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New Kaleidescape Remote

josh said:
you left out RF, which would be the best case besides TCP/IP, if the stratos have an RF receiver
Click to expand...
yeah - good spot. It just seems a bit daft to me when you need line of sight to control a box that in 99% of homes people will have tried to tuck away somewhere in a piece fo furniture or AV rack. Having to add some troublesome IR repeater to make the IR work in a cinema room just seems daft to me. I would ave expected RF or BT.

BTW re your other post - my question about wifi- was have they made it wifi so that it can speak to the player/server whatever via TCP. Probably the more expensive of the 3 which is why I doubted it but just providing IR seems a big miss. It has kept the cost of the remote down I guess but I wonder how many can use it without opening a cupboard or replicating the IR trhough yet another device.
 
Not to just be a K advocate here, but isn’t this remote just a supplemental option for those that like a physical remote? I mean, prior to this, Stratos weren’t even shipping with a remote… K has a purpose built app that allows you full control over WiFi. It’s cool that they would release an updated remote at all.

I never use my physical remote, it’s either the second screen app on iPad or the native K app on my phone. I’m sure many others have control systems and don’t need an additional remote anyway?

I guess I just prefer their development focus be on the user interface, movie store, licensing, etc..
 
tov5005 said:
Not to just be a K advocate here, but isn’t this remote just a supplemental option for those that like a physical remote? I mean, prior to this, Stratos weren’t even shipping with a remote… K has a purpose built app that allows you full control over WiFi. It’s cool that they would release an updated remote at all.

I never use my physical remote, it’s either the second screen app on iPad or the native K app on my phone. I’m sure many others have control systems and don’t need an additional remote anyway?

I guess I just prefer their development focus be on the user interface, movie store, licensing, etc..
Click to expand...
Full control except for scrubbing and volume over CEC
 
jfh said:
How? I can’t find it anywhere on the site. I must be missing something obvious
Click to expand...

Sorry, I should have clarified that I see them available on dealer extranet.

Jim
 
just arrived packed inside my new Strato C which I ordered on Monday through Jim (CineLife).

IR only. Light weight. Lighter than the Apple remote. The quality of the plastic is good but it doesn’t feel super solid. I could probably squeeze it with my fingers and crack the plastic but the feel and texture is premium. The buttons are high quality rubber with nice touch and feedback.
 

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Not including RF isn’t a design decision but it is a design limitation of the Strato player. When was Strato first released? It must be nearing 10 years now. It was good hardware at the time and still relevant today. Rarely something you can say for many tech products remaining in production for a decade.

There is only so much you can add in software without making hardware revisions. As I mentioned earlier, there are no RF radios on the mainboard. No expansion ports to add daughter cards. They could include a USB dongle with a RF radio as a work around but maybe they ran out of gates on the FPGA to control this dongle.

Implementing CEC is an option to add volume control but again no free lunches here, that will cost you estate on the FPGA/ASICs and RAM. If the Strato mainboard wasn’t designed with some headroom or it was but that headroom was utilized with later software updates, there isn’t much to do but to stick to IR based remotes.

I am not in any relationships with Kaleidescape other than being one of their customers (who happened to be an electrical and computer engineer). So these are all my speculations and my best educated guesses. If it was an easy design choice and Kaleidescape skipped it, I would be irritated too but from what I could understand and explained above, it is a more involving overtaking to deliver more. I would be happier if they dedicate their resources on bringing more content to the store, rather than a new design revision.

I respect everyone’s opinion and understand their frustration here but maybe this opens up opportunities for 3rd party integration? Why Logitech pulled the plug on Harmony remotes beats me for example.
 
Substance said:
Not including RF isn’t a design decision but it is a design limitation of the Strato player. When was Strato first released? It must be nearing 10 years now. It was good hardware at the time and still relevant today. Rarely something you can say for many tech products remaining in production for a decade.

There is only so much you can add in software without making hardware revisions. As I mentioned earlier, there are no RF radios on the mainboard. No expansion ports to add daughter cards. They could include a USB dongle with a RF radio as a work around but maybe they ran out of gates on the FPGA to control this dongle.

