Linksys KiSS 1600 – A Talented Media Player with WLAN and DVD

The KiSS 1600 media player made by Linksys is more than a simple playback device for DVDs, MP3 files, and audio CDs. Its price makes it especially attractive, as you’re getting quite a lot for £200 / €300, including support for WMV, DivX, H.264/MPEG-4, xVID and AAC files. Of course, for that price, you can’t expect to get everything, either.

The KiSS plays back movies or audio files over your home network. When provided with internet access, it also doubles as an internet radio receiver with access to over 14,000 stations. The stations are categorized by musical genre, country and languages.

Linksys houses its KiSS player in a slender enclosure that is barely larger than a piece of A4 paper. The build quality is in line with the price, meaning that Linksys first priority was cost, not using higher-quality materials. Two buttons, a display, and the DVD tray door are the only things to be found on the front of the case. The DVD drive itself only reads the conventional DVD formats and lacks support for the new HD-disc formats Blu-ray and HD-DVD.

As if to compensate for the spartan front, a bevy of connectors can be found on the back of the unit. In addition to Scart, S-Video and Component jacks, the KiSS 1600 also features an HDMI 1.2 connector. Two conventional RCA jacks as well as an optical and a coaxial digital connector provide audio connectivity.

Using the RJ-45 port, the player can be hooked up to a wired network or, by extension, the internet. If you prefer wireless operation, you can also attach two WLAN antennas to the KiSS 1600. External media such as hard drives, memory sticks, and card readers can also be attached using the USB port. However, external devices may quickly be bottlenecked by the USB interface when playing back HD content if the older MPEG-2 format is used. Therefore, using formats with higher compression ratios, such as WMV, DivX or MPEG-4/H.264 is preferable.