[Buyer’s Guide] Kaleidescape Quality Compared to Blu-ray & other Digital Sources

[LoveCinema]

In my opinion, expectations of superior video quality to discs is one of the biggest misunderstandings regarding Kaleidescape. Absolutely no one should have this expectation. Historically I've never seen K themselves actually push this narrative, with it generally building up in forums, Fb groups, etc. (alongside other false notions like "true ownership").

However, in looking at K's current website, I do see their chart showing average bitrates that compares K directly to discs (and streaming). To me, this is no different than comparing file sizes - which K very clearly and constantly says we should not do - and therefore I find this misleading.

I believe I had (and have) a fair understanding of K's capabilities when I purchased the system, and I fully expect comparable quality to discs. This means matching audio and approximating video. As any disc collector can attest, any given movie can have variations in bitrate, color-grading, etc. when released by different distributors, in different regions, etc. I expect the same of K. Sometimes disc is better, sometimes K is better, and on average they're similar.

I believe that Rmarci has rightly identified that K has failed in this area in many cases, and I appreciate both his efforts to call this out and K's efforts to address these concerns.

 

[Nathan28]

I’m old enough to remember when Disney release blu rays were the highest of quality, always reference.
Then… 2015-2016, they started compressing them and neutering the lfe. Why the switch? Idk. Some say because of sound bars etc but here we are, almost all movies are now neutered at 30hz… DVD’s and blu rays…plenty of them go to single digits .. not uhd. Also HDR is almost 10 years old and big releases to this day rip us off on it, “F1”.. “Superman” all regular packaged as HDR.
Pop in the matrix… that’s HDR. You could tell quality used to matter…. Sad to say, it doesn’t seem to be the case anymore.

 

[rafaelsmith]

I’m old enough to remember when Disney release blu rays were the highest of quality, always reference.
Then… 2015-2016, they started compressing them and neutering the lfe. Why the switch? Idk. Some say because of sound bars etc but here we are, almost all movies are now neutered at 30hz… DVD’s and blu rays…plenty of them go to single digits .. not uhd. Also HDR is almost 10 years old and big releases to this day rip us off on it, “F1”.. “Superman” all regular packaged as HDR.
Pop in the matrix… that’s HDR. You could tell quality used to matter…. Sad to say, it doesn’t seem to be the case anymore.

I really think its case of...as technology got better and better...what we can achieve even on a moderate budget in our houses...threatened the Studios+Theater Owner Cabal....then Covid hit...and they cried and cried.....they are fighting tooth and nail to keel that old business model going so I would not put past them to purposely neutering what is available at home. They already have the kiddies with ipads and the TVs with soundbars.

Hell, they have been fighting "us" since VHS first came out. They have always believed that anytime we want to watch anything...we should have to "buy a ticket". I think the next phase is not providing digital purchases...only rentals. They are salivating at the death of physical media.

 

[cardsdoc]

There are a ton of pages and movie analysis to sort through here. Can someone point me to a few good examples of the block artifact that has been mentioned. Thanks.

 

[MikeKobb]

Hello all!

It’s time for another update, and I’m happy to say it’s good news all around.

I mentioned in my last message that we had identified the source of the block artifacts that are visible when playing some content on Strato V and E (especially in bright areas on HDR titles), and that it was related to some licensed third-party software. Working with our vendor, this issue has been resolved. We will deploy this fix in the next kOS software update, as planned.

We have also found the cause of the change in black levels when playing Dolby Vision content to HDR10 displays. This fix is also in the upcoming kOS update.

This leaves two categories of issues with fixes that are being worked through. The first is the “red push” present on certain recent releases. Those are being corrected as new assets arrive from the affected studio.

The second is the ongoing work to produce updated versions of content that was encoded years ago, with early versions of our tools and processes. As previously mentioned, these titles are being updated in order of popularity, or if some other update (e.g., the addition of a Dolby Vision version) prompts an update. I can also share that we are working to improve our processes so that we can accelerate these updates. I can’t give a timeline at this point, but as this year goes on, you should see a noticeable increase in the cadence of updates to these older titles.

