Member in Training.
I'm getting quite tempted to buy the Kiss DP-500 DVD player (see http://*******.com/dfj0), but my question is this:
If I was to burn an mpeg2 file produced by TyTool (after multiplexing) onto a DVD - just as a file on the disc, no resolution or format conversion, so no re-encoding, would it play on the Kiss DP-500?
i.e. Can the DP-500 play .mpg files in the same way it can play .avi Divx files straight from the disc? Also what would it do with the strange TiVo resolution? (I know some Windows players squash the picture vertically because they ignore some of the headers).
Does anyone have this player (or the DP-450) and has tried this?
If this was to work then it would be the perfect way of archiving shows recorded from the Tivo, as you can easily fit 3 or 4 shows recorded in Medium quality on a DVD.
...
Martin
Charter Member
I was looking at one of these last night on the bigpockets site in the UK. I've not seen them before, but I was wondering the same thing.
I've not had any experience with DivX but I gather we can convert tys pretty easily and its the first player I've seen that can do this.
Maybe check out the link below there is a bit more info, or if someone wants to buy one...go on you know you want to!
(http://www.bigpockets.co.uk/product....34bea1a635fcd3
Member in Training.
The Kiss DP-500 also has a 10/100 ethernet connection, so you can watch videos (it says DivX stuff, but I'm trying to understand if it also applies to mpeg2 files too) and play MP3's straight from your PC over the network. It also mentions internet streaming radio too.
The cheapest I've found the DP-500 so far is scan.co.uk, see: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/av.htm.
I want to avoid having to convert my Tivo files to DivX (even though I would see a size saving), simply due to the time required to re-encode. Plus I've got several months worth of series I want to keep burned to DVD-R in 'off the Tivo' mpeg format.
Apparently the Kiss 450 and 500 players use a Linux opperating system on an ARM, so maybe there's even more room for DVD <-> Tivo inter-opperation! (see the post by Serge at http://www.edgereview.com/ataglance....y=Video&ID=390).
M.
Member in Training.
Well I can answer my own questions now:
No.... although I didn't try with files of all qualities, but certainly 'medium' and 'high' play on the player at about 1.5 - 2x speed (they all run around really quickly talking like the air has been replaced with Helium!If I was to burn an mpeg2 file produced by TyTool (after multiplexing) onto a DVD - just as a file on the disc, no resolution or format conversion, so no re-encoding, would it play on the Kiss DP-500?
Yes - some MPEG2 files I have (espcially those captured by my Navis Pro) played correctly, while others played sound with no picture, while others didn't do anything.Can the DP-500 play .mpg files in the same way it can play .avi Divx files straight from the disc?
I'll add a few more comments about the Kiss DP500 player while I'm at it (I was going to doa proper full review, with screen-shots etc..., but as I decided to take the player back I didn't have time).
* It supported DVD-R and DVD+R fine, but was a bit picky about DVD-RW and DVD+RW. It was also a bit picky about my cheap CD-R media. I didn't try it with CD-RW.
* Could sometimes be slow/unresponsive to keypresses, especially when having trouble reading the media.
* MP3 implementation was good, ID3 tags and long file names supported. No kind of 'search for file' facility though, just the kind of controls you'd expect on a good DVD based MP3 player.
* DivX playback, after the firmware had been upgraded, seemed okay, although I only tried it on 3 files in total (I'm not a big DivX fan). The quality of the image seemed good, perhaps better than the PC, although I'm sure this is because we are used to lower resolution images on the TV.
* JPEG viewing was very impressive, with pictures being resized to fill the screen. I think there's a bug in their resize routines though which sometimes means it chops the top or sides off, or produces a slightly squashed image. The image quality was very good though.
* The network implementation was less than impressive though. The 'server' software you had to run on the PC was unstable and a bit clunky to use, plus it doesn't auto-detect new files if they are added to a directory. I didn't try the open-source Java application that some kind person has written though, so it may be much better.
* The internet radio implementation was so much of a con! In order to gather it's list of radio stations / addresses it contacts the Kiss website. Out of the default list (of about 10-12?) only about half would play. When I went onto the Kiss website to personalise I was shocked to discover that you could only add stations selected by Kiss (there was no faciltiy to enter the address yourself). Together with their less than lengthy list made it almost useless. When playing from working stations though it sounded good and was very easy to use.
* The most annoying 'feature' though is that you can't mix files types on one disc, so if like me you put the album covers and videos in the same directory as the MP3 files you will find it only 'sees' one type of file (and it's not always the MP3's).
