Store Pricing Feedback & Debate

[alexbeans]

Right, using that sort of language is part of what gives dealers/installers a bad name. You tell them "oh, that device isn't good enough for your cinema room" and then a year later they go to Target and buy one, plug it in and boom - you're the crook who made them buy a $10K+ system vs the $150 box, and you're never trusted again.

Those of us who value the highest quality are in a drastic minority of people who can see/hear a difference. Most of the folks out there will either not notice or barely notice the difference between K and ATV.

Using the "it's not good enough" line is a bad sales tactic. "It's not the best available", or "with the investment you're making in the rest of your system, the ATV won't utilize it to its fullest extent" is a much more effective line. It's honest, and 100% true, and it can be backed up.

I had a dealer that tried to push me to buy a K system. I asked him whether or not he owned one. He said no, that it was too expensive. So I asked him why he's asking me to get one. I told him that I'm happy with my 4K disks and fine with ripping them into my Zappiti system.
I ended up getting a K system later, but it's not because of him. It's those Super Bundle Sales that got me intrigued.

 

[Oldred]

odd the way the thread is wandering to this but….

I would say anyone putting together a cinema room to on any budget would be unwise to leave out a Fire and an Apple TV. The cost relative to the options they give you makes them incredibly good value and their flexibility makes them a must. I personally wouldn’t rely on them for the best experience in terms of video, or more significantly, audio quality but most people I know value convenience more than seeking the best they can afford. This isn’t a matter of right or wrong, it’s personal preference. A 4k Blu ray should be the minimum for me or preferably a Kaleidescape system which for me offers the best I have seen/heard at least and with terra downloads it offers convenience too. Unfortunately it costs more than our first house but hey …… we are old.

So we use them all. Serious movie nights are in the K, casual movies on the ATV or FTV and the Blu ray could probably go in the cupboard now but it’s there just in case.

Back to the topic. The K decision is a meaty one, first time around. The download times on top of the movie pricing put me off it for years and we spent elsewhere. When those times shortened to 15-20 mins we got interested and are now converts. All of our friends love to watch it with us but none of them are interested enough to replicate it at home. If anything most had dumbed down hifi and movie setups in favour of holidays until COVID kicked in. So we are the anomaly around here at least. The variance In Pricing between studios is disappointing but within a studio is just weird. Difficult to fathom what their thinking is.

 

[cinelife]

I had a dealer that tried to push me to buy a K system. I asked him whether or not he owned one. He said no, that it was too expensive. So I asked him why he's asking me to get one. I told him that I'm happy with my 4K disks and fine with ripping them into my Zappiti system.
I ended up getting a K system later, but it's not because of him. It's those Super Bundle Sales that got me intrigued.

Dealers selling what they don't own is nothing new. Not every dealer can afford a K system, just like none of my Ferrari sales folks own Ferrari but they manage to regularly move me to the next model. If a sales person thinks someone can afford the best, there's no reason not to offer it, and actually that's their job. In the end, we decide what works for us, regardless of the sales pitch.

Jim

 

[Rengozu]

Damn Jim, how many Terra's you moving? lol

 

[cinelife]

A bunch! (but that's the only way I can afford one (meaning Terra) myself.....) (Ferrari is my hobby)


Jim

 

[cinelife]

Some Moderator I am, just realized we seriously hijacked this thread. Let's get back on the track!

Jim

 

[HTRaleigh]

Damn Jim, how many Terra's you moving? lol

LOL. I am glad Jim’s day job and K side business allows him to drive the newest Ferrari’s and still have enough beer money to host this site for all of our benefit. This site is certainly one of the best things about the K experience.

Back on topic, the recent movie upgrades that bug me the most on pricing were the Man with No Name Trilogy and The Great Escape. I recently got tired of waiting on 4K and bought the Good, the Bad and the Ugly and the Great Escape HD 14.99 D2D. Then less than two weeks later the 4K versions were released with the same price to upgrade my HD quality or the D2D for my Blu-ray versions of the other two spaghetti westerns I had not done the D2D yet. Do I really want to spend another $20.54 for 4K from HD Quality after just spending $14.99? I doubt I will when my Lumagen upscales the HD to 4K. If it was $8.59 or $4.92 for Upgrade or D2D I might. I also think it would be good if K would give some kind of credit if a purchase was recently made, either a new purchase or an HD D2D when a quality update happens within two weeks. Lots of retailers will take back disks if this happens. That would be a goodwill thing for K to do to keep owners happy so we will sing the virtues to non-owners.

