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Kaleidescape and UV

Lot's of well made comments and arguments and we will have to see who is listening! Upgrade pricing is my current issue..... you buy the only version available in the store for in my case $15.99 (DVD quality) and 2 weeks later the HD version is available and wait the HD version to buy new is the same price as the upgrade price at an additional $19.99.

$20 is not the issue but feeling ripped off and taken for granted is!

Not good in these competitive times
 
All good and fair comments guys, thanks for sharing!


Jim
 
Great post, OP. I agree for the most part, and for the vast majority of the time will choose to purchase directly from the K store in a conscious effort to support them. HOWEVER, what is a tough pill to swallow is when the UHD version is out on disc but only the HD version is out on K. I'm typically pretty patient, so will just hold out for K to release the UHD version, but what is annoying is when after that occasionally long wait, to find out that the disc version has Atmos/DTS:X but the K version does not.

The whole reason many of us invested in and continue to LOVE Kaleidescape is for the bit-for-bit copy of the disc version, sans previews and FBI warnings of course. I honestly do not mind paying a premium for the awesome service and to help support K, BUT it is still annoying to pay sometimes twice as much for essentially a neutered version of the same film.

I fully understand that Kaleidescape is not to blame here. They absolutely want to give us the best experience possible at all times. What I fail to understand is what the studios' logic is (or the lack thereof) in regard to these movie rights. Boggles the mind. That all said, I still typically choose to take the hit with the features to simply buy it off the store. If they always gave us the full disc treatment, then I would buy 100% of my movies from them. Not too often I don't, though. Being able to buy a movie from my phone or computer and have it downloaded to the server by the time I get home is pretty darn sweet.
 
No mention of lossy vs. lossless though or if bitstream passthrough will work in general for apps.
 
For me, it's really a strange catch 22. You see, I cannot afford a kaleidescape.

Only because I work for a dealer and get accommodations was I able to get a c1. Remember, this was the first unit for the masses, and I only could pull it off at cost. I was doing the dance of content before I was 'forced' to buy a second unit when the settlement happened. Forced in that I had a choice of an expensive unit with my favorite movies, or two with all my movies. Of course the second unit quickly filled up. I had acquired a dv700 for the must have Blu-ray that were not available d2d or at all. This did not help storage whatsoever.

This of course was exacerbated by our local salvage store getting a ton of Blockbuster online discs when they finally folded. Not to mention there's about 10 locations near me, all with a different selection that rotates it every month...

Now the cheapest and most beneficial route to get more storage was a Strato and costar. Get some 4k movies and transfer hd downloads to it. That lasted about a year and I'm now out of space again.

I've finally acquired a 1u, m700 and the new 6tb drives should be here Tuesday. I've only been able to do this from knowing the product and or knowing how to repair it. Again, I'm not someone who can afford this.

So my choices to fill these units up are completely price driven. They have to be. I can't normally afford this.

I am susceptible to flash sales and deals on demo worthy movies.

Tonight is a great example and why I'm posting this. Wife wanted to watch movie x. $12 on store, $8 on Vudu. Uv enabled. No brainier, store wins.

Then I remember email from Vudu today. Buy any of these movies, get 20% off next order. Jumamji is on there for $10. Uv enabled. Still $28 on store. 20% of movie x at $8 is $6.40.

So for $5 more then I was going to get movie x for from the store, I'm getting jumanji 4k and movie x.

I've seen the movie. Had no plans on buying it. Got suckered in.

So I'm not asking for matching prices, or deals on everything. I'm just asking for sucker deals that make me buy from them. But again, I know I'm relying on those that do buy from the store for it to continue, but I shouldn't be here in the first place.

That said, I've spent a lot of money in the store (to me), but if you make me think I've gotten a deal, it could be so much more.

Kevin D.
 
Do folks think K should plug all of these holes at some point and (maybe going forward with new titles) only allow a customer to download from the store IF they purchase from the K store? Seems like the future should be you purchase from the K store and you therefore receive a license to download for MA, etc. and not the other way around? SJ
 
SJHT said:
Do folks think K should plug all of these holes at some point and (maybe going forward with new titles) only allow a customer to download from the store IF they purchase from the K store? Seems like the future should be you purchase from the K store and you therefore receive a license to download for MA, etc. and not the other way around? SJ
Click to expand...

No, that is absolutely not how digital rights should work. The whole purpose of digital rights is that you should be able to buy anywhere and play anywhere.

That being said, us K owners should take it upon ourselves to support the K store as much as possible.
 
