The Kaleidescape-owner's dilemma

[BritBlaster]

I have had a Kaleidescape system for 5+ years or so now, and I?ve loved it to pieces. I?ve made a few upgrades along the way, and I?ve got 8TB of storage, 2x1080p players and 2x1080p mini-players. K?scape have made great improvements to their system over the years, but I?m very disappointed that they did not revise the software in the 1080p components to allow the viewing of HD store content (even though they are capable of displaying HD content). My 3U server and its drives are now out of warranty and K?scape will not extend the warranty. The upgrade option is pretty nice, and going to 7x4TB drives would increase my capacity greatly. But then I?d need at least 2 M300 players at the very least, so my total upgrade with tax and everything else would be around $14K. That would allow me to download Blu-Ray HD content from the store, and stick with the wonderful K?scape UI. Or, I could sell my system with 4 players. I reckon I could get about $12K for the complete system. What would I do in that case? Well, I would have a net difference of $26K to spend ? I could therefore purchase 1,200 movies in HD for my AppleTV to replace my existing library that exists on K?scape. I wouldn?t have to worry about maintaining my equipment, or the electrical/maintenance costs of running my media server 7x24. All the maintenance would be Apple?s problem. Yes, I?d have to give up the UI, but I could live with the benefits of convenience?my worst-case outlay would be $99 if my hardware breaks. All of my movies would be automatically available on my mobile devices too. The pricing structure of Kaleidescape makes sense when released when ?streaming? was nascent technology, there was no real competition, but in today?s landscape I just can?t see how I can justify it to myself that upgrading my system makes any sense. Where is the value proposition? Am I missing something, or how do you guys manage to deal with your own inner-monologue when in sensible-mode?

 

[Mr.Poindexter]

First off, the 1080p players can display HD content, but only from MPEG2, which is not what the new Blu-Ray content is encoded with.

Streaming still has it's limits, especially when it comes to watching multiple shows at once. We often have 3 HD streams running simultaneously in my home as my wife may be watching a TV series while I am watching a film, the kids often won't agree on a show and we have another person living in the house here so it would be very hard to have the same level of performance as we get with local storage of the titles. That may not be everybody's reality, but it is mine.

 

[josh]

I happen to agree with you Brit. The case for continued investment in Kaleidescape hardware is becoming harder to make. It's a wonderful system... and adding Blu-Ray was a big step forward, adding a downlaod store was another. But without streaming capabilities and cloud storage, without some amount of portability of content to mobile devices, then consumers will find it is just too restrictive, expensive, and burdensome on many levels. Obviously I'm a huge proponent of Kaleidescape, and they've been able to make big leaps in the past to keep the system fresh, so I hope that will be the case again soon, with features that will wow us and will make it clear to everyone again that Kaleidescape remains in the forefront of home movie viewing technology.

 

[BritBlaster]

First off, the 1080p players can display HD content, but only from MPEG2, which is not what the new Blu-Ray content is encoded with.

Streaming still has it's limits, especially when it comes to watching multiple shows at once. We often have 3 HD streams running simultaneously in my home as my wife may be watching a TV series while I am watching a film, the kids often won't agree on a show and we have another person living in the house here so it would be very hard to have the same level of performance as we get with local storage of the titles. That may not be everybody's reality, but it is mine.

Good point about streaming. I have 50Mbit from Comcast that has been quite reliable, and in my household there is only ever 1 HD stream active at a time anyway.

The store could offer MPEG-2 downloads -- they would take up a little more space than MPEG-4. I'm sure it was a marketing decision (not a technical one) to "encourage" more users to purchase M-class players that the store did not offer MPEG-2 downloads as an option. A technical solution might've been to offer MPEG-4 decoding in software as a software update to the existing 1080p players.

I think I've made up my mind to see if I can sell my complete system.

 

[djb_rh]

I think I've made up my mind to see if I can sell my complete system.

I came pretty close to that before I upgraded to M-class players, but the sale of some other gear I didn't need that was WAY more grotesquely overpriced funded my upgrade so I went with it.

If I had to do it over again? I'm not sure I would have done it. And I only have a 10Mbs connection (soon to be 20) and am so far in the boonies it is a miracle I can get *that* good of a connection. And I still have bottleneck issues from time to time, but I think for the cost I *still* might live with streaming.

