New Strato V Owner

[cinelife]

Grow up. I’m not insinuating anything. It’s a valid complaint.

We welcome you to the Forum, but this isn't like other Forums, please keep what can be viewed as snarky comments and personal attacks off of the Forum. Being critical is fine, but push back comments from others are also fine, let's not make it personal. Thank you.

The person that asked about your PJ was trying to determine if there is a problem with a particular brand, or perhaps something else in your video chain. I have many clients using the V on screens larger than yours, and as discerning as some of them are, they don't see a problem with the Covers screen. Most, but not all, of those owners are using Sony PJ's (6000, 7000, or GTZ380). I use the 380 on a 160" screen, and the covers look fine. This is probably why the "sky is falling" comments don't seem justified to some of us that "see it" differently.

In the end, all we want to do is be helpful.

Jim

 

[Spinn74]

Being helpful is not attacking me for politely asking a simple question and providing my feedback. Thanks.

 

[cinelife]

Being helpful is not attacking me for politely asking a simple question and providing my feedback. Thanks.

I was referring to the questions asked about your system.

When we post in a Forum our comments are rightly evaluated, we should expect there may be some people that disagree with our comments. There's nothing wrong with either, as long as we keep personal attacks out of the conversation.

(Just for the record, someone else was reminded as well.)

Jim

 

[FenceMan]

Suggestion to the developers - the UI is something that matters to the minority of users so can you please concentrate on making ALL new release movies work with the Strato V upon launch first? To me that is much more important than a UI which may not look perfect but is perfectly functional. The movies not working at launch is to me the major issue that needs to be addressed.

 

[Spinn74]

Suggestion to the developers - the UI is something that matters to the minority of users so can you please concentrate on making ALL new release movies work with the Strato V upon launch first? To me that is much more important than a UI which may not look perfect but is perfectly functional. The movies not working at launch is to me the major issue that needs to be addressed.

This is new to me. They aren’t all available on the V? Seems like I can see them on the app?

 

[FenceMan]

This is new to me. They aren’t all available on the V? Seems like I can see them on the app?

Skinamarink is not available on the V maybe others. You can see them but if you purchase its not compatible with the V.

 

[DieZwei]

Suggestion to the developers - the UI is something that matters to the minority of users so can you please concentrate on making ALL new release movies work with the Strato V upon launch first? To me that is much more important than a UI which may not look perfect but is perfectly functional. The movies not working at launch is to me the major issue that needs to be addressed.

I believe both issues are being worked on by different teams anyway, so i don´t think they will interfere with each other.

 

[cinelife]

One quick comment to update this thread because of the frictions yesterday. Spinn74 and I were in direct contact yesterday, he made his points, I made mine, but more importantly it turns out he's one of the good guys, was just disappointed in the GUI and wanted to comment regarding his disappointment (nothing wrong with that), so let's all put yesterday behind us and move forward with the usual friendship experienced in this Forum.

Thanks folks!

Jim

 

[imfletcher]

Skinamarink is not available on the V maybe others. You can see them but if you purchase its not compatible with the V.

this is now stuck in my head, and now its stuck in yours. you're welcome

 

[rafaelsmith]

I admit, I am a tad bit disappointed in the UI "quality"...especially on a 135 inch projection system (JVC RS1100) and the fact that I have to set my UCD refresh rate to 24hz but in all honesty....I spend like 30sec looking at the UI/posters so its hardly game breaking. Quality of actual content playback is what matters and what trust they are focusing their efforts on....i nicer looking cover art is meaningless is the content itself has drop outs, black screens or colors go wonky neon pink.

All that said....I honestly believe the main intent of this product was for people with "smaller" DV TVs, vacation homes, RVs, etc where the UI being rendered at 1080p is not as noticable than on a big projection system. I hooked my V just for giggles to my 65OLED and the UI looked fine...but on the 135 projection not so good.

 

[Completely Lawless]

I too have noticed some visual issues with the Strato V that replaced the C on my Sony 6000. I bought two Vs and sold my C since I didn't want to maintain a DV and HRD10 file on my server for obvious reasons.

On the Strato V I have noticed:

- The covers are definitely a step down from the C
- The over-sharpening as some have mentioned is noticeable on wide shots with oceans or mountains (any continuous type pattern)
- When stopping on a movie cover on the wall there is a weird jiggle as it settles on that cover.
- When going from a movie back to the title menu it is one shade then corrects itself a few seconds later.
- I have had audio drops in two movies now which I never had before. One was last night in Ferrari at 1:30:32. (Going to try and reproduce it)

All that being said, I know this is a new product and K is working hard to make improvements. As it matures I'm sure some of this will work itself out. Besides the audio dropouts (which I haven't formally reported yet) these are all fairly minor issues and only the over-sharpening affects playback quality.