I agree that we all have an investment here and we need to support our investment. I also think that Kaleidescape needs to be sensitive to the fact that we are their clients. We should always get a premium service for a premium price, but we should still get some value.
 
billygreen23 said:
No, that is absolutely not how digital rights should work. The whole purpose of digital rights is that you should be able to buy anywhere and play anywhere.

That being said, us K owners should take it upon ourselves to support the K store as much as possible.
Click to expand...

Guess I disagree. Digital rights should not give you the option to download the equivalent of the physical disc from the K store. SJ
 
Digital rights shouldn’t give you rights to a digital copy? Because that’s pretty much the definition of digital rights. If it’s not going to work that way, then it’s not going to work.
 
Understand it is a digital copy, but it the same full resolution as the physical medium. It was stated that it costs K to download to your system. Not free. Probably more than a blank physical disk. Lol. Can’t walk into Best Buy and pick up the physical disk for free because you own the digital rights. Probably a bad analogy. :)

Maybe all of this is just noise. K should have the data to tell them how many people purchase from the store, vs. purchasing digital rights elsewhere and then proceeding to download from their store. If it became a big issue assume they would likely look harder at the situation. Given the price of K equipment, I would assume their primary customers are not going to try and go around their store to save $5, etc. I still believe they need to complete their digital rights situation for studios like Disney so we won’t have to purchase from the store (at a premium price) and then purchase the digital rights elsewhere so movies can be watched in other ways when required. SJ
 
They need to keep digital rights going both ways but they likely need to get creative in other ways. Here are some ideas to help K reduce their costs.

  • Delivery Optimization: I mentioned this idea before. It would drastically reduce bandwidth coming directly from K.
  • "Diff" downloading: Right now, if a movie is released with 5.1 audio and later Atmos audio, or some other glitch, the entire movie has to be downloaded again. They need to implement the ability to only download the data that is different.
  • Download Credits: Rather than allowing people unlimited free downloads, 1 credit = 1 download. You could get credits different ways. Maybe for every $5 spent in the K store you get a credit. So if you buy a $20 movie, you can download 4 movies. Or you could buy a download credit for $1 each.
 
billygreen23 said:
They need to keep digital rights going both ways but they likely need to get creative in other ways. Here are some ideas to help K reduce their costs.

  • Delivery Optimization: I mentioned this idea before. It would drastically reduce bandwidth coming directly from K.
  • "Diff" downloading: Right now, if a movie is released with 5.1 audio and later Atmos audio, or some other glitch, the entire movie has to be downloaded again. They need to implement the ability to only download the data that is different.
  • Download Credits: Rather than allowing people unlimited free downloads, 1 credit = 1 download. You could get credits different ways. Maybe for every $5 spent in the K store you get a credit. So if you buy a $20 movie, you can download 4 movies. Or you could buy a download credit for $1 each.
Click to expand...

I think the first idea is impossible based on the way movie encryption works to avoid piracy and is likely addressed at the contract level with K and the studios.

Second idea might be cool- you earn credits by buying on the K store that you can later use to download movies you bought elsewhere, thereby eliminating the freeloading aspect of buying on VUDU and downloading on K for free for some titles. However, that likely is controlled by movie studio contract as well.

I just buy directly on the K store so I don't have to mess around with any of this. Convenience- same reason I own K.
 
Another way could be to implement a monthly charge, say $10 or so. This gives you buffer to meet any offsets needed to download movies bought outside the store.

I do not agree with limiting digital rights flow either way and K needs to join MA ASAP. Also, the only way to stop movies bought outside store is to establish price parity. There is no way to justify spending $37 for a 4k movie when the same is available outside for $10. Same way with sales. During vudu/iTunes sales, movies go cheap, sometimes to $5 or lower. How will anyone buy the same movie in store for $23?

I think a reasonable monthly/yearly fees will help offset the download costs along with price parity.

Also, charge more for downloading to multiple systems. For example most, I would assume would own one or two systems. Maybe restrict downloads to 2 systems and charge downloads for more than 2.

I am sure a polling of the community would help find the right solution. Whatever it is, restricting digital rights or not joining MA is not a solution, but rather an impediment to K survival.
 
Yeah, just want to be clear that paying for downloads should only be a last ditch effort if K is in trouble and/or losing money on the store and download costs.

I'd be curious, does anyone have a rough estimate of systems in the wild that have store access? Let's say ballpark 10,000 downloads a month? That's a cost of $10,000 if the bandwidth costs $1/movie. That is really not a lot of money to a business. In my mind it would not justify introducing complex, frustrating, or expensive hoops that users have to jump through that could ultimately end up hurting K.
 
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