NEWS: New Strato M Movie Player

[racecardriver]

I felt that way when I first heard about this as well. But I do see a customer base that will appreciate that new price point, especially if they currently watch blu-ray discs and typical streaming encodes. This could give them the Kaleidescape experience (no discs, better UI, and better quality) for what may finally be an attainable price.

I saw a demo of the M today on a 100" screen with no external video processing, and it was really very impressive. To all but the most discerning eye, it was as good of a picture as one could expect in consumer-priced gear, at least at a typical viewing distance.

And while I scoffed at the idea of this player in my own future at first, I soon realized I have a perfect use case for it: we have an RV that would get ZERO benefit from 4K content & delivery on the 42" screen in the main living area. We only use an AppleTV in there today for content. The M fits that use case very nicely. The price is right, it's physically half the size of a Strato V (space is at a premium in an RV), has onboard SSD storage of a bunch of movies so won't need streaming-level connectivity on the road, and will deliver a great experience for the less-than-videophile equipment and viewing environment we have in the RV. May have to add it before the next long trip.

I agree with you, however I really struggle with the 480Gb of storage. IMO there is no reason not to have 2TB on this and the V.

Hell… my PS5 has 2TB built in, and I added on another 2TB.. and it plays discs.. and it’s HDMI 2.1… with native 4K..

I get it economy of scale, but 480 and 1080 for $2k.
Come on…

 

[Pacfwu]

I think this is a great offering.

I was wanting to get into the K ecosystem for years but wasn't really able to until the V came out (it was a bit of a stretch even then). Even though I've long wanted to live in this world was not just the cost of getting my feet wet but also expanding into the other rooms of the house. Expanding disc playback to other rooms is a pretty inexpensive venture and with digital codes, I'm able to watch my purchased content anywhere in the house easily and cheaply. The high cost of expanding the system to other zones really was a deterrent when the entry point was $9k and expandability to other rooms was $4k each. But my fiance and I were pretty sure we were going to really like the Kaleidescape, so we took the leap with the V knowing we'd only really be feeding the theater room and ordered one the week it was announced.

It took less than 3 days, and we were in love with the movies. Even with some of the hiccups of the V, we were hooked. Through a generous Christmas donation and some savvy open box buys, we've managed to add a Terra, change out the V in the theater to a C (since that's the primary viewing and hosting room, we didn't want guests to have their experience soured with occasional dropouts), and added a third C to the bedroom. I'd love to add a 4th to my den.

In every room but my theater, the seating distance is far enough that I know we're not getting the resolution benefit, but we do get the HDR/DV benefits as well as the lossless audio. If the only system in the house was still the V standalone in the theater, I would've ordered two of these today to expand to two different rooms for 3 standalone systems. Right now, the V is a little bit of a waste since I'm not downloading the Dolby Vision files, but if the bugs get worked out enough so that there was more reliable playback, I'd put that back in the theater room and trade out the Cs for Ms and be very content with 1080p + DV upscaled to 4k on my 65" OLEDS and I think it might be a very interesting proposition for anyone with a pixel-shifting projector instead of true 4k. I would be a little bummed to lose the 4k UI, but I'd get over it.

If this was 5 years ago and I was using my Sony 285es on a 110" 16:9 screen instead of the Sony 715es on a 144" 2.07:1 screen that I have today, the M probably would be my first Kaleidescape unit.

 

[ZeroDarkFuga]

I think this is a great offering.

I was wanting to get into the K ecosystem for years but wasn't really able to until the V came out (it was a bit of a stretch even then). Even though I've long wanted to live in this world was not just the cost of getting my feet wet but also expanding into the other rooms of the house. Expanding disc playback to other rooms is a pretty inexpensive venture and with digital codes, I'm able to watch my purchased content anywhere in the house easily and cheaply. The high cost of expanding the system to other zones really was a deterrent when the entry point was $9k and expandability to other rooms was $4k each. But my fiance and I were pretty sure we were going to really like the Kaleidescape, so we took the leap with the V knowing we'd only really be feeding the theater room and ordered one the week it was announced.

It took less than 3 days, and we were in love with the movies. Even with some of the hiccups of the V, we were hooked. Through a generous Christmas donation and some savvy open box buys, we've managed to add a Terra, change out the V in the theater to a C (since that's the primary viewing and hosting room, we didn't want guests to have their experience soured with occasional dropouts), and added a third C to the bedroom. I'd love to add a 4th to my den.

