The DP-558 is the first DVR recorder from KISS. It includes an 80GB HDD along with a very good DVD loader (Toshiba SD-M1802). We were impressed by the player's GUI and the very good Online services (EPG) and scheduling system. The recorder offers various recording qualities and with the HDD empty, you can record up to 120 hours of MPEG2 video.

Looking at the playback capabilities, KISS claims that the DP-558 is DivX certified, however we had playback problems, especially with the 4, 6 and 8Mbit encoded DivX files. We are not so sure if the problem lies with the onboard chipset's abilities to encode such demanding files or whether it is a firmware bug. The player also doesn't support Quarter Pixel, an encoding option that gives higher quality and is due to chipset limitations. When playing back Audio files, there are fewer problems with the most noticeable problem being the jerky playback of OGG files. Lastly, a rather negative point is that the device doesn't offer direct VOB files editing (manually remove commercials), so any such tasks have to be done on your PC/MAC system.

Many users in the past have complained about KISS products, since some of the supported features didn't work as expected. We hope that KISS will continue improving the DP-558 with continuous firmware upgrades and fix the various problems we encountered in order to deliver a perfect working product to the market. The retail price for the DP-558 is around €385 and can be found at a local store near you :-)

Update: After our review had been finished, KISS Technology released a newer firmware, 1.1.3, that fixed some of our problems, mostly pertaining to the FF/RW with XVid files. For more information, please visit the KISS web site.

- The Good

• Includes 80MB HDD
• Includes 10/100 ethernet
• Recorded videos (Mpeg2 VBR) are in VOB format, so user can burn onto DVD directly
• Supports many online services (EPG, games, weather, radio)
• Very good GUI and setup wizard for less technically inclined
• Many input/output connections supported
• Supports most subtitle formats (Filename.srt)
• Can recognize CD/ DVD recordable/re-writable discs
• Supports frequent firmware upgrades

- The Bad

• Doesn't support WMV playback
• Limited information is displayed for all playback files
• Due to chipset limitations, QPel isn't supported
• Doesn't offer direct editing of produced VOB files. User must manually edit files on PC.

- Like To Be Fixed

• Support for more languages (like Greek) in filenames, menu navigation and subtitles
• Cooling fan for the HDD. Runs very hot when used for a long time
• Problems with DVD±R9 media
• Better subtitle filename support (Filename.avi.srt)
• Various playback problems as described in the corresponding test pages
• Various GUI problems as described in the corresponding menu pages
• We couldn't make the device work at 100Mbit local network, resulting in slow transfer rates with the host PC

Retail Package
Design/Build Quality
GUI
Performance
Value For Money