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Kaleidescape now charging to scan unrecognized discs

Sorry for the delay (and the answer), but not likely to see that level of bookmarking available anytime soon. Although K is aware of the desire to self bookmark, it turns out the process to bookmark certain disc locations is much more complex than it is to create scenes. They have other priorities at the moment but may eventually look closer at a possible solution down the road. No stated timetable. Sorry.




Jim
 
To be honest, it's not what I expected to read - and doesn't match the information I got from the swiss importer earlier this year - but it makes it quite easy for me now. With this information I can make use of my rights here in switzerland and return the system to K and get back my money.

What I can't unterstand is that there must also be a few other customers which have implemented K in a homecinema and now have to pay for a key feature. Do they all accept this? Well when money doesn't matter it's quite easy for a Enterprise to change ongoing processes, but I will never understand, that people accept this even when money doesn't matter!
 
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I certainly would t pay k for this service, unless it was an obscure DVD series ( like an imported tv show or something) that I REALLY wanted indexed.

I'm with you on the power in the hands of the people position. We'll see how thugs go


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Things have changed and I think it is obvious in that the focus is on their store in the US and supporting their large US customer base which does make the rest of us feel we are being neglected which I hope will change soon once they have managed to on-board all the mainstream studios. Most disks I buy are no longer bookmarked and it is frustrating as is the store content in UK...... yes I buy a lot of TV shows as I live and work abroad and miss quality UK TV & drama. I am more selective now in that I generally only send films for bookmarking and use the scenes option as a workaround for the rest.
 
I even understand the focus on getting on board all the studios. But K took also the money of customers outside US and now cut's off the only way we had the chance to get content in our Servers - the loan-program. Here in Switzerland nobody talked about the possibility, that K could change this service into a pay-service. if I had known that before, I would never have bought the system.

Now I have a expensive system which is not able to do more than a Rasperry Pi connected to a NAS with average costs of $1000. Oh no, I have to correct this: with XBMC on Raspberry I can set bookmarks on my own! Only thing which is not so comfortable is ripping manually!

And worst: K knows about this and they are not willing to change this any time soon - no the worst: it is not even sure it will ever be changed!

sorry - K - shame on you!

Telling us, bookmarking special positions is much more complicated than generating scenes is nothing more than a cheap excuse. When generating scenes we do nothing else than selecting/setting a time stamp to the currently viewed movie (technical it is a file position). And the same thing could be done for special custom-bookmarks mentioned in earlier posts.

Same thing for Ascpect-Ratio and Maskinformation. K only has to bring this fields up to front-end of moviecontent-page in the gui and we can manage/correct this information directly.

I'm very disappointed about all this. I use the system now for about 6 month and I loved it! But without bookmarked movie content it's absolutly senceless.
 
Well, K, I really can't believe that you are not willing to change the bad situation for your non US customer.

So I want to make a suggestion which could help us, getting back most of the feature we are used to without having to do to much for you:

First, just implement a feedback to your controlprotocol which sends the name of the played scene to a controlsystem. With this, we could catch for example "Scene_Endcredit" (or Scene_Start or what ever, we can add this scene without your help :)) - with this we could even define where an Intermission has to occure :)

Second, just add a custom field "Custom-Ascpect-Ratio" too the movie-content gui and send this Information over the controlprotocol. With this information we can give the control of the automated mask back to K-Movieplayer

Once this informations are sent to a controlsystem we can catch them to use them ... and all probs belong to past!

These are just two little adds to your system which gives back a huge comfort to all your clients.

You see, I'm not willing to toss out my K-System so give us a sign, K ist willing to help your clients outside US.

@Jim

Would be very nice, if you could give this post a "boost" by forwarding this information to K und help us getting rid of this frustrating situation! Thank you!
 
Francois, I'll point them to the suggestion.:)



Jim
 
Once again I'm thinking about this topic and was in contact with K about the customer-bookmarking. Yes this topic is under Review by K, but no descision has been made. So we will not see a solution soon ...

Assuming most people who want to have bookmarked their disc, are also using a control-system, I have been looking for alternatives to get the needed date into K-System and finaly found a solution. Only prob is that it is a little "unsexy" because I have to fill in the data in the visible part of movieguides-metadata.

So I asked K, to implement the following (se also attached picture)

- some user fields which are only visible in the web-mask (during editing movieguidedetails)
- the data should be sent through K's IP/RS232-Control-System/Protocoll

With this, it should be possible for nearly anyone using a control system to have custom Bookmarks ...

What is the community thinking about this approach?

Regards and HAPPY New Year!

Pio
 

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Not bad but that misses the most important bookmarking feature - which file to start playing to play the feature. And while there is the old "play the largest one" idea, that won't work for films with a theatrical and director's cut version, and it also won't work for TV shows where you want to bookmark individual episodes.

