Kaleidescape now charging to scan unrecognized discs

[Mark H]

If additional resources are needed to keep up with requests from owners, then there must be a financial offset somewhere in the process to pay for that support. That's just sound financial management, which I would expect from any successful company.

For those that think K instituted this new fee to increase profit, that is just not correct. Even with the new fee, K is still not being fully compensated for the actual cost of providing the service, but it does help offset those costs.

Jim

If they can't cope then let us have the option to bookmark disks on our own systems.

The price of their disks I always thought was how they financed bookmarking as they are over 5 times the street price for storage and as I said before they are not sprinkled with 'pixie dust' to make them special.

 

[sbutter]

Since I use my Kaleidescape player in Cinescope mode, I cannot use my projector to zoom (it does not have a zoom compatible with Kscape Cinescope mode)

I currently use a projector with zoom lens memory and CinemaScape. If you are not using an Anamorphic lens, you may need to adjust the CinemaScape settings from CinemaScape 2.35 Letterbox to CinemaScape Native 2.35 Display.

CinemaScape Native 2.35 Display setting will keep the orginal unscaled imaged and then you can use the projectors zoom. Agian this only works with non-Anamorphic.

 

[cinelife]

As you know, K's general policy is to not confirm or discuss ongoing development of products or services, but clearly they are constantly looking to improve the user experience. We know that because of the unannounced improvements we have seen over the years. On a personal level, I'm always being reminded that K's customers are very much appreciated by K's owners and employees, and their satisfaction with products and the user experience is the driving force behind K's operations. As someone that interacts with K on an almost daily basis, I can tell you that these people genuinely care about their company and it's interaction with the end-user.

It is obvious this new bookmarking fee has created some degree of frustration with some owners, and to some extent that's understandable. For those that think this was a move to generate additional income, you are wrong. The reasoning behind the fee has already been discussed in this thread, and it does NOT generate additional net income to K, and was not intended to do so. I'm certain that given K's sensitivities to the customer's experience, this fee would not have been instituted if it were not necessary.

The important note to take away from this post is that K has always intended to add additional features to the end-user experience, including the ability to bookmark our own discs. This process is not nearly as easy to accomplish as one would think given the complexities involved with integrating different operating systems, and then creating the necessary "tools" needed by the end-user. Factor in K's desire to make the process as seamless and intuitive as possible and you can imagine this takes time to develop. I can tell you this is being addressed at K, and they have no problem with end-users being able to bookmark their discs. It is not possible to say when this function will be available, but it is being worked on, and this is just another example of why I say K genuinely cares about the end-user experience. Have faith, and a little patience please.



Jim

 

[Yetis]

Jim,

The frustration is that K has dropped all the bad and just keeps telling everyone to "be patient" for something that will eventually be good. Weeks turn into months, turn into... I appreciate you are closer to this than most, but even you must agree that the way everything has been handled here by K is pretty poor. If there is a positive new announcement pending, why not wait until then to hit people with the change to the fee structure. To be blunt, the way K has acted in the last 30 days, it doesn't feel like K cares at all about some of its customers. I have people who ask me, do you like your K setup and while I tell them it is great, it is tough to tell them to get on board, with just a "trust me" sort of outlook.

 

[cinelife]

Sure, and as I said, I understand the frustration.

First, let me state the obvious to anyone spending time in our forum, I am a huge fan of K the company, and it's employees. I regularly defend their products and policies, and can certainly be placed in the "fan boy" category when it comes to K. This obviously creates a bias on my part and my posts are read accordingly.

I do however share what I'm able to share, and base my posts on my life experiences with K as a company and business in general. As someone that has started and built several companies over the years, including a company I grew to 4000+ employees before selling, I tend to look at business from a owner/manager standpoint, and I understand this might conflict with the customer's viewpoint, but I'm also a customer.

Like K, I've always recognized the stakeholder concept when operating my businesses, and I regularly see K acknowledging the end-user as their primary stakeholder. Because of this, it is bothersome to me to hear comments that make it sound as though K doesn't consider customers when making decisions, because that is just not the case. Businesses must, if they have a desire to succeed, make adjustments to respond to the realities of the environment in which they operate, and K is no different. While I cannot speak to the exact process that went into the fee decision, I can say what I said above, K would not have instituted the fee if they didn't think it was necessary. I do know that one factor was the significant amount of discs they were receiving, mostly obscure titles (yes, I understand not everyone is sending in unique titles) at the same time they are working on content for the K Store. I understand some would have liked notice of the fee change, but I suspect such notice would have generated even more discs being rushed to K to try and beat whatever deadline they announced. How would that have helped alleviate the backlog in bookmarking K was experiencing? A business decision was made to deal with that situation, one not accepted by some, but still necessary to operate their business.

K could have just instituted the fee and moved on, BUT, instead they recognized this fee could be mitigated to some extent if they could provide the end-user with the tools to handle some of the bookmarking themselves, a function requested by some that posted earlier in this thread, but already being considered by K (but not announced). They are not asking for anyone to be patient, those are my words, and I don't speak for the company. I'm just recognizing that it will take some time to build that capability into the software.

