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Kaleidescape today announced the launch of a new product line called Encore

Seems to me Kaleidescape's multiple video server competitors will owe K a nice 'Thank You' Christmas card this holiday season.

I think it will be very interesting to see what the other Vidity vendors bring to market at the 2016 CES. That will be very telling.
 
I'm dumbfounded at this move by Kaleidescape.

I sincerely hope I have read all of this wrong but it appears to me that:

They have a high margin low volume product and they are now kicking their loyal customers in the teeth. How is that a recipe for success?

I am really disappointed and even a little bit angry with Kaleidescape right now.
 
Hi guys, as some have suggested I was at Notre Dame for the past 12 days. A friend of mine is producing a Showtime weekly special "A Season With Notre Dame Football," (10:00pm Tuesdays) and I've been having fun with that experience in addition to hosting several groups of people for ND v. Navy, and the USC game, also hanging out with some new recruits, etc.. This is something I do every year, which is why with CEDIA's show dates this year I was not able to attend.

I have been following all of your posts across several threads, understand the frustration, share some of it, but given what I know I understand why K proceeded with the current strategy.

First, K has not abandoned the Premiere line, they also never intended to abandon that line. There are many markets in the world, and situations, that actually require a Premiere system. It was always their intent to bring the latest tech to the Premiere line. I know this for certain because of numerous discussions with K Execs over the past year. Think about this from a business perspective, why would you ever ignore a market (Premiere owners) you already own? You wouldn't, unless there were externalities forcing a particular direction. What seems simple enough to us on the outside, is sometimes far more complex and involved on the inside. Remember, the beauty of a K system is in the KEAOS, and this was all created from nothing. There were 1000's of man hours that went into creating KEAOS, and 1000's more maintaining it over the years. (I think there might be more than 60 Million lines of code now.) Every time a new product, even a single Player, is released, it requires many, many hours of code writing and corrections to insure it will properly interface with all previous components. KEAOS has many "upsides", but making it what it is today, has also created a downside, the need to constantly work the code to keep things working correctly. This alone drains much of K's manpower resources. Add to this the contract for licensing content distribution, and further add in the security requirements for 4K download distribution, and a situation developed that essentially caused K to modify it's strategic plan. It appears, based on comments I've heard, meetings I've had, and what has been published, that K decided it could only effectively deal with "one" option, and they chose to initially move forward with a completely new line. It's not my place to comment on the chosen strategy, but suffice to say I'm hopeful it will be the right decision for the COMPANY (of course we current Premiere owners don't think it was the right decision for us).

I may be looking at this all wrong, and I'm certain there are some that will disagree, but I personally want to see K survive and grow because that protects my investment. I'm speaking of my "personal" investment as a K Owner, not my business investment as a dealer, which as most of my friends here know is not why I'm involved with K. In the end, what has really happened here?

1. K developed a new product line.
2. It is not compatible with older systems (except Alto).
3. K did not meet my expectation of releasing a 4K Player for my Premiere system.
4. K did not communicate their reasons for the decision (their right, most companies, even niche companies, do not share this with customers).

#1 is fine, #2 I understand the reasoning, #3 pisses me off, but I understand why, #4 is none of my business.


I now diverge down a different road, something that I hope will add some real life perspective to what we are dealing with here. About 10 days ago, while at Notre Dame, I spent some time with an incredible family (Mom, Dad, 7 y.o. twin Boy/Girl), that I could identify with having 5 y.o. twins Boy/Girl myself.

The little girl, very, very cute. Wide eyed and excited to be at ND, taking in all the activities of a typical game day Saturday at Notre Dame. I was able to get her and her Brother on to the field to meet some Players. This little girl was in the final month of her very short life. To look at her you couldn't tell at all, she played, she ran, chased her Brother, and laughed at things a 7 yo would find funny. At some point, she came up to me when I was sitting alone, smiled, sat next to me and started talking about life, her life, her family, etc., and then brought up her own death. I think this was the most difficult conversation I've ever had with another human. On the outside I was calm, but I was crushed inside, found my breathing difficult, and I fought very hard to not lose it in front of this little girl. I kept thinking about my Daughter as well. She confided in me that although she wouldn't tell her family, she was very afraid, but she knew it would be easier on them if they didn't know. She was afraid of "getting to heaven and being alone." I tried as best I could to explain why she didn't need to worry. Heartbreaking.

