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Strato V & Co-star 😞

S

shoptime

Active member
Joined
Feb 16, 2022
Messages
39
So with this new system, I can NOT play any of my DVD or BD in my old K-disc vault? how am I supposed to play the many titles K does not have in the library? I am supposed to pay all this money for a system that still requires me to go load each movie I want to see into an external attached drive when I want to see them? Please tell me I missed something or K is planning on solving this, in my opinion, MAJOR flaw in this new system! The Co-star was clunky, but it worked for people that have a lot of movies that K does not have.

I love the price on this, and having a small internal HD, is great, but i cant get excited about this when i loose the ability and convenience to see so many of my movies.
 
shoptime said:
So with this new system, I can NOT play any of my DVD or BD in my old K-disc vault? how am I supposed to play the many titles K does not have in the library? I am supposed to pay all this money for a system that still requires me to go load each movie I want to see into an external attached drive when I want to see them? Please tell me I missed something or K is planning on solving this, in my opinion, MAJOR flaw in this new system! The Co-star was clunky, but it worked for people that have a lot of movies that K does not have.

I love the price on this, and having a small internal HD, is great, but i cant get excited about this when i loose the ability and convenience to see so many of my movies.
Click to expand...

The new V does not work with Co-Star, so it cannot be the controlling Strato that is used with Co-Star. You can still access your DVD and BR content, but without Co-Star, so basically you'd have two "Sources," one for Premiere content and one for Strato/Terra. This is the way we did it before Co-Star.

Jim
 
cinelife said:
The new V does not work with Co-Star, so it cannot be the controlling Strato that is used with Co-Star. You can still access your DVD and BR content, but without Co-Star, so basically you'd have two "Sources," one for Premiere content and one for Strato/Terra. This is the way we did it before Co-Star.

Jim
Click to expand...
So I would have to have a my old Cinema One sitting next to a new Strato V, and change sources on my stereo each time i want to see one of my DVDs. For a system that costs as much a K do, and the people they target for these systems, you would think it would be in their best interest to just come out with another Disc vault that integrates seamlessly.

I have a lot of movies that i doubt will ever be added to K library, some old, some from unsupported small companies, lol, like Dead Gentlemen production.
 
Last edited:
shoptime said:
So with this new system, I can NOT play any of my DVD or BD in my old K-disc vault? how am I supposed to play the many titles K does not have in the library? I am supposed to pay all this money for a system that still requires me to go load each movie I want to see into an external attached drive when I want to see them? Please tell me I missed something or K is planning on solving this, in my opinion, MAJOR flaw in this new system! The Co-star was clunky, but it worked for people that have a lot of movies that K does not have.
Click to expand...
As Jim has already noted, currently, Strato V does not support Co-Star. This was done in the interest of keeping the development effort for first release at a manageable scale. Existing customers who are using Co-Star systems should keep their current Strato player. If you want to be able to watch Dolby Vision content, then you can of course add a Strato V as well that you would use for that purpose.
 
shoptime said:
you would think it would be in their best interest to just come out with another Disc vault that integrates seamlessly.
Click to expand...
Let me briefly address this.

"just come out with another Disc Vault" suggests that such an undertaking would be a relatively easy process. Let me assure you that it is far from it.

First and foremost, you need to be able to actually play the content that is stored on those optical discs. In the case of Blu-ray in particular, this is an enormous task. The Blu-ray spec is thousands of pages, incredibly complex, and requires extensive software development effort and support from the vendor of the SOC (System-on-Chip) in the new product. Given the current trajectory of media consumption, SOC vendors don't have this support available, and are not interested in adding it. You might be able to find a vendor who would do the work to add the necessary support on an NRE basis (i.e., you pay them under contract), but that would be a huge investment of money that would have to be recovered through sales of the product into a dwindling market for physical media.

Oh, and by the way, you would also need the appropriate optical drives that could go into such a product. Again, given the trajectory of the optical disc market, sourcing such drives to support a new product is likely impossible.

I hope this adds a bit of perspective.
 
MikeKobb said:
As Jim has already noted, currently, Strato V does not support Co-Star. This was done in the interest of keeping the development effort for first release at a manageable scale. Existing customers who are using Co-Star systems should keep their current Strato player. If you want to be able to watch Dolby Vision content, then you can of course add a Strato V as well that you would use for that purpose.
Click to expand...
Is Co-Star support on the roadmap? Reading the comparison chart and your comments make it seem like K hasn’t decided one way or the other yet.
 
On the comparison chart it says Strato V with Terra Prime Costar support is not available at launch. Is there a timetable to bring costar support to the combination of the Strato V with a terra prime server?
 
mariyoshikong said:
I appreciate the detailed response you have gvien on this one. Even though this is probably not the answer most of us wanted to hear, it does help put things into perspective.
Click to expand...
I think we keep our fingers crossed for a quick co-star update, and buy a few used backup disk vaults so we are not left high and dry once they eventually break.
 
