NEWS: Strato K Movie Player with 8K capability and new "4K Cinematic" full-chroma & higher bitrate support

[cinelife]

For anyone wants to have another source of comparison in order to evaluate what kind of difference you will be seeing from Strato K. Youthman just posted a video in his YouTube channel. Personally I found that video is much less of dealer BS.

I think that's an unfair comment, unless you feel that your dealer lied to you when you purchased the K, and if so, then it applies to your dealer, not every dealer. No BS involved on my end, we've had several viewing sessions inputting both a Strato-C and the Strato-K to the same display (Sony Z9K) in an AB comparison (not side by side, two different Inputs), using both 4K and 8K, HDR and Cinematic content. Unidentified to those watching, and in every showing and with every person, they all preferred the new K. Some post in this Forum.

My use of "preferred." is intentional. As I've said from the beginning, owner's should not expect a "wow" moment. I see it as several incrementally small improvements that combine to provide an overall better picture, and that's what most owners have found. I've got 40+ of these already in the field, and many more pending, and not a single owner that has received their K has voiced any disappointment is the purchase. I don't "sell" anyone, if asked I give my opinion, which may or may not have any value to a buyer, only they decide if it's worth the cost.

I'm personally not questioning your comments about the K, as I stated, you have the right to make those comments and post your opinion, and I ask that you pardon those that don't share your opinion. There can be many reasons for differing opinions.

Jim

 

[Nathan28]

I think that's an unfair comment, unless you feel that your dealer lied to you when you purchased the K, and if so, then it applies to your dealer, not every dealer. No BS involved on my end, we've had several viewing sessions inputting both a Strato-C and the Strato-K to the same display (Sony Z9K) in an AB comparison (not side by side, two different Inputs), using both 4K and 8K, HDR and Cinematic content. Unidentified to those watching, and in every showing and with every person, they all preferred the new K. Some post in this Forum.

My use of "preferred." is intentional. As I've said from the beginning, owner's should not expect a "wow" moment. I see it as several incrementally small improvements that combine to provide an overall better picture, and that's what most owners have found. I've got 40+ of these already in the field, and many more pending, and not a single owner that has received their K has voiced any disappointment is the purchase. I don't "sell" anyone, if asked I give my opinion, which may or may not have any value to a buyer, only they decide if it's worth the cost.

I'm personally not questioning your comments about the K, as I stated, you have the right to make those comments and post your opinion, and I ask that you pardon those that don't share your opinion. There can be many reasons for differing opinions.

Jim

He simply stated what the video shows…which is enthusiasts with no skin in the game doing real world blind tests verses someone trying to sell the player by giving their opinions or “I saw a difference and I also showed my wife and kids and they say they saw a difference”. watch the video…
In the video in the blind test, when asked to pick which one was better on Top Gun Maverick.. cinematic or regular .. all but one picked regular… these are home theater enthusiasts trying to see a difference… it’s a valuable video showing how close it really is going to be. Anxiously awaiting receiving my player and seeing RMARCI’s data.

 

[cinelife]

He simply stated what the video shows…which is enthusiasts with no skin in the game doing real world blind tests verses someone trying to sell the player by giving their opinions or “I saw a difference and I also showed my wife and kids and they say they saw a difference”. watch the video…
In the video in the blind test, when asked to pick which one was better on Top Gun Maverick.. cinematic or regular .. all but one picked regular… these are home theater enthusiasts trying to see a difference… it’s a valuable video showing how close it really is going to be. Anxiously awaiting receiving my player and seeing RMARCI’s data.

Understood, I have no objection to the comment referencing the video, only the use of BS as related to dealers. There are many excellent dealers, quite a few are members in this forum, and I doubt any of them lie to get business, which is what that term (BS) implies.

In any case, not a big deal.

Jim

 

[docdhina]

Top Gun was the very first movie I did A/B comparison in my theater room, and I don’t find any noticeable and repeatable improvement. Your set up is quite close to mine, I have Strato V and Strato K, and sounds like you upgraded from C, perhaps that could be the reason, just curious if you have done A/B testing between the two units you own, and and also A/B testing between the 4K Cinematic and 4K HDR10 on Strato K alone? Anyway Feel happy for you that you find improvement on your set up.