She departed this life yesterday.

I think I can get over having to add another source to access 4K. (I'll be adding some additional details about the new line later today or tomorrow.)



Jim
 
Well said Jim. Puts this into perspective. I pray her family finds comfort. When your parent dies they call you an orphan, when a spouse dies they call you a widow(er) when your child dies it is so awful they don't even have a name for it....
 
Well, I'm very happy to hear from Jim, but wish it hadn't had to involve a tragic story. My sympathies are with you, Jim.

As far as K is concerned, the response is about what I expected.


--Donnie
 
Hello all,

The following is a copy of an email I sent to Cheena. I just thought I would share and hopefully it encourages further discussion.

Wayne
---------------------

Dear Mr. Srinivasan,

I am with the majority of Premiere line owners in being very upset that the new Encore line will not somehow integrate with my current Premiere line equipment. I have been a loyal Kaleidescape customer for many years and currently have quite a large system with over 4,000 movies and TV shows on my servers. It would be great to be able to play everything (old and new) through one player. I don’t mind accepting a new server for all my downloads (see caveat below) but it is not practical or even conceivable to migrate completely over to the new architecture, whether it be by download (too slow and expensive for such a large collection) or keeping the discs in a vault (way too many - I would need at least 15 to 20 vaults for my collection!). While I realize much of this likely has to do with the studios insisting on eliminating any use of “ripped” DVDs and blu-rays, surely the grandfathering of these original systems could be extended into the new system to allow playback in a single combined system. Eventually the older systems will die out and everything will be controllable by the studios as they have been hoping for. Until then, a relatively small number of systems is a drop in the overall bucket and not a threat. I would gladly convert what I can to downloads if the cost is reasonable, but even that seems to be going by the wayside at the K store. Many titles are now full cost even if I already own the title on physical media. The K store is woefully inadequate in the titles offered, especially here in Canada, and many of my titles will never be available in another format.

I figured out that trying to re-download all of my K store purchases to the new server, as has been advised, is not realistic. Currently I have 350 downloads - 336 Blu-ray quality (21 of which are TV series) and 14 DVD quality (4 of which are TV series). This is roughly 12,000 GB and even though I have a 100MB connection, I am limited to 500 GB of download per month. As you can see this means it will take close to 2 years just to re-download the titles I own now!

Kaleidescape should consider supplying their new server with the option of having the registered system’s K store purchases pre-installed (as they used to with a few of their own demo titles). This would give purchasers the freedom to download new titles to the new server and free up space on their older server for titles not available in the store.

I sincerely hope some announcement of reasonable integration or other options for Premiere line owners will be forthcoming. Even if the new server will not support imports from disc, we could keep these titles on the older servers if the new player could “read" from both types of servers. Ideally all titles, whether download or import, would play on the new Strato player. If this is absolutely not possible, perhaps, if a “legacy” title is identified and cannot be played on the new player, an automatic switchover to the legacy Premiere player could be triggered (barring that, a message could be displayed advising the user to switch players). It would still mean 2 systems need to be maintained, but they would be separate. All owned titles would be visible in both systems but playable only on the designated player.

For now, I will likely have to keep what I have. However, I am concerned about ongoing equipment support as well as what will happen to the current bookmarking system for Blu-ray and DVDs which, although not as end-user friendly as it used to be, is still an integral part of the Kaleidescape experience.

Thank you for listening. I do hope some positive news is in the not too distant future. Communication is always key in maintaining good relationships.


Sincerely,

Dr. E. Wayne Tunis
White Rock, BC Canada
 
Just to be clear, K is planning to address current owners as soon as possible, possibly before the end of the week.



Jim
 
Also, for those that keep asking me and others that have not gotten around to it yet, "Yes" K is planning to offer upgrade Promo's to the new line, but the details of the promo and options available are not yet finalized.

