Which way to go with my K future?

[Balthazar2k4]

I have been in and out of the Kaleidescape ecosystem for about the last 5 years or so. Started with an 8TB compact server and eventually ended up with a 48TB server last year. Then I hit the storage limit of my server and immediately questioned my future with K since my rate of movie collecting was growing faster than I could afford storage space. This put me in the weird download on demand/locally stored situation that I didn't really want to find myself in, but probably should have known it was coming. Long story short... I sold everything and decided to walk away.

Fast forward a year and the Strato K has pulled me back in. Now, I have access to my collection of 600 or so movies I own of which many are the new 4KC format. I am also living the download on demand life, but wondering if maybe adding a Mini Terra Prime SSD to the mix might get me a little closer to the feeling of on demand since downloads for the very large 4KC files takes ~20 minutes on average with just the Strato K. The server would be a staging platform to download movies faster with the thought that if I find something I want to watch and need to download it I am not having to go make a sandwich or tell my family to play a game first and then we can watch the movie. I would love to go to something else with 2.5gbe, but that leaves the 120TB Terra Prime which I refuse to do. Is anyone else using a Mini Terra Prime SSD in this fashion? Any real caveats that I am not seeing?

 

[JWort93]

I was in a very similar situation, owning roughly ~1300 titles on K, and not wanting to spend the money necessary to store all my content locally at all times. I ended up selling my 40TB HDD Terra early last year, going with an 8TB SSD Compact Terra Prime instead (mini Terra wasn't out yet, so my model is the one that looks more like the standard compact terra, but black). I've been very happy with the setup! Gives me enough storage to have a good selection of movies, usually my more recently acquired titles, stored locally for immediate playback, but with my 5 gig fiber connection, and the 2.5Gbe port on the SSD Terra, downloads complete fast enough at 2000+ Mbps, that it doesn't bother me to kick a download off and wait if something isn't ready right away. I'll just go make some popcorn lol.

I usually see around 2 mins for an HD download, 4-6 mins for a standard 4K download, and 6-10 mins for most 4K Cinematic downloads, and I'll delete a movie once I'm done watching it if I don't think I'll watch it again in the near future, to keep enough free space on the unit.

No complaints with this setup, it'd definitely be the route I'd go down again, hands down.

 

[todo]

I am in the K environment since 2012 or so.... own about 2800 Movies.
Was heavy into rat packing (downloading) every movie with a 100TB premier system (for HD movies) and then added a Strato C and a 48 TB Terra.
As time passed, I used K less and less and it became more of an impulse or planned movie purchase platform. To the point, I did not buy movies even when they went on sale. If we wanted to watch a movie we just bought it at that time and did not care what the price was and it took 8 or 10 minutes to download and off we went.
Then came the Strato V and I realized that no matter how much storage I own I will not have enough. At this point I decided to sell my entire Premier System including a disc vault M players and what not - also sold my Terra.
I bought one 8TB SSD Terra and I could download a HD movie under a minute and a 4K movie 2 to 4 minutes with my 2.GBPS connection.
Now with K, the SSD Terra can download a 4KC movie between 6 to 8 minutes - this is getting a little long as 4 minutes for 4K was the sweet spot.
The 8TB Terra SSD can hold 75 4KC movies and with a mix and match of some concerts and some rewatch movies I have plenty of hard drive space.
I am planning not to add more storage as the reasoning is same that there is never enough space so best keep the movies on the cloud and download them on demand. A complex theater takes 5 minutes just to start so 8 minutes is still not bad.

 

[Balthazar2k4]

Thank you @todo. Sounds like you and I are in a similar situation. Your thinking is right in line with mine so I believe I am on the right track. Aside from the slightly longer download time any other real caveats using a small server as a staging point? Sounds like the trade-off is always "You never have enough space" with I can download 3x faster with an SSD server. Just need to get used to 'managing' the server end as it fills up.

 

[Balthazar2k4]

I was in a very similar situation, owning roughly ~1300 titles on K, and not wanting to spend the money necessary to store all my content locally at all times. I ended up selling my 40TB HDD Terra early last year, going with an 8TB SSD Compact Terra Prime instead (mini Terra wasn't out yet, so my model is the one that looks more like the standard compact terra, but black). I've been very happy with the setup! Gives me enough storage to have a good selection of movies, usually my more recently acquired titles, stored locally for immediate playback, but with my 5 gig fiber connection, and the 2.5Gbe port on the SSD Terra, downloads complete fast enough at 2000+ Mbps, that it doesn't bother me to kick a download off and wait if something isn't ready right away. I'll just go make some popcorn lol.

I usually see around 2 mins for an HD download, 4-6 mins for a standard 4K download, and 6-10 mins for most 4K Cinematic downloads, and I'll delete a movie once I'm done watching it if I don't think I'll watch it again in the near future, to keep enough free space on the unit.

No complaints with this setup, it'd definitely be the route I'd go down again, hands down.