I'll also say again that having spent many years playing in this industry, and having had direct contact and interaction with dozens of AV related companies, I have found NONE that can beat K when it comes to caring about their customers experience, and NONE that provide the level of professional support we experience from K.

Gotta go now, my wife says I'm talking to myself, again......



Jim

 

[Mark H]

Feeling more positive once again

Talking to yourself is no longer a sign of madness but instead is a great way of ensuring that your views and opinions are listened to and accepted.

Fully agree Jim.

They are great systems and there support is excellent but now we want more (for less bucks of course).

 

[Drhemi]

I will be patient

Great news, Jim, about the possible future ability to do some "bookmarking" ourselves. I use the term in quotes as it may not be identical to the bookmarking that K provides. I am happy to take some of the workload off of K's overworked staff so they can concentrate on getting ready for more titles in the store and I will anxiously await the expanded offerings which hopefully will make their way to Canada as well. I suppose titles we "bookmark" ourselves will be available only to our own systems. Wouldn't it be great if the metadata could somehow be shared with other K. users without causing any studio concerns?

Wayne

 

[Transepoch]

Even with the new fee, K is still not being fully compensated for the actual cost of providing the service, but it does help offset those costs.

I don't know what they pay the staff, but as estimated above, I think it depends in part on scale. For a few off-discs it might trend close to a bit below reimbursement, but for large batches it eventually reaches the point where the fees could be expected to easily offset the labor required.

This process is not nearly as easy to accomplish as one would think given the complexities involved with integrating different operating systems,[...]

If Sun Oracle (and no other flavor of) Java is good enough for the web controller interface, that's as good a place to start for dealing with O/S independence as anything.

 

[djb_rh]

If Sun Oracle (and no other flavor of) Java is good enough for the web controller interface, that's as good a place to start for dealing with O/S independence as anything.

Dear God, I sincerely hope they're working to get rid of Java in the K environment, not adding more to it.


--Donnie

 

[Pio435]

...

Like K, I've always recognized the stakeholder concept when operating my businesses, and I regularly see K acknowledging the end-user as their primary stakeholder. Because of this, it is bothersome to me to hear comments that make it sound as though K doesn't consider customers when making decisions, because that is just not the case. Businesses must, if they have a desire to succeed, make adjustments to respond to the realities of the environment in which they operate, and K is no different. While I cannot speak to the exact process that went into the fee decision, I can say what I said above, K would not have instituted the fee if they didn't think it was necessary. I do know that one factor was the significant amount of discs they were receiving, mostly obscure titles (yes, I understand not everyone is sending in unique titles) at the same time they are working on content for the K Store. I understand some would have liked notice of the fee change, but I suspect such notice would have generated even more discs being rushed to K to try and beat whatever deadline they announced. How would that have helped alleviate the backlog in bookmarking K was experiencing? A business decision was made to deal with that situation, one not accepted by some, but still necessary to operate their business.
...

Jim

just 2 comments:

- A company which cares about their customers does not leave theme in the dark. A clear communication is not more than fair. When K is developing a tool for bookmarking, why don't tell this the primary stakeholders, us customers?
- I contacted K about my concerns of bookmarking and the change of "marketing" for non US-Customers. Yes, K answered my first question but I'm still waiting for a response for some further questions I asked them. Not really the kind of support I would expect.

I just hope that K doesn't forget, that customers outside US also spent much money for the K-system and they are just expecting, that the USPs still are available without having to spend even more money for having the USPs working.

Pio

 

[Peter Nielsen]

I am not sure I understand the part about having to watch with 4 black bars. Can't you just go in to the browser and change the video string manually so it shows correctly on your screen. Am I missing something on this? I realize that this would not be optimal and would bug me whenever I had to do it but it is a work around the same as a zone would be on the kplayer.

I don't use the aspect ratio myself so I could be wrong on this.

John

John, what "string" are you referring to? What we need is a way to tell Kscape that an image is letterboxed and needs to be zoomed. This is not needed for material that is already bookmarked, of course.

It would be nice if there was a command I could send to the player to tell it to zoom, but AFAIK there is no such thing. Also note that one setting per movie is not acceptable. Some music videos require zooming in/out depending on the track, so it needs to be a setting that can be changed on the fly.

A simple zoom in/out command on the Kscape remote would be perfect and quite acceptable for use on all those videos that are not bookmarked...

Now, that said there is a workaround but it's extremely clumsy: What I can do is program my remote to switch Kscape from Cinemascope (2:35) mode to 16:9 mode. Then my projector and lense can do the appropriate zooming. However, when doing this the Kscape menu also will be in 16:9. It feels like a big fat cludge to have to do this in a system that is supposed to be high-tech. Why can't Kscape simply add a zoom function that lets the user zoom the video material (and still use the full 2:35 for the Kscape menus) when a video is not bookmarked...

Peter

 

[JohnJ]

I had to look back through the tread to try to remember what this was about...

I don't know where "string" came from and it must be a typo but I can't for the life of me think what word I might have been trying for.

