DVD CCA appeal "settled"?

[cinelife]

To continue this trend, are you saying the 'customer' is grandfathered, not any particular equipment in the system?

IE, I have a new C1 capable of DVD import. If I purchase a new C1 after November, you're saying the new unit would allow DVD imports as well when paired with my system?

Say a year later my original C1 gets hit by lightning with a catastrophic failure and I have to purchase another unit. Since that's replacing the original, would the system still be grandfathered?

Kevin D.

Yes, you are grandfathered. The easiest way to explain the settlement is to say "If you are a current owner of a K system, or become an owner of a K system prior to Nov.30th, the injunction has no affect on your system's functionality, not now, and not in the future."

It makes no difference if you upgrade your Servers in the future, or buy another Server to add to your system, or get one from K as part of warranty work, etc, you will always have the same DVD import and playback capability you currently have. Any server added to your system in the future takes on the same characteristics as your current system. The only caveat to all of this is that you must be adding the new Server to a Legacy/Grandfathered system. If you purchase a new Server after Nov. 30th for use as a SEPARATE system, it will have the DVD restriction.

It would not be accurate to say the "customer is grandfathered" because the "customer" does not have the right to purchase new Servers as separate systems after Nov. 30th and have those Server's grandfathered. In such a case, those Server's would have the DVD restriction.

Hope that's clear.



Jim

 

[Kevin D]

Crystal, but can I muddy it up?

Say I fill my C1 up (who am I kidding, it's full all ready), can I add a Premier Line player and server to my system, replicate and remove the C1, and still be grandfathered in?

If not it appears I have 5 months to decide if 1200 DVD quality / 200 BR quality is enough space for me if they never release any storage expansion options for the Cinema Line.

I know I'm not taking into consideration disc to digital that will most likely trump everything anyway, but still something to ponder.

I'm assuming on the used market:

1: If any server is purchased by an existing customer it assumes the qualities of that customer's system.

2: If it's from an existing system that still has active components and goes to a new customer (IE, existing customer goes from 1U to 3U and sells 1U), it won't import DVD's for the 'new' customer because Kscape can easily see it's on for a different customer.

3: If an entire system is sold to a new customer and no one bothers to tell Kscape it has changed owners, everything will function fine until something goes wrong or they have tighter control over pairing the store account and the customer account. IE, you better be friends with the seller because they will need to be involved with any upgrades/problems.

Kevin D.

 

[bedbuged]

Now that I understand that 'grandfathered' applies to the equipment itself (the server) and not the customer....

What happens if I decide to sell my grandfathered server? I theoretically should be able to sell it as a 'grandfathered system with full dvd functionality' to a potential buyer. Right?

Like when you sell a piece of K gear that's still under warranty, the new owner inherits the remaining warranty.

 

[JohnJ]

Crystal, but can I muddy it up?

Say I fill my C1 up (who am I kidding, it's full all ready), can I add a Premier Line player and server to my system, replicate and remove the C1, and still be grandfathered in?

Kevin D.

And if I want to add a system for another residence, can I add a C1 before the deadline and upgrade to a premiere line server and still be grandfathered?

John

 

[MikeG]

If you can import your old system into the new premier line the answer would be yes. If you can't, which I believe is the case, the answer would be no.

 

[ptrubey]

Do you think that now Kaleidescape could add a feature to allow home movies to be uploaded to the server?

 

[MikeG]

As it stands now they are two separate product lines. It would be up to K make them compatible.

 

[digitalvd]

Oh Oh. No future for us in Germany? Time to sell my components. The download store in Germany seems to be far away. In my opinion Kaleidescape was a good solution for years. But now?

Patrick

 

[JerryL]

Are non-US territories not grandfathered? If they are then I would think an existing owner should be OK... Do I have that wrong?

 

[JDS]

From what I have read "grandfarthering" is not geographically dependent. I imagine many owners are not aware of forthcoming changes for new systems.

 

[Transepoch]

So in reading this umpteen-times last night, it sounds like the settlement uses the same definition of "system" as the K-Service & License Agreement does (http://www.kaleidescape.com/go/sla.)

"Kaleidescape System" and "System" means a combination of Hardware and Software that works together, within a single location such as a home, yacht or private aircraft, to store, organize and play a library of movies, TV shows, music and other Content throughout that single location over a local area network. For purposes of this Agreement, "Kaleidescape System" expressly excludes third party hardware and software relating to installation and integration, control programming, User Content and/or User Content loading services.