There are a lot of "moving parts" to the process unfolding, hang in there!


Jim
 
I agree. Be patient.

To me this will be very similar to the Disney offer. First on the Alto and then made available to the Premier with software licensing change. Also, while at CEDIA an engineer mentioned to me that Disney DMA was on their radar, but taking longer to implement. They have to work with Disney engineers to make the changes simultaneous and it is taking much longer.

My hope is that Premier Server with a new software license agreement will be restricted to playback only and store downloads. With that new agreement the server would provide existing ripped movies to the Encore line but the User gives up the right to import any physical media. Similar to the Disney License agreement. I can only hope at this point.
 
I just heard from my dealer that he received an angry call from Mr. Srinivasan regarding my letter (posted above) accusing him of throwing Kaleidescape under the bus. The end result is that he revoked my dealer's Kaleidescape dealership. Talk about a negative response to what was supposed to be honest feedback and constructive ideas! Wow! I really will have to reassess.
 
Wow. Your letter certainly wasn't harsh so maybe it was part of the phone exchange between K's CEO and your dealer. Don't take this as your doing but perhaps maybe your letter was just the spark the little tug that pulled the pin from a grenade.

While tempers may flare, it is best to not get in a heavy discussion when angry or disappointed if there is a chance that things can escalate and spiral out of control. Perhaps Kaleidescape has miscalculated how its owner base and dealers might feel about this and thought they could slow walk out the news on the Premier line, but sometimes a small fire grows out of control if left unchecked. They would do well to get something out to their dealers and customers that give some better idea of what is in store other than just "stay tuned".
 
Agree with Mike, and while I wasn't part of the conversation between your dealer and K, I absolutely guarantee you there was more going on here than your letter. Knowing Cheena, I seriously doubt he presented as "angry" while on the phone with your dealer, but I'm not the one that gets to define "angry," obviously your dealer is entitled to his perception of the phone call.

I can state with great confidence that a dealer would never lose their license to sell K products because of a letter written by a customer (unless the letter was disclosing dealer misconduct). I also state with confidence that K has never taken a letter like that, or any letter for that matter, in an angry manner, and frankly to my knowledge, based on my many discussions over the years, they tend to read all correspondence with an eye toward improving their products and services.

I would not be concerned, it is not a letter like yours that would cause such a drastic action on the part of K, especially it's CEO, if accurate, there is much more to the story.


Jim
 
Thanks Jim and everyone for your helpful insights and comments.

My feelings are best summed up by Mr.Poindexter's point that they should do more than just "stay tuned".

I understand this is a company that is likely working very hard to put out a new product in a very demanding industry, and here comes the butt... BUTTTTT !!!!

Every Kaleidescape system is a luxury purchase. The Premiere line even more so. Even though it turns out we will not be left out in the cold- creating a situation where any of your customers are left to worry they might be is not the correct practice for any company which wishes to prosper and especially one which sells luxury goods.

I think the upset and angst was entirely foreseeable, and while I am sure Kaleidescape cannot disclose all the details, they could have let us know something along the lines of:

* We just announced this wonderful new system

* It has many benefits such as 4K

* Unfortunately due to various factors (some of which we may elaborate on in the future) we had no choice but to make it a new system which is unfortunately not compatible with your existing Premiere system.

* You are not being left out in the cold: Premiere will still be supported.

* We are in the process of designing an upgrade path for those Premiere owners who wish to upgrade.

* Almost everyone at Kaleidescape owns a Premiere system so we are also system owners just like you. We understand anyone who is upset by this- we felt it was a difficult but necessary move.

I don't think they have to give the game away but communication is important- especially when it involves something that could lead people to assume the worst.

Jim, all I can say about the other part of your post is its heart wrenching, and yes, that sure does put this in perspective. We should all have worrying about our fancy AV gear as our biggest problem.
 
So, since it is now pretty clear that to get 4K I will need to move to the Encore Line, I have a couple of questions.

One thing I use all the time on my Premier Line is the Scripting features. As far as I can tell the Encore line does not support scripting (at least the Alto doesn't) so going forward is this capability going to be added so that I have this capability once I upgrade to 4K?