MikeKobb said:
As Jim has already noted, currently, Strato V does not support Co-Star. This was done in the interest of keeping the development effort for first release at a manageable scale. Existing customers who are using Co-Star systems should keep their current Strato player. If you want to be able to watch Dolby Vision content, then you can of course add a Strato V as well that you would use for that purpose.
Click to expand...
Co-Star vs. DV? Co-Star for me. Any plans to add Co-Star support to Strato V?
 
Substance said:
Would you consider using Co-Star as a work around for this?
Click to expand...
MikeKobb said:
Interesting thought, but given the scale of a project like that (read: enormous) and the fact that we are expecting the number of movies that can't be updated to ultimately be quite small, I don't think that it would make sense to go that route.
Click to expand...

This kind of answers my question about whether to expect Co-Star integration with the Premiere line in the near future or not. Ability to play my entire library is more important to me than Dolby Vision. Given this, I will be staying with my Strato C(s). Will you be phasing out the Strato C?
 
Substance said:
This kind of answers my question about whether to expect Co-Star integration with the Premiere line in the near future or not. Ability to play my entire library is more important to me than Dolby Vision. Given this, I will be staying with my Strato C(s). Will you be phasing out the Strato C?
Click to expand...
Let me clarify: porting Co-Star to Strato V is a project of a certain size. Implementing a new flavor of Co-Star specifically to allow playback of old-format HD titles in zones that have a Strato V is a project of a different size that I believe would be larger. With that said, if Co-Star is super important to you, then as we acknowledge in our FAQ, sticking with Strato C is the right call, at least for now.
 
MikeKobb said:
Let me clarify: porting Co-Star to Strato V is a project of a certain size. Implementing a new flavor of Co-Star specifically to allow playback of old-format HD titles in zones that have a Strato V is a project of a different size that I believe would be larger. With that said, if Co-Star is super important to you, then as we acknowledge in our FAQ, sticking with Strato C is the right call, at least for now.
Click to expand...
Plus, adding a third player to the mix wouldn’t even be necessary. Any HD content that is unplayable on the Strato V could be played by the paired Alto or Premiere player.

Also, just want to add my vote that I would really like to see Co-Star support with the V. Once most of the HD content is migrated, Co-Star compatibility is really the only thing keeping the V from completely replacing the C.
 
baltz said:
Plus, adding a third player to the mix wouldn’t even be necessary. Any HD content that is unplayable on the Strato V could be played by the paired Alto or Premiere player.

Also, just want to add my vote that I would really like to see Co-Star support with the V. Once most of the HD content is migrated, Co-Star compatibility is really the only thing keeping the V from completely replacing the C.
Click to expand...
That is true unless you want to keep all your digital library on the Terra(s) and keep only disc imports on the Premiere(s). But I agree with you, it is a fair compromise to skip the Strato C all together and do Strato V + M Class integration.
 
Would it be possible to mimic a Co-Star with a (Crestron) control system until the functionality is available natively?
Actually all of our clients are using Co-Star, so they won´t move until this is available.
 
DieZwei said:
Would it be possible to mimic a Co-Star with a (Crestron) control system until the functionality is available natively?
Actually all of our clients are using Co-Star, so they won´t move until this is available.
Click to expand...
It's possible, I guess, to create some sort of control system programming that could switch automatically between two different players but since each player will only show content it can actually play on its onscreen display, if you're currently looking at the Strato V's OSD, you're not going to see the content that resides on the Premiere system and thus wouldn't be able to select it for playback until you switched the display to the M-Class player.

Similarly, if you're on the M500's OSD, you're only going to see the content that is on the Premiere system and nothing from the Strato system's library. So you'd have to switch back to the Strato V's OSD first.
 
J.Green said:
It's possible, I guess, to create some sort of control system programming that could switch automatically between two different players but since each player will only show content it can actually play on its onscreen display, if you're currently looking at the Strato V's OSD, you're not going to see the content that resides on the Premiere system and thus wouldn't be able to select it for playback until you switched the display to the M-Class player.

Similarly, if you're on the M500's OSD, you're only going to see the content that is on the Premiere system and nothing from the Strato system's library. So you'd have to switch back to the Strato V's OSD first.
Click to expand...
OK, so what´s actually missing is the pairing piece to get the combined library.
 
Unfortunately, the Strato V doesn’t apparently work with CoStar. I have a CinemaOne with a Strato that just died and can’t be repaired, both connected to a CoStar. The Strato V would be a perfect replacement except it wouldn’t integrate seamlessly with the CinemaOne.
 
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