According to KISS, the DP-558 has the following specifications:

The DP-558 as a player can playback DVD, Mpeg4 compliant streams (DivX certified, XVid), Audio CDs, MP3, Ogg and of course view JPEG files.

Looking at the back, we notice the 10/100 Ethernet jack, the antenna in/out, SCART in/out, S-Video in/out and Composite Video. There are in addition Analog, Coaxial and Optical Audio output jacks. We were also somewhat surprised to find that while the picture on the retail package includes Coaxial/Optical input jacks, in the model we received, these weren't present.

- The package

We received the retail package for the DP-558 for our review. The package includes the player itself, a CD with the PC Link software, the remote control, two AAA batteries for the remote control, and cables for power, composite video, scart and audio. The European edition doesn't include the S-Video cable (the US does). Of course the cost of such a cable is not so high and can be easily found at a local electrical goods store.

On the front of the player, we find all the certification logos for the DP-558 (Dolby Digital, DivX, DVD-Video), the on/off button, the tray and of course, the basic control buttons for operating the player without the remote control (play/stop, next, previous, etc...). The display, located just above the tray, is not all that big and displays the current function as well as the playback format (DVD, Mp3, CD). The remote control has a very good grip and has very good layout and placement of each function.

After removing the mounting screws (not suggested since you will void your warranty), we can see the internal layout of the DP-558, which is very simple. We can clearly see the HDD drive (Samsung SV0802N) and the DVD-ROM reader (TOSHIBA SD-M1802)

along with the chipsets (click for a hi-res picture)

The main processor is from Sigma Designs: "...The EM8510 family provides highly-integrated solutions for products requiring MPEG-4, MPEG-2 and DVD decoding. Incorporating flexible, advanced audio/video processing, the EM8510 family enables cost-effective solutions for consumer products, such as portable media players, digital media adapters, and networked DVD players. Unique features offered by the EM8510 family include analog YPbPr/RGB video outputs with optional scaling up to HDTV resolution and support for external MPEG encoder and networking chips. A wide variety of media types are supported, accessible through a powerful navigation engine..."

The remote control, according to the information, comes from Bang & Olufsen. Its effective range is about 5 meters and you need to have it pointing at the DP-558.

There are two special menus that can be activated with a special sequence from the remote control:

• Hidden Menu: Eject - Return - 2 -7 -6
• Reset Menu: Eject - Return - 1 - 2 -3

You can see various interesting bits of information available from the KISS DP-558 hidden menu. The used DVD-ROM comes from Toshiba SD-M1802 (with KISS ID) and the CPU speed is 216Mhz.