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NEWS: Strato K Movie Player with 8K capability and new "4K Cinematic" full-chroma & higher bitrate support
- Thread starter josh
- Start date
David23
Well-known member
- Joined
- Apr 2, 2015
- Messages
- 610
So interestingly enough, just looking at the formats of Top Gun: Maverick, helped clarify 4K Cinematic more than anything else. It's not an entirely new format altogether, it's essentially the new base layer, separate from the SDR, HDR10, Dolby Vision layer.
Exciting. I'll be getting these for my rooms ASAP and getting content up immediately. I always love available now as well on a news announcement.
Looking at the store. There's seem to be no charge for 4K cinematic content that you already own. I can freely download the format on my existing 4K movies.
Looking at the store. There's seem to be no charge for 4K cinematic content that you already own. I can freely download the format on my existing 4K movies.
Wondering how many will actually be able to discern any difference between a high quality 4K transfer and 4K Cinematic on most equipment. I'm not convinced the bitrate increase is going to be anything more than subtle but will reserve judgment. Will need to wait on reviews from non-influencers. I have an NZ7 and Lumagen.
So 4K Cinematic will only be either DV or SDR not HDR10?
That was my first thougth...especially for lower end systems like mine...I really do not think there would be any discernible difference.
Does K ever offer trade-ins?
Maybe they can send a demo unit to Rmarci and have him do some comparisons. Since i am relatively new to Kscape, not really interested in shelling out more money for a small incremental improvement. just hoping they fix all the issues that Rmarci discovered. And I'm guessing this new 4k Cinematic is just another version that the encoders can screw up
I was invited to see the Strato K yesterday at Kaleidescape HQ and it was an impressive demo. Two major parts of the demo: an explanation of "4K Cinematic" with side-by-side comparisons of regular 4K and the new format, and then a demonstration of 8K content.
I'll leave it to more technical members and writers elsewhere to go through all the deep spec differences of 4K Cinematic, but as a more casual owner/user, the. A/B demonstrations were impressive and there were clear visual quality improvements in the 4KC playback. It's hard to describe, but while the differences were truly in color depth and contrast, it somehow makes it appear higher resolution (which of course it is not). In the (carefully selected) scenes they showed from a couple of the Harry Potter movies, you could tell the difference quite clearly.
Kaleidescape will now be encoding and offering movies in this new format, which for now is playable only on the K. They described how the K with the 4KC files can generate the best possible playback on DV-capable screens as well as non-DV screens and projectors. They believe that the format will be the single file you'd need in an environment with both DV screens and non-DV, as it can basically generate HDR10 content for those players on the fly that is equal to or better than files encoded directly for HDR10. So in an environment where some screens have Dolby Vision and some do not, a server can and should store just the 4K Cinematic to give the best quality output to any screen, assuming all the players are Strato K's.
The 8K demos were... mixed. There was a reel of demo content (I'm not sure i can say the company that supplied the demo content) similar to what you see at CEDIA and elsewhere, lots of high contrast landscapes, animals (chameleons always seem to be featured), dancers in colorful costumes, etc. and it's pretty astounding to see visuals like this. It was done on a 100" 8K native panel (Sony) with the Strato K. I've never experienced something like this previously... but this was optimal quality from specially selected and shot 8K demo content.
The 8K movie content they were able to show me was a single choice, 2001 A Space Odyssey, though several more will be available now as of launch apparently. That demo was, well, completely unimpressive at least to my eyes becuase we're talking about a 50 year old movie that was rescanned from the original film to 8K. So to my eyes, it was not impressive at all as a demo... the film is beautiful, but has its own grain that has now been rescanned to higher resolution and it just doesn't pop. I told them that if I were them I'd not use that as a demo... I just couldn't see a resolution difference. I know there are members here who will be able to see it and might be impressed, but I didn't think it was at all effective as a demo. When a movie is available that is fully natively shot in 8K (or re-rendered CGI or animation to 8K) then I think the demos will be amazing.
