kiss dp-1000-sff review

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By Neteru on 30th Mar 2004

Neteru's Ratings

Time DVD Player Owned	1 - 6 Months
Image Quality	9/10
Sound Quality	2/10
Features	9/10
Ease of Use	9/10
Value for money	4/10
Overall value	6/10
Neteru's recommendation

Good Points

Plays all the disc types
Plays ogg audio files
Just about every input/output port on the back

Bad Points

Slow to load
Prone to stalling/crashing/hanging
No audio gapless playback
Euro power lead

General Comments

There is only one reason that I bought this Kiss DP-1000-SFF dvd player. It is the only product (dvd player, stereo or cd player) I have ever found that plays ogg music files. Already owning a dvd player, I didn't need another one for dvd - but since converting all my music to the superior to mp3, ogg vorbis format, I needed something other than my pc to play them. And so, I was prepared to pay the steep price of £100 (steep considering the glut of cheap players available at around £30).

When it arrived, and I took it out of the box, I was impressed by the fact that it came with scart lead, phono jacks, and composite video jack (the back having ports for all of these, along with optical output, coaxial output, S-Video and component video). What didn't at all impress me, was that the power supply cable was a two pin European power lead, which meant cutting this two pin plug off to fit a three pin UK plug, and probably invalidating my guarantee. Yes, I could have bought an adapter after much hard work to source one (there are plenty of 3 to 2 pin adapters, but try getting one the other way round).

Anyway, as for the styling of the A4 sheet of paper sized player, I have to say, I love the late 70's look of it. Not everyone's taste I know, but there you go. On the downside, the two main excessively large buttons on the front are garishly lit by excessively bright pale blue led lights that show up a little of the pcb board that the buttons are wired to, thus making the darkened plastic facade pointless. These lights can be dimmed in the configuration, but it makes no difference to what can be seen. The remote control is very stylish too, long and slim, but nothing much more.

I've not tried this machine for anything other than mp3, ogg, and mpeg4 video (some on mixed mode disc), so I can't comment on it's efficiency with anything else. As for any of these discs, you have of course to wait for the long period it takes to identify the disc type, and then to display the contents on screen before you can play anything. Inserting a mixed mode disc means you only get to choose to watch the video content or listen to the audio. There is no further option to switch, the disc must be ejected and re-inserted to get to the other content. Having said, that, it played the mpeg4 video content with no problem.

As for the audio content, well that is a different matter. The tracks, whether mp3 or ogg, frequently jitter and jump. Sometimes they stall completely (along with the menu system), where the machine seems to be stuck in an eternal disc spinning, but accessing no data mode, and sometimes all the tracks play without a problem. In other words, hit and miss. The only way to resolve this, is to eject the disc and start again. Which sometimes doesn't even work. All that remains then is to power off at the mains.

Another downside, I discovered, is that there is no gapless playback mode for audio tracks (needed when you have several audio files from an album of continuous music), but hopefully this will be addressed with a later firmware version. These can be downloaded from the Kiss website www.kisstechnology.com

In conclusion then, this all looks so promising, well packaged, stylish and leading (for ogg and divx support), but in reality, proved to be a disappointment.

Total Respect: +1