LOL. You and @todo must've posted at about the same time as I didn't see your post when I responded. Yeah, I regret selling my 48TB Terra Prime now, but at the time I just couldn't make sense of the situation. Unfortunately, only Terra Prime server with space and the 2.5GbE is the 120TB model and I just can't justify the expense. So I think the Mini SSD is going to be my compromise despite the terrible cost per TB value.

Thank you both for your perspectives. Always appreciate insight from other users on here.

 

[andy]

Great topic @Balthazar2k4!

I’m in a somewhat different position because I’m still running an older system: a Strato S with a 10TB internal drive, a 40TB Terra, and an M700 Disc Vault.

When I first filled my storage, I started replacing less frequently watched 4K titles with their HD versions. That bought me some time, but eventually even that wasn’t enough. Today, I keep my favorites and demo-worthy content downloaded, but everything else gets deleted when I need the space. From a playback perspective, that works reasonably well.

The downside is that I’m also a collector. I’ve been a K user since 2007 and over the years I've created 30–40 custom collections, designed cover art for well over 1,000 titles, and added custom scenes to many of my favorite titles. That’s always been one of my favorite parts of the platform.

The problem is that I own more than 1,500 movies on the Store, but around 400 of them aren’t downloaded simply because I don’t have the storage. Every time I delete a movie, or swap a 4K version for HD, I know I’m going to lose any custom cover art and scenes, and whether collection membership survives seems a bit hit-or-miss. As that “not downloaded” number continues to grow, the curated library I’ve spent years building slowly shrinks along with it.

I don’t see myself buying another Terra just for more storage, so that’s become my real dilemma. Download-on-demand itself doesn’t bother me nearly as much as watching years of personal curation slowly disappear. I just wish custom collections, cover art, and scenes were tied to my account instead of the downloaded copy so they would always be there whenever I chose to download a movie again.

Andy

 

[rafaelsmith]

Great topic @Balthazar2k4!

I’m in a somewhat different position because I’m still running an older system: a Strato S with a 10TB internal drive, a 40TB Terra, and an M700 Disc Vault.

When I first filled my storage, I started replacing less frequently watched 4K titles with their HD versions. That bought me some time, but eventually even that wasn’t enough. Today, I keep my favorites and demo-worthy content downloaded, but everything else gets deleted when I need the space. From a playback perspective, that works reasonably well.

The downside is that I’m also a collector. I’ve been a K user since 2007 and over the years I've created 30–40 custom collections, designed cover art for well over 1,000 titles, and added custom scenes to many of my favorite titles. That’s always been one of my favorite parts of the platform.

The problem is that I own more than 1,500 movies on the Store, but around 400 of them aren’t downloaded simply because I don’t have the storage. Every time I delete a movie, or swap a 4K version for HD, I know I’m going to lose any custom cover art and scenes, and whether collection membership survives seems a bit hit-or-miss. As that “not downloaded” number continues to grow, the curated library I’ve spent years building slowly shrinks along with it.

I don’t see myself buying another Terra just for more storage, so that’s become my real dilemma. Download-on-demand itself doesn’t bother me nearly as much as watching years of personal curation slowly disappear. I just wish custom collections, cover art, and scenes were tied to my account instead of the downloaded copy so they would always be there whenever I chose to download a movie again.

Andy

Yeah, while I was content with only having a standalone player....I realized quickly that I could never really make use of scripts, custom scenes,etc. Other than that the download-on-demand has worked out great for us...and still zero interest or desire to buy storage.

 

[randman]

It’s hard to break the collect-and-store-locally habit, even though the vast majority of my movies are only watched once. I find that I only use my scripts maybe once or twice a year, so the need to have lots of movies a HDMI sync away didn’t turn out to be as important as I had anticipated. But gotta admit, hoarding lots of movies is a hard habit to break!

 

[rafaelsmith]

It’s hard to break the collect-and-store-locally habit, even though the vast majority of my movies are only watched once. I find that I only use my scripts maybe once or twice a year, so the need to have lots of movies a HDMI sync away didn’t turn out to be as important as I had anticipated. But gotta admit, hoarding lots of movies is a hard habit to break!

LOL one of the reason I am making sure I never even consider getting storage...cause once I do....I know I will never have enough! Kinda part of the reason I stopped with the NAS and ripping....I was reaching point where I would have to up the raid size...and given what has happened with the price of HD storage....glad I did.

 

[AlanG]

I too have a Strato K paired with a Mini Terra Prime 8TB SSD and the combo works great — as long as you don’t mind swapping titles out of course!

Cheers,
Alan

 

[todo]

Thank you @todo. Sounds like you and I are in a similar situation. Your thinking is right in line with mine so I believe I am on the right track. Aside from the slightly longer download time any other real caveats using a small server as a staging point? Sounds like the trade-off is always "You never have enough space" with I can download 3x faster with an SSD server. Just need to get used to 'managing' the server end as it fills up.

One change in KEOS - if they allow us to choose the Terra in our system where the downloads will occur would change my thinking some.
8TB for Cinematic is Puny Space - like 1 TB in a player .... I dont mind adding say another 20 or even 40 TB just for convenience (and isn't that what K is about? convenience?).
But the deal killer is that if the system decides to push my download into my non SSD Terra.
I have posted several times about this feature on the forum but looks like it is not the priority for K.

