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

[iansilv]

I exchanged some tweets with K, and it seems like this is the deal: 4K is what's ahead. It will be a long rollout, and just like when iTunes started a bunch of music was missing but now it is all there, it will take some time but eventually the vast majority of movie content will be available on the store. This makes the disks not needed except for a small group of titles, and the disk rips not required as well for the majority of movie watching. Along the way, if we buy a Stratos with storage it becomes the 4K server and player in one while the premiere line runs side-by-side with it. Eventually all the major studios are on the Kaleidescape store and I have a disk vault just to store disks that still are not there.

Transferring to the Encore system is as simple as connecting the vault to the Encore system away from the premiere system, dealing with the titles that have to load from it, and watching all my content as bough from the k store...

This means that the line is drawn at 4 K with our premiere systems. Frustrating, but that's where it is.

 

[djb_rh]

This is a really crappy way to learn about system deprecation. REALLY crappy.

One thing that's for sure, the die-hards who hang out on this forum seem totally put-off by this choice that K has made. Maybe we're just a vocal minority and most K customers will just buy whatever they put out. But it seems to me that their growth potential just got a lot more limited. Reasons why are that Encore is still pretty expensive and offers WAY fewer advantages over other systems than Premier. On top of that, I think they're overestimating their installed base's ability to get fast enough Internet to make great use of Encore. Sure, fast Internet is getting faster, but I don't think it's happening at NEAR the rate the movie industry will be able to move to 4K content.

I dunno, I'm still pretty perplexed by all this. Maybe K didn't have any better choices than this based on losing the DVD lawsuit and needing to bend over to get future content and studios, but all that means is I'm not *mad* at K about it. It doesn't mean I'm going to be able to stay loyal, either. Hard to see a lot of value in Encore over something like AppleTV. Well, hard to see THOUSANDS of dollars in value over it.


--Donnie

 

[Mr. Integration]

All they really need to do is offer a great price for an additional new server and 4 K player for existing premier customers. You can migrate all downloads to the new unit and keep the old one for legacy.

 

[djb_rh]

All they really need to do is offer a great price for an additional new server and 4 K player for existing premier customers. You can migrate all downloads to the new unit and keep the old one for legacy.

And anywhere I want both systems I have to have two players? Like I said, at that point I start considering other options instead. They had me somewhat happily locked in and willing to just keep on upgrading my Premier hardware as necessary as long as I *could*. Now? Getting quite unlikely.


--Donnie

 

[Yetis]

This is consistent with I have heard. I would add that as of today, there are no 6tb drives for premier systems, due to technology issues.

My issue is certainly the lack of customer care. Seems a pretty lousy way to handle the situation. Certainly not how anyone in a customer centric business should act.

 

[TrackZ]

I dunno, I'm still pretty perplexed by all this. Maybe K didn't have any better choices than this based on losing the DVD lawsuit and needing to bend over to get future content and studios, but all that means is I'm not *mad* at K about it. It doesn't mean I'm going to be able to stay loyal, either. Hard to see a lot of value in Encore over something like AppleTV. Well, hard to see THOUSANDS of dollars in value over it.

Hence the arms race. Will K get content before Apple, VUDU, Amazon, Ultraflix or someone gets the quality? If those services reach a point of competing on quality, there becomes no compelling reason to spend the money K costs, especially if it's Apple or Amazon IMO.

 

[Mark H]

Internet speeds are getting faster but providers still manage the speeds (where I live at least) so despite having 100Mb fibre to my router it take on average 7 hours to download an HD film from the K-store as the downloads are throttled somewhere in the WAN. A 4K download would arrive faster on disk (when available) via Amazon.com than download.

 

[Yetis]

Hence the arms race. Will K get content before Apple, VUDU, Amazon, Ultraflix or someone gets the quality? If those services reach a point of competing on quality, there becomes no compelling reason to spend the money K costs, especially if it's Apple or Amazon IMO.

I think that is spot up. K just opened themselves up to the competition. Studios have no reason to keep this exclusive to K. I mean Tivo has a 24tb server now shipping and just launched a 4k set top box. Seems like all the pieces are there... I am sure there are others.

 

[Haywood]

I was waiting for this product launch with great excitement ever since the Alto was released and K communicated an intention to go after the more mainstream market. I now find myself puzzled and dismayed that they think charging $1000 for a $250 hard drive is the way to do that. Are they intentionally seeking to make their products unattainable to those with large libraries and more limited means? I was ready to pull the trigger on an Alto, but now I am thinking about holding off for a year or two to see who else makes a play.

 

[stephen]

Stupid

I guess my question comes down to what about me being grandfathered into imports. From what I understand we can only use the storage for the kstore stuff.

