CES Blu-Ray demonstration / detailed announcement?

[iansilv]

Anyone have anyinfo or thoughts on this? We are about 1 month away, so I would assume someone here might have heard something.

 

[iansilv]

anyone?

 

[cinelife]

There will not likely be a Blu-ray announcement from K at CES. The original "2009" announcement still stands, and although we've all been hopeful it would be earlier rather than later in 2009, most of us understood it would likely be later. K does not give "updates" and given the "we do not discuss future products" rules at K, I'm sure we will not hear anymore about BR until it is actually released.

Personally, I was surprised MM announced BR when he did. He probably felt compelled to disclose K's intent in this regard because of market conditions, but having done so, I doubt he'll go further.

"Are we there yet..."

Jim

 

[iansilv]

I hope that someone can post in here about K's CES presence and ask some direct questions about bluray.

 

[cinelife]

I can already post on BR. Nothing has changed. Managed Copy is still unresolved (not K's fault, talk to the BR guys), and until it is resolved we will not have a BR Player. K is ready, but needs MC to be finalized. AFAIK, there is no movement on MC at the moment.

Jim

 

[JerryL]

Any gut feelings or wild speculation as to when we might see them get MC done?

 

[cinelife]

"Wild speculation" (and that's all it is) would be 6 months.

Like many of you, my BR collection is growing and it would be nice to get it into the server. Additionally, I regularly demonstrate the K system and now (as opposed to 6 months ago) I ALWAYS get asked about BR capability and it isn't fun to say it is coming, but I cannot provide a date.

Again, given that K will only operate legally (a good thing IMO) we are forced to wait for the BR clan to figure out MC, and all it's requirements.

I'm sure we can all see that a BR solution is a winner for K as well and I'm sure they want to implement it as soon as possible, so the delay is clearly not in K's best interest and is certainly not their fault. (But of course we all know that.)

Hang in there guys, this is hopefully the year!

Jim

 

[DigitalStudioWerks]

We have been told (repeatedly) by our sales rep that it looks like it will be released at the end of 2009. I am personally thinking Q4

 

[cinelife]

That's about a good a guess as any, at this point.

It is likely no one at K knows the answer either because they don't control the process. It is certainly a safe bet to say 4Q, but even that could be pushed back if MC isn't resolved.

Jim

 

[Lloydy]

I'm new to this forum and have found it very useful indeed as i want to purchase the K system after my B & O dealer suggested it. I have the same problem with B & O, they have no Bluray and don't know when they will, so I'm unsure of which way to go at the moment, i take it the system will not even play a BR disk just like B & O?

 

[cinelife]

I'm new to this forum and have found it very useful indeed as i want to purchase the K system after my B & O dealer suggested it. I have the same problem with B & O, they have no Bluray and don't know when they will, so I'm unsure of which way to go at the moment, i take it the system will not even play a BR disk just like B & O?

That's correct. The current 1080p Players are not BR capable (they do, however, throw out an excellent image).

You mentioned being new to K, and I'm not sure what you have read on the forum, but hopefully you are aware of the following:

-K has already announced support for BR, is committed to a BR solution, has already devoted time to making this happen, and is awaiting the BR folks decision regarding Managed Copy, and other licensing requirements. The plan is to have a solution this year.

-At present, any vendor claiming BR capability in their systems is doing so without a license, and may be subject to legal action going forward. These companies normally require the buyer to purchase their own 3d party software to essentially "break encryption" to allow a copy to be made. This is viewed by the producing industry as being illegal and lawsuits have already been filed to stop this activity.

-K has always taken the "high road" in this regard and will not allow for persistant copies of any protected content without the proper licenses in place.

-At this point, those looking to obtain the licensing necessary to store BR content, K included, are waiting on the BR folks to come to an agreement regarding Managed Copy (or whatever form is to be used to allow owners to make at least one back-up copy of the content they own). There is a belief/hope that this will occur in 2009.

We are all patiently/impatiently waiting for that decision.

Jim

 

[JerryL]

LLoyd, your B&O system should (ask them) work with anyone's Blu Ray player. I personally like the Panasonic BD55 and Sony S550- both are kind of like the best of the reasonably priced players. I use a BD50 (predecessor to the 55) in my system and its fairly high end. You don't need a very expensive fancy BR player to get a great image.

The K system is really fantastic if you have a lot of media to organize. For example, I have 1200 movies. Sometimes its easy to forget which ones I have and the K makes it easy to access all those choices. Same for music. It is a relatively large investment in terms of cost, but I have never had a moment of buyers remorse with the K system. As a matter of fact, I've added to it over time. And my opinion is the image the K players produce is top notch as is the audio over its digital connection. Yes, I am a big fan, but its been earned.

