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Price fluctuations

MikeKobb said:
Hello all,

As you’ve noticed, we have made some pricing adjustments. Generally speaking, most titles have gotten two or three dollars more expensive than they were. Disc-to-Digital purchases have also gone up by a similar amount.

Why?

To be blunt, we were losing money on nearly every download with the previous pricing structure. The more titles we sold, the more we lost. That was obviously not sustainable. These pricing changes allow us to cover the costs of delivering these movies. Here’s a bit more detail on where these costs come from.

We are delivering movies at higher quality than any other digital delivery platform – disc-equivalent quality or higher – with the convenience of Internet download. It’s expensive to deliver movies at this level of quality, with the features we provide. The bandwidth and storage cost for each download of a Blu-ray quality or 4K Ultra HD movie is measured in dollars, not cents.

Every single title in the Movie Store has been processed by Kaleidescape, using a proprietary process. We don’t just sell the same bits as other retailers. To cite a recent example, we are now downloading 4K Ultra HD and 4K HDR movies with Dolby Atmos soundtracks based on the lossless Dolby TrueHD core. We worked with the content owners to develop the unique processes to make them available to you. Nobody else offers this. Indeed, there are 4K titles with Atmos in the Movie Store that are not available from any other source. And the titles available today are just the beginning.

On top of the audio and video quality, we deliver added features, like scenes, songs, movie-start bookmarks, aspect ratio information, and lighting triggers. These are the user experience features that make the difference between “home video” and “home cinema,” and provide lasting enjoyment of your movie library that goes above and beyond the simple one-time experience of watching the movie. Delivering these features requires a dedicated staff of talented people who exercise considerable editorial discretion. In sum, Kaleidescape is delivering a unique premium product that offers many benefits, and doing so costs money.

I hope this helps to explain why we’ve made this pricing adjustment.

—Mike
Click to expand...

Mike:

Thank you for sharing. What intrigues me the most now is the ability of Kaleidescape to offer a disc equivalent or higher. Could you kindly give an example of a higher than Disc equivalent? Are there download movies that are higher than there 4K UHD Disc offerings. This to me is very interesting and certainly worth a premium. I have always assumed bit for bit equivalent to 4K UHD disc, but never thought Kalieescape could offer higher than the actual 4K UHD Disc.

Thank you
 
Hi Lon,

We have dozens of 4K Ultra HD titles that are not available on UHD Blu-ray discs at all. So, we deliver those movies at higher quality than any available disc. Some of these titles also include Dolby Atmos soundtracks, which are not available on the corresponding Blu-ray discs. (One of my personal favorites, Leon, The Professional, looks and sounds amazing in 4K Ultra HD with Dolby Atmos!)

As well, we do our own encoding for all of the 4K Ultra HD and 4K HDR titles on the Movie Store, and we work very hard to deliver excellent picture quality. We're not limited by the capacity of an optical disc, so we're able to use higher bitrates if we need to.
 
Mike, is this list on your website? Having UHD titles in the store that are not available on disc may be a big selling point? One of the reasons I haven't pulled the trigger on a Kscape is that I'm only buying UHD discs and there appears to be alot more UHD discs available with higher SQ than on the K store.

Sent from my LG-H818 using Tapatalk
 
We don't have a "4K Ultra HD movies not available on disc" list (although that's not a bad idea). It's easy to see the complete list of 4K Ultra HD and 4K HDR titles, though. Just click Browse -> All Movies, then click the UHD button in the filter bar.

There are movies that are available on UHD Blu-ray that we don't have in the Movie Store yet, because we don't have 4K titles available from all the majors yet. We are certainly aiming to add more titles from more studios.
 
MikeKobb said:
Hi Lon,

We have dozens of 4K Ultra HD titles that are not available on UHD Blu-ray discs at all. So, we deliver those movies at higher quality than any available disc. Some of these titles also include Dolby Atmos soundtracks, which are not available on the corresponding Blu-ray discs. (One of my personal favorites, Leon, The Professional, looks and sounds amazing in 4K Ultra HD with Dolby Atmos!)