In every room but my theater, the seating distance is far enough that I know we're not getting the resolution benefit, but we do get the HDR/DV benefits as well as the lossless audio. If the only system in the house was still the V standalone in the theater, I would've ordered two of these today to expand to two different rooms for 3 standalone systems. Right now, the V is a little bit of a waste since I'm not downloading the Dolby Vision files, but if the bugs get worked out enough so that there was more reliable playback, I'd put that back in the theater room and trade out the Cs for Ms and be very content with 1080p + DV upscaled to 4k on my 65" OLEDS and I think it might be a very interesting proposition for anyone with a pixel-shifting projector instead of true 4k. I would be a little bummed to lose the 4k UI, but I'd get over it.

If this was 5 years ago and I was using my Sony 285es on a 110" 16:9 screen instead of the Sony 715es on a 144" 2.07:1 screen that I have today, the M probably would be my first Kaleidescape unit.

I’m willing to bet these would pair great with a display such as an older pioneer Kuro and just might test one out…..

 

[gerald.d]

Scratched my head when I first heard about this. And then I realised I can get one for the TV in the living room for my wife, and I can absolutely guarantee you she won't even know it's not 4k

 

[J.Green]

[snip]
However, the "maximum player components in system" under the comparison chart should probably say "Server dependent" on the Terra side instead - not that unlimited is technically wrong, just potentially misleading (in the same way you could have more than 4 in a Strato S system.)

Unless or until you add a Terra server, you cannot group more than 4 Player/Servers (Strato, Strato S, and/or Alto) into a system. It's a hard limit.

Whereas, with a Terra/Terra Prime server, there is no limit to how many players can be grouped with it. Hence the entry on the chart.

Yes, there are concurrent playback limits on systems based on the type of server(s) in the system but the chart is accurate. There is no limit to how many players you can group with a Terra-based system while there is a 4 server limit on a Strato/Alto-based system.

 

[SimonSays]

For legacy systems, like TV screens in cars, RVs, private planes, yachts, outdoor TVs and projectors, it's a great solution.
Residential TVs are pretty much all 4K now, and you can easily add a TV in your workshop or garage for $500-$1000 in any size, but adding a $3995 player to those just to watch a concert or a script of all great car scenes in movies (I may have done just the latter) makes the cost of extending your KScape library pretty expensive.
I use one of my Altos for this purpose, but when that unit fails, the Strato-M would make a great replacement at half the cost of a Strato-V.
I do agree it should allow WiFi though. @MikeKobb will it support a WiFi dongle like the Alto did? Especially for use in a car or even RV, I don't want to have to get some sort of physical network going.

 

[J.Green]

I do agree it should allow WiFi though. @MikeKobb will it support a WiFi dongle like the Alto did? Especially for use in a car or even RV, I don't want to have to get some sort of physical network going.

No. Neither Strato M nor Strato V support Wi-Fi dongles.

 

[ZeroDarkFuga]

Didn’t Strato S support WiFi?

 

[SterlingMax]

Scratched my head when I first heard about this. And then I realised I can get one for the TV in the living room for my wife, and I can absolutely guarantee you she won't even know it's not 4k

This is my likely use case. We have an upstairs TV - a Samsung "Frame" that is 4K but not big enough (65") or high end enough for the difference between 2k and 4k to matter very much. And having access to our Kaleidescape library upstairs might be worth the $1995.

 

[SterlingMax]

This product does nothing to bring in potential customers like myself. This may be useful to a subset of existing Kscape customers, but does little to grow the customer base. A cheaper StratoV would have been a much better move.

This might be true, but expansion revenue to existing customers is a pretty attractive component of a business, especially if the product development lift on the M wasn't especially high.

 

[Techthusiasm]

I'm kind of a resolution snob, I admit, LOL, but I will admit the bigger part of picture quality comes from HDR and wider color space than the resolution bump to 4K, so I understand the positioning of this device. Someone that has a K system and a secondary zone like a bedroom, office, kid's play room, home gym, or whatever, can now drop a player there at half the cost. The main element sacrificed in the player is realistically inconsequential to the performance as you probably have a smaller screen and/or longer viewing distance in those places. It will be interesting to see how it does in the market.

One suggestion that would have been pretty awesome is if the M had some level PoE. That would be fantastic for zone installs to be able to skip the power brick. That idea was suggested in a comment on my video about the M.

 

[StanfieldNC]

I'm kind of a resolution snob, I admit, LOL, but I will admit the bigger part of picture quality comes from HDR and wider color space than the resolution bump to 4K, so I understand the positioning of this device. Someone that has a K system and a secondary zone like a bedroom, office, kid's play room, home gym, or whatever, can now drop a player there at half the cost. The main element sacrificed in the player is realistically inconsequential to the performance as you probably have a smaller screen and/or longer viewing distance in those places. It will be interesting to see how it does in the market.