But for me, I want this player for the clearly obvious chroma differences when 4K Cinematic titles are available. I obviously have no need (or relevant equipment) for 8K video, but it's good to see Kaleidescape being ready for the inevitable upgrades to 8K that will slowly trickle into consumer gear in the coming years. And I think it will be strong positioning that Kaleidescape will become the defacto playback device for manufacturers to use in their own demos of 8K stuff at tradeshows and press briefings.
4K Cinematic and the players ability to push it to all types of display devices at maximum quality seems to be the big news here to real users. 8K will get the headlines, 4KC will be the difference users like us will see and want in our homes for now.
And as many people here know, I have been a strong critic of the Strato V's 2K UI limitations. Happy to say that I could immediately see the differences on the UI screens of the new 4K UI rendering that the K can do. Some users don't care about this, others like me do. It's back to being glorious UI, especially on the 110"+ display they were showing this to me on.
There's also news coming about the software fix for macroblocking and other issues on the V, discussed at length here in the forum and elsewhere. I'm not sure yet what I can say, but it's truly imminent and is truly entirely done with the new KEAOS software upgrade. It was a collaboration with the previously-mentioned hardware chip vendor working directly with Kaleidescape on the fix and I will be eager to hear from the technical members here on what they see when that software rolls out to all V owners. I believe that is coming out as soon as next week, but of course will take several weeks to get pushed to every system out there with a V.
I'll leave it to more technical members and writers elsewhere to go through all the deep spec differences of 4K Cinematic, but as a more casual owner/user, the. A/B demonstrations were impressive and there were clear visual quality improvements in the 4KC playback. It's hard to describe, but while the differences were truly in color depth and contrast, it somehow makes it appear higher resolution (which of course it is not). In the (carefully selected) scenes they showed from a couple of the Harry Potter movies, you could tell the difference quite clearly.
Kaleidescape will now be encoding and offering movies in this new format, which for now is playable only on the K. They described how the K with the 4KC files can generate the best possible playback on DV-capable screens as well as non-DV screens and projectors. They believe that the format will be the single file you'd need in an environment with both DV screens and non-DV, as it can basically generate HDR10 content for those players on the fly that is equal to or better than files encoded directly for HDR10. So in an environment where some screens have Dolby Vision and some do not, a server can and should store just the 4K Cinematic to give the best quality output to any screen, assuming all the players are Strato K's.
The 8K demos were... mixed. There was a reel of demo content (I'm not sure i can say the company that supplied the demo content) similar to what you see at CEDIA and elsewhere, lots of high contrast landscapes, animals (chameleons always seem to be featured), dancers in colorful costumes, etc. and it's pretty astounding to see visuals like this. It was done on a 100" 8K native panel (Sony) with the Strato K. I've never experienced something like this previously... but this was optimal quality from specially selected and shot 8K demo content.
The 8K movie content they were able to show me was a single choice, 2001 A Space Odyssey, though several more will be available now as of launch apparently. That demo was, well, completely unimpressive at least to my eyes becuase we're talking about a 50 year old movie that was rescanned from the original film to 8K. So to my eyes, it was not impressive at all as a demo... the film is beautiful, but has its own grain that has now been rescanned to higher resolution and it just doesn't pop. I told them that if I were them I'd not use that as a demo... I just couldn't see a resolution difference. I know there are members here who will be able to see it and might be impressed, but I didn't think it was at all effective as a demo. When a movie is available that is fully natively shot in 8K (or re-rendered CGI or animation to 8K) then I think the demos will be amazing.
But for me, I want this player for the clearly obvious chroma differences when 4K Cinematic titles are available. I obviously have no need (or relevant equipment) for 8K video, but it's good to see Kaleidescape being ready for the inevitable upgrades to 8K that will slowly trickle into consumer gear in the coming years. And I think it will be strong positioning that Kaleidescape will become the defacto playback device for manufacturers to use in their own demos of 8K stuff at tradeshows and press briefings.