I think it's beneficial at this point, since this thread is very long, to also re-post and update the grid that I've shared several times before, listing the various issues that were reported and their current status. I've shortened the status explanations of some of these from their prior iterations to avoid being overly repetitive. You can use the forum's "search in this thread" feature to find previous posts by me if you want to read additional detail.

Issue	Current status
Cropping of letterboxed titles	Fixed. Also improved display of aspect ratio information across our user interfaces.
Incorrect HDR metadata on some titles	Confirmed; many titles addressed; updates ongoing. Note that this issue affects certain displays, while others completely ignore this metadata. As described previously, these issues were rooted in incorrect data provided as part of the metadata package that accompanies the mezzanine file, and we did not catch those errors. We have added additional process steps to make sure that we catch errors like this in the future. Further updates are being made following the strategy described above.
Red/green "push" on certain older titles	Confirmed; some fixes released already; updates ongoing. We fully understand the cause of the red/green shift in older titles, and we have begun releasing updates that correct it. We have made process adjustments to avoid what caused the issue, and we have deployed a new tool into our content workflow that will flag issues of this type should something creep in that would cause them again. (This is in addition to our manual review process.) Further updates are being made following the strategy described above.
Red “push” on certain recent titles	Confirmed; some fixes released already; updates ongoing. As described in an earlier post on this thread, this issue specifically affected titles from one of our studio partners, and we worked with them to get to the bottom of it and resolve the issue. We are receiving replacement assets for the affected titles and producing updated versions.
Poor picture quality on certain older titles (e.g. "Pixels")	Confirmed; some fixes released already; updates ongoing. As described above, some older releases don't match the quality of our more recent titles. We’ve made updates to some of these titles and this process is ongoing. Further updates are being made following the strategy described above.
Decoding of bitstream audio to PCM	TrueHD resolved in kOS 26.0; DTS-HD works as designed.
Detail, macroblock artifacts, grain structure, etc.	As described above, block artifact and Dolby Vision -> HDR10 issues resolved, will ship in upcoming kOS release. Inadvertent application of video processing by Strato V and Strato E players during playback was fixed in kOS 26.0 Where issues were caused by the encoding (at least in part), movie updates are happening according to the strategy outlined above.

That’s all for now. We’ll have more to say about the coming kOS update when it’s released. Have a great weekend!

 

[dinom]

Thanks for the update, Mike!

 

[Rmarci]

I mentioned in my last message that we had identified the source of the block artifacts that are visible when playing some content on Strato V and E (especially in bright areas on HDR titles), and that it was related to some licensed third-party software. Working with our vendor, this issue has been resolved. We will deploy this fix in the next kOS software update, as planned.

We have also found the cause of the change in black levels when playing Dolby Vision content to HDR10 displays. This fix is also in the upcoming kOS update.

Thank you for the update. This is great news.
When can we expect the update? days? weeks? months?

 

[Rmarci]

To those curious about the issue, I made a 3-second loop from the SDR version of Signal One to demonstrate it. In HDR, it would be a lot worse.
Download the 3-sec loop here: Signal One 2026 KSCAPE_SDR_Frame_115780_LOOP.mkv

This GIF makes the issue look a bit worse than it actually is in the loop file, but it still gives a good idea of what's happening.

 

[MikeKobb]

When can we expect the update? days? weeks? months?

Still the same timeframe mentioned in my last post: early summer. We avoid giving more precise date targets than that because there's always the possibility of an issue found during final testing that causes a change.

 

[Broncowrangler]

Well I noticed the “I am Legend” movie on sale for $9.99 and added it to my collection immediately. However after watching it, I felt somewhat like this:



Absolutely terrible quality. Black levels appeared like greys. Horrible blown highlights. Wtf? I have the Zavvi 4k steelbook which has a rather nice transfer.

Need to exercise more caution…especially during enticing markdowns.

 

[Space Sheik]

Hello all!

It’s time for another update, and I’m happy to say it’s good news all around.

I mentioned in my last message that we had identified the source of the block artifacts that are visible when playing some content on Strato V and E (especially in bright areas on HDR titles), and that it was related to some licensed third-party software. Working with our vendor, this issue has been resolved. We will deploy this fix in the next kOS software update, as planned.

