Blu-Ray Delay Confirmed

[cinelife]

The news has been circulating for a couple of days already, but YES, the K BL Player (Blu-Ray Player) release has been delayed. The cause of the delay is NOT Kaleidescape, it is with third parties outside K's control. The primary culprit is the video chip needed to work both K's OSD and the BR Menu system. It is still in development.

The delay is reported to be 3-6 months beyond the original release date which while not specifically defined, was generally expected to be later this year. This means the release is pushed back into next year.

There is no need to speculate about other possible reasons for the delay, there are no other reasons beyond what is noted above, and K is very much committed to releasing the Player as soon as possible. Also, for those that doubt K is committed here, the player has already been developed, it has been seen, and it does work. It does however, require the additional video chip to add full K functionality, and for those that might think all of this should be "easy" to accomplish, there are now nearly 7,000 separate tests, and a Player certification process that is in the hands of third parties that must be completed before the player can be released.

We may hear something more official from K in the near future.


Jim

 

[josh]

Ugh... that's not good, but glad you were able to get the story from Kaleidescape as I'd heard something to that effect from a few sources. Combine this news with the legal setback, and, well, it's not been a good month for the company.

I wonder if this will cause the "faithful" here to start losing hope? Do home theater dealers and yacht builders start looking a bit out of date to their clients when they deploy a mega-expensive Kaleidescape that can't load or play blu-ray in mid-2010?

 

[brodricj]

..I wonder if this will cause the "faithful" here to start losing hope?

I for one am keeping the faith and will keep waiting...bit weird though, they have a working version but the video chip to make it work properly hasn't been made yet I wonder if that is an ABT chip or a Gennum chip?

 

[Mr.Poindexter]

They might have a prototype chip? Or perhaps an earlier version of the chip that doesn't have all the features in place yet, like the video overlays and such.

 

[JerryL]

I would to see K use the oppo player as a base.

 

[cinelife]

K has announced the official delay of the Blu-Ray Player. In a letter from K's CEO to all dealers, received today, it is confirmed that it may likely be several more "quarters" before the Player is released. It further states that 3rd party suppliers and the daunting BR certification process are responsible for the delay. K already has a working BR Player. It's functionality is being improved upon during this delay.

The MSRP is planned to be $3,995, and to encourage sales of current Players, K will be allowing a very generous upgrade trade-in value of $1,995 for either 1080p Player.

More to come!

Jim

 

[MTrueblood]

Will Blu-Ray even be around as a preferred medium by the time that the new player comes out? It would seem that direct digital downloads may close the Blu-Ray window.

 

[iansilv]

I don't understand this... It sounds to me like they are waiting for managed copy to avoid "firmware updating" or something.

Can someone post the whole letter?

I just don't understand why a company with the technology, revenues and customers K has cannot get a blurry player to market. If the delay is managed copy, then so be it- just say that.

i have to wonder if the electronics industry is waiting for one more holiday season to push blurry in its current form before talking about managed copy at CES 2010 so people don't hold off buying holiday 2009.

 

[JerryL]

I suspect the legal side of it is responsible for the reason they can't get a blu ray importing player. As to just they player part I guess you just have to take them at face value. My guess is K didn't make too many friends with the other CE companies with the DVD battle.

 

[cinelife]

Because the email was addressed to dealers, I did not post it. Here is the relevant excerpt:


"The Blue-Laser Player continues to be the most important engineering project at Kaleidescape, and we have made substantial progress in its development. Pre-production units are running, and the results are exciting. Unfortunately, we will not be able to ship this product by the end of the year as we originally projected.

Not only has our schedule slipped significantly, it has become less certain due to dependencies on third parties over which we have little control. We cannot predict when all of our suppliers will be ready or when the extensive Blu-ray certification process will be completed. Our best estimate is that it will be a few more quarters before we will have this product in production.

The good news is we are using this additional time to improve upon the compelling experience that Kaleidescape will bring to Blu-ray Discs".


Jim

 

[JerryL]

Thanks Jim- and I think that is good news.

My suggestion to Kaleidescape is have a good look at the Oppo blu ray player. The output is very good. Speaking for myself, I would not buy the blu laser player unless I knew it would be able to import the disc to the server. I know the technology is the least of the hurdles with this, so I think having the extra time to sort out the legalities is a good thing.

 

[cinelife]

Hi Jerry, I agree with your comments and perhaps K realizes that the Player really needs to be competitive with whatever Players are in existence when they finally release it. This is even more important if the ability to import is absent on initial release. There are players in the market now that offer all of the essential functions (Internal processing of Dolby TrueHD and DTS MA, 7.1 Analog out, some even offering SACD playback and excellent 2-channel audio, etc.,) and do so for substantially less cost.

