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Continued Movie playback in event of Company closure (Hypothetical Question)

steelman1991

Well-known member
Hi folks

I have become involved in a discussion on another forum regarding the continued access to titles downloaded to an "Encore" system in the hypothetical event that K closes it's doors. This seems to come up on various threads as a "reason not to purchase" and is by and large peddled by those who seem to have an "axe" to grind with K for whatever reason and there appear to be a few out there.

Anyway, I was under the impression that should this happen, then titles would continue to be available and had no requirement to have any contact with K servers. Playback would continue and the only issue that would be of concern would be the failure of hardware and the existence of support to those affected. See below for the comments posted. Perhaps someone from K @MikeKobb or @J.Green could clarify the position.

According to K-Scape, yes it does. The downloaded files need copy key access to the home server at least once in a while. If their servers go dark due to them having to fold shop, the keys won't be accessible for authentication. Therefore the files cannot be played. It may be a staggered event, but would happen to all titles stored in your hardware eventually.

They said something about maybe being able to get a studio, based on your downloaded titles, to give you access to Movies Anywhere or the like for lesser quality streaming equivalents compared to what you paid for at K-Scape, but it sounded like more of an aspiration than an iron-clad promise.

This was at the last CEDIA in Denver.

I wouldn't put money down in Vegas.


The DRM copy protection/anti-piracy "feature" was added as a condition for Kaleidascape to continue to do business with certain studios. This was when they almost went under a few years back.

I pressed them on this at CEDIA giving them a scenario of what would happen to customers and their hardware and collections if they ever went under.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news twice in one day.

The original model was that you could place your already purchased Blu-ray discs into the supplied player and the files could authenticate every so often using the disc's built-in keys. It showed that you at least owned some licensed product and that was okay for certain studios. That got to be cumbersome with their newer download store system if certain clients didn't have the discs already. Then the keys shifted to the web based approach. No keys when called for and the digital copy would not play.
 
According to my experience this is wrong. I have two Strato S 12TB players in another residence in the French Alps. Internet is limited to 2Mbps down and 640k up so players are not permanently connected to the Internet.
We last went 2nd weekend of March and then because of the lockdown we only went back mid June. Movies played fine.
As I have now brought the players back to my main residence to update them and load/delete movies I will try again prior to connecting them to the Internet. I'll let you know.

Kostas
 
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Hi Kostas

Thanks for the reply. Yes that was my understanding too. In fact I had a friend who had no home internet access at all for 5 weeks recently and he was able to access his content without issue, despite no internet.

Would be nice to get a definitive from K - if only to put these naysayers in their place :ROFLMAO:
 
On my side I can confirm that my 2 Strato S players have been disconnected from the internet since March 21, 2020 and never connected since then. Just plugged one back and movies played fine more than 4 more months without ANY internet connection.

I suspect that the naysayers may say that I have simply disconnected it, so happy for K or @cinelife to confirm above.

K states that the player need the Internet connection to "get movie descriptions, cover art etc etc" but not for playback.....

Kostas

IMG_2299.jpeg
IMG_2300.jpeg
 
Thanks for checking Kostas - appreciate that. Yes again my understanding was the only thing that occassional "call-back" was required was for "movie guide updates", which don't affect playback.
 
I've always been told by K that the content existing on a server would continue to be available even if the company shutdown, but it needs to be pointed out that this is not going to happen anytime soon, if ever. Given how fast tech moves, and the externalities faced by all businesses in the tech space, it wouldn't shock me to see collaborations between platforms, or mergers of some type at some future point, that's just business (NO, that's not my way of sending a message about K's future, I have no personal knowledge of the company's future plans or current financial position other than having been told many times that the company is "doing fine.")

That all said, if you had to be connected to playback content there wouldn't be a yacht business, and one of my best friends filled his yacht servers with hundreds of movies while he was docked, and those have always played back without any connection to K, sometimes for months. In addition, I have several systems installed at isolated properties that have been offline for more than a year, and in one case approaching 3 years, and I've never had a playback problem with any of those systems. I'm not saying there isn't some mechanism in the background that at some point would restrict playback, but if there is, up to this point I've never encountered that problem. Maybe Mike or John (G.) have additional info.

Jim
 
Also, I have a couple of titles that are no longer available in the Store. I assume the digital rights were revoked for some reason. I have these downloaded and they play fine.

John
 
And that sometimes raises the question about recovery of content if a drive (or server) fails. The Store is our RAID, and I've been asked several times historically "what happens if my titles are no longer in the store?" I don't know the answer for certain.

Jim
 
And that sometimes raises the question about recovery of content if a drive (or server) fails. The Store is our RAID, and I've been asked several times historically "what happens if my titles are no longer in the store?" I don't know the answer to that for certain.

Jim
Jim, if a title is purchased it will always be available for download from "My Movies" even if it is no longer available at the K store(for new buyers). So no issue if a drive or server fails.

Kostas
 
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Of course YOU would know that my friend!!😁 (I'll leave my post up in case others have the concern.)

Thanks Kostas!

Jim
 
It’s still listed in the My Movies but there is no option to download when you pick it. It just says “This title is currently unavailable”. At least on the ones I know about.

John
 
It’s still listed in the My Movies but there is no option to download when you pick it. It just says “This title is currently unavailable”. At least on the ones I know about.

John

Hi John,

Strange. I could always download "Life" when it disappeared from the Store, anyway it is now back. Just checked another one which is no longer available at the K Store for purchase but it can be downloaded.

Screenshot 2020-08-01 at 20.52.33.png
 
Confirmed by John Green post #11

 
Hi Kostas,

Interesting! Looks like it depends on the individual title:

1596311355150.png
 
Interesting indeed... check with K maybe about this one? Purchased on August 19th, 2016...maybe this explains why....
As already discussed I had missed buying it so I cannot check.

If anyone else is aware of any movies that are no longer available for purchase I can check if I own them and if I can download them. For those that I know of I have no problem downloading them.
 
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John just saw that you own it in "Another edition". That most probably explains why you cannot download it. Are you sure that you don't have another edition in your "My Movies" collection?
 
Movies may drop for sale from the store due to licensing or rights and such, but nothing should leave your movies that you had already purchased. Even it leaves the store for new sale, provided you bought it before it left, you'd still access. I have seen this happen with a couple of titles I own.
 
Yup, it's never really been a problem, but the subject comes up from time to time. Thanks guys!


Jim
 
John just saw that you own it in "Another edition". That most probably explains why you cannot download it. Are you sure that you don't have another edition in your "My Movies" collection?

Yes, that’s the only one that shows up in “My Movies”. I will check with K and see what they say.

John
 
Howdy folks.

Just confirming that once a purchased movie is downloaded to your system and authorized (which happens immediately after download), there is no further interaction with the Internet required. As Jim correctly noted, we have a large number of systems installed in the marine market, and satellite Internet is expensive. Many of these vessels disable Internet access for the Kaleidescape system, and everything works fine.

John, I don’t have an answer for you regarding the title that is showing up as “not available”, but I suspect it is related to the different edition as Kostas guessed. Please do reach out to support because it’s possible that there’s a bug or something that needs to be addressed. Certainly the intended behavior is as was described: if you’ve purchased the movie, then even if that movie is later withdrawn from sale, you retain the ability to download it if you need to.
 
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