As well, we do our own encoding for all of the 4K Ultra HD and 4K HDR titles on the Movie Store, and we work very hard to deliver excellent picture quality. We're not limited by the capacity of an optical disc, so we're able to use higher bitrates if we need to.
Click to expand...

Thank you Mike for taking the time to explain this. Again I understand that Kaleidescape offers titles in UHD not available on 4K UHD disc and are therefore higher quality.

Can you give an example of a higher than 4K UHD Disc encoded by Kaleidescape?
 
When it comes to UV and as a big Vudu user before buying a Kaleidescape, the price increase will lead me to do in-store Walmart Disc-to-Digital for movies that aren't working in-home due to the price difference. Although Kaleidescape d2d is more convenient, it's not worth spending an extra $400 to convert 100 blu-ray movies.

UV code sellers tend to sell UV movies at around $3-4 (even new releases are around $6), so I think Kaleidescape will lose more from competition then they think.

I assume the studios take around half of the sale price, so every dollar they increase only leads to $0.50 revenue gain. Selling at $1.99 vs at $5.99 is just a $2 gain, but leads to less purchases.

Considering downloads, marketing more towards users who all ready have a large collection would be beneficial since their downloads wouldn't necessarily increase with more purchases.

Furthermore, digital good selling seems to be price elastic with smaller revenue as the price increases, for example some older info:

Books:
http://www.retailwire.com/discussion/amazon-explains-digital-pricing-elasticity/
Music:
http://digitalaudioinsider.blogspot.com/2010/04/of-course-demand-for-music-is-elastic.html?m=1

At least if they bring the price back down, there will be a boom in sales.
 
I just added the Taken trilogy to my disc server.

In digital offers, I can now 'd2d' those disks - BUT - the cost is $21.99 for Taken 1 and 2 and $29.99 for Taken 3 ?? That's more than I paid for the Trilogy on BluRay!
 
Hmmm. That does not sound right. I have 1 and 2 in my Disk Vault at home and I see $5.99 for each. These are definitely Blu-ray discs and not DVDs? Are you looking at digital offers in the onscreen display, or on the Movie Store?
 
Hi Mike,

Many thanks, I checked again just now and they are showing in at $5.99 - most odd, no doubt entirely my fault - perhaps I was logged out or something the first time around!!
 
Universal has only put these series out on DVD - no BR versions available (even though the series was broadcast in HD) I have no idea of the reasoning for this.

John
 
JohnJ said:
Universal has only put these series out on DVD - no BR versions available (even though the series was broadcast in HD) I have no idea of the reasoning for this.

John
Click to expand...

Suits Seasons 1-5 are available in BR both in box sets and indivdual releases - so they just haven't released to Kaleidescape :confused::mad:
 
It's strange. I can find BR versions for EU countries but nothing for the US. Even Amazon only has BR versions that are Region B.

John

Edit: I finally found some BR that are region free.
 
Last edited:
boskonay said:
Hi Mike,

Many thanks, I checked again just now and they are showing in at $5.99 - most odd, no doubt entirely my fault - perhaps I was logged out or something the first time around!!
Click to expand...

Great, glad to hear it's showing correctly. How soon after you put the disc in were you checking the digital offers, and were you checking on the Movie Store website or on the onscreen display?
 
MikeKobb said:
Great, glad to hear it's showing correctly. How soon after you put the disc in were you checking the digital offers, and were you checking on the Movie Store website or on the onscreen display?
Click to expand...

Movie store, and no doubt too quickly! Patience is a virtue :) Thanks again!
 
Ah, that's probably it. It does take a little time for the system to upload an updated inventory so that the Movie Store can update the available offers.
 
I just upgraded my "Passengers" pre-order from HD to UHD, the cost was $15.99 (on top of $21.99 for the HD version)
 
dnanian, there's actually some variation in digital upgrade pricing. Most DVD quality to Blu-ray quality upgrades are $7.99. Some are $8.99.
 
The passengers 4k Blu-ray is $29.99 or less and comes with a UHD code if redeemed on Sony. If Kaleidescape can only rely on purchase mistakes and people that throw away money, they will be struggling indefinitely.
 
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