Actually Top gun maverick is only available in 4Kc DV and not in 4Kc HDR10. I pulled out the C from my rack and I stalled the K. It won’t be easy to do A/B testing with the C. I can do A/B testing with 4k disc through Oppo 203 or download the 4k HDR version when I return from vacation in 10 days. But having watched the Mach 10 scene at least 25 times over the past few years testing speakers and subwoofers, I can can see an uptick in the overall picture quality. Granted it’s not like going from SD to HD. It’s difficult to describe but what impressed me the most is the smoothness in movies without the soap opera effect, likely from higher bitrates along with other improvements I mentioned previously.

 

[docdhina]

Why not just answer the question?

@111-JEDI - from his previous post JVC NZ800 and a Trinnov

Not sure if MadVR envy’s tone mapping vs JVC NZ800’s tone mapping makes any difference with the 4K cinematic files.

 

[docdhina]

Curious..when did you order your K. I am trying to get a sense of where Kaleidescape is on the shipping(paid) dates. Last I heard, they were shipping out orders paid on July 3rd.

I placed my order on July 1st and Jaremy @ Techthusiasm processed the payment to Kaleidescape the same day.

 

[Nathan28]

If I missed this I apologize…. I get the hdr 10 version is the full chroma and the Dolby vision is not…
I’ve also read ppl saying “Dolby vision just has a little magic about it”…
Has anyone compared the cinematic DV to HDR 10?

 

[wilson]

If I missed this I apologize…. I get the hdr 10 version is the full chroma and the Dolby vision is not…
I’ve also read ppl saying “Dolby vision just has a little magic about it”…
Has anyone compared the cinematic DV to HDR 10?

Consensus seems to be that 4KC DV is 4:2:2 11.5-bit and 4KC HDR is 4:4:4 10-bit. @Rmarci claims that no commercial display can resolve more than 10-bit. I have a feeling that the processing chain can make use of the 11.5-bit and make less rounding/dithering error.

 

[Htjinus]

Actually Top gun maverick is only available in 4Kc DV and not in 4Kc HDR10. I pulled out the C from my rack and I stalled the K. It won’t be easy to do A/B testing with the C. I can do A/B testing with 4k disc through Oppo 203 or download the 4k HDR version when I return from vacation in 10 days. But having watched the Mach 10 scene at least 25 times over the past few years testing speakers and subwoofers, I can can see an uptick in the overall picture quality. Granted it’s not like going from SD to HD. It’s difficult to describe but what impressed me the most is the smoothness in movies without the soap opera effect, likely from higher bitrates along with other improvements I mentioned previously.

Thank for taking the time to reply and sharing your experience. What you described is much more like when I first hooked up my Strato K, then after I did A/B testing between my Strato V, I really have hard time to tell if there are improvement. Regarding comparison with physical discs, I haven’t done that comparison, I also own an Oppo 205, but I feel that probably gonna be less objective for comparison

 

[Rmarci]

Consensus seems to be that 4KC DV is 4:2:2 11.5-bit and 4KC HDR is 4:4:4 10-bit.

Well, technically, Dolby Vision on the K is 4:2:2 10-bit, but because it uses color reshaping metadata and a more efficient color space, it can achieve better performance than standard YCbCr 10-bit, which roughly equals 11.5 bits YCbCr. That said, the improvement it provides on our 10-bit displays is minimal. Even 12-bit FEL isn't noticeable unless the HDR10 base layer was poorly encoded. I made tons of lossless 16-bit screenshots that contain the full 12-bit depth from the FEL or from DV profile 5 ipt here. Even if our displays were 12-bit, I doubt it would make a significant difference, just as a well-dithered 8-bit image can look virtually identical to a native 10-bit image.

I also made a few 10-, 11.5-, and 12-bit test patterns here. While I do see a small difference between FEL 12-bit and DV5 compared to 10-bit in terms of banding, the difference is still very small.

On the other hand, our TVs output RGB, which has the same uncompressed chroma resolution as 4:4:4. I doubt this will make any perceptible difference either. Regardless of the perceptible difference, the higher the bit depth or chroma resolution, the better, and that's what I want.

