Are Kaleidescape server prices in the real world?

[RedHodor]

So I'm slowly but surely filling up my 6tb store, so thought I'd have a look and see what it would cost to expand this a bit.

My first reaction is WTF?? I can buy a 4tb SSD drive for around £300 and an 8tb platter drive for sub £200,

So how on God's green earth do kaleidescape begin to justify circa 7 grand for a 6tb store!?!?!

7 grand for a 6tb storage box.

I don't know whether to laugh or be angry that I'm eventually going to be putting all my films on some other form of storage, because I think I'll have to go completely insane before spending that kind of money on 6tb worth of storage

 

[shoptime]

Lol, well the price per terabyte does go down the larger you go! Here in the US you can get an 88Tb for the pocket change price of $25,995, that breaks down to the pocket change of about $300 per terabyte, compared to the $830 per Tb for the 6Tb Terra.
I wouldn't suggest breaking it down that way to try to sell it to your significant other, mine really didnt take it well.

 

[TrackZ]

Just cycle your content. You don't have to keep all your movies local, unless you're on a boat or remote ski chalet or whatever. Hopefully you have a Compact Terra and fast enough internet for ~10 minute downloads.

 

[Vodder]

Just cycle your content. You don't have to keep all your movies local, unless you're on a boat or remote ski chalet or whatever. Hopefully you have a Compact Terra and fast enough internet for ~10 minute downloads.

Aye, this is what I’ve started doing now that I have 1Gbps connection. Biggest frustration is not having a way to see my entire library, in one view, downloaded and not downloaded. It’s starting to become really frustrating!

 

[cinelife]

So how on God's green earth do kaleidescape begin to justify circa 7 grand for a 6tb store!?!?!

They don't have to justify it, their products are not "necessaries," people either buy, or don't buy, it's personal choice. They know what it takes to operate their business, and like all businesses they price to make a profit while keeping the doors open.

I could ask the same question of many companies that exist in luxury markets, but the answer would be the same.

Jim

 

[cinelife]

BTW, @RedHodor, that's NOT a criticism of your question, it gets asked often, especially by those fairly new to K.

Jim

 

[Oldred]

They don't have to justify it, their products are not "necessaries," people either buy, or don't buy, it's personal choice. They know what it takes to operate their business, and like all businesses they price to make a profit while keeping the doors open.

I could ask the same question of many companies that exist in luxury markets, but the answer would be the same.

Jim

I do agree with this. I completely understand and to some extent share the instinctive response to the disk pricing but the reality is that you aren’t buying simple disk, you are buying Kaleidescape and all of what that means AND the disk. The infrastructure, the software, ongoing support, etc etc etc. like just about every high end hifi business their pricing doesn’t reflect the simple component costs. The very nature of the product precludes them from attracting the high customer volumes that would enable them to offer the bargain basement pricing that it seems many want. I get that, who doesn’t want a bargain and I plunder the sales each week.

The reality is that chasing the best video/audio quality for movies is very much a niche past time. Those willing to pay for it, an even smaller one. As customers we have the choice to buy it or not, I think Kaleidescape management/owners probably have the choice of pricing at these levels or folding the business. Maybe mass markets expectations/ambitions or technology advances will force this to change, that demand will rise and K or another supplier will offer something suitable but I am not going to hold my breath. In the same way that I am happy to pay premium for Linn audio products, I am willing to do so for Kaleidescape. I guess that’s why I am on this forum. It took me a number of years to convince myself but here I am.

Many of my friends can afford it but would never even consider it because they simply don’t value it enough to buy it but they have spent far more on fast elite cars and that leaves me equally cold. We spend our luxury $$$ where we want.

None of this suggests other opinions are wrong. Just how I see it.

 

[Golfx]

Aye, this is what I’ve started doing now that I have 1Gbps connection. Biggest frustration is not having a way to see my entire library, in one view, downloaded and not downloaded. It’s starting to become really frustrating!

Hope I understand your query properly, you can go to the main Kscape store tap movies then tap “All” in the upper left corner and then the filter in the upper right corner and when the drop down options come up check the box next to “movies I own” and hit apply. That shows you all the movies from Kscape you own. If you tap on the movie and then “manage download” it will tell you if it is on your home server.

 

[AusDan]

Just cycle your content. You don't have to keep all your movies local, unless you're on a boat or remote ski chalet or whatever. Hopefully you have a Compact Terra and fast enough internet for ~10 minute downloads.

This is exactly my process. As soon as I watch a movie that I don’t plan on watching again for awhile, I remove it from my 6TB Compact Terra. However, It would be helpful if there was a way to see on the screen what movies are local and which are on the server. I do realize the app does this quite well, but it would be helpful when we have an audience and are selecting a movie.

 

[cinelife]

I deleted a post I made yesterday. On a second read, my attempt to give an example of the differences in potential K buyers was a bit arrogant, especially given the current economic situation in the world. One of my new year resolutions is to spend more time re-reading my comments before posting! My apology to anyone offended.

Jim

 

[Oldred]

I deleted a post I made yesterday. On a second read, my attempt to give an example of the differences in potential K buyers was a bit arrogant, especially given the current economic situation in the world. One of my new year resolutions is to spend more time re-reading my comments before posting! My apology to anyone offended.

Jim

I don't think it was arrogant Jim but you probably have wealthier friends than most that's all

Your point stood however. It's a niche market driven by a niche approach to a relatively niche interest/hobby.