Implementing CEC is an option to add volume control but again no free lunches here, that will cost you estate on the FPGA/ASICs and RAM. If the Strato mainboard wasn’t designed with some headroom or it was but that headroom was utilized with later software updates, there isn’t much to do but to stick to IR based remotes.

I am not in any relationships with Kaleidescape other than being one of their customers (who happened to be an electrical and computer engineer). So these are all my speculations and my best educated guesses. If it was an easy design choice and Kaleidescape skipped it, I would be irritated too but from what I could understand and explained above, it is a more involving overtaking to deliver more. I would be happier if they dedicate their resources on bringing more content to the store, rather than a new design revision.

I respect everyone’s opinion and understand their frustration here but maybe this opens up opportunities for 3rd party integration? Why Logitech pulled the plug on Harmony remotes beats me for example.
Click to expand...
That’s a very fair point and sound reasoning

Didn’t realize the player was 10 years old now!

K-scape did send me some API docs for volume control integration - may take another look at that!
 
I think Substance has probably got it right with his assumptions about the limited response here.

By definition a handheld remote must be a demand because K have not only implemented one after the original launch but have now redesigned and manufactured one with improved look and feel. If there was no demand then I can't imagine that would have happened. My confusion remains that despite having done that, they haven't addressed the major deficiency which is it's reliance on IR. It's too obvious a thing to have fixed and so I have to assume they can't do so at a practical cost. I would have thought that there was a way to address the issue but it is perhaps harder than I might think.

We have a solution in place here, which isn't replicating all of the function but it's got the core and probably enough, so my comments are more on the logic of nor addressing the gap rather than needing the fix here.
 
Oldred said:
I think Substance has probably got it right with his assumptions about the limited response here.

By definition a handheld remote must be a demand because K have not only implemented one after the original launch but have now redesigned and manufactured one with improved look and feel. If there was no demand then I can't imagine that would have happened. My confusion remains that despite having done that, they haven't addressed the major deficiency which is it's reliance on IR. It's too obvious a thing to have fixed and so I have to assume they can't do so at a practical cost. I would have thought that there was a way to address the issue but it is perhaps harder than I might think.

We have a solution in place here, which isn't replicating all of the function but it's got the core and probably enough, so my comments are more on the logic of nor addressing the gap rather than needing the fix here.
Click to expand...
It might have been a supply issue too. I believe the previous remote predates even the Strato. Perhaps a 20 year design? The manufacturer might have closed down or stopped fulfilling the same design.

Lumagen had a similar problem. It was the same remote for 20 years then it wasn’t possible to order more of them. A couple of years back, Lumagen switched to a new design and a new supplier/manufacturer.

Apple TV is a good case study for a small company (compared to Apple)without spending a ton on market research. Earlier generation ATV’s were shipped with a very simple but a good remote control. The follow up generation was an ambitious (touch only) but an awful remote then the newest remote is probably the best remote one could ever ask for.

Apple could take the easy route and tell customers to use the iOS app but they have always supplied a remote. I would say the current ATV remote cost Apple more than the ATV itself with its amazing materials quality. I am pretty sure this is due to market research. Customers demand a control device with actual buttons, at least for the most common functions.
 
I see from the release notes that the replay command was changed from 5 seconds to 10 seconds. Still on my wish list: have replay functionality that will also turn on subtitles, and then turn off subtitles 10 seconds later. My remote can issue IP commands, but the caption command is for selecting a caption (and there can be more than one caption track). For this special replay command, the caption (English or user's preferred language) should be turned on and off automatically.
 
OK, I hear you guys about their limited resources and some technical things that may have precluded this thing having RF... not sure I completely buy it, but I'll go with it for the moment.

But let's address the other issue - no volume buttons or mute. Describe the use case for someone holding and using this remote... they're browsing movies and TV, selecting the movie and controlling playback but then they're NOT able to adjust volume?? Honestly... what good is that? You need another universal remote in the other hand to adjust volume, so why would you want this remote as well?