However, the concept was that in the K browser under video, you have the options of picking the following aspect ratio settings:

16:9
CinemaScape 2.35 Anamorphic
CinemaScape 2.35 Letterbox
CinemaScape Native 2.35 Display

My thought was that you should be able to pick between these and get one that would fill most of the screen.

But from what you have said it sounds like you already tried this and it didn't work. I guess I am not sure why bookmarking would affect this.

John

 

[Peter Nielsen]

However, the concept was that in the K browser under video, you have the options of picking the following aspect ratio settings:

16:9
CinemaScape 2.35 Anamorphic
CinemaScape 2.35 Letterbox
CinemaScape Native 2.35 Display

My thought was that you should be able to pick between these and get one that would fill most of the screen.

Sure, I can select "16:9" to achieve a simple zoom. However, this has the bad side effect that the Kscape menu looks totally distorted. Consequently I would need to switch back to "CinemaScape 2.35 Anamorphic" when returning to the menu, or move my anamorhpic lens away when returning to the menu. What a hassle.

Also, the very specific zoom that switching from "CinemaScape 2.35 Anamorphic" to 16:9 achieves does not solve all situations. For example sufficient zoom to deal with the situation of non-anamorphic DVDs containing 2.35 aspect material cannot be achieved.

If we had a simple zoom function, the Kplayer could apply the zoom only to the video played and not to the menu system. This is why the Kplayer really needs to handle the zooming - and it already does this automatically when appropriate bookmarks are present. It's the situation when aspect info is unavailable that is problematic. The user should be given control in this case!

But from what you have said it sounds like you already tried this and it didn't work.

Correct. It could be used in some situations, but not all. It's also a major cludge. Not practical.

I guess I am not sure why bookmarking would affect this.

When Kaleidescape adds bookmarking, they're able to also add aspect ratio information. For example if you have a non-anamorphic DVD (4:3) where the picture is letterboxed 2:35 (i.e. huge black bars on the top/bottom), the aspect information in the bookmarking can tell the Kplayer to zoom the 4:3 letterboxed image so that it fills a 2:35 screen completely.

Peter

 

[JohnJ]

Got it. Things get complicated when switching an anamorphic lens in and out.

John

 

[Pio435]

Quite a long time with no news from KS about bookmarking. Only news for US Customers about new studios an movies in k-store which is still not available in Europe (Switzerland). Nearly every new movie I buy has no bookmarks or they are not complete (the amazing Spiderman 2 is missing aspect-ratio an maskinformation). No more KS-Supportpoint in Switzerland, so I have not only to pay 10$ for each disk within the loan-programm, I have also the high taxes for sending abroad ... This is no longer the KS-experience I invested in and it's annoying that KS doesn't provide any informations to it's non us-customer, if and when they will release a bookmarkingtool for the enduser.

it could be so simple. They already have implemented the personal bookmarkin tool, so they just have to add custom-bookmarks like custom_movie_start, custom_begin_endcredits, custom_mask_information and custom_ascpect_ratio. Then check if this items are filled/tagged respectivly filled with Information and if so, use this dataset for the controller-events ...

KS, please give us back the experience we are used to without the need to spent more money for your "USP" for which we have allready payed for with buying your expensive hardware ...

 

[cinelife]

Pio, K may see your post and respond, but I will also reach out to them today to get an update on this issue.



Jim

 

[Mark H]

Thanks Jim.

It is disheartening with the regard to lack of progress on this and the store, we have a store for the UK but it is very poor and little or no new titles. Unlike with Amazon where I can buy disks from the US I can't do that with the K Store as it seems to also check the card issuing country as well as the ip.

We pay generally at least 50% more for hardware in Europe than the US so we have a real 'un-loved' feeling.

Appreciate full bookmarking may be difficult for early release but I am sure to start with a simple solution to play film / chapter rather than disk would be relatively easy to implement.

Like said above nearly every disk I also now buy comes without bookmarks and several never seem to manage to even get the artwork added unless I do it manually. Appreciate K supporting the client base in the US and getting ready for the new implementations post November where new systems won't import copy protected DVD's but to loose sight of the customers they have is not good for a long term business model.

The movie streaming options we have are now really starting me to question what is the point of K!

 

[Pio435]

Thank you very much Jim!

@Mark H

At the moment I'm bookmarking every movie with a custom Scene "Hole Movie" where I set the "start scene tag" when the movie Begins, then forwarding >> to the endcredits and set "end scene tag". This way I can workarround the Play-Disc-Misery.

And that could also be the easiest way to get bookmarking for endusers implemented. Just add tags the enduser can set himselfes and implement it in the controlsystem ...

This would still not be the K-Experience I expected when i bought the system (when I have to bookmark movies on my own, I can do this with much cheaper systems) but it would return the system to be able of controlling a full automated homecinema and give back at least the K-Experience for the familiy members which are only "consumers" and not "administrators" ...

 

[Mark H]

What a great idea to get around the play disk option - so simple I never even thought about it. You could also do something similar for each episode if it is a TV series (something I buy a lot of).

I guess we shall just have to use your workaround for the foreseeable future.

Thanks for the idea.

 

[ISW23]

I can't get this workaround to work.Everytime I try I get "Unable to create new scene"

Any ideas?

Ian.