I had a long talk with Tim Barnes, Kaleidescape’s VP Sales Operations about some of these issues during the recent Audio Advice Live event. I also told him that the longer they go without having a way to authenticate 4K disc ownership for a correspondingly better D2D credit that they would be missing out on more and more future owner prospects. As internet speeds increase the quality of streaming will continue to narrow the gap with K, so they need to adapt to expand their potential new customer base before the itch is satisfied with less expensive alternatives. I also made a specific request to add the Rotten Tomato scores in the MyMovie view just like it is shown in the store. I think he and Craig Sholder were surprised that wasn’t already on there. Both Tim and Craig were engaging and interested to hear from owners.

 

[TrackZ]

It was cool meeting some of the K folks at Audio Advice Live. I talked at length about some features and options and integration items, but it went over my head to also mention pricing concerns there.

 

[Sonus]

The quote above is from @KDeering about store pricing.

Pricing has kept me from buying certain titles in the store, for sure, including new releases up at $39.99 per. I can afford to, but I don't want to pay that. I got lucky with timing in my Kaleidescape account as I got in when UV was still around and did quite a bit of D2D, otherwise I wouldn't have close to the library size I do today and it would temper my investment in the platform, for sure.

Per some of the recent videos on my YouTube channel, I think more and more I could get by with just an Apple TV in my setups for all of my content and entertainment needs and be happy. In many ways, I would be happier with less paradox of choice, less frustration double buying content, and quite a lot of freed up money to allocate to other things or other gear in terms of reducing what I own today and saving future expensive purchases too. That decision, for me, isn't just about K though, but also in parallel with regards to gaming platforms.

Some reasonable consistency would be awesome to see in the K store. I agree that a $5 premium is fine. Apple makes iTunes just too nice with good quality and amazing convenience and features. I'm also really keen to see if we get some Apple TV news on 9/7 as well as what K might have to say at CEDIA.

You are spot on, we watched DC League of Super-Pets yesterday, 40$ of K, 25$ on iTunes.
I decided to check iTunes since this is animated and sound is not a top priority for this title, Atmos vs Atmos.

The iTunes presentation was terrific, I loved it and saved some money. Will definitely do this more in the future. K is leaving money on the table with the way they price the store.

 

[thrillcat]

This is a pretty good example. I've been wanting to watch this, but didn't want to pay $40. I was excited to see the price had dropped, disappointed that it only dropped to $35. Still too much, IMO, so I'll stream it for free on the HBOMax that I get free with my AT&T cel phone plan. If it's good, I'll consider buying it on Kaleidescape when the price drops to something reasonable.

So, basically, they probably would've had my $25 if they'd priced it there, but instead their master plan has me watching free (albeit at a lesser quality) and deciding whether or not to give them anything. Not a smart plan.

(They = WB, not K - I understand the studios control pricing)

 

[alexbeans]

You are spot on, we watched DC League of Super-Pets yesterday, 40$ of K, 25$ on iTunes.
I decided to check iTunes since this is animated and sound is not a top priority for this title, Atmos vs Atmos.

The iTunes presentation was terrific, I loved it and saved some money. Will definitely do this more in the future. K is leaving money on the table with the way they price the store.

Tomorrow is National cinema day and all tickets, popcorn, drinks and candy are $3. I booked tickets to see Super Pets because I didn’t want to pay $40. So family of 4 with popcorn and drinks came up to be $30. If I ever want to own Super Pets I’ll wait for the $10 sale.
If it was priced at $20-25, I may just skip the theater

 

[Transepoch]

Back on topic, the recent movie upgrades that bug me the most on pricing were the Man with No Name Trilogy and The Great Escape. I recently got tired of waiting on 4K and bought the Good, the Bad and the Ugly and the Great Escape HD 14.99 D2D. Then less than two weeks later the 4K versions were released with the same price to upgrade my HD quality or the D2D for my Blu-ray versions of the other two spaghetti westerns I had not done the D2D yet. Do I really want to spend another $20.54 for 4K from HD Quality after just spending $14.99? I doubt I will when my Lumagen upscales the HD to 4K. If it was $8.59 or $4.92 for Upgrade or D2D I might. I also think it would be good if K would give some kind of credit if a purchase was recently made, either a new purchase or an HD D2D when a quality update happens within two weeks. Lots of retailers will take back disks if this happens. That would be a goodwill thing for K to do to keep owners happy so we will sing the virtues to non-owners.

Extending the existing 30-day credit for rentals to purchases would appear to be a straightforward way to resolve this ongoing issue without need to reinvent the wheel.

One thought I've had on ways to improve pricing is if K implemented some sort of "see price in cart" function. While the studios can't [legally] tell K what to sell for, they can restrict the lowest price at which it can be publicly advertised. Since K doesn't really have a way to hide a price until far enough down the path, it also forms an effective floor (even if K wanted to price something below their cost,) without getting into the bundling or other alternative-pricing-structure route.

 

[Substance]

Price matching could potentially solve this. I worked at Best Buy in my college years. We price matched anything (including CDs, DVDs and Blu-rays) as long as the match was to another official retailer. (i.e. sold and shipped by Amazon).