We have also found the cause of the change in black levels when playing Dolby Vision content to HDR10 displays. This fix is also in the upcoming kOS update.

This leaves two categories of issues with fixes that are being worked through. The first is the “red push” present on certain recent releases. Those are being corrected as new assets arrive from the affected studio.

The second is the ongoing work to produce updated versions of content that was encoded years ago, with early versions of our tools and processes. As previously mentioned, these titles are being updated in order of popularity, or if some other update (e.g., the addition of a Dolby Vision version) prompts an update. I can also share that we are working to improve our processes so that we can accelerate these updates. I can’t give a timeline at this point, but as this year goes on, you should see a noticeable increase in the cadence of updates to these older titles.

I think it's beneficial at this point, since this thread is very long, to also re-post and update the grid that I've shared several times before, listing the various issues that were reported and their current status. I've shortened the status explanations of some of these from their prior iterations to avoid being overly repetitive. You can use the forum's "search in this thread" feature to find previous posts by me if you want to read additional detail.

Issue	Current status
Cropping of letterboxed titles	Fixed. Also improved display of aspect ratio information across our user interfaces.
Incorrect HDR metadata on some titles	Confirmed; many titles addressed; updates ongoing. Note that this issue affects certain displays, while others completely ignore this metadata. As described previously, these issues were rooted in incorrect data provided as part of the metadata package that accompanies the mezzanine file, and we did not catch those errors. We have added additional process steps to make sure that we catch errors like this in the future. Further updates are being made following the strategy described above.
Red/green "push" on certain older titles	Confirmed; some fixes released already; updates ongoing. We fully understand the cause of the red/green shift in older titles, and we have begun releasing updates that correct it. We have made process adjustments to avoid what caused the issue, and we have deployed a new tool into our content workflow that will flag issues of this type should something creep in that would cause them again. (This is in addition to our manual review process.) Further updates are being made following the strategy described above.
Red “push” on certain recent titles	Confirmed; some fixes released already; updates ongoing. As described in an earlier post on this thread, this issue specifically affected titles from one of our studio partners, and we worked with them to get to the bottom of it and resolve the issue. We are receiving replacement assets for the affected titles and producing updated versions.
Poor picture quality on certain older titles (e.g. "Pixels")	Confirmed; some fixes released already; updates ongoing. As described above, some older releases don't match the quality of our more recent titles. We’ve made updates to some of these titles and this process is ongoing. Further updates are being made following the strategy described above.
Decoding of bitstream audio to PCM	TrueHD resolved in kOS 26.0; DTS-HD works as designed.
Detail, macroblock artifacts, grain structure, etc.	As described above, block artifact and Dolby Vision -> HDR10 issues resolved, will ship in upcoming kOS release. Inadvertent application of video processing by Strato V and Strato E players during playback was fixed in kOS 26.0 Where issues were caused by the encoding (at least in part), movie updates are happening according to the strategy outlined above.

That’s all for now. We’ll have more to say about the coming kOS update when it’s released. Have a great weekend!

Thank you Mike for your hard work and this update. Much appreciated.

 

[KDeering]

Well I noticed the “I am Legend” movie on sale for $9.99 and added it to my collection immediately. However after watching it, I felt somewhat like this:

View attachment 10290

Absolutely terrible quality. Black levels appeared like greys. Horrible blown highlights. Wtf? I have the Zavvi 4k steelbook which has a rather nice transfer.

Need to exercise more caution…especially during enticing markdowns.

I watched this one a few weeks ago and mentioned it. I don't know if I have the disc here to compare to, but it definitely wasn't great looking. But I also feel like a lot of early Warner/Sony catalog titles in HDR weren't the best. Lots of black issues and way overdone HDR levels on top of issues with color saturations (which was a known bug with early Dolby Vision based transfers). I bet if Warner redid a lot of these titles now, they would look noticeable different (Fury Road, The Meg, Batman V Superman, Harry Potters, etc).

 

[Broncowrangler]

I watched this one a few weeks ago and mentioned it. I don't know if I have the disc here to compare to, but it definitely wasn't great looking. But I also feel like a lot of early Warner/Sony catalog titles in HDR weren't the best. Lots of black issues and way overdone HDR levels on top of issues with color saturations (which was a known bug with early Dolby Vision based transfers). I bet if Warner redid a lot of these titles now, they would look noticeable different (Fury Road, The Meg, Batman V Superman, Harry Potters, etc).

