I have a question on the browser interface and storage.... I have 1 x Strato and 5 x M players into multi-room system. Originally the idea was that all downloaded content would have to be transferred to the Encore storage. Therefore I have downloaded any HD or UHD content onto both systems. How will the new regime work? Do I need to transfer any content? If I upgrade only partially (i.e. leave one M player with just the Premier system), I assume I need to keep both the HD and UDH on the servers. Does the interface know I have both?
You don't need to move anything to the Strato. Here's how this will work.
Any Blu-ray quality and DVD quality downloads on your Premiere system are playable by all Premiere players, whether or not they are part of a Co-Star pair. If a Strato player is paired with a Premiere player, then the downloads that are on the Premiere system will appear in the Strato onscreen display. When you play one, Co-Star will switch to the Premiere player for playback.
So, you can delete the duplicate copies on Strato if you wish, to make more room for 4K.
Now, let's say that you have a Blu-ray quality movie on your Premiere system, and you also have the 4K version of that movie on Strato. When you're looking at your Strato onscreen display, you'll only see the 4K movie cover. You don't see the Blu-ray/DVD covers as well. If there are extras on the HD version that are not on the 4K version (fairly common), those extras are shown right on the UHD version's details sheet. If for some reason you wanted to specifically play the lower-resolution version, there's an Other Versions menu item that gives you access to them.
The combination of different versions under one cover also applies if you have duplicates on your two systems. For example, if you have the Blu-ray quality version of the movie on both systems, you'll just see one cover on the Strato. Strato always tries to play the best available version, and it does factor in locality into that decision. So, if you have the movie on both systems, Strato will choose the local copy to avoid the small delay from the Co-Star switch. So, you
could leave copies on both systems if you wanted that faster playback. I deleted all the duplicates from my Strato at home because I wanted more space for 4K!
Now, what about buying new movies? You have some zones that have Strato, and some that don't. If you go buy a Blu-ray quality movie from the Movie Store, by default, it will be downloaded to your Premiere server, so that every zone (paired and un-paired) can play it. If you buy a 4K movie, the 4K version will be downloaded to Strato, and the Blu-ray quality version will be downloaded to the Premiere so that your un-paired zones can play it. You can de-select the Blu-ray quality version if you don't need/want it.
If you were to pair every zone, then you might want your downloads to go to Strato (or to a Terra if you had one). Maybe you want to save the remaining space on the Premiere system for disc imports, for example, or maybe you just only want Co-Star to switch to the Premiere player for disc-based content. There's a setting in the browser interface to send downloads to the Strato if you prefer. Also, if every player is paired, then when you buy a 4K movie, the Store will download just the 4K version by default (since you don't need the HD version for un-paired zones). You can always select the HD version as well.
Also, is there now a unified browser interface so that I know that I have both HD and UHD content without having to cross check against two open browser windows?
Not yet, but it's something we're looking at for the future.
