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What is "Cinematic?"
- Thread starter DmitryB
- Start date
Wbhendrix
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This might answer some of your questions.
www.kaleidescape.com
Strato K Movie Player - Kaleidescape
Strato K is Kaleidescape’s groundbreaking new movie player, featuring 4K Cinematic, native 8K, and lossless multichannel audio for home entertainment. Learn more.
www.kaleidescape.com
It's whatever I say it is! 
To clarify, there is no additional fee to upgrade to the 4K Cinematic format of a movie that you already own in regular 4K. You will see upgrade pricing if you currently own the movie in HD (or have a digital offer). If you are seeing an upgrade price for a title that you already own in 4K then it's possibly a bug in the store interface and you should let us know so that we can fix it. For example, there's currently an edge case where you might see an upgrade price for the 4K Cinematic version of The Martian if you already own both editions that are on the store (the theatrical release in 4K and the Extended Edition in HD). We're working on a fix for that.
Wbhendrix
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Thanks John. From the K-scape article linked above, it gave me the impression we had to have the new K player to utilize the new 4k Cinematic version but I guess thats not the case?
I also have a Strato C - can anyone share their experience comparing the 4k Cinematic version to the previous 4k HDR version?
Also, with the new K player having 8k capability, what is the ETA on 8k titles? I know Warner has been working on some 8k scans for over a year but I have not heard any 8k related news in a while.
A new K player is required to play the the 4k Cinematic files.
You absolutely do require a Strato K in order to play the 4K Cinematic titles. All I was pointing out in my post above is that there is no additional fee to upgrade to the 4K Cinematic format of a movie that you already own in standard 4K.
But to be perfectly clear: if you do not have a Strato K in your system, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to download a 4K Cinematic movie. No other Stratos can play it and it won't even appear on their OSDs. All it will do is take up space on your Terra server.
Thanks Mike! It was "The Martian" upgrade price that threw me off. For a minute I thought the Extended Edition was upgraded to 4K. But... sadness...
Yeah, a trade in program would be much appreciated. Otherwise I can't see making the upgrade.
Well since Kaleidescape doesn’t offer a trade-in program towards Strato K, you can always ask your dealer about doing a trade-in. As a dealer since 2005 we’ve certainly been through a lot of Kaleidescape generations over the years—and this is what we do for our clients.
Cheers,
Alan
Cheers,
Alan
Is anyone else a little bothered that Kaleidescape is making terms up? I mean "4k Cinematic" is not a standard or anything.. Its a marketing term that probably sounds better than it actually ends up being. Is this not the kinda stuff other companies accused of snake oil get blasted for?
cinelife
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Why don't you wait to see it, or at least hear comments from those that are ordering the K Player before speculating. Those that have already seen it can all see the image improvements. Whether those improvements meet with your satisfaction is a call you'll have to make.....AFTER you actually watch some of that content.
Jim
The specifics of the formula they are using is exclusive in their platform, so they gave it a branded/trademarked name. Nothing wrong with that, IMO. It's a product/marketing name.
I don't see the problem as they are objectively offering something different from any other format in terms of what the file delivers. There is no other delivery system for consumer content that has true 422 or 444 chroma information. This also has a higher data transfer rate. I guess they could have called it 4K+ or something, but they obviously want to differentiate it from their standard 4K content to show what is available with the increased specs. This is a definitive way for K to differentiate themselves from disc playback, streaming or people saying Plex is the same thing as K over and over again.
So objectively, this is the best consumer 4K format available. The question is will there be any subjective difference in quality when viewing. Chroma resolution is not something we are really sensitive to, which is why we have the compression schemes we have. And all content is already chroma upsampled to 422 or 444 already. So whether you will see the increase is debatable. But I'll guess we will find out. The increase in bit rate is also interesting, so we'll see if that improves anything. I don't feel like compression is typically an issue with K, most the issues I see are baked into the Mezzanine file and not a limit from K's delivery.
It's mentioned in the main SK thread, they will only do Cinematic HDR when there's an HDR version but no Cinematic DV, so expected to be few and far between (Sicario was shown as an example of one that exists.)
As Kris mentioned. If course "4K Cinematic" is not a standard since Kscape is the only company offering such a format. That´s the advantage of having both the content and the hardware in one hand.
That´s the beauty of being at the forefront - you don´t (have to) follow standards, but create your own.
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Question....Projectors do not process Dolby Vision. When a 4K disc has Dolby Vision the projector falls back to HDR. Does the Strato K convert to HDR Cinematic for DV titles? I seem to recall the Starto V was unable to process DV to HDR. If it does convert DV to HDR, will it be Cinematic HDR?
Yes. When playing a 4K Cinematic Dolby Vision movie while connected to a display that does not support Dolby Vision, Strato K will output a the movie in 4K Cinematic HDR10.
Your recollection is incorrect. Strato V can and will output a 4K Dolby Vision file as 4K HDR10 when necessary (e.g. when connected to an HDR10 display).