Guys, I did some Google searches on Managed Copy and I hate to say it but from what I read, it just looks like the studios do not want this. I hope I am missing something- having K do Blu Ray would be wonderful.

 

[cinelife]

You are correct Jerry, MC is not favored by everyone with an interest, and it may never be implemented.

The delay on their (BR folks) part is one of the reasons the 3d party ripping software got more attention, as well as some vendors deciding not to wait. All of this puts K in a difficult position because of their insistance on having a license in place (which I agree with). We (my A/V biz) regularly lose business to the compeitition because they allow for BR implementation now, albeit illegally (IMO).

(I use the term competition loosely, because IMO no one really competes with K.)

Jim

 

[josh]

Welcome to the forum Lloydy. Unfortunately, for now, that's correct. The Kaleidescape players will neither import nor playback a BR disc. We're all hoping to hear some news on this soon.
--josh

 

[AnOutsider]

You are correct Jerry, MC is not favored by everyone with an interest, and it may never be implemented.

The delay on their (BR folks) part is one of the reasons the 3d party ripping software got more attention, as well as some vendors deciding not to wait. All of this puts K in a difficult position because of their insistance on having a license in place (which I agree with). We (my A/V biz) regularly lose business to the compeitition because they allow for BR implementation now, albeit illegally (IMO).

(I use the term competition loosely, because IMO no one really competes with K.)

Jim

That may be, but in all reality, it's a consumer's world. If they want to do something that they feel they should be able to do with something they purchased, they'll find ways to do it. This has been shown a million times over (RIAA vs the world anyone?).

These companies should learn and move forward, not put obstacles in the way. Unfortunately, since K prefers to take the moral high ground (nothing wrong there, just a fact), it may hurt them a bit (only a bit, since most that can afford one will still consider it, but they may put their purchase off if they find out this "god-system" can't playback what most perceive as the future of DVDs).

I do notice that almost every DVD I buy now has a free digital copy with it. Baby steps...

 

[cinelife]

I generally agree with what you are saying and I understand the "I bought it so I should be able to do what I want with it" mentality, BUT, that rationale fails to recognize that purchasing DVD's, CD's and other media isn't the same as buying a carton of milk. There is a specific contract/license included in the media sale that defines the parties rights, including use restrictions. Buying implies that the buyer agrees to those terms and conditions and if they do not agree, then they shouldn't be buying the product. Once the purchase is made, they should honor the agreement (at least according to my parents and grandparents).

Jim

 

[Lloydy]

LLoyd, your B&O system should (ask them) work with anyone's Blu Ray player. I personally like the Panasonic BD55 and Sony S550- both are kind of like the best of the reasonably priced players. I use a BD50 (predecessor to the 55) in my system and its fairly high end. You don't need a very expensive fancy BR player to get a great image.

The K system is really fantastic if you have a lot of media to organize. For example, I have 1200 movies. Sometimes its easy to forget which ones I have and the K makes it easy to access all those choices. Same for music. It is a relatively large investment in terms of cost, but I have never had a moment of buyers remorse with the K system. As a matter of fact, I've added to it over time. And my opinion is the image the K players produce is top notch as is the audio over its digital connection. Yes, I am a big fan, but its been earned.

Guys, I did some Google searches on Managed Copy and I hate to say it but from what I read, it just looks like the studios do not want this. I hope I am missing something- having K do Blu Ray would be wonderful.

Thanks Jerry and everyone here for a great and very informative forum.

I'm currently using a Sony PS3 as my Bluray player through a 65" B &O TV and its great, i have been told today the B & O are going to upgrade one of the other TVs which has a DVD player built in to run BR next month and `free of charge`.

I purchased a complete home B & O AV and lighting system light year and was introduced to Kaleidescape then but costs were just to high for all in one go, it was going to top ?100,000 all in.

If it helps any further prospective K customers in the UK, i looked at everything available on the market to offer the facilities of storing and distributing high end sound and video media and nothing comes close to this system for functionality and design, espesially if connected to a B & O system, its like B & O designed it!!

And finally, my dealer said `they are a joy to deal with and truly support their products` very rare these days but very important when making a large purchase like this.

This and the forum have convinced me to now order my K system, and sorry if i have gone on. The only query i have is to what i will have to replace when and if BR is approved, will it be just the player?

Thanks again
Lloyd.

