KiSS Player coming, Sigma out of the game?

[Blkbird]

The (in)famous KiSS DVD Player featuring DivX playback is finally going to hit the street, as annouced (http://www.kiss-technology.com/news/content.asp?id=46) by the manufacturing company herself last week and reported (http://slashdot.org/articles/02/10/28/0242228.shtml) in Slashdot today. Interesting enough, although most of us have heard of this player for quite a while now, some things appear to be new.

Previously reports indicated (http://www.sigmadesigns.com/news/press_releases/020827.htm) the KiSS player were coming with a Sigma Designs chip (with mostly stolen XviD firmware). But in this newest KiSS press release, Sigma Designs' name is mentioned nowhere. Instead, DivX Networks itself is named the (new) technology partner. This leads to the intepretation that KiSS has broken up with Sigma due to the latter's incriminating activities regarding the XviD codecs theft. If that's the case, it would be very interesting to know who KiSS has found as a new supplier of DivX compatible decoding chip.

Supporting this suspicion is another detail in the annoucement that the player will playback DivX 4.x and 5.x content. If I am not much mistaken, the Sigma Designs chip was known to playback (some) DivX 4.x only. Anyway, the still defacto standard DivX 3.11 is not being supported, be the reason of it subject to your free speculation.

Now DivX 5.x supposingly been supported, we are certainly also keen to know if the player is playing back XviD as well. Has anyone got more insight information on this matter?

[-h]

My bet is that it's not a black-box DSP implementation, but a CPU running a decode-only build of DivX 5.02. There are too many standards-breaking bugs in the DivX 4 to 5 timeline to allow a generic MPEG-4 decoder to work, and I can't imagine DXN could have come up with an IC this fast.

I suppose we won't know until someone cracks one open.

-h

[dattrax]

I was looking at this last week. If you do a search in google for kiss and sigma designs, you get loads of german reviews of the player which all confirm the inclusion of the EM8500.

The EM8500 will play back DivX4 and 5 but with the same limitations as the PC ad in card. no Q-PEL and no GMC.

I don't know about anyone else, but it seems a bit silly to advertise a player which 'supports' a standard, when 2 out of the 3 features are missing.

Jim

[mwillberg]

I visited Sigma Designs booth at IBC (a huge convention in Amsterdam for mostly television and movie technology) in September, in order to question them regarding the XviD-issue.

They were demonstrating the Kiss player, and bragged about how it plays DivX5. However, when I asked about the missing features, the guy had no idea that it doesn't support everything included in DivX 5.0. As usual the marketing guys don't know what their product does.

They showed a 750kbps DivX 5.0 encode of Shrek, which looked really bad in my opinion. There was a lot of "movement" of blocks in static areas, much more so than I get on my computer and/or TV-out. However, it's not like I was able to test my own encodes on it, so probably the encode itself was poor.

He also bragged about how it supports DD-passthrough, but when I asked if it also works with AVI-files he looked at me as if I were crazy. Possibly it does and he didn't know about it, but possibly it does not.

Well anyway, my point was that they most likely still use Sigmas chip but just keep quiet about the fact that it doesn't support all features of DivX 5.0. That coupled with missing 3.11 support means that almost everyone buying it will be disappointed...

[ac3]

Yes, agreed. I will stick with my AIW 8500 TV out for the time being. I am considering upgrade to AIW 9700 Pro...

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by Blkbird
Previously reports indicated (http://www.sigmadesigns.com/news/press_releases/020827.htm) the KiSS player were coming with a Sigma Designs chip (with mostly stolen XviD firmware). But in this newest KiSS press release, Sigma Designs' name is mentioned nowhere. Instead, DivX Networks itself is named the (new) technology partner. This leads to the intepretation that KiSS has broken up with Sigma due to the latter's incriminating activities regarding the XviD codecs theft. If that's the case, it would be very interesting to know who KiSS has found as a new supplier of DivX compatible decoding chip.


The KiSS player is using a SIGMA decoder, no doubt here. You cant change the design/layout of a hardware device within a few weeks if its developed, and the SIGMA decoder is a vital part of the player.

The alliance with divx.com is more a marketing thing, plus DivX N will make sure the player is compatible with DivX5, and this is currently not the case. Its surprisingly quiet on divx.com about the player, given they have announced a partnership and DivX N was desperately searching for hardware devices.

I assume Sparky and Junto have tested the player and found that its failing on half of the existing encodes in AVI format, not to mention missing Qpel and b-frames, being vital parts of the currently used MPEG4 profiles.

KiSS is really brave to launch a player that is trying to read MPEG4 in AVI IMHO .... AVI is certainly not the right container for a hardware device, and with MCF not being available nor being widely used i would have decided to support MP4 container, if anything.

[trbarry]

I wonder if it still has the same silly 480 line limitation as the original Sigma card?

- Tom