I recently bought two KW-HD6900i upconverting DVD players from Kingwell Technology. One is for me the other was for my brother. Since I can't find any user reviews on this player anywhere I figured I would give my impressions after a few days of use.

The player itself looks a little cheap. It is vey thin and only comes in black. The back offers great connection options like HDMI, VGA and component. It's ability to upconvert over all three was the reason I got this player as my projector has no HDMI or DVI inputs. I tested the component but I've done most of my experimenting using the VGA output. Another great feature for me is that the unit is region free right out of the box.

I tried many of the formats the player claims to play and they all worked no problem. The image quality using 720p, 1080i and 1080p looked great but the picture upgrade was marginal. It was easy to compare signals as the HD button on the remote allows you to go back and fourth. The most noticable upgrade on PQ was with my region 2 DVDs. I can honestly say they have never looked clearer on any of my other DVD players.

This player plays the Chinese HD format discs known as HVDs just like me old HVD108 from NeoDigits. Just like the 108 the image from the 6900i when playing these discs is spectacular. Unlike the NeoDigits player this unit has yet to exhibit any audio sync problems. This was a very small problem with the 108 at first but became a bigger one as time went on.

Touching on the comparisons I suspected there was a connection between NeoDigits and Kingwell. I was told by Kenny at Kingwell they have no connection whatsoever but who's to say.

As I play more with this dvd player I will post my experiences. I am being cautiously optimistic as my last HD upconverting player from China crapped out on me. As of right now I'm pretty pleased.

Will the player play HD DivX? This is not clear from the website, and people frequently ask here for recommendations on which players can handle the resolution. - DR

[Sorry, I see you already address this in another thread - as Bill points out, there are samples available for download; besides the test CD he mentions, there are also videos downloadable at http://stage6.divx.com - search there on the search term "720" to find HD downloads to try]

I personally didn't test this but Kenny at Kingwell has informed me that it does NOT play HD Divix.

He informs me that it is something they plan on adding through a firmware upgrade but who knows how long that will be.

I have had an HD6900i for a couple of weeks as well and I must say the image quality is excellent. Your PJ has to be set up just right to avoid crushed blacks as there is no gamma adjust. I am using the VGA out but I have been trying to get the HDFury to work through the HDMI but I am getting synch issues.

A couple of quirks:

1) Subtitles are always on when you first start the player so you have to shut them off every time.
2) If you skip ahead chapters a bit too quickly it can lose audio synch and the subtitles will start up again! Just take it easy operating it and everything works great.

For the price it is hard to beat! As for build quality I think it is pretty good. You'll want to pick up a learning remote with backlighting to top it all off. The remote is typical of these cheap import things. I shake my head when I see the logic in how they place buttons...

Also, I should mention that the player will do all the PC resolutions right out of the box :VGA, SVGA, XGA, SXGA no WXGA though :-(. My PJ is set up for XGA so I just had to plug everything in.

Derek.

One of the things that has perplexed me about this player, as did my HVD108, is that the image quality is much better at 480p, 720p, 1080i or 1080p as opposed to XGA. This surprises me as I would think the native resolution of the PJ should be the better of the images.

Any thoughts on why that isn't the case for me? I have a NEC LT240K and have the Kingwell hooked via it's VGA.

No specific reason comes to mind. You would think that the PJ would just pass the image on without modification.

I suppose I should try some other resolutions to see if they look even better than my XGA output.

I'll check it out.

Sometimes the XGA mode does not use "anamorphic" resolution of the DVD movie. Kinda like using "4:3" mode instead of "16:9" mode on a DVD player to show anamorphic widescreen movies. You are wasting the extra builtin resolutions of the software. HTPC XGA mode does not have this problem but AMLogic chipsets in your Kingwell and Neuneo/Helios do.

I personally didn't test this but Kenny at Kingwell has informed me that it does NOT play HD Divix.

He informs me that it is something they plan on adding through a firmware upgrade but who knows how long that will be.

I don't believe they can pull that one off ever.

Chris

I don't believe they can pull that one off ever.It is not impossible, because the Kingwell really is a HD player; it has the processing power and memory space to decode HD DivX, just as it can decode the Chinese HD format. That is a big difference between it and the usual upscaling players.

Whether they will pull it off is something else again, but if not I think they are missing a market niche. - DR

It is not impossible, because the Kingwell really is a HD player; it has the processing power and memory space to decode HD DivX, just as it can decode the Chinese HD format. That is a big difference between it and the usual upscaling players.

Whether they will pull it off is something else again, but if not I think they are missing a market niche. - DR

The Helios X3000 and X5000 are offered to fill that small niche, I don't see that this product needs to. I don't believe it is possible, unless you can show me a player anywhere with the AMLogic chip and hardware this player has that is able to play HD DivX and HD Xvid. I am certainly not aware of one, I don't think the X3000 and X5000 are much different than the Linksys and JVC offerings in terms of hardware.

Chris