You are certainly not alone in the decision to wait for import capability before adding the BR Player, I'm hearing that from most of our clients as well. There are just too many inexpensive and excellent performing BR players in the market (like the Oppo), so without BR import ability it will be hard to justify the purchase at K's expected price point. I would think that having heard these comments from many owners over the past several months K is likely less concerned with making the BR Player available prior to having the import capability in place, but I also believe MM's letter speaks for itself and is an honest statement of the current situation.


Jim

 

[videofile]

Am I alone in thinking that Managed Copy is far from the silver bullet it might have originally seemed?

Putting aside for a moment the already discussed issues of inability to transfer special features, any charges that may be made for the managed copies and then any limitations on the amount of devices you may transfer the managed copy to; there seems to be a more fundamental issue.

Bluray is already fairly well established in terms of number of titles available (most of the classics are already available), and I can't imagine the studios going back over titles they've already moved to bluray (an probably have tons of stock of) in order to add the new Managed Copy functionality. The roll-out of the new AACS features into titles seems to be kicking in around Q1 2010, and with over 2500 titles already on Region A, how will consumers know which titles they may be able to transfer? Confusion in the market is never a good start...

From this article at Bluray.com
http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=2894

"Video entertainment site Video Business has contacted the chairperson of the AACS Licensing Authority, Michael Ayers, who confirmed that virtually all Blu-ray discs released after the first quarter of 2010 will offer consumers the ability to make one full-resolution backup copy."

 

[cinelife]

There are conflicting statements out there regarding the status of current BR disks. I've heard from one BR insider that most disks sold within the past year have the necessary coding to allow a copy to be made should that process be implemented, but I've also heard from two reliable sources that no disks currently have the coding because the process has not been finalized (makes sense).

I do know that from my own perspective, I will not be re-buying any of my BR collection (now over 700 disks) just to be able to import a copy. That being the case, and because of the delays caused by the BR folks in implementing managed copy, I've decided to stick with the older method of manually loading the disks. Actually, a close friend at Sony assures me that a new and better disk changer/manager is being planned with a much better GUI, so that may be an option going forward (I'm not impressed with the quality of their current BR changer).

Basically, I'm going with the first reliable (and legal) system that will allow me to store and manage my BR collection, hopefully that will be K.


Jim

 

[videofile]

Just wondering what about the current BD changer you don't like? I've seen a lot of broken 777ES DVD changers in my time, but I had heard the new BD changer was significantly better - or is the 5 year warranty just marketing? Or is it some other aspect of the product you dislike?

 

[cinelife]

Just wondering what about the current BD changer you don't like? I've seen a lot of broken 777ES DVD changers in my time, but I had heard the new BD changer was significantly better - or is the 5 year warranty just marketing? Or is it some other aspect of the product you dislike?

I now know three people that have experienced the issues described in the link below. That does not mean you will experience the same problem, and I do not know the total number of units sold, so I have no way of knowing the percentage of units that have experienced issues. As you correctly point out, there is a significant warranty with the BD changer so that adds some comfort to a purchase, but I'm just not interested in dealing with warranty issues on a unit that big (removing disks, packing, shipping, etc.).

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1182026

That said, I may have to reconsider if Sony fails to release a better unit (as implied to me), or if K is further delayed with their BR implementation. If I do, I'll be looking at the BDP-CX7000ES, not the server described in the link above. Unfortunately, I'll need to link two units. These units have also had their share of problems. Not widespread, but still issues (see AVS Forum BR section for this model).


Jim

 

[JerryL]

Thats exactly how I feel. I use K all over the house- and in every room DVD level video is satisfactory, except for my theater which really benefits from the enhanced resolution and color depth BR gives. I would like it in another room that has a good size plasma but its not critical. So if K can't get this resolved, in 12-18 months I might have to go with a changer. The key feature will be to pass 1080P/24 and decode the formats to PCM which is how my gear needs it (to the Meridian processor which does not decode the new HD audio formats but it can handle the high res PCM).

 

[kman]

Good thread. Looking at the bigger picture. Storing BDs requires significantly more disk space than DVDs. I say get a good Blu-ray player and give K some more time. We are offering a free blu-ray player with every K system until they can store. By then who knows we may even have 4Tb drives

Kelly

 

[JerryL]

Good point. On the other hand, by then, they may have moved on to downloads...

 

[kman]

Noted, but don't confuse downloads with streaming. Regardless of import source, tray, download, replication, it all still gets stored. The last mile of Internet access, and frankly the Internet as a whole, is still light years away from supporting high quality (high bit rate, uninterupted) streaming.

Managed Content is a big deal though, reducing the storage required per BD title - that's huge - and could drop the total cost of ownership by as much as half. Pay attention to anything that lowers overall cost/Tb and required storage.