The most important consideration when buying a hardware MPEG-4 player is the chipset (which should be the latest Sigma Designs chip), and the manufacturers ability to perform good software/firmware updates. The commmon XviD-standard in constantly updated, and even the newest player doesn't handle all the features of the XviD standard "advanced simple profile" (Global Motion Compensation etc). Then there's the issue of Progressive Scan. Many manufacturers doesn't specify which outputs they've got PS on. Most often i¨t's just the VGA-connector, which is useless either way.
The KiSS player is a good player though. But it's all still first-generation products. The big advantage of a hardware player is the image quality of MPEG-4 material. The Sigma-chip outperforms any HTPC by miles. the you could of course buy the chip on a PCI-card instead 
http://www.kiss-technology.com/
Edited by masken (2004-12-22 05:48 PM)
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