I have what I feel is an even better idea. Release the bookmarking tools to approved dealers who are then able to either do that for a fee or include free bookmarking for a set number of discs as part of their service with the sale of a new system. Also, it would allow for more people who can bookmark and add covers and such but not open the floodgates where low quality data might start infiltrating the system or open themselves up to people adding bad data just to sabotage like could happen if there were no controls on who can add metadata. They could have the person who is doing the metadata at Kaleidescape approve the submissions if they wanted to look over them first (they wouldn't be able to check the bookmarking, but they could verify the cover art quality meets their standard)

This would also seriously cut down the costs and shipment times for overseas customers. Of course, a dealer would have to agree to get on the list but I would expect there would be enough volunteer to help shoulder a lot of the burden and also that would increase the hit rate, which gives everybody a better Kaleidescape experience. I know I wouldn't mind shouldering a bit of the effort to make the system better for all. It also could allow for an additional revenue stream for some dealers who feel inclined to make a buck on the endeavor.
 
Good idea, but this assumes, that the actual bookmarking tool can be handled by the dealers. And I think, thats not the case for the moment so we're back to the decision about developing a tool or not ...

K wants to bring the K-Experience for movies which are viewed by masses and not for movies existing in only in a few systems. The approach to have some additional fields in the database could make it possible to have "home movies" bookmarked.

Maybe a mix of both would be the best?
 
Not bad but that misses the most important bookmarking feature.

Hmm... IMHO the most important bookmarking feature is the aspect ratio. I don't want to watch a movie "post stamp size" (black bars on all 4 sides). Currently I have half a dozen brand new German movies from Amazon.de that are unwatched because of this. Now they're just waiting to be sent to Kaleidescape...

Just IMHO...
 
Kaleidescape have about 50+ of my discs for bookmarking at the moment. I know they've started the job. I'm expecting to pay for it but there's been no mention thus far of how much I need to pay. Perhaps they will invoice me when the job is done. Perhaps they are reconsidering the $10/disc bookmarking fee. I'd rather buy from the Kaleidescape store than pay to have my unrecognized content video bookmarked, but I can't. Although I am looking at a workaround via VPN, but that also requires a monthly subscription to get access to a US based WAN IP. And in any event I think any attempt at VPN into the store when my internet broadband download maxes out at 1 Mbps is probably futile.
 
Don't expect too much. About 4 months ago I sent them a bunch of discs. They charged for every disc - even the major German blockbusters !!!! Bummer! Well, at least I made a lot of Germans happy by providing the source for "Nicht Mein Tag" and similar titles. (For those that are not familiar: This title has run on most Lufthansa Flights - it's that big and *I* paid for it! A middle class American paying for the German nation. Oh yeah!) The only no-charge exception was for the Addams Family 3-season series because it was a different pressing.

I love Kaleidescape, but I've come to realize that it often costs the price of the disc plus $10 and (what's way worse) 3 months of processing time...

To be fair, you need quite a bit of socialism in your blood to buy into Kaleidescape. It's pure global socialism! Think about it...
 
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Now, the problem is that they can't make way to let rich people enjoy their systems! I totally hate having black bars on all 4 sides... GRR!
 
Well, I was in contact with K and they have their own opinion about bookmarking. I can't agree with them and I still think, customers outside US are no longer treated as equal customers to us ones ... and even in time of socialism :) I'm not going to pay for others to have their movies bookmarked.

But I also love my K-Server and I'm happy to have found a solution to get custom-bookmarks working with the installed control-system.
 
You can set a "scene" to start at the beginning of the movie and play the scene. I did that in the past.
 
Can you share the programming details for this, please? What commands do you send, etc.

Yes of course:

The system I use is RTI . The drivers you need are:

- Kaleidescape Driver from RTI
- IP-TwoWay String Driver from RTI
- Parse Strings Driver from coupeautomation or similar
- Simple Logic Driver from coupeautomation or similar


- Over the official K-Driver I first check if there is a aspect-ratio for the current selected movie (twoway Driver)-> if not, I disable all mask-events from K-Masking-Commands
- For movies which are not bookmarked I make a custom "tag" into the Synopsis-text --> (CAR-235;E-9576-C) for example. The remote System then selects the aspect-ratio based on the "CAR-xxx"-Part of the tag and the simplelogic-driver rises the Endcredit-Event when the current played second of the movie reaches the "E-XXXX-C"-part of the tag which holds the second of the endcredit (string parse and simple logic Driver)
- after rising EndCredit-Event I send a "clear command" over K-Controler to
Remote-Syste to enable K-Events again ...

About the "Play Movie" I just do it like Mr.Poindexter mentioned - unfortunately this is not possible for all Bluray-Discs

And the tag "(CAR ....." in the Synopsis-text is a little unsexy. I hope, K will implement some custom-hidden-fields. Currently the are reviewing this feature-request.
 

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