So, it's not quite the customer=legacy and server=legacy, but close enough that we should generally be safe.

 

[djb_rh]

So in reading this umpteen-times last night, it sounds like the settlement uses the same definition of "system" as the K-Service & License Agreement does (http://www.kaleidescape.com/go/sla.)

So, it's not quite the customer=legacy and server=legacy, but close enough that we should generally be safe.

Yeah, I'm starting to think that even that case of "the house burns down" or the "yacht sinks" would actually even be protected assuming you simply had your dealer replace it into your insurance purchased replacement house or yacht. I don't want to test that, and hope nobody has to, but I think their example of the house burning, yacht sinking, or plane crashing being the kind of things to reduce the legacy count by one is simply when the owner decides that there is to be no replacement (I mean if you crash with the plane...).

Basically the owner would have to abandon his system by not maintaining/replacing it in any way after it dies or is destroyed by some kind of act of God. We just can't do anything that would increase the number of legacy systems after that date. Preserving that number is okay, however. And since K knows if your old system dies or not, REALLY (because it starts to become useless if it can't get metadata, which requires a call to the mothership and whatnot), this shouldn't ever be much of an issue.


--Donnie

 

[Transepoch]

Maybe not if the whole location goes down. I would think you might need at least one component that will call-home. Worst case you can just plug-in a miniplayer once a month, so it stays registered on your system, and then store it in a bank vault for the other 29-days

 

[dlittle]

What about a more common scenario where you sold your house and bought a new house, moving all of your existing Kaleidescape equipment into this “new location”. Would it still be the same system, and legacied in?

 

[Croptop]

What about a more common scenario where you sold your house and bought a new house, moving all of your existing Kaleidescape equipment into this ?new location?. Would it still be the same system, and legacied in?

Yes.

 

[JerryL]

Perhaps we will see some form of common sense come to the rescue? Or is that asking too much?

I think if you move it should still be grandfathered. I would hope the same if there was a total loss due to fire, water etc.

 

[bedbuged]

While some of the questions may seem obvious to some, it just shows that there are a lot of concerned owners out there. All of us here have quite a bit of time and money invested in our systems. For almost 10 years there has been so much speculation concerning K's legal matters more recently how this injunction would affect all of us, and now that day is fast approaching.

Most (but not all) of my questions have been answered by those on this forum who would definitely be in the know, but I would still like to see more of an official statement on K's website concerning this, or better yet, a mass e-mail to all dealers and existing customers spelling out the details in plain English of what is protected and who is protected and what is not going forward.

Even if you think that the DVD functionality is not that important to you now... It might suddenly become relevant if you found out later on that the re-sale value of your equipment just got cut in half after 11/2014, because your equipment loses it's grandfathered status the minute you sell it.

The devil is in the details... Everyone's playing the 'what if' game. Guessing and hoping that it benefits them in some way or doesn't affect them at all... myself included.

 

[JerryL]

I agree.

 

[Yetis]

The good news is that we have gotten all the bad news so far and presumably there is some good news coming...

 

[josh]

I've been unusually quiet on the topic as I had some knowledge of the details of the settlement from company execs before it was announced and promised I'd not post anything about it.

I think in general this is good news for the company.

The big question for me is, how attractive will post-november new K systems be to new K customers? Will the whole package of new content plus new DVD restrictions be enough to still justify such a premium price for all this in-home storage on HD and vaulted BR discs when the world is moving to streaming multi-device access? I hope so... but not clear to me.

A few other minor questions about the grandfathering still remain. For instance, if a person has never bought Kaleidescape before, but buys a USED system that was grandfathered under its original owner, what's the status of that new owner? Are they grandfathered (since the grandfathering applies to the server/system, not the owner) and can continue to import DVDs onto that system that always had the ability? Or are they now subject to the DVD restrictions since they were not an official K customer before Nov. '14?

Some other good news in the way this has come together, is I believe that there is still the incentive at K to maintain the DVD Movieguide service, as that metadata is still valuable for post-settlement (non-grandfathered) systems... those systems can still play back DVDs (from vault or tray) and therefore still need the metadata. So Movieguide resources will still be applied to DVDs. Had the settlement meant a full abandonment of DVD playback entirely going forward, as was possible, then there'd be dwindling incentive for K to apply resources to keeping up with DVD metadata for a smaller and smaller number of households. So I consider that good news.

--josh