KiSS Player coming, Sigma out of the game?

The (in)famous KiSS DVD Player featuring DivX playback is finally going to hit the street, as by the manufacturing company herself last week and in Slashdot today. Interesting enough, although most of us have heard of this player for quite a while now, some things appear to be new. Previously reports the KiSS player were coming with a Sigma Designs chip (with mostly stolen XviD firmware). But in this newest KiSS press release, Sigma Designs' name is mentioned nowhere. Instead, DivX Networks itself is named the (new) technology partner. This leads to the intepretation that KiSS has broken up with Sigma due to the latter's incriminating activities regarding the XviD codecs theft. If that's the case, it would be very interesting to know who KiSS has found as a new supplier of DivX compatible decoding chip. Supporting this suspicion is another detail in the annoucement that the player will playback DivX 4.x and 5.x content. If I am not much mistaken, the Sigma Designs chip was known to playback (some) DivX 4.x only. Anyway, the still defacto standard DivX 3.11 is not being supported, be the reason of it subject to your free speculation. Now DivX 5.x supposingly been supported, we are certainly also keen to know if the player is playing back XviD as well. Has anyone got more insight information on this matter?

I was looking at this last week. If you do a search in google for kiss and sigma designs, you get loads of german reviews of the player which all confirm the inclusion of the EM8500. The EM8500 will play back DivX4 and 5 but with the same limitations as the PC ad in card. no Q-PEL and no GMC. I don't know about anyone else, but it seems a bit silly to advertise a player which 'supports' a standard, when 2 out of the 3 features are missing. Jim

Yes, agreed. I will stick with my AIW 8500 TV out for the time being. I am considering upgrade to AIW 9700 Pro...

I wonder if it still has the same silly 480 line limitation as the original Sigma card? - Tom