The appeal of the Kiss DP600 is its sheer willingness to play back anything you can throw at it. While at first glance it looks like a DVD player - and certainly it operates as an efficient disc-playing machine if that's what you want - its toolkit is actually far broader than that.

This machine can happily play back a wide variety of media files, including XviD, DivX and Windows Media 9. And it can be directly networked to your computer, either through the built-in Ethernet port or by utilising its 802.11g wireless network compatibility (for which two small aerials are mounted on the rear of the unit). In short, on paper it seems really strong.

And to a point, it is. Blessed with a straightforward menu system that allows you to get to the media of your choice with very little problem, and a simple, straightforward, initial setup wizard that makes short work of even getting a network connected, the DP600 gets off to a flying start.

Once up and running, we installed the PC Link software on our test machine (Pinnacle software is also provided), and sure enough, the DP600 could wirelessly access anything we transferred into the relevant folder on our computer. There's no on-board storage in the machine itself, sadly, but that's something Kiss is already working on. Expect to pay at least a third more when it turns up, though.

What surprised us is that wireless playback of files was absolutely seamless, with not a judder in sight. Then we tried CDs and DVDs full of various media files, and discovered that we could use the simple menu system to browse to the file of choice, hit play and the Kiss machine would do the rest. There's an LED display that scrolls the name of what you're watching too, and you can even hook up a USB flash key and read media off that. It's a very able machine.

But there are a couple of problems. The most significant was the fan noise. In the same way that a small form-factor PC can be set to kick its fans in when the machine gets too hot, the DP600 does the same. The only problem is that the cooling system is way too noisy, and while it only sporadically activates, it's very off-putting when it does decide to click into life.

Secondly, the menu system has moments where it's seemingly waiting for the processing power of the machine to catch up with its demands. And finally, for the home entertainment devotee, the DVD player itself isn't multi-region, and by all accounts there's no easy or cheap way to resolve that.

Yet the Kiss DP600 remains an adept, and in many ways superb piece of technology. It's a flawed genius in many respects, and the fan noise problem - even though sensible positioning of the machine can help - will be enough to turn some away. But you'd be hard pushed to find a more flexible media playback machine out there, and for just north of £200, this is both an interesting and welcome investment.

Versatile, useful and in many senses a videophile's dream, the DP600 lets itself down with a couple of annoyances. It's at least worth a look, though.