One suggestion that would have been pretty awesome is if the M had some level PoE. That would be fantastic for zone installs to be able to skip the power brick. That idea was suggested in a comment on my video about the M.

This makes sense.

 

[Techthusiasm]

One more thought. I haven't seen one yet, but I have to imagine this still wins against an Apple TV and streaming. It is still playing the high bit rate, color space, HDR/DV, and 4K movie asset just downscaled to 1080p. It also still does lossless and object audio.

Even for a main viewing zone that is a maybe 55" or less TV, this is still likely "worth it" for $2,000 if $4,000 is not tenable for someone to join the ecosystem. It is higher fidelity than streaming and still maintains all the access and convenience benefits of Kaleidescape.

 

[LoveCinema]

...I have to imagine this still wins against an Apple TV and streaming...still playing the high bit rate, color space, HDR/DV, and 4K movie asset just downscaled...

...and upscaled back to 4K by your display. The premiere TVs of the day do a fantastic job upscaling HD to 4K. I'm sure you'd get a better result than streaming. The argument against disc would be harder, but K is best when positioned against streaming.

Now, having said all of that, you're a K owner and you're looking to add one in the bedroom. Are you buying a new Strato M or used C/V?

 

[Rengozu]

Outside of firstly thinking I was late to an April fools joke, my assumption for this product was that it was meant to pair up in existing Kaleidescape systems in rooms where you don't need the absolute best quality. This isn't for your theatre, but maybe to expand your K eco-system onto smaller TV's like the kids room, garage, or even above the bathtub in your bathroom where you might've wanted it before, but not enough to drop 4K on a V to do it.

 

[Balthazar2k4]

...and upscaled back to 4K by your display. The premiere TVs of the day do a fantastic job upscaling HD to 4K. I'm sure you'd get a better result than streaming. The argument against disc would be harder, but K is best when positioned against streaming.

Now, having said all of that, you're a K owner and you're looking to add one in the bedroom. Are you buying a new Strato M or used C/V?

Not buying a C because I would need multiple copies on my server(s). That leaves it down to a used V or an M... even at used prices, the M is significantly cheaper. I will be doing Ms in my other rooms of the house now that it is a more economical approach for still what should be great quality.

 

[Techthusiasm]

...and upscaled back to 4K by your display. The premiere TVs of the day do a fantastic job upscaling HD to 4K. I'm sure you'd get a better result than streaming. The argument against disc would be harder, but K is best when positioned against streaming.

Now, having said all of that, you're a K owner and you're looking to add one in the bedroom. Are you buying a new Strato M or used C/V?

I only have two zones (theater and living room) and only have K in my theater at the moment. I plan to put another player in my living room along with the planned Focal Utopia and 97" OLED project. I will put a V in there as I won't sacrifice the 4K in that system. I don't have TVs anywhere else in the house, not in bedrooms or anything.

I think folks will opt to save the money and choose the M for secondary zones, but we will see.

 

[Transepoch]

Would take a control system to match the input, but might be an option for adding a dedicated audio out where running a split and line back is a hassle.

This might be true, but expansion revenue to existing customers is a pretty attractive component of a business, especially if the product development lift on the M wasn't especially high.

As someone mentioned early on, if this is just a software-limited V, could removing the limit be an option? Was trying to decide if it would be better to have such a feature tied to the account or device - both have advantages, depending on the situation.

 

[Edgar]

I only have two zones (theater and living room) and only have K in my theater at the moment. I plan to put another player in my living room along with the planned Focal Utopia and 97" OLED project. I will put a V in there as I won't sacrifice the 4K in that system. I don't have TVs anywhere else in the house, not in bedrooms or anything.

I think folks will opt to save the money and choose the M for secondary zones, but we will see.

Yeah, I’d never buy a 2K player either. It does seem like K has maxed out their TAM for elite hardware, and is trying to offer cheap HW to a broader market while preserving their product value at the high end. I get it. But cutting the quality to 2K seems like a joke. I seriously triple-checked the date on this too.

 

[LoveCinema]

Yeah, I’d never buy a 2K player either. It does seem like K has maxed out their TAM for elite hardware, and is trying to offer cheap HW to a broader market while preserving their product value at the high end. I get it. But cutting the quality to 2K seems like a joke. I seriously triple-checked the date on this too.

And, for what it's worth, I've seen other people online making the same 1440p mistake I did. When a company historically uses "HD" branding and then suddenly switches it up to "2K" with a new hardware release, I think it's pretty common to think that there's been a jump in resolution, especially if you're also saying things like "Blu-ray or better."