 

[Htjinus]

If I missed this I apologize…. I get the hdr 10 version is the full chroma and the Dolby vision is not…
I’ve also read ppl saying “Dolby vision just has a little magic about it”…
Has anyone compared the cinematic DV to HDR 10?

I did, and it is not all 4k cinematic has a HDR10 version(check the screenshot I pasted) My eyes can easily pick up the difference between DV and HDR10, and I think it is probably because the fact human vision is much more sensitive to tone mapping difference than chroma sampling difference. So, it won’t be a fair comparison IMHO. Every time my eyes will pick up Dolby Vision for sure, it is simply much more color popping out.

 

[docdhina]

Thank for taking the time to reply and sharing your experience. What you described is much more like when I first hooked up my Strato K, then after I did A/B testing between my Strato V, I really have hard time to tell if there are improvement. Regarding comparison with physical discs, I haven’t done that comparison, I also own an Oppo 205, but I feel that probably gonna be less objective for comparison

My personal opinion is that as I am satisfied with the upgrade, I don’t want to be comparing more to look for improvements. I rather enjoy watching the movies in that time. For some movies,it’s hard to tell a difference between blu ray disc and 4k disc with MadVR envy doing the upscaling of 1080p content. To each their own. I understand your concerns. We all want to justify the upgrades we make on our home theaters as HT enthusiasts. For example, I upgraded my L and R mains with newer versions of the same speakers few years back and did not hear any difference at all, not sure if there would have been any changes in REW measurements as well. Anyway going forward I will be watching all the movies in 4k cinematic version.

 

[Htjinus]

Actually Top gun maverick is only available in 4Kc DV and not in 4Kc HDR10. I pulled out the C from my rack and I stalled the K. It won’t be easy to do A/B testing with the C. I can do A/B testing with 4k disc through Oppo 203 or download the 4k HDR version when I return from vacation in 10 days. But having watched the Mach 10 scene at least 25 times over the past few years testing speakers and subwoofers, I can can see an uptick in the overall picture quality. Granted it’s not like going from SD to HD. It’s difficult to describe but what impressed me the most is the smoothness in movies without the soap opera effect, likely from higher bitrates along with other improvements I mentioned previously.

I would also say since you came from C, which doesn’t have Dolby Vision, I would suggest to restrict your comparison to HDR 10 file only. Huge eye difference between DV and HDR10, and those are not because of 4:4:4 vs 4:2:2 chroma sampling difference.

 

[Broncowrangler]

In that youthman video, they were also suggesting that the Strato K appears to resolve the regular (non cinematic) content better than the older C/V/E players. This was also making it harder for the participants to distinguish between the 2 different versions.

FYI, both the cinematic and the regular content was being played through the K

I think this might open a whole new Pandora’s box out here. LOL.

 

[todo]

In that youthman video, they were also suggesting that the Strato K appears to resolve the regular (non cinematic) content better than the older C/V/E players. This was also making it harder for the participants to distinguish between the 2 different versions.

I think this might open a whole new Pandora’s box out here. LOL.

Dont do that - I got flamed greatly and called a snake oil salesman when I posted that Strato K 'could' have a better build than previous players for which reason it may sound better.

 

[Nathan28]

In that youthman video, they were also suggesting that the Strato K appears to resolve the regular (non cinematic) content better than the older C/V/E players. This was also making it harder for the participants to distinguish between the 2 different versions.

FYI, both the cinematic and the regular content was being played through the K

I think this might open a whole new Pandora’s box out here. LOL.

We will have all of the answers when the absolute stud @Rmarci gets his k player lol

 

[J.Chitwood]

I won't lie, I turned the Youthman video off as soon as they did the first vote via people raising their hands lol

 

[mkozlows]

The Youthman video is interesting, because the takeaways are:

• If you're looking at it as a blind test, asking whether the viewers can really see a difference, the clear answer is no. 4/8 of the enthusiasts there (who all clearly wanted to see differences) accurately picked the Cinematic in one piece of content, 7/8 in another, and 1/8 in another. This is literally 50/50 coin flip. Like, you'd expect to get less 50/50 than that, just randomly.
• The people doing the test by and large are clear that they're trying to pick out subtle differences, and are not confident in their judgements. They mostly all seem to verbally indicate that they're trying to pick out hyper-subtle details and have little confidence they're getting it right. (And some of the things they call out as perceived improvements, like greater saturation, are things you wouldn't expect to be different between regular and Cinematic, so yeah.)
• Except for one guy, who thought the difference was clear and also who got all three correct, so arguably is not full of shit... but with only three samples, could just be confident and lucky: If you flip eight coins, it is again statistically likely that exactly one of them comes up heads three times, so this guy could just be the lucky penny.

