NEWS: New Strato M Movie Player

[leo9000]

Very puzzling. Even AppleTV under $200 does 4K. If this did 4K I could see how this would be a great product to get more customers signing up for the K experience. I would think that anyone interested in K would at least have a 4K TV, especially considering the cost of the K hardware.

 

[thrillcat]

Seems like they went 2K to continue to differentiate the product line. Otherwise it's more or less a V with half the storage.

I don't know if I'm interested in it for a second display, since we rarely watch content outside of the theater. If K handled TV shows better, I might be swayed.

I like the product and the price point, just don't know that it fills a need that I have, but I think it's a great option for a lot of folks. Getting tired and want to finish up a movie in the bedroom? Now you can for a much more enticing cost, without unplugging your Strato V, carrying it upstairs and connecting it. Been binging S1 of The Last of Us before S2 launches, but don't feel like holing up in the theater? Watch an episode in the living room tonight.

This opens up a lot of scenarios that I wouldn't have paid $3-4K for, but at $2K they're more interesting.

Also factor in that my primary goal with every system in the house these days has been simplification, so no surround systems outside of the theater, no immersive audio, smaller screens, minimalist setups. This is good for that.

 

[cinelife]

Very puzzling. Even AppleTV under $200 does 4K. If this did 4K I could see how this would be a great product to get more customers signing up for the K experience. I would think that anyone interested in K would at least have a 4K TV, especially considering the cost of the K hardware.

I believe the thinking is to offer a less expensive standalone product that introduces a new market to K, perhaps thinking this will lead to upgrades and adding Terra servers for additional storage. They already offer a 4K player (V) at $3,995, so clearly they didn't want to offer the same performance at half the price, no one would buy the V.

Jim

 

[Steve Bruzonsky]

As it turns out I'm happy to report you are correct! I just received a text correcting what was just a misunderstanding (probably on my part, if my wife is to be believed).

Thanks for pointing that out!

Jim

The wife is always right! HA!

 

[cinelife]

I really think this is a case of actual performance being better than what the 1080p spec conjures up in our thinking. I know it did for me, until I actually saw its performance playing back content (5 titles including Wicked and Gladiator II that were pre-loaded on the M) .

Jim

 

[leo9000]

It is tempting at this price point as a way to have K content on my bedroom TV (just wish it was 4K).

 

[Topmetom]

How can it play SDR in HDR/DV?

 

[markrubin]

I never thought K would be scalable to the larger (huge) market out there, but they are moving in that direction:
Kudos and I hope success with this new offering

 

[LoveCinema]

How can it play SDR in HDR/DV?

It's not. It would be playing an HDR/DV file in 2K simply by downscaling the image (same thing you see on other digital players like Apple TV).

 

[jackuiowa]

I’ll be very intrigued to see how this looks on a smaller display outputting Dolby vision or hdr10 at 1080p

 

[LoveCinema]

I’ll be very intrigued to see how this looks on a smaller display outputting Dolby vision or hdr10 at 1080p

I assume you'd always go 2K (1440p - 77% more pixels than 1080p) unless your display wasn't capable of the resolution. If it's not native, then modern 4K TVs will upscale from the 2K source to 4K, retaining the HDR/DV and likely providing an image that's very close to a native 4K source and certainly better than any streaming image.

 

[jackuiowa]

I assume you'd always go 2K (1440p - 77% more pixels than 1080p) unless your display wasn't capable of the resolution. If it's not native, then modern 4K TVs will upscale from the 2K source to 4K, retaining the HDR/DV and likely providing an image that's very close to a native 4K source and certainly better than any streaming image.

I didn’t even think about 1440p great point

 

[J.Green]

I assume you'd always go 2K (1440p - 77% more pixels than 1080p) unless your display wasn't capable of the resolution. If it's not native, then modern 4K TVs will upscale from the 2K source to 4K, retaining the HDR/DV and likely providing an image that's very close to a native 4K source and certainly better than any streaming image.

Strato M does not output at 1440p.

 

[LoveCinema]

Strato M does not output at 1440p.

Ok, this is my bad. I hadn't realized how acceptable it was to use 2K to refer to 1080p. With too much time on the computer side, I had always assumed that when you say "2K" you're specifically referring to 1440p as opposed to "1080p" or "HD".

 

[J.Green]

Oh, my bad. I'll check the specs and correct my comments. I thought the whole point was this is a 2K player?

2K yes. 2K - 2048 x 1080 vs. QHD - 2560 x 1440.

 

[cal87]

Just curious. Is there a decoder chip which takes 4K/HDR/DV input and is only limited to 1080P output, or is it just being artificially limited?

By the way, I have an HMD that takes 4K input and the display is 2560x1440.

 

[Mr.Poindexter]

This reminds me of the old discussions on the home theater forums 20 years ago about people who had HDTVs but no HDTV receiver and one guy on the forum had an HDTV receiver but not an HDTV display. He said when he watched HDTV channels downscaled to NTSC, it was far superior to the native NTSC broadcast.

 

[jglowinski]

Seems like it would've made more sense to lower the cost of the Strato V to attract more users. As someone who has been fence sitting on this for awhile, cost is the number one issue working against K. I do have to ask, Does K not share in the revenues from the rental/purchase of titles? If they do, it would be another reason to attract more buyers with cheaper equipment. I just dont see settling for 1080p when almost every TV is now 4k.

 

[MikeKobb]

Howdy folks!

I'm happy to see such lively discussion already of our new player. There are a couple of things I'd like to emphasize, especially when comparing Strato M to low-cost streaming products:

1. Lossless audio: As with our other players, Strato M plays content with lossless audio, including object-based audio like Dolby Atmos and DTS:X. This is a significant and noticeable difference.
2. Better video: While the output is 2K, when playing a 4K source file, you're getting video that is coming from an H.265-encoded file at up to 100 megabits per second, preserving BT.2020, Dolby Vision, and producing 4:2:2 color sampling. We believe this looks substantially better than 4K streaming content at 25Mbps, which is about the best you'll find.

 

[ahard]

This product definitely delivers better quality 2k, but with a large number of people having 4k tvs and those same people likely watching 4k material on Netflix, or Apple TV+ or Prime Video, I feel that like this product may not land with a number people that maybe sitting on the fence with K due to price.