If you pay the deposit, your unit will get a special engraved early customer number or somesuch. Why the deposit? Yes, they appear well enough funded - they have both corporate money as well as VC money. But as a startup (and in a brand new market too), while they have sales projections, they really don't know the demand level so it hard to plan out hiring, inventory levels, etc. Having an early adopter program allows them to make those plans based on much more concrete data. As a former startup CEO myself, that knowledge is golden, so their pre-sales program makes a lot of sense to me.
As far as why you the customer would want to plunk down a deposit, well, do you want to be one of the first people to have day and date theatrical release in your home theater? Everyone has different risk tolerances - for me if I that company goes under and I never see that money again, I won't be shedding any tears. And of course, that money IS kept in a segregated account, and by general accounting rules, in the case of bankruptcy, that money should be refunded back to customers before anything else happens.
He gave me the names of the studios they have inked deals with, but I have no idea if that info is secret still, so call them up!
The default is for the unit to take all releases (about 2-3 a week). I have asked him to modify their software to allow people to select the releases they are interested in.
Yes, the Kaleidescape litigation comment seemed unlikely to me too, however the continued lawsuit with no settlement talks is also surprising to me. Frankly, the studios have already demonstrated to me their juvenile behavior, so it is more of the same. And no doubt individual studio people could care less, yet the lawsuit drags on.