVD but the formats cannot be mixed this presented me with problems when I tried to play an MP3 CD that had album covers as JPEG files on the CD the JPEG pictures were shown & I could not access the MP3 files, Access to different file types is to be implemented in a future firmware update.

The following formats are supported

DVD: I tried a large selection of DVD-R/RW recordings and did not find any media it was not compatible with. I tested it with a poor quality Bulkpaq that had read errors towards the outer edge and this disc played faultless whereas it had stuttered in other players. Playing a disc with a bad error however caused it to freeze and although I was able to eject the disc and insert another I could not play another disc without switching the power button off then on, this should be corrected in future firmware.

The playback sound and video quality is excellent and although I do not have a Hi Res TV the quality of the picture was noticeably better with a lot less flicker than other players, I put that down to the Progressive Scan. Playback can be fast forward and reverse at 48x speed, turbo speed compared with other players.

The play button doubles as a pause button and in pause mode the picture can be stepped forward a frame at a time with the step button. There is a zoom of up to 400% with screen positioning done with the navigation buttons. Audio output is excellent and the output volume can be controlled by the remote.

There is digital optical and coaxial output for feeding digital audio amplifiers. One point that niggles me is that from the menu, play cannot be selected by either the number buttons or the play button, one has to navigate to the required on screen button then press the enter button, on a normal menu just a press of the enter button is sufficient to start the movie, but when the movie starts the on-screen play symbol remains in the top right hand corner of the screen, to clear this I have to press the play button twice to pause the movie then restart, if this is done before pressing the enter button it clears on starting the movie. This is also apparent with VCD movies which auto run on insertion the play symbol remains on screen until reset.

VCD: I tried several VCD's on CD-R/RW media and playback was smooth with the fast forward/reverse limited to 8x speed

SVCD: Playback was limited to SVCD compliant movies and it would not play back MPEG 2 movies on SVCD discs that were not SVCD compliant even though these movies played in several other DVD players

MPEG-4: and DivX playback I tried several DivX MPEG-4 & MPEG-5 movie clips and the playback was impressive, I was however disappointed that it did not support DivX 3.11 there are a lot of movies around using this format.

CD Audio: Playback of CD audio discs on CD CD-R/RW is as expected good

MP3: Playback of MP3 discs is good and will play albums from individual folders and display the track ID tag
JPEG Photo Album: A disc with JPEG images on it inserted into the player will show a slide show on the screen configurable from 5 secs upwards. A CD with a total of 12,000 jpg images inserted took 10 minutes to read the full disc before the slide show could be viewed. The show could be paused and the images zoomed up to 400% and panned with the navigation buttons, images were easily skipped back & forth with the chapter skip buttons. I tried a DVD which had a mixture of picture files a total of 32,000 on it but gave up after it appeared to be struggling to read it. It took 1/2 hour to eject the disc by continually powering it on & off

Conclusion
The Video Quality produced by this player is one of the best I have seen and this coupled by the excellent sound quality and DivX playback makes this a desirable player. The player is Region 2 only but the drive is apparently a standard Toshiba SD-M1612 or SD-M1712 which can be easily flashed in a PC to RPC1 (Region Free)

There are however a few minor bugs in the operating firmware which I am sure KISS will sort out with future firmware upgrades. These upgrades are in the form of a CD iso image which once burnt to the CD is just inserted in the drive and the firmware is automatically updated.

The Following Problems were encountered during my tests
When a CD or DVD with large quantities of JPEG files (17,000) is inserted it takes a long time 15+ min to read the disc and the player appears to have locked up the disc cannot be accessed or ejected until it has been read. Powering on/off and continually pressing the reject button on the unit takes 15 min or so to eject the disc. A DVD-R with 32,000 jpeg took over 1/2 hour to eject.
KISS are aware of this and will implement a fix in future firmware update. Some large jpeg files seem to be skipped in slideshow mode but can be accessed direct from the menu

Will not work with different file types on the same disc although the web site says you can view graphics whilst playing MP3 audio I found this was not possible

DVD playback from the main menu cannot be started with the play button only by pressing the enter button the play will start, then the play symbol is displayed on the top right of screen this can only be removed by pressing the play/pause button twice

If the playback freezes due to faulty media ejecting and inserting any other media will not play until it is powered off and back on again

These problems I am sure will be sorted by firmware updates and are not serious or detrimental to the pleasure this unit gives with its excellent playback quality

Firmware 2.5.3 is due for release
New firmware release version 2.5.3 will be available from Wednesday the 18th December. The new release contains a lot of enhancements and full Ogg Vorbis support.

FAQ
We ahave a FAQ for this player available here.

Thanks to Flash for this review.