Can i not go with the encore system and reimport all my movies? (Im grandfathered into imports). Also what does this mean for the Primer line? I understand the need for different hardware for 4k but what I am seeing is they are taking away the entry level and killing the Primer?

It bugs that a company with so many high class clients have no news of what all this means with clear upgrade paths.

I bought the Kaleidescape because..
1- Easy Import and Movies on the Server
* Its becoming a Glorified Disk Changer

2- The User Interface and bypassing all the crap to get to the movie.
* Dont get me wrong its great but there hasnt been anything changed for years

3- Hardware Integration
* Got to buy all new players no backwards compatibility

I guess at the end of the day when iTunes finally does 4k why wouldnt I go with it. Or even PLEX. I bought into this system for a reason and bottom line is if they cant do something with Premier they leave me no reason but to leave.

 

[Haywood]

I have a fairly beefy 8-Bay NAS running Plex that can hold about 900 Blu-Ray rips, though that is not what I mainly use it for. I use it mainly for storing music, photos, television shows and about 500 DVD rips of things that I cannot get in HD or don't want to bother with upgrading (ever watch a classic Kung Fu movie in 1080p?). The primary source component in every system in the house is a Roku box and Plex works very, very well for what I use it for. I can even share my Plex server with my parents.

I do not use Plex for uncompressed Blu-Ray rips for a couple of reasons. The first is that the upcoming Roku 4 is the first generation that supports lossless audio pass-thru and high enough bit-rates for fully uncompressed Blu-Ray rips. I could have purchased a separate media player for each room, but then I would have to worry about people outside the house trying to access that content and tanking my NAS with transcoding loads it cannot support. The second is that I have been moving away from disc-based media for the bulk of my library.

When UltraViolet hit the scene with disc-to-digital, I had just begun upgrading my huge DVD library to Blu-Ray. The value proposition was unbeatable. I will be the first to admit that Vudu HDX is NOT Blu-Ray quality, but it is vastly better than DVD quality. Faced with the cost of hundreds of movies, $2.50 each was pretty appealing. CFF was on the horizon (though we all know that went nowhere). The possibility of being able to incrementally upgrade movies rather than continue to repurchase them was attractive. Being able to access the library from anywhere and to share it with a few other people (such as my parents) was appealing. Then I discovered the secondary market for UV codes and realized that I could buy new releases for 1/4 to 1/3 what I would normally pay. The end result is that I spent roughly $3500-4000 over the last 3.5 years to acquire nearly a thousand UV and DMA movies as well as quite a few seasons of television.

This is why I am so interested in Encore and why I am so dismayed at the storage cost. I probably saved $6000 buying UV licensing. I can easily justify spending $5-10k over several years on hardware, but $20k? 25K? That is a little off-putting.

I am curious if anyone here with an Alto has a large UV library and uses the Alto to simply rotate through the 100 movies they are most likely to watch next. I am considering that as an option, but I have no idea how easy that is to do.

 

[MikeG]

I would be fine with K ending the premier line if there were a clear upgrade path to the new system. After spending tens of thousands of dollars on something and then being told to forget it and buy the same thing again is unreasonable. There must be something more here we don't yet know about. I'm holding final judgment until I here officially from K (or Jim )

Btw what's technically difficult with 6Tb drives over the current drive capacities offered. That didn't make sense either. If they're ending the premier line, then it makes sense

 

[djb_rh]

2- The User Interface and bypassing all the crap to get to the movie.
* Dont get me wrong its great but there hasnt been anything changed for years

If I had to guess, I'd bet anything that this kind of thing will NOT be possible if future formats require those things NOT be skipped. Sure, anything you buy on DVD and rip to your grandfathered system will work that way, but I wouldn't be so sure that 4K content will.

K was playing fast and loose with the DVD standard stuff due to the loopholes they THOUGHT (and we thought) they had found. Losing in court probably meant that kind of thing goes away in the future, too.

So unless the movie studios have come to understand how much consumers hate that crap, we're going to be stuck with it. I wouldn't put much stock in the movie studios giving a crap about making us sit through previews and copyright screens and anti-piracy "reminders." *sigh*


--Donnie

 

[Haywood]

If I had to guess, I'd bet anything that this kind of thing will NOT be possible if future formats require those things NOT be skipped. Sure, anything you buy on DVD and rip to your grandfathered system will work that way, but I wouldn't be so sure that 4K content will.

K was playing fast and loose with the DVD standard stuff due to the loopholes they THOUGHT (and we thought) they had found. Losing in court probably meant that kind of thing goes away in the future, too.

