Kaleidescape

[David Vaughn]

I will have a Kaleidescape system in the coming weeks....looking forward to putting it through the paces

[Barry]

David, what does such a system consist of? How will it make your system better? And we will probably be seeing Belfast tonight

[SRW1000]

Hope you enjoy your time with it.  By all reports it's a fantastic piece of hardware, and some movies even have better picture quality than their disc counterparts.  

Unfortunately, the hardware and movie prices are well out of average person's affordability range.

Looking forward to your impression and review.

[David Vaughn]

David, what does such a system consist of? How will it make your system better? And we will probably be seeing Belfast tonight

A Strato C and a Compact Terra for storage. 

https://www.kaleidescape.com/systems/movie-players-servers/

This is not something I could afford, but when they reached out to me to give it a go, I couldn't refuse

I can now see how the 1% watch movies

[TRainH2O]

K-Scape is back? I thought the DVD Cabal had pretty much shut them down.

Very cool but pretty expensive; at least the earlier version was.

[David Vaughn]

K-Scape is back? I thought the DVD Cabal had pretty much shut them down.

Very cool but pretty expensive; at least the earlier version was.

It's still expensive!

[Paul Heroy]

David, are you reviewing it for S&V? I recalled S&V having a review fairly recently - just checked the website, and Kris Deering reviewed the Strato S 4K in Sep 2020, and the Terra server in Dec 2021.

I had someone at my local hi end AV store try to sell me on buying a Strato a few years ago. It's amazing how casual and offhanded it was said - I knew enough about it that I wasn't going to consider the cost. Back then they didn't even have a rental option either, only buy, and re-purchase anything you already have. The interface is beautiful though.

For the curious here are the 2 referenced reviews:

https://www.soundandvision.com/content/kaleidescape-compact-terra-12tb-movie-server-review
https://www.soundandvision.com/content/kaleidescape-strato-s-4k-ultra-hd-movie-player-review

[David Vaughn]

David, are you reviewing it for S&V? I recalled S&V having a review fairly recently - just checked the website, and Kris Deering reviewed the Strato S 4K in Sep 2020, and the Terra server in Dec 2021.

I had someone at my local hi end AV store try to sell me on buying a Strato a few years ago. It's amazing how casual and offhanded it was said - I knew enough about it that I wasn't going to consider the cost. Back then they didn't even have a rental option either, only buy, and re-purchase anything you already have. The interface is beautiful though.

For the curious here are the 2 referenced reviews:

https://www.soundandvision.com/content/kaleidescape-compact-terra-12tb-movie-server-review
https://www.soundandvision.com/content/kaleidescape-strato-s-4k-ultra-hd-movie-player-review

Yes, Kris already reviewed it. Trinnov and Kaleidescape have a joint promotion where if you purchase the two together, you get a slate of movies (about a $1000 value--about 40 titles or so). My review will be more of a blog of my impressions and I'll be looking at the included titles from the promotion and do some comparisons to their disc counterparts (I literally own something like 35 of the 40 titles). 

[TRainH2O]

It's still expensive!

Well, if our kid wasn't starting her first semester of Pharmacy school.........nah, not even then. 

Maybe she will buy her old man one when she graduates. 

[David Vaughn]

Well, if our kid wasn't starting her first semester of Pharmacy school.........nah, not even then.

Maybe she will buy her old man one when she graduates.

Tracy,

I will tell you this...after paying for college for 8 years for my kids, I felt rich that first year I didn't have to pay tuition and rent (the Trinnov was the present to myself . By comparison, it was downright cheap versus the cost of college!

[bmoney]

Do you have to give it back after reviews?

[David Vaughn]

Do you have to give it back after reviews?

At some point...yes. I'll probably have it for 6-12 months and will always have the option to buy it. 

[bmoney]

At some point...yes. I'll probably have it for 6-12 months and will always have the option to buy it.

Still really cool. Glad my NAS is 99% as good

[SRW1000]

Review is up:  A Marriage Made in Movie Heaven | Sound & Vision (soundandvision.com)

Nice write up, and it does really look like a dream system, too bad it's priced beyond the budget for so many of us.  At its cheapest configuration, the hardware cost is equal to roughly 450 4K BDs priced at $20 each.  

It would be interesting to know if the audio of any of the movies will be improved over their disc counterparts.  I remember reading at one point that they do improve the picture for some titles, but the audio track remains the same.

The other concern I'd have is ownership rights.  Should the company go under, would you still have access to the content you purchased?  Will everything on the server be accessible, or at some point would need to do some kind of authorization check to allow playback?  And I's assume that you would also need to download all of those titles before the company shut down.  And after that, what if their NAS storage fails, are the drives replaceable?

All in all, if one can afford it, this would be the system to own, but that risk/reward gambit is a bit on the high side.  Maybe someday they can scale the product to be more affordable for the masses.  Until then there's always disc ripping, NAS storage, and a Sheild or other playback device for the rest of us.

Scott

[randman]

I was very tempted to get into K-scape recently, but for me, the main thing that held me back (after overcoming the cost, that is) was that I can only play Kaleidescape-purchased movies with a K-scape player. If K-scape had a Movies Anywhere type of relationship, I would have bought into K-scape. Often times, I'd get a movie to watch in my Home Theater, but other family members might not want to watch it until later, and want the flexibility to watch the movie outside the home theater (such as in a TV in another room in the house or even in an iPad). I like to keep TV's outside the Home Theater simple. TVs outside the Home Theater only have one source - an Apple TV, and I'm not interested, nor would I benefit from, getting a Kaleidescape player for TVs outside the Home Theater. K-scape has a FAQ that says a Movies Anywhere deal is being looked into, but nothing has changed in a while.

I use Plex for playing movies, and I've ripped all my physical media to a NAS. Works great. Plex works great (for folks who like a DIY approach). I usually know far ahead of time what movies I want, so I have time to purchase the disc and rip it. However, one main advantage of Kaleidescape for me would be those times when you don't decide what to watch until you're sitting in your Home Theater browsing what movie to watch. No need to go out and buy the movie and rip it to the NAS. Just wait 10 to 15 minutes to download the movie! Also, these days, movies are coming out for streaming and Kaleidescape a few weeks before the physical media becomes available. This usually isn't an issue for me since I have a backlog of movies to watch, but occasionally, it's hard to wait for the physical media to come out when a movie is already available online for streaming (or K-scape). For example, although I saw Top Gun Maverick in a theater, other family members missed it and wanted to watch it once it became available for streaming. Then, it would have been good to have K-scape (although I gotta say, iTunes streaming looks pretty good).

I'm somewhat of a movie collector, although it's hard to amass such a large K-scape collection given the (seemingly exponential) price increases as their server's capacities increase. One thing I saw online before (and I'm not sure if it's still true today), is: if you purchased a movie, but it's not in your local Kaleidescape server, the movie won't show up in the K-scape movie wall. I can see having a lot more K-scape movies that I've purchased but not downloaded (or downloaded in the past, but have since been removed due to capacity constraints). If so, I want to see all movies that I've purchased from K-scape, whether or not they're all available locally in the K-scape player (but maybe have some small icon to indicate that a movie needs to be downloaded). Most movies I only want to see once, which would argue for not having more capacity than is necessary. But it's good to be able to see all movies that have been purchased, whether or not a movie has been downloaded. It's especially useful for guests.