The Kiss DP-1504 Divx DVD player is a lot more than your average DVD player and hence the £250 cost versus a £100 cost for a good Sony DVD device, the primary reason to pay more is the inclusion of a hard drive within the package, this allows media to be stored on the DP-1504 in fact up to 58 Divx movies.

The Danish manufacturer has seized on the gap in the market for Divx enabled products as large sections of the entertainment industry and mainly Hollywood shun the format as one they see favoured by pirates and any quick search of the internet will show why with dozens of sites will illegal movies and Divx is the weapon of choice on most P2P download networks too.

The Kiss DP-1504 looks just like any other DVD player but the rear panel gives away a few of its secrets, the 1504 model we have on test has both a 100 base Ethernet connection and a PC card slot for the optional Kiss 802.11b wireless card. From the front there is a 12 character display and 2 glowing blue control buttons, most of the control is from the remote which is small and dare we say cluttered, LP's big thumbs often managing to eject a disc rather than perform the required function.

Using both the DVD replay and media replay from the had drive work well, but audio track replay from either the Kiss internal disk or your network is a simple and plain affair, album art and even track listings are a little utilitarian but they do work well. Configuration of the network parameters are fairly easy to grasp, which is just as well as the manual seems to have lost a lot in translation, the wired Ethernet is fairly straightforward and worked well the wifi card which is supplied as an optional extra took a bit more fiddling around before it join our network and even then the limitations of 802.11b were clear when trying to stream a Divx video clip.

It would have been a good idea to offer an 802.11g card especially as its an option, but nothings perfect. We expected to find some problems with the support of the many Divx variants out in the wild, but no even the techies favourite XvID played without issue, as did MPEG 2 and 4, plus a whole host of audio formats from CD replay to MP3 and our favourite Ogg Vorbis.

Many devices claim to be multimedia enabled but often support just "windows formats" Kiss have enabled the DP-1504 to work with almost all the formats we could throw at it and work it does, internet radio streamed fine as did browsing images and we were happily accessing audio tracks on the Lordpercy.com server both on cabled network and wireless.

Connectivity is provided with coaxial, optical, and standard analogue audio outputs and composite, S-Video, and SCART for pictures, DVD replay is fine with good colour reproduction and a creditable all round display when compared to our Sony DVD player.

Overall Kiss have done a creditable job with the DP-1504, the 40gb hard drive is plenty for a modest Divx / Ogg collection and there is always the DP-1508 with the 80gb drive if you really need the space, but for its multi-format support and networking capability we think the DP-1504 represents good value for money and until more manufacturers get on board its fits a niche in the market.

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