I have both the UK and US discs and felt they are quite decent. Probably a tad better than Hancock which I also own. The issues are definitely not as egregious as those found on the K version. Hopefully it gets updated soon.

 

[Rmarci]

Yep, this is another botched encode from Kscape. It looks like a full-range vs. limited-range mistake. The fact that this even passed quality control is proof that Kscape used to do little to no QC at all.

I Am Legend (2007) kscape vs uhd-bd | Slowpoke Pics

Slowpoke Pics image comparison service

slow.pics

It's simple: all of the older titles should be re-encoded. I feel bad for the people who paid $100,000 USD for the offline viewing package and have no way to upgrade their existing downloads to the corrected versions.

 

[thrawn997]

Built for Apple Intelligence last year when it sold its last round of most-capable iPhones even though the AI wasn't available? And, a year later, it still will not have released full capability, nor will it probably even do so until next year, well after the next release of phones in September.

Exactly, it is exactly like this. And apple is being sued for this because it was false advertising.

 

[thrawn997]

Yep, this is another botched encode from Kscape. It looks like a full-range vs. limited-range mistake. The fact that this even passed quality control is proof that Kscape used to do little to no QC at all.

I Am Legend (2007) kscape vs uhd-bd | Slowpoke Pics

Slowpoke Pics image comparison service

slow.pics

It's simple: all of the older titles should be re-encoded. I feel bad for the people who paid $100,000 USD for the offline viewing package and have no way to upgrade their existing downloads to the corrected versions.

It's okay, apparently some people in this thread can't tell the difference between the video quality of K and Itunes even in your static images showing them side by side

 

[Mandalore]

I've been watching the Interview with the Vampire series and opted to buy it on K instead of going for the bluray first (unusual for me) and the amount of artifacting and halos is kind of insane across it. Surely this is abnormal and the disc version isn't this crushed?

 

[DieZwei]

I feel bad for the people who paid $100,000 USD for the offline viewing package and have no way to upgrade their existing downloads to the corrected versions.

Do you mean the "Ultimate 4K system" with "offline viewing package"?
This just comes preloaded with content so you don´t have to download yourself. Of course the content can be updated and new content can be loaded to that system like any other system.

 

[lujan]

Well I noticed the “I am Legend” movie on sale for $9.99 and added it to my collection immediately. However after watching it, I felt somewhat like this:

View attachment 10290

Absolutely terrible quality. Black levels appeared like greys. Horrible blown highlights. Wtf? I have the Zavvi 4k steelbook which has a rather nice transfer.

Need to exercise more caution…especially during enticing markdowns.

Yes, I made the same errors when looking at attractive K pricing. For instance, I recently purchased a couple of titles on K at $4.99. The titles are (Paycheck & Lockup). The two titles are in HD. After the purchase, I noticed that I already had both of the titles in 4K on streaming sites. I would probably watch the 4K versions in the future rather than the HD versions with the better audio quality. I will have to start paying more attention to the quality I already have prior to making future K purchases.

 

[MarvinTheAndroid]

In my opinion, expectations of superior video quality to discs is one of the biggest misunderstandings regarding Kaleidescape. Absolutely no one should have this expectation. Historically I've never seen K themselves actually push this narrative, with it generally building up in forums, Fb groups, etc. (alongside other false notions like "true ownership").

This is simply not true. Although they have downplayed the prominence of such a comparison in recent years (One does have to wonder why) the comparison is right there on the product pages and takes less than a minute to find for anyone that cares to look: Strato E Movie Player - Kaleidescape

Not that I subscribe to the greater video throughput is always better narrative. However, even with their comparison they are slightly disingenuous when it comes to audio since they neglect to mention they often don't have superior object based mixes.

Regardless I don't think anyone here is expecting K to be better than disc, although they may hope, what they are expecting is K to be at least as good as disc which in far too many cases in some peoples opinion is simply not the case. Nobody is expecting miracles here and I don't think anyone has unrealistic expectations.