NEWS: Strato V Player Announced

[Oldred]

Not sure if it's just the movies site creaking under the load of people exploring their existing movies or they have a problem. Pages have been crashing all over the place. I have checked that my chrome is up to date and so it's not that. Hopefully sort itself out when we all calm down.

TBH I am not sure it makes much difference to us here as we watch K with a projector and MadVR unless the latter gains some new advantage from it? All a bit over my head TBH - I like best picture and best sound but have grown to despise the tech wars and label proliferation that underpin that and don't have the patience these days to keep up with it, so I will wait until there is a 'for dummies' explanation.

 

[Sasquatch]

Gateway drug. Genius.

Correct, I started out with a 6gb compact Terra and strato C and ended up with a 48 GB terra prime, the original 6 TB compact tera, and 5 strato C's in less than 1 year....I can only imagine what this will do for people....

 

[thrillcat]

 

[thrillcat]

Hey folks, the Dolby Vision is a great improvement, but what about this audio upgrade.

Of course, my projector doesn't have Dolby Vision, but I run a 7.2.4 Atmos setup and this sounds like a pretty sweet upgrade.

Was this a typo by K or is the C only capable of lossy 5.1, because I thought I was decoding lossless 7.1 channels on my Strato C (with my Marantz SR8015, but I could be misunderstanding.

Thoughts? Can anyone elaborate on this?


View attachment 5247

That’s decoding, not output. The new players can decode internally to feed lossless audio via PCM to older AVRs without the capability.

 

[StanfieldNC]

That’s decoding, not output. The new players can decode internally to feed lossless audio via PCM to older AVRs without the capability.

Thanks! You're suggesting I would not notice a difference on my system since my AVR is capable?

 

[HarperVision]

Right? That must have been an intentional decision not to pair a 2.5GbE NIC with the SSD, which is unfortunate. Maybe SSD was just a cheap & easy storage solution and they view 2.5GbE as a premium feature? Wish it had been firmware/driver limited to open up future possibilities for Terra owners …

Owning a Terra Prime, I was really hoping they’d blend storage types together to give ultra fast downloads then offload to HDD storage later. I am getting 4-7 min titles on my Terra Prime at 2Gb Internet now so could only imagine SSD speeds!

Strato V is listed at $4,000.

Still, very happy to see the new product at the right price point opening the platform to many more enthusiasts. I hope they sell a ton of them!

And DV for OLEDs is a huge win! I wonder how the content and pricing will be handled. Will we all get movie updates, small upgrade charges?

DV isn’t just for OLEDs. You can do LLDV Dolby Vision on projectors and other displays that don’t natively support DV, like Samsung.

All you need is a cheap EZCoo HDMI splitter (if you can manually engage HDR Mode) or even better, but more expensive, HDFury product like the Vertex2 or VRROOM.

These spoof the EDID of the KScape Strato V in this case into thinking it’s connected to a DV capable display. Then all you do is turn on HDR in your display or add HDR metadata using the HDFury, which should activate it automatically.

 

[MovieChef]

Not sure if it's just the movies site creaking under the load of people exploring their existing movies or they have a problem. Pages have been crashing all over the place. I have checked that my chrome is up to date and so it's not that. Hopefully sort itself out when we all calm down.

TBH I am not sure it makes much difference to us here as we watch K with a projector and MadVR unless the latter gains some new advantage from it? All a bit over my head TBH - I like best picture and best sound but have grown to despise the tech wars and label proliferation that underpin that and don't have the patience these days to keep up with it, so I will wait until there is a 'for dummies' explanation.

I also would like to know if the DV capabilities of this new device would improve the MadVR Envy tone mapping (for an HDR10+ capable but not DV capable projector), or if it would not matter? If there’s no difference, then I might just stick with my Strato C for the projector and pick up one of these Strato V for another room with an OLED. Other than DV, I don’t see a lot of upside in upgrading from a Strato C and it may introduce compatibility issues with some HD titles.

 

[thebland]

This is a great product! Finally, a stand alone product (I’ll be at with a teeny tiny hard drive ). For somebody like myself with a second home, this is a low-cost entry to access my whole library in Northern Michigan.

I assume unlike the Strato C, if there’s a hard drive failure, it is replaceable in this model? Does anybody know?

I am very interested in this unit. Does anyone know when it ships?

 

[StanfieldNC]

DV isn’t just for OLEDs. You can do LLDV Dolby Vision on projectors and other displays that don’t natively support DV, like Samsung.

All you need is a cheap EZCoo HDMI splitter (if you can manually engage HDR Mode) or even better, but more expensive, HDFury product like the Vertex2 or VRROOM.

These spoof the EDID of the KScape Strato V in this case into thinking it’s connected to a DV capable display. Then all you do is turn on HDR in your display or add HDR metadata using the HDFury, which should activate it automatically.

This would prevent the need from owning two copies of the same title if I had two Strato V's (one in theater, one in living room)? If I have a Strato C in the theater and a V in the living room, I imagine I would still need two copies.

 

[StanfieldNC]

Hey folks, the Dolby Vision is a great improvement, but what about this audio upgrade.

Of course, my projector doesn't have Dolby Vision, but I run a 7.2.4 Atmos setup and this sounds like a pretty sweet upgrade.

Was this a typo by K or is the C only capable of lossy 5.1, because I thought I was decoding lossless 7.1 channels on my Strato C (with my Marantz SR8015, but I could be misunderstanding.

Thoughts? Can anyone elaborate on this?


View attachment 5247

Update: Go to @Techthusiasm video about 6 minutes, he does a good job of explaining it.

 

[ZeroDarkFuga]

I am thrilled with this product and addition of DV. Question regarding the "some but not all HD title transfer issue" mentioned:

If adding a Strato V, would we utilize the Strato C for the HD titles that were not upgraded/re-encoded until all HD titles are?

How does that scenario work? Didn't see that mentioned in the FAQ unless I missed it.....

 

[HarperVision]

This is a great product! Finally, a stand alone product (I’ll be at with a teeny tiny hard drive ). For somebody like myself with a second home, this is a low-cost entry to access my whole library in Northern Michigan.

I assume unlike the Strato C, if there’s a hard drive failure, it is replaceable in this model? Does anybody know?

I am very interested in this unit. Does anyone know when it ships?

It ships Wednesday

 

[HarperVision]

I also would like to know if the DV capabilities of this new device would improve the MadVR Envy tone mapping (for an HDR10+ capable but not DV capable projector), or if it would not matter? If there’s no difference, then I might just stick with my Strato C for the projector and pick up one of these Strato V for another room with an OLED. Other than DV, I don’t see a lot of upside in upgrading from a Strato C and it may introduce compatibility issues with some HD titles.

It can help image quality possibly if it reacts in the same manner as my Zidoo and AppleTV do. I send 10,000 nits max DV Luminance to my Radiance Pro as LLDV with added HDR metadata and it seems to really help image depth and clarity compared to HDR10.

I’ll know more Thursday when mine arrives.

See my post here:
NEWS: - Something exciting is coming next week.

 

[thrillcat]

Thanks! You're suggesting I would not notice a difference on my system since my AVR is capable?

My take is that there would not be a difference, if you're bit streaming from the player to your AVR this does not apply to your signal path.

From Kaliedescape:

"The addition of player-side decode for high-bitrate audio codecs provides flexibility to maximize sound quality with a range of downstream components."

 

[Rengozu]

Woah, while I was still hoping for 3D I wasn’t too far off on the guess.

Now just hoping they finally listen and let us view our entire purchased Kaleidescape library on screen even if not downloaded. It would thrive with this unit if I could just easily download in minutes from the movie interface.

 

[Techthusiasm]

I've clicked on all the links and watched a couple of youtube videos but I haven't seen an answer. How long is the warranty of the Strato V?

All the K hardware, I understand, is 5 years now.

 

[Oldred]

ahhh just realised it's all a bit of a moot point as they are only selling it in the US and Canada right now by the looks of the website.

 

[J.Green]

This would prevent the need from owning two copies of the same title if I had two Strato V's (one in theater, one in living room)? If I have a Strato C in the theater and a V in the living room, I imagine I would still need two copies.

You don't need to buy two copies. Your Kaleidescape store account allows you to activate up to 5 separate systems on the same account. Movies purchased from the store can be downloaded to all 5 of those systems.

However, in your case above, you don't even need to do that. Since the Strato V and Strato C are in the same household, conceivably, you'd put them on the same network. In that case, you simply group the Strato V to the same Terra you have the Strato C grouped with. All of the content on the Terra that is compatible with your Strato V would be accessible and playable in your Strato V zone and all of the content on the the Terra that is compatible with your Strato C would be accessible and playable in your Strato C zone.

If you go with two Strato V's with no Terra server in the middle, you would activate each of the Strato V's as separate systems on the same store account and then download whatever movies you want to each of the units individually.

 

[J.Green]

ahhh just realised it's all a bit of a moot point as they are only selling it in the US and Canada right now by the looks of the website.

Strato V is available in all territories supported by the Kaleidescape Movie store (US, Canada, UK, and Marine).

 

[Oldred]

Strato V is available in all territories supported by the Kaleidescape Movie store (US, Canada, UK, and Marine).

OK sounds good - guess they are all a bit slow with updating www sites then. One has 'pictures' but no pricing. I will wait. thanks