Yet another week with yet another catalog relapse with a 4k UHD SDR only print from Paramount. Not sure if it’s strike related but getting pretty old. Now I’m back to buying all catalog titles on discs since it’s like 75% of the recent releases are messed up in some manner. Exorcist still not updated to HDR, the last 8-10 Paramount titles SDR only. Great.
-
Thanks for visiting the Kaleidescape Owners' Forum
This forum is for the community of Kaleidescape owners, and others interested in learning about the system, equipment, services, and the company itself.It is run by a group of enthusiastic Kaleidescape owners and dealers purely as a service to this community.
This board is not affiliated in any way with Kaleidescape, Inc.
For official technical support, product information, or customer service, please visit www.kaleidescape.com -
You are currently in "Guest" mode and not logged in with a registered account.
The forum is free to use and most of the forum can be used by guests who are not registered....
... but we strongly encourage you to register for a full account. There is no cost to register for a full account.
Benefits of registering for a full account:
- Participate in the discussions! You must have a registered account to make posts on the forums. You will be able to start your own thread on a topic or question, or you can reply to other threads/discussions.
- Use the "Conversation" feature (known as "private messaging" on other forums) to communicate directly with any of the other users here.
- Access the Files area. The "resources" area of the forum contains many "Favorite Scene" and Script files that can dramatically increase the enjoyment of your Kaleidescape system. Go directly to great scenes in your favorite movies, created by other owners, and add automation to playback of your system with Scripts.
- You won't see this annoying notice at the top of every screen!😊
Store "Hole" Feedback
- Thread starter TrackZ
- Start date
mariyoshikong
Active member
I am not sure why it would be strike related, Apple and VUDU have no problem with any of these releases. We are also missing 4K upgrades for the titles in the newest Hitchcock box set which Apple and VUDU both have.
zatchury
Well-known member
Add to this the Paramount titles that are simply missing, like Scream 3, Rosemary’s Baby, and Sweeney Todd.
SimonSays
Well-known member
Scream 3: Scream 3
Rosemary's Baby [1968]: Rosemary's Baby
Rosemary's Baby [2014] Series: Rosemary's Baby (Complete Series)
Sweeny Todd: Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Sometimes movies or TV shows are removed from the store (to purchase) when the studios decide to do so, often in relation to a sale of those assets to another studio. It's then up to the new studio to decide if they want to do anything with those assets, such as putting it up on K, or doing a re-release...
Also, we've seen movies disappear for a week or so in preparation for the 4K version to be released.
Unfortunately those are all the old HD versions, not the new 4K versions available on disc and itunes. Hopefully those will come to K soon along with other recent 4K releases missing from the store like the Hitchcock films.
yolosuarez
Member
I like how everything that is noted is all "speculation" or based off of info from how things gone in the past/history. It sucks that we have to resort to this type of knowledge to determine if and when something is going to be released rather than hearing some type of info directly from Kscape.
For a system and service costing this much, we deserve more. I wish there was more transparency and direct communication with its paying customers. For now [and who knows how long] we resort to the "let's wait and see if something becomes available" approach
I would surely love the 4K upgrade on those but the huge list of neglected SD titles on the store is a bigger annoyance for me. HD is passable in the absence of 4K. SD is unbearable and unwatchable. We are being offered content sets with half the titles in SD sometimes.
SimonSays
Well-known member
SD looks pretty decent on my system though. Yes, it's far from 4K, but hardly "unbearable and unwatchable"
Sure but also keep in mind in SD you don’t get lossless audio either. You get 5.1 channels max in mp3 quality.
They should be able to offer lossless audio with the SD copy, not sure why they wouldn't
Legally allowed soundtracks are 2ch LPCM (lossless), Dolby Digital 5.1 (lossy at 488kbps) and DTS 5.1 (lossy at 756kbps) per the DVD forum. 2ch LPCM is almost never used in movies but it is common for concert/music DVDs. Dolby Digital is the mandatory soundtrack and all DVDs must include a form of it (Dolby Digital 2.0 at the minimum).
Kaleidescape seems to have implemented the DVD forum specifics for their SD downloads hence any lossless audio codec other than 2ch LPCM is illegal and unsupported. They don’t really have DVD logos anywhere on their products or on their digital store. Perhaps they aren’t strictly tied to follow the DVD forum standards. Upon inspecting a good number of their SD downloads, I believe they simply come from the DVD masters with a few exceptions. Kaleidescape could request the mezzanine data and do their own renders without the limitations of the DVD format but that’s too much work.
Note: Dolby Digital 5.1 at 488kbps is when all ch are driven with some front ch biasing hence about 192kbps(ish) bitrate on the front left and right speakers. Dolby uses the same discrete cosine transform (DCT) Fourier transform developed by the MPEG group in Germany which also invented the MP3 codec with the same principle.
Last edited:
KDeering
Well-known member
Not sure how K derives their SD versions. BUT, DVD was not limited to those numbers. It could do 640 DD and 1506 DTS if the studio desired (rare, but possible). There are plenty of DTS discs with the higher rate, but I am not aware of any DVDs off the top of my head that used 640 for DD (I'm sure there are some though). But when it comes to the digital marketplace titles (SD copies purchased from the current store), they should be able to do anything they want with those unless the studios imposed some kind of limit on them. I imagine any limit put on those is likely do to the limits of the legacy playback devices that are SD compatible though from their older pre-Strato days.
You are correct. There is about 30 titles with the full bitrate DTS encoding at 1.5mbps. Most of these titles have been re-released later with only 756kbps (to make room for extras on the disc). You are also correct, the legal limit for Dolby Digital is 640kbps but it was never used. DTS could also do 24bit/96khz but I have only seen 1 disc with that. There were also a handful of titles with DTS 6.1 (at 756kbps). I actually own one of these commercial DTS encoders (DTS CAE4/CAD4) which was professionally used to author consumer DVDs. These are such niche cases/numbers, I didn’t want to make my explanation larger than it already is. Nevertheless, they are all highly compressed and lossy soundtracks with the exception of 2ch LPCM soundtracks.
If you randomly pick some SD titles from the store and compare their aspect ratios (whether letterboxed or anamorphic widescreen), audio soundtracks (including commentary tracks), subtitles, included extras and the download file sizes, you will see that they all match exactly to their DVD versions. This is also true for the majority of the HD downloads on the store. There are some exceptions, typically on the titles released in the last 2-3 years. Maybe in the earlier days of the store, they were using the physical media masters rather than the mezzanine file from the streaming versions.
This makes sense, perhaps they were using physical media for these.
From what I understand, with the mezzanine files, they can take this and create the SD, HD and UHD versions and encode the LPCM tracks to DTS-HD MA or the included Atmos for the store. They don't seem to be creating any new SD masters with these unless the mezzanine is only SD quality.
mariyoshikong
Active member
My Pink Floyd Pulse concert DVD has a 640kbps Dolby Digital track.
kristenmarie
Member
Babylon 5 got remastered to "HD of sorts" back in early 2021. Not sure if Kaleidescape could make it available, but that would sure be nice...
FYI - it's coming out on Blu-Ray tomorrow, 12/5/2023.
Now that we have the complete series of Psych in HD would love to get the 3 movies added.