To summerise:
* A very good MP3 player.
* Far too picky about the format of MPEG files.
* DivX seems okay although I didn't really test it properly.
* Crap PC software
* Far too picky about the recordable / re-recordable media used in it.
* DOESN'T PLAY TIVO MPEG FILES.
Because of the last two points I sent it back and got myself an XBox which I play to put Xbox media player on. The XBox is even more picky about media though so I'm not gaining that much!
M.
Charter Member
Thanks for the info, I think I'll sit on the fence a bit longer before looking at one of these again.
Just out of interest do you think it would have played DVDs created by a tivo any better than the mpegs? I write most of my stuff to dvd. I also wondered if it would play extracted DVD IFO/VOB files. I don't suppose you experimented with this did you?
Could you post a followup to keep us informed how you get on with Xbox stuff and how easy/difficult/expensive you find it. Its something I've been pondering, but not built up the courage to look into yet. I would find it interesting at least. :-)
Member in Training.
It does play Tivo files when burnt as a DVD - in fact it makes a much better job of that than the XBOX does.
For some reason when I try to play Tivo-made DVD's on the XBOX (no mods done yet) it sometimes (either randomly after fast-forwarding, or sometimes after >10 minutes of playing) seems to get confused about the interlacing. It almost appears as if it displays the even and odd fields the wrong way round! The result is very mad flickering on anything that moves. Pressing stop/play cures it, until the next time! I've not seen this yet on a pressed DVD, although I've only watched 2 on it so far!
I didn't check to see if it would play IFO/VOB files, although it seems unlikely. I did try to make it play a non-multiplexed .m2v file and it wouldn't do that (either over the network or burnt onto a CD).
Last edited by pythag; 06-16-2003 at 09:42 AM.
Member in Training.
Well I've done it!
The modchip I chose was the Xecuter 2.1 Lite, so I don't know how much of the following applies to other modchips:Could you post a followup to keep us informed how you get on with Xbox stuff and how easy/difficult/expensive you find it.
The process of putting a modchip in the xbox is fairly easy. It's a little more complicated than fitting a TurboNet in the Tivo, but only because you have to take the motherboard fully out of the xbox and do some soldering (only 10 points in total though). The Xecuter 2.1 is supplied pre-flashed so I didn't have to worry abotu flashing a bios into it. When I powered up it worked first time (which I think is typical).
To make any use of the modchip (other than playing copied games) you really need to load a different dashboard with FTP support. EvoX seems a popular one. Once you've got hold of it (which was the most difficult part of the whole process) simply burn the iso image to a CD-R or DVD-R and boot your xbox from it.
You can then transfer the xbox media player to the xbox's hard disk using FTP and you're away. From then on you can either transfer your MP3s/video files/JPEGS to the hard disk or play then straight from the Network or DVD drive.
You can skip the dashboard stage if you really want and boot media player straight from a CD/DVD, but it's easier to have it always there on the xbox.
I did all of the above in about 3 hours. It really isn't difficult at all, the only thing that Tivo users might find surprising is how 'underground' the files are (there arn't any web-sites openly distributing them).
Overall expense=£128 for xbox+£35 for the modchop (inc p&p)+£20 for the DVD playback kit, so still £40 less than the kiss DVD player (you don't need the playback kit if you have a modchip, I just bought it because I wanted a remote control).
Back to Tivo stuff: Xbox media player plays multiplexed Tivo mpg files almost currently. For some reason I have to turn of interlacing (the problem appears in the same way I described on DVD's), which results in a noticable 25Hz frame rate. The resulting video is watchable though, and at least this has the potential to be fixed in later releases of xbox media player (or maybe it's just me!). Files recorded in 'best' quality seem to exibit the problem less, perhaps just chance though as I've only played with a couple of files. Somebody here has probably already played with xbox media player and Tivo files so they can tell me where I'm going wrong!
M.
Charter Member
Thanks for the info.
Does the xbox connect to your PC to stream mpegs and mp3s, I gather you can ftp, but I wondered if media player can connect to a drive and read the files on the fly.
Member in Training.
Yes - xbmp (xbox media player) can connect to SMB shares, as well as XNS shares (see the user guide available on sourceforge http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/s...al2.3.2eng.pdf), and can stream video, pictures and audio straight off your network.
Both the dashboard and xbmp run an FTP server so you can manage files on the xbox disk itself (or extract stuff from xbox game DVD's, but not DVD video).
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote