NEWS: Strato V Player Announced

[Homecinemas]

@MikeKobb:
Is it possible to combine the new Strato V with a Strato S (6 TB) Player/Server and download f.e. 50 4K movies in Dolby Vision on the Strato S, and of course, play them only on the Strato V ?

 

[StanfieldNC]

Yes, but this has nothing to do with HDR. You must have an HDR title to "take advantage" of DV or HDR10. I put take advantage in quotes because many videophiles believe that HDR10 and especially DV degrade the image, not improve it. The best image quality with HDR content is not using tone mapping at all - i.e., using a display that can display HDR.
If you do need to tone map, use a Lumagen or MadVR, not HDR10 or DV - you will get far better results.
Any serious HT will have either a display that is true HDR or use Lumagen/MadVR, so the Strato V is not an "upgrade" for those users.

At the risk of repeating myself: this is a very disappointing "upgrade" for serious users. Nothing that has improved A/V quality for the past ~2 decades is in this new player.

Regardless, the point I am making is pretty simple that a user with two Strato V's (as opposed to a mismatch V and C) and an HDR display that does not have Dolby vision will not have to keep two versions and use double the storage.

 

[MikeKobb]

@MikeKobb:
Is it possible to combine the new Strato V with a Strato S (6 TB) Player/Server and download f.e. 50 4K movies in Dolby Vision on the Strato S, and of course, play them only on the Strato V ?

No. The Strato V requires a Terra server in the system if it’s not running standalone.

 

[steelman1991]

No. The Strato V requires a Terra server in the system if it’s not running standalone.

Mike - will the Strato S work as a server where paired with a Terra server in that instance?

 

[J.Green]

Mike - will the Strato S work as a server where paired with a Terra server in that instance?

Yes. As long as some form of Terra is part of the system and online, the Strato V will be able to access and play content that is stored on any server device in the system including Strato, Strato S, and Alto.

 

[Rengozu]

Yes. The next release of kOS, which was released and has started its phased rollout this week, removes the quality badges from the cover art included in the media guide. The cover art replacement process will start shortly after your system updates to 10.18.0 and has downloaded and extracted the new version of the guide. The time it will take for all of the images to be replaced will depend on the size of your library.

NOTE: This process will not replace any custom cover art images you have uploaded. They will remain intact.

Not a fan of removing the easy to see badging and wish it could be an optional on/off setting. While maybe it won't be a big deal when I finally upgrade my projector, for now I need to know if it's HD, UHD, or HDR when I start the movie so that my JVC is manually set on the proper picture mode.

 

[MikeKobb]

Would you consider using Co-Star as a work around for this?

Interesting thought, but given the scale of a project like that (read: enormous) and the fact that we are expecting the number of movies that can't be updated to ultimately be quite small, I don't think that it would make sense to go that route. I think those resources will be better spent on the tools to help us convert some of that content that is incompatible, but doesn't require a codec change, into a compatible format. (This is part of the current effort already.)

 

[MikeKobb]

Not a fan of removing the easy to see badging and wish it could be an optional on/off setting. While maybe it won't be a big deal when I finally upgrade my projector, for now I need to know if it's HD, UHD, or HDR when I start the movie so that my JVC is manually set on the proper picture mode.

The issue there is that there is basically no way to fit the necessary badging information onto the covers anymore. There's no variation of the Dolby Vision logos that works at that size.

This essentially forced us to make a change that we've been talking about doing for years anyway -- while there is benefit to having the badges on the covers, it also causes problems, like covering up half of the title of a movie.

One note on your situation specifically: all of the information necessary to switch your projector mode is available via the control protocol as soon as playback starts. So you may be able to automate this function and remove the need for the manual step. I do this with my projector, where I load a different preset for HDR content that's being tone-mapped through the Radiance Pro.

 

[MarvinTheAndroid]

At the risk of repeating myself: this is a very disappointing "upgrade" for serious users. Nothing that has improved A/V quality for the past ~2 decades is in this new player.

Whilst I am all for performance improvements, so I don't necessarily disagree with you, I am not aware of any deficiencies in the audio or video quality of the Stratos when compared to other players. None that aren't content or source file related at any rate. What is it that you feel is lacking from the current players in respect to this or what unresolved issues do you feel they have?

Personally I was hoping for quality of life updates myself such as integration with streaming services such as Netflix, Apple and Amazon and perhaps even the ability to play ISO and MKVs from a local share. None of which I fear will happen any time soon if ever. Being able to use the SSD as a staging cache for downloads when in grouped mode might also be useful if only on the nice to have list though rather than anything overly important.

 

[HarperVision]

Yes, but this has nothing to do with HDR. You must have an HDR title to "take advantage" of DV or HDR10. I put take advantage in quotes because many videophiles believe that HDR10 and especially DV degrade the image, not improve it. The best image quality with HDR content is not using tone mapping at all - i.e., using a display that can display HDR.
If you do need to tone map, use a Lumagen or MadVR, not HDR10 or DV - you will get far better results.
Any serious HT will have either a display that is true HDR or use Lumagen/MadVR, so the Strato V is not an "upgrade" for those users.

At the risk of repeating myself: this is a very disappointing "upgrade" for serious users. Nothing that has improved A/V quality for the past ~2 decades is in this new player.

I do not agree at all. If you know what you’re doing you can get an absolutely incredible image with both HDR10 and Dolby Vision, sans Envy or Radiance Pro, even on low brightness projectors.

 

[MarvinTheAndroid]

I do not agree at all. If you know what you’re doing you can get an absolutely incredible image with both HDR10 and Dolby Vision, sans Envy or Radiance Pro, even on low brightness projectors.

That's at least three times you have mentioned your DV/LLDV hack on this thread alone. Do you think there might be another more appropriate place for you to post before this thread goes off track like most of them seem to?

 

[HarperVision]

Yes. As long as some form of Terra is part of the system and online, the Strato V will be able to access and play content that is stored on any server device in the system including Strato, Strato S, and Alto.

What if they’re in separate locations like a vacation home?

 

[HarperVision]

That's at least three times you have mentioned your DV/LLDV hack on this thread alone. Do you think there might be another more appropriate place for you to post before this thread goes off track like most of them seem to?

I said nothing of the hack in that post and only mentioned HDR and DV looking great on low luminance displays and projectors.

 

[HarperVision]

Has anyone that ordered yesterday received any tracking information today?

 

[Completely Lawless]

Do you think there is ever a possibility to open up the storage on Vs in group-mode when combined with a Terra? If you have purchased 2-3 Vs it’s a shame to give up that storage when you’ve already paid a premium for a Terra Server.

We’ve always been told storage will seamlessly be recognized and managed on a system and this is clearly a departure from that premise.

There was a real opportunity here to put in a 2.5GbE card, limit it to 1GbE in standalone but when combined with a Terra to increase the speed, mesh the storage together, and take advantage of the SSD vs HDD tiers for a highly performant system. If you own the best K has to offer they should all work together to be more than the sum of the parts, IMHO.

PS: thank you for all your participation in the thread. Great to have a dialogue going with the product team.

 

[J.Green]

What if they’re in separate locations like a vacation home?

That won't work. The Terra and the Strato V have to be up and running on the same local network in order to be grouped together. For that matter, all Kaleidescape devices that you want to group together into a single system have always needed to be on the same local network. That part is not new behaviour.

 

[MikeKobb]

Do you think there is ever a possibility to open up the storage on Vs in group-mode when combined with a Terra? If you have purchased 2-3 Vs it’s a shame to give up that storage when you’ve already paid a premium for a Terra Server.

I try never to say never, but it’s not part of the plan currently. Remember, as soon as you open up storage of one component to some other component, you introduce a bunch of complication and dependencies. You can look at Strato/Strato S for examples. For example, it’s possible to get a system with multiple Strato/Strato S players into a state where a player is so busy serving content to other players that it can’t play anything on its own hard drive.

We’ve always been told storage will seamlessly be recognized and managed on a system and this is clearly a departure from that premise.

That’s true of servers and player/servers. Strato V is a new sort of animal: a standalone.

There was a real opportunity here to put in a 2.5GbE card, limit it to 1GbE in standalone but when combined with a Terra to increase the speed, mesh the storage together, and take advantage of the SSD vs HDD tiers for a highly performant system. If you own the best K has to offer they should all work together to be more than the sum of the parts, IMHO.

Don’t forget: our Terra Prime servers (which have 2.5GbE Ethernet) are running on server-class processors with all the attendant CPU performance, I/O bandwidth, and multiple lanes of interconnectivity between the processor and other components in the system to support saturating that 2.5GbE link and feeding data to the drives as fast as they can take it.

Strato V is running on a set-top SoC. It has excellent performance for a chip in this class, especially compared to the chips in our previous-generation players, which is why it can download at high speed even while playing content from the internal SSD, but it is not at the same level of performance as the Terra Prime. A meshed architecture as you’re describing is likely beyond the capabilities of this class of chip.

PS: thank you for all your participation in the thread. Great to have a dialogue going with the product team.

 

[MikeKobb]

Honestly, I am completely underwhelmed by the "new" features here. What really should have been done is major improvements to the power supply and HDMI noise (e.g., jitter), and I am not seeing any references to that.

Actually, there was a lot of work done on the electrical design of the new player. I've asked our hardware lead if he'd like to provide some specifics, and I'll post a follow-up if so. It's the sort of thing that will be sort of in the weeds for most consumers, which is why there aren't a bunch of marketing bullet points about it, but it was taken seriously.

Yes, but this has nothing to do with HDR. You must have an HDR title to "take advantage" of DV or HDR10. I put take advantage in quotes because many videophiles believe that HDR10 and especially DV degrade the image, not improve it. The best image quality with HDR content is not using tone mapping at all - i.e., using a display that can display HDR.
If you do need to tone map, use a Lumagen or MadVR, not HDR10 or DV - you will get far better results.
Any serious HT will have either a display that is true HDR or use Lumagen/MadVR, so the Strato V is not an "upgrade" for those users.

At the risk of repeating myself: this is a very disappointing "upgrade" for serious users. Nothing that has improved A/V quality for the past ~2 decades is in this new player.

I debated whether to reply to this, but I feel that there's enough here that could be confusing to readers that I have to respond. However, I do not want to derail this thread with an off-topic digression, so I'm going to address the points raised, but if there's further discussion, let's please have it on a separate thread.

Okay, diving in, with help from some of my colleagues who are more knowledgeable than I am about this stuff:

Surge said: "The best image quality with HDR content is not using tone mapping at all - i.e., using a display that can display HDR."

Within the realm of consumer HDR, this statement doesn't really make sense. SMPTE ST 2084 is the luminance standard that underlies all consumer HDR formats. It can represent values from 0.0001 nits up to 10,000 nits. There is no display on the market that can reproduce that range of brightness. That's because unlike SDR and previous transmission standards, ST 2084 was intentionally designed to exceed the capabilities of modern displays, so that you could represent video in a way that more closely approximates how light exists scientifically, and allow displays to do the best that they can to reproduce that idealized representation. That way, better displays will display a picture that is increasingly close to physical reality and director intent. Contrast this with what used to happen with earlier formats where better displays just tended to produce a more vivid/colorful/bright, but unrealistic (from a scientific standpoint) image.

That process of mapping from the idealized world of ST 2084 to what the display can actually do is called tone mapping. So, tone mapping is inherently part of the design of consumer HDR, and will be (for the foreseeable future), a critical part of any display, no matter how much you pay. You certainly can move the tone mapping out of the display and into an external processor like a Radiance Pro, but tone mapping is going to happen, always.

Dolby Vision is a way to get (fake) HDR to display better (some say) on a non-HDR display.

To the contrary, Dolby Vision brings a number of benefits to the table for real HDR on actual HDR displays.

First of all, tone mapping isn't an exact science. Since the underlying assumption in ST 2084 is that the signal cannot be exactly represented by the display, there are different approaches you could take in producing the displayed result. What Dolby Vision provides is a whole toolchain that extends from the content creator to the final tone mapping that happens in the display, including passing along metadata for each frame to help the display map the original source to what the display is capable of rendering in a way that preserves the director's intent.

There are other solutions to tone mapping that don't require this end-to-end flow and the extra metadata, and they can produce good results, but Dolby Vision gives greater control to the director and colorist to produce the desired result at the point of display.

Second, moving beyond the question of tone mapping, let's talk about color. The CE industry generally defines "HDR" as PQ (ST 2084) on top of the BT.2020 colorspace. PQ defines the luminance range, and BT.2020 defines the color area. Combined they form the color volume, a.k.a. the range of colors and intensities that can be represented. In order to display a picture digitally, we need a coordinate system to pinpoint a color/intensity within this volume. Typically, we use YUV (YCbCr) coordinates to quantize images digitally in the CE space.

The "10" in "HDR10" and "HDR10+" means that those formats are using 10 bits per component to represent those points in the color volume. This is a bit of a bummer, because YUV isn't a very uniform coordinate system from a perceptual perspective. i.e., some increments in coordinates lead to a larger perceivable change than others. It turns out that you really need 12 bits per component in YUV before the step from one arbitrary increment to the next becomes imperceptible to the average viewer. It's these perceptible steps that cause visible artifacts such as color banding in large areas of color, like the sky.

Here's where Dolby Vision comes into play. Dolby Vision Profile 5, which is what Strato V uses, employs the ICtCp coordinate system instead of YUV to represent those points within the volume. ICtCp is designed to be more perceptually uniform than YUV. In other words, coordinate increments that would've had a really small perceptual increment now make larger increments, but in exchange, coordinate increments that would've had a large perceptual increment will now have a smaller perceptual increment.

Crucially, this shifting of the coordinate system makes it such that all coordinate increments fall below the threshold of perceptibility for a typical human observer using only 10 bits of precision.

Why use 10 bits and switch to ICtCp instead of using YUV at 12 bits? Basically, because there aren't any hardware decoders available that do HEVC at 12 bits per component. So switching to ICtCp provides superior results while still fitting within the capabilities of existing HEVC hardware.

Displays, however, still use YUV, and modern ones that do Dolby Vision can accept 12-bit YUV. So after decoding, Strato V's system-on-chip converts 10-bit ICtCp, in hardware, to 12-bit YUV. The result is that you see better color with reduced visual artifacts. We've been really impressed by how great the Dolby Vision content looks on our reference displays as we've been producing the Dolby Vision versions of movies for Strato V.

[It perhaps bears mention at this point that this is one of the key differences between Dolby Vision Profile 5 and Profile 7, which is what is used on 4K Blu-ray discs. They are both seeking to solve the same problem -- how to get 12 bits of YUV precision out of a hardware decoder that has 10 bits of precision. Profile 7 takes advantage of the fact that the Blu-ray spec effectively necessitated the presence of a second, lower-resolution AVC decoder that could be run in parallel with the main decoder to support things like picture-in-picture. Profile 7 uses that second decoder to decode an "enhancement layer", which is then combined with the decoded 10-bit YUV main signal by a Dolby-designed block on the chip to produce a 12-bit YUV output signal. This clever solution allows for the main 10-bit "base layer" to be backward compatible with systems that don't support Dolby Vision, but outside of chips that are specifically designed for Blu-ray players, it makes more sense to accomplish the same task using a single stream and a single decoder. This is why, as mentioned earlier in this thread, SoC vendors don't produce chips that have the necessary hardware support for Profile 7.]

Third and finally, because of its greater perceptual uniformity, ICtCp as used in Dolby Vision Profile 5 has benefits from a compressibility standpoint. Video compressors are often designed with the assumption that all signal values are equal when making their visual error estimates and decisions during lossy compression. ICtCp better aligns with these assumptions, so the compressor is more likely to make a good decision in terms of what details of the picture it can compress away without affecting the visual perception of the quality.

Okay, well, this is a lot longer than I really wanted it to be. I hope that I've accurately communicated what my colleagues have helped me to understand, and I hope that it will prove useful.

 

[baltz]

Actually, there was a lot of work done on the electrical design of the new player. I've asked our hardware lead if he'd like to provide some specifics, and I'll post a follow-up if so. It's the sort of thing that will be sort of in the weeds for most consumers, which is why there aren't a bunch of marketing bullet points about it, but it was taken seriously.



I debated whether to reply to this, but I feel that there's enough here that could be confusing to readers that I have to respond. However, I do not want to derail this thread with an off-topic digression, so I'm going to address the points raised, but if there's further discussion, let's please have it on a separate thread.

Okay, diving in, with help from some of my colleagues who are more knowledgeable than I am about this stuff:

Surge said: "The best image quality with HDR content is not using tone mapping at all - i.e., using a display that can display HDR."

Within the realm of consumer HDR, this statement doesn't really make sense. SMPTE ST 2084 is the luminance standard that underlies all consumer HDR formats. It can represent values from 0.0001 nits up to 10,000 nits. There is no display on the market that can reproduce that range of brightness. That's because unlike SDR and previous transmission standards, ST 2084 was intentionally designed to exceed the capabilities of modern displays, so that you could represent video in a way that more closely approximates how light exists scientifically, and allow displays to do the best that they can to reproduce that idealized representation. That way, better displays will display a picture that is increasingly close to physical reality and director intent. Contrast this with what used to happen with earlier formats where better displays just tended to produce a more vivid/colorful/bright, but unrealistic (from a scientific standpoint) image.

That process of mapping from the idealized world of ST 2084 to what the display can actually do is called tone mapping. So, tone mapping is inherently part of the design of consumer HDR, and will be (for the foreseeable future), a critical part of any display, no matter how much you pay. You certainly can move the tone mapping out of the display and into an external processor like a Radiance Pro, but tone mapping is going to happen, always.



To the contrary, Dolby Vision brings a number of benefits to the table for real HDR on actual HDR displays.