What's stopping me from selling it now? Probably the store, honestly. I'm holding out hope that they're going to get all the major studios on board. If so, I like the interface enough as well as the quality level overall that I think it's worth it. But it is teetering, I agree. And I can't see a scenario where I'd fault anyone for going the other direction, assuming you have given the streaming option a full test drive and find it adequate in your situation.

One very nice thing about that situation is if you have vacation houses your hardware investment is MUCH lower, obviously. If you think having to pay for one server is bad, imagine two or three!


--Donnie

 

[Mr.Poindexter]

The store could offer MPEG-2 downloads -- they would take up a little more space than MPEG-4. I'm sure it was a marketing decision (not a technical one) to "encourage" more users to purchase M-class players that the store did not offer MPEG-2 downloads as an option. A technical solution might've been to offer MPEG-4 decoding in software as a software update to the existing 1080p players.

The store can only offer downloads the studios will give them and the studios are not mastering any of these films in MPEG2, so it would require the studios not only to support Kaleidescape, but also to provide them with a special mastering in addition to their Blu-ray one, which the majority of their future user base will be preferring as it offers higher quality video, lossless HD audio, smaller file size for storage and a faster download as well. Keep in mind that the studios might still be finding issue with allowing downloading of a digital HD version of a film without the AACS copy protection system, which you would not have on the MPEG-2 stream as it won't decode that encryption and the older players were found to be lacking the processing power to decode the new HD codecs via software.

These issues on the hardware were discussed years ago.

Thinking of these larger file sizes, I am curious as to how large the Kaleidescape servers must be for their store. Anybody know the total size of their catalog now when the HD and DVD versions of all their content is added up? I also wonder if some titles require multiple copies to be available to cover lots of simultaneous streams for downloads of new releases, as I suspect one image might have a problem feeding ten steams at 50+ mbit each.

 

[BritBlaster]

Thinking of these larger file sizes, I am curious as to how large the Kaleidescape servers must be for their store. Anybody know the total size of their catalog now when the HD and DVD versions of all their content is added up? I also wonder if some titles require multiple copies to be available to cover lots of simultaneous streams for downloads of new releases, as I suspect one image might have a problem feeding ten steams at 50+ mbit each.

Pretty simple Fermi problem.

20 movies per page, ~40 pages of movies = 800 movies
~10 pages are HD = 200 HD movies
Say approx 5GB for SD, 50GB for HD average
600 * 5 + 200 * 50 = 13 TB total

K'scape probably just uses S3 or Rackspace to host the files in the cloud (would be silly to implement their own cloud-storage). 13TB of cloud storage can be had for around $1000/mon.

 

[Mr.Poindexter]

Brit, I think you are way off in your calculations. You have 100 HD movies, yet I personally downloaded about 200 HD discs in the last month from their store. I did over 100 film titles and about 20 TV shows at ~5 discs per title. I certainly don't have all their HD content.

 

[JohnJ]

I think that's 100 movies per page not 20 (there are 20 rows by 5 title per row).

John

 

[Mr.Poindexter]

I left the search terms blank and did a search and told it to only show Blu-ray titles and it said 3,002 titles were not shown because of my preferences. I interpret that to be 3,002 DVD titles.

Blu-ray titles are less, but certainly more than 200 of them.

 

[Mr.Poindexter]

I think that's 100 movies per page not 20 (there are 20 rows by 5 title per row).

John

That would make more sense.

3,000 DVD at 6.7GB per title = 20 TB
1,000 Blu-ray at 40GB per title = 40TB

Total 60 TB right now. If they were to add an MPEG-2 version of the Blu-ray titles, that would add another 50TB of storage on the back end, based on the number of studios online now and the current slate of titles. Also, based on your numbers, it would cost them about $3,000 per month just to host the movies in the store in MPEG2-HD for legacy players.

 

[JerryL]

Everyone is correct.

Bottom line: streamers are great but if you lose your connection you get nothing. Btw- last year after Sandy we were home bound for 10 days and we didn't have our internet for a month. I was very glad for satellite TV and our K Scape.

The cost of the K system is quite high. For that you get local storage and also you get access to high res audio- the streamers don't currently have that.

Ive tried playing my apple tv on my projection system and I can tell you it does not look as good as the BR content- and the BR content is 24P whereas the apple tv is reformatted to 60hz.

But for watching on a flat screen in your family room- its hard to argue against the apple tv/ streaming solution.