Half of my wife's and my conversation during a movie is her shouting at me to "turn it down!" So I'd be holding two remotes anyway if i had this one.

Just seems like the decision not to build in volume control makes the case for this remote really a pretty extreme subset of users and scenarios as far as I can tell.

The old white remote had volume and mute buttons on it, so while it had it's limitations and wasn't really beautiful, at least it could do all of what you'd want in one device.
Screenshot 2023-06-29 at 8.34.24 PM.png
 
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... and as long as we're talking Kaleidescape Remote Control history, who goes back long enough to remember this one? :)

Screenshot 2023-06-29 at 8.31.25 PM.png

it was actually super clever with a pretty cool use case.
 
josh said:
OK, I hear you guys about their limited resources and some technical things that may have precluded this thing having RF... not sure I completely buy it, but I'll go with it for the moment.

But let's address the other issue - no volume buttons or mute. Describe the use case for someone holding and using this remote... they're browsing movies and TV, selecting the movie and controlling playback but then they're NOT able to adjust volume?? Honestly... what good is that? You need another universal remote in the other hand to adjust volume, so why would you want this remote as well?

Half of my wife's and my conversation during a movie is her shouting at me to "turn it down!" So I'd be holding two remotes anyway if i had this one.

Just seems like the decision not to build in volume control makes the case for this remote really a pretty extreme subset of users and scenarios as far as I can tell.

The old white remote had volume and mute buttons on it, so while it had it's limitations and wasn't really beautiful, at least it could do all of what you'd want in one device.
View attachment 3885
Click to expand...
Touché ;)
 
Substance said:
Not including RF isn’t a design decision but it is a design limitation of the Strato player. When was Strato first released? It must be nearing 10 years now. It was good hardware at the time and still relevant today. Rarely something you can say for many tech products remaining in production for a decade.

There is only so much you can add in software without making hardware revisions. As I mentioned earlier, there are no RF radios on the mainboard. No expansion ports to add daughter cards. They could include a USB dongle with a RF radio as a work around but maybe they ran out of gates on the FPGA to control this dongle.

Implementing CEC is an option to add volume control but again no free lunches here, that will cost you estate on the FPGA/ASICs and RAM. If the Strato mainboard wasn’t designed with some headroom or it was but that headroom was utilized with later software updates, there isn’t much to do but to stick to IR based remotes.

I am not in any relationships with Kaleidescape other than being one of their customers (who happened to be an electrical and computer engineer). So these are all my speculations and my best educated guesses. If it was an easy design choice and Kaleidescape skipped it, I would be irritated too but from what I could understand and explained above, it is a more involving overtaking to deliver more. I would be happier if they dedicate their resources on bringing more content to the store, rather than a new design revision.

I respect everyone’s opinion and understand their frustration here but maybe this opens up opportunities for 3rd party integration? Why Logitech pulled the plug on Harmony remotes beats me for example.
Click to expand...
This is well-reasoned, although to be fair, it's six years, not ten. Strato was introduced in 2017. They could have included RF at that time (lots of contemporary devices did, including that generation of AppleTV) but knowing that they didn't and that the entirety of the installed base lacks RF, there really wasn't much they could go with this remote.
 
SterlingMax said:
This is well-reasoned, although to be fair, it's six years, not ten. Strato was introduced in 2017. They could have included RF at that time (lots of contemporary devices did, including that generation of AppleTV) but knowing that they didn't and that the entirety of the installed base lacks RF, there really wasn't much they could go with this remote.
Click to expand...
Just for accuracy (and not disagreeing with any of your conclusions), it was 15 October 2015:

www.kaleidescape.com

Kaleidescape Announces New Encore Line of Products Industry’s First 4K Ultra HD High-Dynamic-Range Movie Player - Kaleidescape

www.kaleidescape.com www.kaleidescape.com

John
 
SimonSays said:
One of the coolest things for me in K is the "intermission" option, displaying the movie poster on the screen. And that button isn't on the remote anymore either :(
Click to expand...
Usually, pushing and holding "pause" is another way to trigger the intermission display. No need for a separate button for this.
 
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