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A Look Inside

A Look Inside

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Linksys KiSS 1600Linksys KiSS 1600

Looking inside the KiSS 1600, the first thing you notice is the DVD drive and its IDE cable. The drive, made by Samsung, is a standard PC component that you could find in any computer. The same goes for the Wi-Fi adapter that sits in a mini-PCI slot. The EM882L-LF decoder chip by Sigma Designs does not require extra cooling in the form of a fan or even a heatsink, getting only slightly warm to the touch even after hours of intense usage. An internal power supply is located next to the DVD drive.

Linksys KiSS 1600Linksys KiSS 1600
Linksys KiSS 1600


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Talkback
UncleDave 02/11/2007 01:33
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UncleDave

I fail to see how this can offer good value at £200, it is not that much cheaper than a X-Box or PS3. Both those consoles offer everything that this unit has and much more for +- £100 more!

Qwakrz 02/11/2007 03:18
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Qwakrz

I had one of these.

Not reccomended. It does play back all the DVD's I have without problems but I have found that the remote is very weird.

Whenever the unit is next to anything that is even slighty noisey with RFI (e.g. your TV, DVD player, Amp etc) the remote will stutter and not work correctly. Move the it a good 20ft from the TV etc and it works fine so Kiss (or Linksys) failed to put shielding on the IR wires as they work their way through the box. This was the deal breaker with me as it took 15 mins sometimes to scroll through a list of 30 video's to playback due to the remote not being picked up.

Also, it does not support disc images so you cannot archive your DVD's to a HDD or network storage and play them back as if they were the original DVD (even if you copy the Video_TS folder it will still only play back the main movie and sometimes pauses between the VOB files as well).

On the plus points it supports most DivX / XviD encoding flavours and support for MP4 means that it can be used with Nero to playback DVD's you have archived using Nero's software (but it only supports standard h264 profiles so all the advanced tricks are out).

All in all for a box to sit under the TV and play back DVD Discs and some Hi-res clips for a novice its a good player. For the more advanced user I would look else where.

The unit I had is now resigned to its box (soon to be eBay'd) and I have replaced it with a slimline HTPC for not much more than I paid for the Kiss, this has given me lots more functionality than I could ever hope for from the Kiss player.

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