You could keep the K system as a legacy system.

It doesn't make any sense for them to reformat/ master the content as MPEG2.

They might as well remaster those high res soundtracks the M class players cant internally decode into PCM.... hummmm

 

[Yetis]

Correct me if I am wrong, but doesn't the online digital version allow for mobile? Once in your online account, you add a UV account. This allows you to download the HD content to a flixster account or stream it? This is studio specific, so no Disney.

I will agree, watching a full blu ray simply beats streaming on a decent amount system, though the gap is closing. There are some on avs that do side by side comparisons apple/vudu/blu ray, and while blu ray seems to edge out, it's not a land slide.

I have been lingering on this site, with plans to buy a K system. The discussion is worrisome, though given K seems to be listening, perhaps it's a good thing.

Can I ask, as K owners, what are features you would like/need to keep or further invest? I will take a stab at a few.

Mobile application native to K
Hi-res audio decode.

 

[JohnJ]

I would love to have support for hi res audio. However, this is not a deal killer for me. I can get this with other solutions.

What I do expect from K is pristine video. This is why K needed to offer BR quality downloads fom their store. If they had done some kind of compression to reduce the download time, I would not have been a happy camper.

This also means that K needs to support future video standards if and when they become common place. This means support for 3D at some point and 4k/UHD if this becomes common place in the market. I also don't expect K to pioneer the market in new formats but to add capabilities once there is a proven market.

In terms of a mobile application from K, this I also not a deal breaker for me especially with UV rights available through the store.

In terms of what I like about K:

1) I love the interface (and so does the rest of the family).
2) I love having scenes marked and the ability to make your own scenes along with the capability to write scripts to link scenes together with minimal delay between each new scene. I don't think people realize how hard it is to minimize the delays in playing parts fron totally different movies with no delays. I use these features all the time. I don't know of any other system that can do this.
3) I like the ability to play multiple movies simultaneously without noticing that this is even happening.

John

 

[Yetis]

So the bases of the original OP was that K wasn't cutting it for him anymore. If owners had to list, what they thought K needed to keep them engaged, what is it? I guess the positive attributes also help balance out the discussion.

I suspect that 4k is a little way down the pipe. There isn't a lot of of content and standards seem a little unstable. I suspect that we will need to see some updates such as HDMI 2.0 and gigibit transfer, to get to that level.

 

[BritBlaster]

Brit, I think you are way off in your calculations. You have 100 HD movies, yet I personally downloaded about 200 HD discs in the last month from their store. I did over 100 film titles and about 20 TV shows at ~5 discs per title. I certainly don't have all their HD content.

I think that's 100 movies per page not 20 (there are 20 rows by 5 title per row).

It IS a simple Fermi problem, but it does help to put in basic details correctly -- thanks for the corrections guys.

 

[BritBlaster]

I have contacted my dealer and requested upgrade pricing. I'm seriously considering going that route based on the quote.

I do like the fact that K'scape offer Blu-Ray quality via download, there are some movies that really cry-out for Dolby TruHD or DTS-HD audio and high bit-rate video. I wish there was some "middle ground" though. For example, if I was buying "Lord of the Rings" or "World War Z", then dedicated 50GB of storage to those movies is a no-brainer. But what about "My Best Friend's Girl", "Ace Ventura" or "Christmas Vacation" -- I'd like an upgrade from DVD, but without dedicating 50GB of storage for it. Something like the codec used in AppleTV or Vudu where it is highly efficient, high quality, but with a slightly inferior video quality than BluRay, but only use around 10GB of storage -- that would be perfect for the 80-percentile purchase case for me.

A note about UV. You can sure tell that system was designed by a committee of lawyers and bureaucrats. I installed the Flixster app, spent 2 hours downloading several movies I had in my account onto my iPad for a long upcoming flight. Once on the flight it refused to play any movie at all because it didn't have an internet connection. Um, hello!, that's why I downloaded the movies that you said I had the rights to. Jeez.

I think that's what makes the Kaleidescape system so pleasant -- it's designed by people who clearly love movies and love the experience of watching a movie. Click "play" and boom! there's your movie playing right NOW -- no FBI warnings, no being forced to watch a movie trailer for a movie long-ago introduced and forgotten, no, your movie! Most times when I put in a DVD or BluRay and endure the unpleasantness of that whole process to get your movie to play I think to myself, wow, the companies that release movies really hate/mistrust their own customers and seem to want to make things as frustrating and inconvenient as possible. On the other hand, Kaleidescape seem to take the approach "how can we make this a more pleasant and rewarding experience"...