 

[AlanG]

One change in KEOS - if they allow us to choose the Terra in our system where the downloads will occur would change my thinking some.
8TB for Cinematic is Puny Space - like 1 TB in a player .... I dont mind adding say another 20 or even 40 TB just for convenience (and isn't that what K is about? convenience?).
But the deal killer is that if the system decides to push my download into my non SSD Terra.
I have posted several times about this feature on the forum but looks like it is not the priority for 8TB for K.

There is a workaround to achieve control over this, simply turn off the non-SSD Terra when you wish to force a download to the mini Terra Prime 8TB SSD. This is exactly why I have started stocking just the Strato K and Mini Terra Prime 8TB SSD — as this combo, for some anyway, is the current sweet spot in the Kaleidescape line. Of course you can always combine that with another Terra (or 2 or 3) if you wish.

 

[todo]

There is a workaround to achieve control over this, simply turn off the non-SSD Terra when you wish to force a download to the mini Terra Prime 8TB SSD. This is exactly why I have started stocking just the Strato K and Mini Terra Prime 8TB SSD — as this combo, for some anyway, is the current sweet spot in the Kaleidescape line. Of course you can always combine that with another Terra (or 2 or 3) if you wish.

I never thought of this... very good idea.
I am guessing this method can also be used to use up the 1TB K drive in the player to load in my permanent fixtures such as Greatest Showman on the player drive - It can take 8 or 10 cinematic movies I Understand. This will relieve 1TB off the SSD Terra.

 

[AlanG]

I am guessing this method can also be used to use up the 1TB K drive in the player to load in my permanent fixtures such as Greatest Showman on the player drive - It can take 8 or 10 cinematic movies I Understand. This will relieve 1TB off the SSD Terra.

Well this workaround is not practical to try to implement with the 1TB drive in the Strato K. It is only a practical workaround to utilize with Terra Primes or Terras.

 

[todo]

Well this workaround is not practical to try to implement with the 1TB drive in the Strato K. It is only a practical workaround to utilize with Terra Primes or Terras.

The movies on the player drive would be load once and forget - If you load movies in the player drive and also on the SSD Terra - do all of them become available (including the player drive movies) to play?

 

[Broncowrangler]

You lose access to the in built player storage once you introduce (or pair) an external drive into the equation. Wish they would change this going forward and allow the internal storage to be integrated as well with the external drive.

In this hobby every inch of real estate counts. Lol.

 

[rafaelsmith]

You lose access to the in built player storage once you introduce (or pair) an external drive into the equation. Wish they would change this going forward and allow the internal storage to be integrated as well with the external drive.

In this hobby every inch of real estate counts. Lol.

Would be nice but I am pretty sure that the chipset used in this new players does not allow the unit to be used as a "server". Big difference between having internal storage and offering that storage up in a networked environment. I mean we cant even "connect" two Vs or two Ks..or any combo of the "M/E/V/K". They simply cannot be servers is my guess.

 

[Transepoch]

Would be nice but I am pretty sure that the chipset used in this new players does not allow the unit to be used as a "server". Big difference between having internal storage and offering that storage up in a networked environment. I mean we cant even "connect" two Vs or two Ks..or any combo of the "M/E/V/K". They simply cannot be servers is my guess.

Performance hit for serving is one thing, not allowing it to be used for local playback on that device is another. Granted, it may lower the chance of confused customers who know they downloaded something but cannot play it (because it went to another player,) but more likely is because it would ultimately be a messy homing issue (you go to download something but didn't delete enough from the Terra first, so a Strato has the most space available... and not the one you're trying to play from, so now you're back to the prior example.)

 

[Sasquatch]

I have been in and out of the Kaleidescape ecosystem for about the last 5 years or so. Started with an 8TB compact server and eventually ended up with a 48TB server last year. Then I hit the storage limit of my server and immediately questioned my future with K since my rate of movie collecting was growing faster than I could afford storage space. This put me in the weird download on demand/locally stored situation that I didn't really want to find myself in, but probably should have known it was coming. Long story short... I sold everything and decided to walk away.

Fast forward a year and the Strato K has pulled me back in. Now, I have access to my collection of 600 or so movies I own of which many are the new 4KC format. I am also living the download on demand life, but wondering if maybe adding a Mini Terra Prime SSD to the mix might get me a little closer to the feeling of on demand since downloads for the very large 4KC files takes ~20 minutes on average with just the Strato K. The server would be a staging platform to download movies faster with the thought that if I find something I want to watch and need to download it I am not having to go make a sandwich or tell my family to play a game first and then we can watch the movie. I would love to go to something else with 2.5gbe, but that leaves the 120TB Terra Prime which I refuse to do. Is anyone else using a Mini Terra Prime SSD in this fashion? Any real caveats that I am not seeing?

Might be stating the obvious, but might want to confirm the download speeds you’re getting with your ISP. The SSD/2.5 gbe isn’t of benefit if you can’t feed it.

 

[Balthazar2k4]

I have 5gig fiber. Speedtests about 4800mbps up and down, but that is a very good point @Sasquatch