I am hoping in the next couple firmware updates we see the software optimized for this new hardware platform.

 

[Completely Lawless]

I too have noticed some visual issues with the Strato V that replaced the C on my Sony 6000. I bought two Vs and sold my C since I didn't want to maintain a DV and HRD10 file on my server for obvious reasons.

On the Strato V I have noticed:

- The covers are definitely a step down from the C
- The over-sharpening as some have mentioned is noticeable on wide shots with oceans or mountains (any continuous type pattern)
- When stopping on a movie cover on the wall there is a weird jiggle as it settles on that cover.
- When going from a movie back to the title menu it is one shade then corrects itself a few seconds later.
- I have had audio drops in two movies now which I never had before. One was last night in Ferrari at 1:30:32. (Going to try and reproduce it)

All that being said, I know this is a new product and K is working hard to make improvements. As it matures I'm sure some of this will work itself out. Besides the audio dropouts (which I haven't formally reported yet) these are all fairly minor issues and only the over-sharpening affects playback quality.

I am hoping in the next couple firmware updates we see the software optimized for this new hardware platform.

PS: I am very happy to see all the support and dialogue from the Kaleidescape team not only on this forum but social media as well. The feedback they take and clarifications they provide are valuable interactions to all of us.

We have officially entered the next generation of K between Prime server and Strato-V!

 

[Transepoch]

There are a very limited number of chips that can:

• Decode 2160p video at the bit-rates that we require for our quality level

It happens that the chip that best met all of those criteria (and more), while offering strong developer support and a roadmap for future capabilities, has an onscreen display graphics plane that is at 1080p resolution.

I'd been curious from before, but the way it's presented here makes me wonder more: when you tell it to render video, why should the chip care whether the source is media content or an OSD?

 

[J.Green]

I'd been curious from before, but the way it's presented here makes me wonder more: when you tell it to render video, why should the chip care whether the source is media content or an OSD?

Without getting into painful levels of detail and complexity, it boils down to the following explanation which was given to me from a colleague:

Reliably displaying video requires a pipeline of frames compressed in a color space that can be unpacked and rendered at 60 fps, even if every one of 8 million pixels is changing -- keeping a consistent frame rate, while reading large amounts of data from disk and simultaneously decoding complex audio, is paramount.

Displaying graphics requires a pipeline that can render arbitrary geometry with high color precision. These two pipelines (video and graphics) stress the chip differently and operate in separate color spaces, but they must cooperate so their rendered output can be composited together without interrupting the flow of video and audio data. Graphics is more forgiving, but dropped video frames or audio glitches cause noticeable artifacts and disrupt the viewing experience.

EDIT: To expand on this a bit, one should also keep in mind that devices like most computers have a unified buffer architecture. But devices that are optimized for media playback, such as the Strato V, do no use a unified buffer. In this case, the graphics pipeline is completely separated from the video pipeline and the mixing of the two happens in real time, scanline by scanline at the time the video is being output on HDMI. There is never a moment where a whole frame with both the graphics and video exists at the same time.

This is to say that the capabilities and limitations of the graphics pipeline and the video pipeline are completely separate and disjointed.

 

[StanfieldNC]

I'm sure it's been mentioned before, but can someone clear this up. Is Stratov V OSD 1080p in standalone and when paired with terra or only in standalone?

 

[josh]

I'm sure it's been mentioned before, but can someone clear this up. Is Stratov V OSD 1080p in standalone and when paired with terra or only in standalone?

it's in 1080p regardless of mode (standalone or paired)

 

[Completely Lawless]

I'm sure it's been mentioned before, but can someone clear this up. Is Stratov V OSD 1080p in standalone and when paired with terra or only in standalone?

The Strato-V's chipset is the limiting factor so it's in 1080p regardless of how it is configured (standalone vs with server).

 

[StanfieldNC]

it's in 1080p regardless of mode (standalone or paired)

I barely notice a difference. I know no visitors to my home have. They still comment over how amazing the movie wall is.

 

[StanfieldNC]

The Strato-V's chipset is the limiting factor so it's in 1080p regardless of how it is configured (standalone vs with server).

This is what I was what I thought I remembered, but I my display still says it's transmitting 4k. No big deal. Looks good to me.

 

[J.Green]

This is what I was what I thought I remembered, but I my display still says it's transmitting 4k. No big deal. Looks good to me.

The graphics are rendered in 1080p and then upscaled to 4K. So even on the OSD, the video signal output is 4K (assuming the player is connected to a 4K display)