 

[cinelife]

..........A note about UV. You can sure tell that system was designed by a committee of lawyers and bureaucrats. I installed the Flixster app, spent 2 hours downloading several movies I had in my account onto my iPad for a long upcoming flight. Once on the flight it refused to play any movie at all because it didn't have an internet connection. Um, hello!, that's why I downloaded the movies that you said I had the rights to. Jeez.........

This is one of the reasons I ordered a hot spot on my next car (due in March), but I still doubt the connections will be reliable. I'm considering trying to find a way to add a Cinema One to the car's rear seat entertainment. Might use one of those special protective travel cases and drill some holes for the cables...........



Jim

 

[BritBlaster]

This is one of the reasons I ordered a hot spot on my next car (due in March), but I still doubt the connections will be reliable. I'm considering trying to find a way to add a Cinema One to the car's rear seat entertainment. Might use one of those special protective travel cases and drill some holes for the cables...........

Assuming it's LTE and you are in a major metro area, you should have enough bandwidth to stream from your HOME system -- you could use a (M)300 player and then define a VPN link from your car to your home network. I wouldn't want to put hard-drives in your car, they would only last a few months at best.

 

[nineball]

So the bases of the original OP was that K wasn't cutting it for him anymore. If owners had to list, what they thought K needed to keep them engaged, what is it? I guess the positive attributes also help balance out the discussion.

I suspect that 4k is a little way down the pipe. There isn't a lot of of content and standards seem a little unstable. I suspect that we will need to see some updates such as HDMI 2.0 and gigibit transfer, to get to that level.

I think this thread could be useful to the Kaleidescape folks who are listening. As stated this thread questions the current value propositions for both the existing and prospective customers. Its a relevant and good discussion to have for the owners and the manufacturer.

I think there is a general consensus that until recently there was a significant enough gap between Kaleidescape and any potential competitors to warrant purchasing a system. The user interface and sense of engagement were significant elements in that assessment. The ability to have bluray quality with local storage was about as good as it got with respect to comparisons with on-line product availability. But that landscape is shifting and shifting fast. The opening of the store blunted that momentum but without an avalanche of additional studios the gap is going to narrow considerably in my opinion.

I have around 8 screens(7 flat LEDs and one 14 ft projection) The current dominant use of the smaller screens is Apple TV and I cannot fault the utility of that application. I suspect that will continue. Even though I have Cable/Satellite/stand alone 3D Bluray/AppleTVand other media hooked into the larger screen I only ever watch Kaleidescape movies as the process and quality work extremely well in that environment. On that screen in that environment the Kaleidescape value proposition has been sustained. On smaller screens not so much.

This brings me to what I think the 'PUBLIC' roadmap ought to be like for the Kaleidescape management team. There needs to be a continuing association with quality and best practices for hardware and software with a clear and detailed blueprint for what that means. A public commitment with the apparent industry intent to go 4K and yes, even 8K in the near practical term would be in their best interest. Aiming for next years CEDIA would be a great goal for a prototype system to be demonstrated. There are some potential industry partners that are headed in that direction for additional leverage and momentum. Remember Kaleidescape owners are generally folks who value technology leadership and innovation ............ that desire needs to be fed!

As for software, there needs to be a cultural shift in gears from the years of legal wrangling that emphasized closed secure systems to an environment that is much more available and connected. AND no I do NOT mean violating the integrity of the media security either. We need to have easy connectivity to a range of popular devices because if the conversation in this forum is any indicator. Kaleidescape owners do want and need to consume movies in a larger footprint than is presently allowable. Yes there are engineering challenges to that goal but you can't stay holed up in the present configuration and survive, much less grow.

Additional studios are definitely in the crosshairs of the critical path to success. I don't pretend to understand or to overestimate what it takes to bring them on but the failure to achieve this business requirement will in my opinion diminish the value of this technology substantially. With the current architecture that I can see (so far in Canada we have Warner Bros) the value proposition is great. Bluray quality available as a download. I think I have downloaded close to a hundred movies and contrary to some opinions in this forum the bandwidth worked, albeit a bit slow but it worked and worked well.

I have more to say but I type waaaaay to slow.

Peter