The comments from the guys who ran the test, describing their sighted experience (which is obviously less reliable than the blind tests), is that they found it easier to tell the Cinematic version apart from the regular one with more practice, and after going back and forth with the same content knowing the results, they were able to see the differences more easily. Maybe! It is true that with training, it's easier to tell apart subtle differences. But a) they didn't do a blind test, so we have no idea if they were right or just fooling themselves, and b) I think that puts an upper bound on how big the difference is: i.e., it's in the range where you can tell it apart only with careful repeated comparison and training. Which seems plausible to me.

(The sighted guys also talk about how they believed there was a bigger difference between the C and K on the same content than between the regular and Cinematic on the K. If true, this is very eyebrow-raising, and raises questions about what's different between the C and K's video processing, and what they're doing differently. Video decode alone must product bit-identical outputs, so if there are differences in the output, they're in some kind of transformative processing pipeline that the hardware is doing, and Kaleidescape should be able to confirm what processing, if any, is present and different between the C and K.)

I won't lie, I turned the Youthman video off as soon as they did the first vote via people raising their hands lol

They had their answers pre-written down, and that's what they used for the tallies. The hand-raising was just to drive the discussion.

 

[Broncowrangler]

We will have all of the answers when the absolute stud @Rmarci gets his k player lol

Well that’s true and I really look forward to his assessment. But all the member testimonials out here also count. Let’s also acknowledge that.

There seems to be unanimous positive consensus

 

[J.Chitwood]

The Youthman video is interesting, because the takeaways are:

• If you're looking at it as a blind test, asking whether the viewers can really see a difference, the clear answer is no. 4/8 of the enthusiasts there (who all clearly wanted to see differences) accurately picked the Cinematic in one piece of content, 7/8 in another, and 1/8 in another. This is literally 50/50 coin flip. Like, you'd expect to get less 50/50 than that, just randomly.
• The people doing the test by and large are clear that they're trying to pick out subtle differences, and are not confident in their judgements. They mostly all seem to verbally indicate that they're trying to pick out hyper-subtle details and have little confidence they're getting it right. (And some of the things they call out as perceived improvements, like greater saturation, are things you wouldn't expect to be different between regular and Cinematic, so yeah.)
• Except for one guy, who thought the difference was clear and also who got all three correct, so arguably is not full of shit... but with only three samples, could just be confident and lucky: If you flip eight coins, it is again statistically likely that exactly one of them comes up heads three times, so this guy could just be the lucky penny.

The comments from the guys who ran the test, describing their sighted experience (which is obviously less reliable than the blind tests), is that they found it easier to tell the Cinematic version apart from the regular one with more practice, and after going back and forth with the same content knowing the results, they were able to see the differences more easily. Maybe! It is true that with training, it's easier to tell apart subtle differences. But a) they didn't do a blind test, so we have no idea if they were right or just fooling themselves, and b) I think that puts an upper bound on how big the difference is: i.e., it's in the range where you can tell it apart only with careful repeated comparison and training. Which seems plausible to me.

(The sighted guys also talk about how they believed there was a bigger difference between the C and K on the same content than between the regular and Cinematic on the K. If true, this is very eyebrow-raising, and raises questions about what's different between the C and K's video processing, and what they're doing differently. Video decode alone must product bit-identical outputs, so if there are differences in the output, they're in some kind of transformative processing pipeline that the hardware is doing, and Kaleidescape should be able to confirm what processing, if any, is present and different between the C and K.)



They had their answers pre-written down, and that's what they used for the tallies. The hand-raising was just to drive the discussion.

Someone literally changed their answer on the first vote after seeing how everyone else was voting. Then I heard an absolutely nonsensical conversation start, and I knew I didn't want to keep watching.