4K Cinematic and the players ability to push it to all types of display devices at maximum quality seems to be the big news here to real users. 8K will get the headlines, 4KC will be the difference users like us will see and want in our homes for now.
And as many people here know, I have been a strong critic of the Strato V's 2K UI limitations. Happy to say that I could immediately see the differences on the UI screens of the new 4K UI rendering that the K can do. Some users don't care about this, others like me do. It's back to being glorious UI, especially on the 110"+ display they were showing this to me on.
There's also news coming about the software fix for macroblocking and other issues on the V, discussed at length here in the forum and elsewhere. I'm not sure yet what I can say, but it's truly imminent and is truly entirely done with the new KEAOS software upgrade. It was a collaboration with the previously-mentioned hardware chip vendor working directly with Kaleidescape on the fix and I will be eager to hear from the technical members here on what they see when that software rolls out to all V owners. I believe that is coming out as soon as next week, but of course will take several weeks to get pushed to every system out there with a V.
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Or the madVR Envy which does 4:4:4 processing since over 6 years now.
Very pleased to see that I already own half of the Cinematic releases. Would've been a real bummer t have to pay to upgrade again. Excited to see what this thing can do.
The player has the ability to generate HDR10 bitstream on the fly from 4K Cinematic files and Kaleidescape claims it will be as good on HDR10 displays as if it were a native HDR10 file. Will leave it to others to test this and report back, but they were convinced that if you have a K and an HDR10 display, you would have no need for that file and can rely on the new 4K Cinematic encode file, meaning it will serve up best quality visuals to both HDR10 and DV devices. (of course those 4K Cinematic files are larger, i think they said around 50% larger, so you'll be consuming more storage space for these files.)
Correct. If you already own a 4K title, you can download the 4K Cinematic version at no additional cost.
The web store will now also inform you when there is a "version update" available. For example:
4K Cinematic titles are available in SDR, DV, and HDR10. Note, however, that we will only generate one HDR version in 4K Cinematic with the preference going to DV since Strato K and play the DV version and output it as HDR10 if necessary. So a 4K Cinematic HDR10 version will only be generated if a DV version is not available.
David23
Well-known member
- Joined
- Apr 2, 2015
- Messages
- 610
Completely agree here. 8K is going to be big for K.
Also appreciate the honesty in your review.
Difference between 4:2:0 and 4:4:4 chroma should be visible.
- Joined
- Nov 24, 2020
- Messages
- 40
Kaleidescape's new Strato K flagship movie player sharpens its already convincing case against streaming
With the introduction of its 4K Cinematic format, Kaleidescape wrings even more performance from the company's high-fidelity movie downloads.
www.popsci.com
will there be any point in re-downloading the 4Kc version of these movies for current Strato V and E owners?
Oh, I should have pointed out one other thing. Amidst my praise and excitement about the visual quality differences on the K, I expressed disappointment to the team on one aspedt: there is just one HDMI output on the K. This will make upgrading to a K difficult for some users/installers who relied on the dual HDMI paths of the Strato C. I think there will be some criticism from the community about this decision.
There are reasons for this that I'll leave to the company to explain regarding some hardware limitations or cost issues or something, but in my mind it could have unequivocally been the player that brought all these improvements AND addressed that one other issue that the V, E, and M had that many users complained about. eARC or having processors in the video signal path aren't ideal for some setups and some users.
I know that people sill seek out the C's here on the marketplace for some installations specifically for that reason.
There are reasons for this that I'll leave to the company to explain regarding some hardware limitations or cost issues or something, but in my mind it could have unequivocally been the player that brought all these improvements AND addressed that one other issue that the V, E, and M had that many users complained about. eARC or having processors in the video signal path aren't ideal for some setups and some users.
I know that people sill seek out the C's here on the marketplace for some installations specifically for that reason.
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No. Strato V and Strato E cannot play the 4K Cinematic format. Only Strato K can play it.
I think its safe to say the V will be discontinued. Just do not see its purpose in the lineup anymore.
Completely Lawless
Well-known member
What's the price of a used V now? Haha, the million dollar question!