We had to enter into the system the retailer we are matching to, the price, and the date. It was explained to us by the corporate that Best Buy did not lose any money if done this way because the vendor would have to cover Best Buy for their loss for allowing their (same) product to be sold at another official retailer at a lower cost.

The “same product” argument here is a little more complex because Kaleidescape offers less compression and lossless audio. However the mezzanine file provided to Kaleidescape is the same one provided to other digital retailers. Therefore it is the same product. Kaleidescape can negotiate a similar price match policy with their vendors. You would have to call or email the support each time to match any price or sales. Word of mouth on a forum like this will probably turn it into a store wide sale immediately. So there are some significant cons from Kaleidescape perspective. Also, some of the sales or lower pricing on other digital retailers could be outside the vendor control (i.e. iTunes eats the loss on certain titles to lure in customers to the store)

 

[Hunter67]

Let's compare a few movies

Elvis:
Kaleidescape: 4K HDR $34.99 Movie only
Disc: 4K HDR+/DV $29.96 Movie, Extras and 4K Digital copy (on 9/13)
Streaming: 4K HDR/DV $19.99 Movie and Extras

Super Pets:
Kaleidescape: 4K HDR $39.99 Movie only
Disc: 4K HDR $32.99 Movie, Extras and 4K Digital copy (on 10/4)
Streaming: 4K HDR/DV $19.99 Movie only

Top Gun: Maverick:
Kaleidescape: 4K HDR $24.99 Movie only
Disc: 4K HDR/DV $29.96 Movie, Extras and 4K Digital copy (on 11/1)
Streaming: 4K HDR/DV $19.99 Movie and Extras

The Batman:
Kaleidescape: 4K HDR $34.99 Movie only
Disc: 4K HDR/DV $24.99 Movie, Extras and 4K Digital copy
Streaming: 4K HDR/DV $19.99 Movie and Extras

$34.99 for Elvis would be an acceptable price to me if it included the extras, digital copy and the ability to purchase before the disc is released

 

[Oldred]

While not looking to defend the studios here (who set the pricing) there is perhaps a small argument for a premium before the 4k disk is released. I.e. quite often they are released well in advance but that should disappear when that difference disappears. As there are a whole bunch of costs that disappear (manufacturing, packaging. distribution and retail) then I think there is a solid argument for it being cheaper. Kaleidescape bears the cost of hosting which is the closest to the retail costs I guess.

Even more so, if it doesn’t have the extras I can’t see the prices should match but that seems to be regularly ignored.

It varies between the studios as has been documented and some are better than others.

I don’t know what changes the studios view on this. I suspect our biggest problem is that we are not a big enough base to drive meaningful sales. Also as they each enter the direct market I suspect there is some reticence to give away margins before they start. Whatever the reasons, it feels as if it’s stunting Kaleidescape’s growth.

I wonder if the studios should form a collective investment group to put money into Kaleidescape. It clearly provides an invaluable service to the studio personnel and the proposition tools the pyramid for the consumer. Maybe that would see a better way forward but equally it may see all prices rise so I will keep my mouth shut.

 

[JohnJ]

However the mezzanine file provided to Kaleidescape is the same one provided to other digital retailers.

Are you sure about this? I know when there were discussions about missing immersive audio, K had said that they needed different files from the studios and a different flow. This implies to me different mezzanine files.

I have no inside information and I have done a lot of reading between the lines but it is not clear to me that K gets the same files as other digital retailers. They still might - I am just not sure.

John

 

[Oldred]

Are you sure about this? I know when there were discussions about missing immersive audio, K had said that they needed different files from the studios and a different flow. This implies to me different mezzanine files.

I have no inside information and I have done a lot of reading between the lines but it is not clear to me that K gets the same files as other digital retailers. They still might - I am just not sure.

John

That’s what I have understood, seen reference to the Studio Masters which they then process themselves for the platform. It is possible they all get the same but the rest compress it all down but when described it sounds different.

 

[TrackZ]

@thrillcat the bummer thing about your Elvis post as well is that your first viewing of the movie ends up being the lesser viewing. It would be ideal to watch a movie in it's high fidelity glory the first time (and maybe the only time) I would watch it. The more folks resort or fall back to this, the easier it becomes to do it again and again, and then it becomes a real risk factor to begin to question why one still needs this expensive K platform that's not being utilizied.

 

[Sonus]

While not looking to defend the studios here (who set the pricing)

that is not true, if that was true Google, Apple and K would have to sell at the same price.

 

[Sonus]

Are you sure about this? I know when there were discussions about missing immersive audio, K had said that they needed different files from the studios and a different flow. This implies to me different mezzanine files.

John

There is only ONE digital release pkg and everyone is using the same one.