 

[JerryL]

Lloyd,
Youre welcome . My understanding is yes, you will need to replace the player if/when BR comes to K. The server is just a big array of hard drives that stores computer data. Does not matter if that data is BR or DVD or CD or whatever. Of course, a typical BR has something like 6x more data than a typical DVD. So, you might have to increase the storage capacity by adding hard drives. You will need what I will call the BR player because the BR data uses a different physical format so the older player just wouldnt be able to read it. Once the data is read, you would also need different decoding chips for BR. So its both physical and software. HD also takes a lot more bandwidth so its possible you would need to improve some areas of your network, but a good test of that would be that K ships 2 "free" HD programs with the system- these use MPEG2 which is a different CODEC than most BRs use (they CAN use MPEG2, I believe Kingdom of Heaven is and that is an awesome movie). These would be a solid test of any bandwidth issues you would have.

One bit of advice on ordering a new system. There are 2 server options, the 1U and the 3U. The "U" refers to the amount of rack spaces each one takes up. My opinion is the 1U exists either to help people who really need to stretch their budget to get into a K system or for people with small media libraries that are not likely to increase in size. There is nothing wrong with it, but when I see you are running with B&O gear, etc, I assume if you had to you could go for the 3U. My opinion the 3U is the better choice because it presents so much more expandability. I think the 1U has 4 drive bays and the 3U has (I think) 14. I believe a 1TB K drive can hold around 100 DVDs. If we just divide that by 5 (rather than 6- easier to do in my head) that works out to about 20 BR discs- again if BR ever happens for us. My experience is the K system is so wonderful and easy to use that you will find new content to add to it and the 1U would be full very fast and then you have to decide if you would buy a whole new server. This happens to people with the 3U too- but it would take longer and makes the investment in the server make more sense.

AnOutsider,
I actually find the digital copy to be troubling from the standpoint of those who want managed copy because the studios can say managed copy is not needed, they are giving us the ability to make a copy right here. I also agree with you and Jim- in the "real world" I think you are right, but Jim has it as it should be.

The way it looks to me right now is we are not likely to get managed copy, and for K to get us BR functionality, its going to require something else- perhaps some kind of agreement between K, K Users and the BR group.... I can only speak for myself, but I would pay a small license fee for BR functionality. I can also see many other K owners howling at that prospect.

 

[josh]

Welcome to the forum Lloyd! Here's another idea you may want to think about to save some money while waiting for the BR player. Since you're going to end up replacing any players you buy today, you want to minimize your investment in the players today. (I agree with Jerry to stretch if you can to get the largest server possible). So to save money on players today that will have to be replaced in a year or so, here's two ideas:

• Instead of buying the full-size Kaleidescape 1080p player, you could buy the smaller 1080p miniplayer. They have the exact same picture quality and features. The only difference is the physical size and the inclusion of the disc reader in the 1080p player. Pick up a used Kaleidescape Reader (a standalone DVD loading device) to load your collection. Those readers are cheap on the second-hand market now because most people have the single-chasis Movie Player 2 or 1080p players now. Then, when the BR Players come, you'll only be replacing a smaller and cheaper miniplayer. You may come out ahead in this scenario. Note - there's one minor function you won't have with a combination 1080p player and a Reader - the ability to play a disc directly from the tray. That means you can't use your player for rental or borrowed discs. If that matters to you, you should keep that slight limitation in mind.

• Or you could pick up a used MoviePlayer 2 (1080i) which does have a built in reader. Again, these older players are (relatively) cheap since many people want the 1080p players. You'll still get great picture quality (though slightly below the 1080p players), but will be saving a lot before you have to replace your player with the Movie Player 3 or whatever they call the BR player.Hope that's helpful...

These scenarios may save you some money and let you invest a little more of your budget in the server, which by all accounts will not need to be replaced when BR capability arrives.

--josh

 

[cinelife]

I failed to say welcome as well Lloyd, so WELCOME!

All good advice from both Jerry and Josh.

Also, Jerry is correct that a 1U only hold 4 1TB drives, 3 of which can be used for storage (the 4th is the RAID backup). Each TB provides for 130-150 DVD's depending on DVD size). The 3U holds 14 1TB drives, 12 of which can be used for storage. The other two are dedicated to back-up, 1 for RAID and 1 as a "hot spare" (used to substitute for a drive should one fail). The spare remains empty until needed.

Given current BR disk sizes, we "should" be able to store about 30 BR disks. This will likely decrease as the full potential for BR storage (currently 50GB) is used (most BR disks currently on the market are using 20-30GB). As Jerry pointed out, a 1TB disk will only hold 20 BR disks if the full 50GB is used.)

I'm hoping that we will also, at some point, be able to fully control the content that we store. I'd like to load ONLY the movie as I don't normally watch the extras that show me how what I'm about to watch, or just watched, is fake.

In any case, enjoy the forum!