My other concern (which a lot of people have echoed) is that there is no RAID on the Encore line. Will this be available at some point in the future for people with very large collections?

John
 
First, I wish to apologize on behalf of Kaleidescape’s management team for not communicating sooner about the implications of our recent Encore announcement. We appreciate your many thoughtful postings, and we feel fortunate to have so many passionate customers.

Kaleidescape has always valued each and every one of our customers. We have no intention of abandoning any subset of our loyal customers. We have negotiated hard for years with the DVD CCA and with the movie studios to protect our existing customers’ investments, and to insure that our Premiere customers can benefit from the Kaleidescape Movie Store.

We will continue to sell and support Premiere line products for years to come. A new customer with a large collection of Blu-ray discs can find no better solution than a Premiere system. Many of our systems are installed in remote locations that have very slow Internet access. Such installations cannot rely on the Internet for content delivery or for restoring data when a hard drive fails. The Premiere system’s RAID protection will continue to be important until everyone has fast Internet. Also, most of the countries we sell in do not have access to the Kaleidescape Movie Store, so those customers must rely on discs as their only source of content, and the Premiere system is their only option.

I personally own three Kaleidescape systems. My newest system is an Encore (four Altos, so far). I love all three of my systems, and I have no plans to replace either of my Premiere systems with Encore. However, that may happen in a couple years or so.

The reason we had to introduce a whole new line of products for 4K movies is it simply isn’t practical to store 4K content on a Premiere system. The movie studios have very stringent security requirements for their pristine 4K movies. Kaleidescape’s storage systems used in its 1U Server, 3U Server, and Cinema One products cannot satisfy the studio’s 4K storage-security requirements. Other 4K security requirements affect every component in the system, and (for a myriad of reasons) none of the Premiere components can satisfy these requirements. For these reasons, it was necessary to develop a new set of components in order to comply with the studios’ 4K security requirements.

Everyone at Kaleidescape is stretched very thin, but we are all energized by this exciting product launch. The response has been great! But we are still investing significant thought and effort to make sure we do everything possible to protect the investments made by our existing customers, and to give them options for enjoying 4K Ultra HD movies in their homes. More details will be coming soon.

Michael Malcolm, Founder and Chairman
Kaleidescape, Inc.
 
Thanks Jim and everyone for your helpful insights and comments.

My feelings are best summed up by Mr.Poindexter's point that they should do more than just "stay tuned".

I understand this is a company that is likely working very hard to put out a new product in a very demanding industry, and here comes the butt... BUTTTTT !!!!

Every Kaleidescape system is a luxury purchase. The Premiere line even more so. Even though it turns out we will not be left out in the cold- creating a situation where any of your customers are left to worry they might be is not the correct practice for any company which wishes to prosper and especially one which sells luxury goods.

I think the upset and angst was entirely foreseeable, and while I am sure Kaleidescape cannot disclose all the details, they could have let us know something along the lines of:

* We just announced this wonderful new system

* It has many benefits such as 4K

* Unfortunately due to various factors (some of which we may elaborate on in the future) we had no choice but to make it a new system which is unfortunately not compatible with your existing Premiere system.

* You are not being left out in the cold: Premiere will still be supported.

* We are in the process of designing an upgrade path for those Premiere owners who wish to upgrade.

* Almost everyone at Kaleidescape owns a Premiere system so we are also system owners just like you. We understand anyone who is upset by this- we felt it was a difficult but necessary move.

I don't think they have to give the game away but communication is important- especially when it involves something that could lead people to assume the worst.

Jim, all I can say about the other part of your post is its heart wrenching, and yes, that sure does put this in perspective. We should all have worrying about our fancy AV gear as our biggest problem.

This had better not be the message we get from K.

Edit: Crossed in space with the above. Disappointing news. In essence, Premiere will never house 4K content and zilch about any creative way to integrate legacy systems to meet the 4K security requirements.
 
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So Premier can't house 4K. Fine. I get that. But why can't an Encore player ALSO be a Premier player?


--Donnie
 
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