 

[Mark H]

We all make self justifications when it comes to paying for things when we want them even if we can't fully rationalise the price. For me and my Kaleidescape purchases I have always seen them in a way that I am not buying hardware, instead I am buying into an ecosystem where the real value is in the software and experience I get when using their products to watch a film. Like 'Oldred' I am a Linn hifi lover and and whilst they make excellent hardware, but, to enjoy my music when it comes to software to support their streaming hardware it is best left to a specialist like Roon to enable you to get the same value add enjoyment as you do when using your Kaleidescape system. Kaleidescape have managed to marry hardware and software and now the store to deliver an experience which many others can only dream about.

 

[alexbeans]

Hope I understand your query properly, you can go to the main Kscape store tap movies then tap “All” in the upper left corner and then the filter in the upper right corner and when the drop down options come up check the box next to “movies I own” and hit apply. That shows you all the movies from Kscape you own. If you tap on the movie and then “manage download” it will tell you if it is on your home server.

I think what we want is the ability to view the movies we own on the user interface of the K unit rather than going to the K store app or logging into your computer.

 

[RedHodor]

Interesting responses from all. Thats what I intend on doing for now is cycling the content, though to agree with others what would be nice is the ability to show all movies "owned" on the interface itself rather than within the storefront or account on the PC.

Show all movies on the interface and a litle symbol to show whether it is physically available or not. If not (and the broadband speed is up to it), at least I know whether its a case of delaying family film night for ten minutes or so whilst I download it.

My comment on pricing was merely highlighting the vast gulf of difference between raw storage space and the price charged for the terra stores. Given that the player component is arguably doing most of the heavy lifting in terms of interpreting and presenting the data, I could see a case for those being costly. The store meanwhile is simply reading data from a hard drive and passing this to the player.

In this regard it is merely a storage device, and whilst I can appreciate that there are margins etc within every sector, this one just seems quite ridiculous (in my opinion) when we can all see what the basic cost is of the raw storage it is ultmately based on.

I also appreciate this is now likely a cork that cannot be put back in the bottle - pricing for storage has been set, and Kaleidescape will hardly wish to annoy existing customers that have already bought extra storage by introducing any form of cheaper expansion option.

Another concern I would have is that should anything happen to Kaleidescape in the future, and I do not have enough storage space to download all the purchased content, I would then have lost any content that isnt downloaded at the time of any failure of Kaleidescape the company - however unlikely it may be.

 

[thrillcat]

Show all movies on the interface and a litle symbol to show whether it is physically available or not. If not (and the broadband speed is up to it), at least I know whether its a case of delaying family film night for ten minutes or so whilst I download it.
...
My comment on pricing was merely highlighting the vast gulf of difference between raw storage space and the price charged for the terra stores. Given that the player component is arguably doing most of the heavy lifting in terms of interpreting and presenting the data, I could see a case for those being costly. The store meanwhile is simply reading data from a hard drive and passing this to the player.

I absolutely agree that being able to see the entire collection with an indicator for downloaded/not downloaded should be available, if not the default. I would imagine Kaleidescape is in agreement, if not already working on it, but I would also imagine it's a little more involved than simply updating a display preference. The Players aren't necessarily looking at your account to know what to display, they're looking at your server. Perhaps there's a method to change the database on the server to include non-downloaded titles as well. I'm not a programmer, just thinking about how these things operate. Hopefully it happens soon.

Regarding pricing, and I have no inside information on this, but I'm guessing pricing and data security are also part of why they're able to offer the quality of content that they do. Again, I'm only guessing, but I would imagine there is some threshold that was promised to the studios to avoid people opening these servers up, hacking the drives and pirating the content. This is something I've not seen mentioned as part of the pricing discussion, but I have to believe that, at least in part, this also drives the premium cost of storage.

 

[alexbeans]

If possible, I wish that K would take the Synolgy approach and make the drives swappable. Since all our movies are in the cloud and can always be re-downloaded, I wouldn't be too concerned about doing a RAID backup. To prevent privacy, we can restrict this new server so that it can only be opened by up to five K players. As far as pricing, something like $2-3k for an empty 4-bay system would be reasonable. I don't know how many bays are in the largest Terra server. But I do like the compact look of my 40TB K server. I don't know. Just an early thought. I'm sure someone in the forum can poke some holes to this idea.

 

[RobT]

This is the perpetual conundrum of Veblen goods, of which Kaleidescape certainly qualifies. It's just a totally different set of economic rules, and it's why there are so many guys out there wearing Rolexes that cost more than the cars they drive. If it helps, used Terras come up in the forum fairly regularly, often still under some warranty, and usually at sharp discounts to retail.

 

[Dew1551]

The storage device CANNOT be allowed to copy from and/or duplicate from! The innate ability to be safe from piracy is what makes this format available to us!!

 

[alexbeans]

The storage device CANNOT be allowed to copy from and/or duplicate from! The innate ability to be safe from piracy is what makes this format available to us!!

I agree. And this may be the agreement that was made between K and the studios. This is the reason why vendors such as Apple iTunes have DRM protection and can only be playable under your account. I'm not suggesting that the content be copied or duplicated and thereby shared with others. The Synology approach I am proposing is to give customer the option to add internal drives (as they are so cheap these days) and lock the content to one user/ account.

I did buy a large Terra storage from this forum's market place and based on my buying history will be good enough for another year. But I really wish that I could swap out the storage from my 40TB to 80TB without having to buy another Terra storage device.
I plan to cycle my downloads because i rather spend money on buying movies instead of storage. But if I can avoid paying ~$8k for a used 40TB Terra every year by simply replacing my drives to a higher storage, I'm all for it.