First of all, tone mapping isn't an exact science. Since the underlying assumption in ST 2084 is that the signal cannot be exactly represented by the display, there are different approaches you could take in producing the displayed result. What Dolby Vision provides is a whole toolchain that extends from the content creator to the final tone mapping that happens in the display, including passing along metadata for each frame to help the display map the original source to what the display is capable of rendering in a way that preserves the director's intent.

There are other solutions to tone mapping that don't require this end-to-end flow and the extra metadata, and they can produce good results, but Dolby Vision gives greater control to the director and colorist to produce the desired result at the point of display.

Second, moving beyond the question of tone mapping, let's talk about color. The CE industry generally defines "HDR" as PQ (ST 2084) on top of the BT.2020 colorspace. PQ defines the luminance range, and BT.2020 defines the color area. Combined they form the color volume, a.k.a. the range of colors and intensities that can be represented. In order to display a picture digitally, we need a coordinate system to pinpoint a color/intensity within this volume. Typically, we use YUV (YCbCr) coordinates to quantize images digitally in the CE space.

The "10" in "HDR10" and "HDR10+" means that those formats are using 10 bits per component to represent those points in the color volume. This is a bit of a bummer, because YUV isn't a very uniform coordinate system from a perceptual perspective. i.e., some increments in coordinates lead to a larger perceivable change than others. It turns out that you really need 12 bits per component in YUV before the step from one arbitrary increment to the next becomes imperceptible to the average viewer. It's these perceptible steps that cause visible artifacts such as color banding in large areas of color, like the sky.

Here's where Dolby Vision comes into play. Dolby Vision Profile 5, which is what Strato V uses, employs the ICtCp coordinate system instead of YUV to represent those points within the volume. ICtCp is designed to be more perceptually uniform than YUV. In other words, coordinate increments that would've had a really small perceptual increment now make larger increments, but in exchange, coordinate increments that would've had a large perceptual increment will now have a smaller perceptual increment.

Crucially, this shifting of the coordinate system makes it such that all coordinate increments fall below the threshold of perceptibility for a typical human observer using only 10 bits of precision.

Why use 10 bits and switch to ICtCp instead of using YUV at 12 bits? Basically, because there aren't any hardware decoders available that do HEVC at 12 bits per component. So switching to ICtCp provides superior results while still fitting within the capabilities of existing HEVC hardware.

Displays, however, still use YUV, and modern ones that do Dolby Vision can accept 12-bit YUV. So after decoding, Strato V's system-on-chip converts 10-bit ICtCp, in hardware, to 12-bit YUV. The result is that you see better color with reduced visual artifacts. We've been really impressed by how great the Dolby Vision content looks on our reference displays as we've been producing the Dolby Vision versions of movies for Strato V.

[It perhaps bears mention at this point that this is one of the key differences between Dolby Vision Profile 5 and Profile 7, which is what is used on 4K Blu-ray discs. They are both seeking to solve the same problem -- how to get 12 bits of YUV precision out of a hardware decoder that has 10 bits of precision. Profile 7 takes advantage of the fact that the Blu-ray spec effectively necessitated the presence of a second, lower-resolution AVC decoder that could be run in parallel with the main decoder to support things like picture-in-picture. Profile 7 uses that second decoder to decode an "enhancement layer", which is then combined with the decoded 10-bit YUV main signal by a Dolby-designed block on the chip to produce a 12-bit YUV output signal. This clever solution allows for the main 10-bit "base layer" to be backward compatible with systems that don't support Dolby Vision, but outside of chips that are specifically designed for Blu-ray players, it makes more sense to accomplish the same task using a single stream and a single decoder. This is why, as mentioned earlier in this thread, SoC vendors don't produce chips that have the necessary hardware support for Profile 7.]

Third and finally, because of its greater perceptual uniformity, ICtCp as used in Dolby Vision Profile 5 has benefits from a compressibility standpoint. Video compressors are often designed with the assumption that all signal values are equal when making their visual error estimates and decisions during lossy compression. ICtCp better aligns with these assumptions, so the compressor is more likely to make a good decision in terms of what details of the picture it can compress away without affecting the visual perception of the quality.

Okay, well, this is a lot longer than I really wanted it to be. I hope that I've accurately communicated what my colleagues have helped me to understand, and I hope that it will prove useful.

Thanks for taking the time to make posts like this! I found this extremely informative!

 

[Substance]

I apologize if this was answered before. Is there any benefit of the internal SSD when in Strato V + Terra Prime configuration?