A few random thoughts on our (excellent) discussion so far.
First on HD capacity. Although K doesnt currently offer the 1tb drives, they are out there now- maybe (fingers crossed) there will be larger capacities by the time they get around to the actual retail offerings.
Second on licensing fees. Everything you all say is true- they could implement a system to charge us every X views or whatever they want but I think we would all find this an annoyance or difficult to digest. I agree that K is not going to subsidize our "right" to import movies and I also agree that our ability will come along as part of an industry wide MMC agreement. I could see, though, K working with the industry to get us a Blu Ray customer licensing agreement with one time bulk licensing fee- they would have to find a way to keep this fee to a manageable number- maybe $500? but this would allow for lifetime imports, etc.
An interesting on MMC- what will it allow? Maybe it will or could allow one to make a back up copy to a hard drive and if MMC allows you to make a downscaled copy (via some kind of software) for use on a portable player such as an ipod, then maybe K will someday offer something similar to what they offer with audio: some form of itunes integration- making the Kaleidescape system even more of a hub for the home. Along this line Kaleidescape might want to consider offering iphoto and imovie (as well as their PC counterparts) streaming/ access to complete the Kaleidescape as a digital media hub in the home. In the end it would end up being similar to a very high end Apple TV.
Downloads- in an interview somewhere I read Michael Malcolm saying that their original vision was downloads so maybe some day it would be possible. I think right now with the resolution demands of HD + the bandwidth out there, it is possible but not easy. Probably 99% of Ks customer base has high speed internet and therefore its probably not a problem if you wanted to order the latest HD movie and let it download overnight.
1080P/24. Great feature that I think everyone wants. Heres the wrinkle- I believe the DVD standard does not allow for scaling up beyond 1080i. So when you play from a DVD file you will either want a video processor or accept what your TV scales to. In my home we have a theater with a video processor where I run 480i over HDMI to my processor and in my other rooms I just run 480P over component video to my plasmas/ LCDs. Also how many displays support 24hz playback- not many and there are those that can support 48hz but not 24. So I would like to suggest a fairly robust set of options on the video output side- allow us 24/48/72/96/120! playback. Id also like to see a set of picture quality controls. It may also be useful to have a lip sync control.
HDMI. I have it on pretty good authority from a friend in the industry - not at K! at another company which is more concerned with the audio side of things- they are concerned about how bad HDMI is with digital audio jitter and he says that they will be making a push to not use HDMI but rather this newer technology called DisplayPort. Its supposedly more flexible than HDMI and better yet is it handles audio in a much more preferable way to HDMI. I think the best argument though for anything to take over from HDMI becomes a winner is if its more reliable- HDMI is a dirty word for many installers- for many of us, we can tackle the technical problems here and there with no problem- but look no further than our current K players with HDMI. Many of us have difficulty making it work because of silly issues between hardware. Whatever happens, it needs to be truly plug and play.
http://www.displayport.org/
So with that in mind, I would hope that K gives us the latest connections- whether its HDMI or DP or something else.
Bottom line speculation is a fun sport for us, but there is much that can change between now and when we see something. I hope its early 2009- when the product is ready for us, Ill be right there in line, but for now, this is just a good discussion.