So unless the movie studios have come to understand how much consumers hate that crap, we're going to be stuck with it. I wouldn't put much stock in the movie studios giving a crap about making us sit through previews and copyright screens and anti-piracy "reminders." *sigh*


--Donnie

I own nearly a thousand UV and DMA movies and have yet to see a preview or any form of advertising. I don't recall seeing FBI or anti-piracy reminders either, though I could be wrong on that count.

 

[tweaks]

The worst part of all this, without question, from my standpoint is K's complete lack of silence to their most loyal customers. I don't claim to know anything about K's finances but without the investments Premiere customers made in their systems K wouldn't have gotten this far. I can't for the life of me figure out how their lack of attention to these customers (disclaimer: this includes me) makes good business sense.

 

[stephen]

Got to agree with Haywood on that Digital doesn't include all that crap. Im guessing 4k digital downloads wont as well.

I only care about this is in regards to DVDs and Bluerays (non-digital download).

I get that some people on here bought into Blueray when it first came out. Im sure some even bought right into Blueray 3D (in my eyes never really succeeded). There is also people updating there Movies to digital for a small price (to get around this disc issue). I could care less to update all my previous bought movies.

At the end of the day though there are some movies I wouldnt care to watch in 4k vs Blueray vs DVD others not so much. Why would I speed thousands to upgrade my library when I can get classics/older movies out of Walmarts $5 bin? Higher quality also means less i can store in the server. For example I don't need Back to the Future in 4k or even Blueray. Now Lord of the Rings in 4k sure. For one thing it was filmed in high enough res that it makes sense. None of this upscaling crap.

 

[djb_rh]

Got to agree with Haywood on that Digital doesn't include all that crap. Im guessing 4k digital downloads wont as well.

I'm just saying there's no way to know and if it *does* end up with crap, I'll bet K will be stuck with it, too. And if it doesn't have it on ANY platform, then K has no advantage here and isn't worth paying extra over other systems for.

At the end of the day though there are some movies I wouldnt care to watch in 4k vs Blueray vs DVD others not so much. Why would I speed thousands to upgrade my library when I can get classics/older movies out of Walmarts $5 bin? Higher quality also means less i can store in the server. For example I don't need Back to the Future in 4k or even Blueray. Now Lord of the Rings in 4k sure. For one thing it was filmed in high enough res that it makes sense. None of this upscaling crap.

Sure, I agree with the above. I just wanted 4K added to the Premier line via a new player so I could have it all on one system. I've already made purchasing decisions NOT to upgrade some movies I have ripped from DVD to HD digital downloads because I didn't want to waste the space on a low res movie. I would have done the same with 4K movies.

Now, if I want 4K movies I have to add SOME other system. Everywhere that I want 4K. I could do that with $texas-priced K or I could just upgrade Roku's or AppleTV's that I already have for a few hundred bucks each. Basically K just put themselves in more direct competition with much cheaper alternatives and did so with a lot fewer reasons to chose K over them.

Doesn't seem terribly smart to me. *shrug*


--Donnie

 

[Yetis]

Btw what's technically difficult with 6Tb drives over the current drive capacities offered. That didn't make sense either. If they're ending the premier line, then it makes sense

Heat issues with the servers is what I have heard. So I guess it was planned but the heat issue was an issue.

 

[brodricj]

The Kaleidescape store and Kaleidescape hardware that relies exclusively on K-store content is never going to work in my market. We were connected to the latest and greatest National Broadband Network yesterday that is being rolled out across the country at a cost to tax payers of many billions of dollars. My connection speed: 8Mbps down 1Mbps up.

I have been a Premiere system owner long before it was called Premiere, as many of us here have been. Since the 750GB K-Disc and MP2 days. I am getting prepared for 4K. I have a Lumagen Pro 4K video processor. The UHD display is on my shopping list. Obviously a Premiere system 4K player was also on my shopping list. Now it seems obvious a Kaleidescape 4K solution in my market is impossible, Premiere or otherwise.

Very disappointing.

 

[MikeG]

Heat issues with the servers is what I have heard. So I guess it was planned but the heat issue was an issue.

Um ok. A server grade rack unit with server grade HDDs having heat issues?? With their recent level of transparency...not so sure. Couldn't find on net the thermal operating temp for the drives so I cannot comment fully but I would venture a guess that they have similar specs to their 4Tb drives.

You guys know that the 3U server is a basic configuration used by many manufacturers right? I (really my tech department) am upgrading my dell server at work to a mixture of 4 and 6 Tb drives. I'm a radiologist in private practice so we also need massive storage for our images, archiving and backups. The unit when opened looks exactly like our K units! Funny how that is.