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Your Experience with Reliability of Kaleidescape Disc Vaults

Steve Bruzonsky

Well-known member
I am STILL considering whether to get, to go along with my Terra Server 40TB and Strato C 4k player, an Alto blu ray player (benefit of if the movie/concert/tv show is in the KStore, paying the price to get the KStore digital HD or upgrade price to 4k if available version; as well as to play any blu rays I have not in my K system via Alto without going through all the previews, etc) and perhaps a DV-700 disc vault (so blu rays which I have, not in the Kstore, or which I won't want to pay anymore more $$ for, can be played from the vault via the Alto). (The vault would be nice particularly as I have a lot of blu ray and some DVD concert discs, most of which are NOT in the Kstore - but if I don't get a vault, heck, I can still play them on my Pioneer UDP-LX500 4k universal player.)

Particularly for the DV-700, I am reconsidering, perhaps just get the Alto. My concern is the disc vault's disc drive breaking down. If I buy a used one, still a lot of $$. If I buy a new one, way more money, but you get a warranty - but new one too much $$, out of the question. My understanding is the Kaleidescape has bought up what they consider to be sufficient spare parts and drives to cover their outstanding warranty on the disc vaults and players. But what if your disc vault is out of warranty - will KScape fix at reasonable charge of course the vault, or are you simply out of luck because KScape is reserving the parts for in warranty service? My gut tells me the latter may well be the case, especially as the year(s) of any remaining warranties go by. Some years ago I had a Pioneer LD-97 player that simply couldn't not be repaired, no new or used drive available.

I should add the the WARNING on the Kscape Owners forum on buying used KScape products is so appropriate. Last week, there was a DV-700 advertised on ebay. I emailed with the seller. He told me some good stories, gave me a serial number, turned out a week ago Monday I checked with KScape and it was an invalid serial #. I had told the seller I was checking with KScape the day before. Well, within 12 hours of my telling this to the seller, on the day KScape told me it was not a valid serial number and didn't even start with the right letters/numbers for a serial number, the add was pulled from Ebay.

Which begs the question, folks with Kscape disc vaults, which vault(s) do you have, how long have you had the vault(s), how much have you used the vault(s), and to what extent have you had issues with the vault(s) requiring sending to KScape for repair?

Thanks.
 
*to the tune of knocking on wood*
My fleet of vaults are about evenly split between Ms & Ds, and likely skewing toward previously used, but generally been fine. I think the first one ended up having to get swapped-out fairly early on, but it was likely from the initial batch, so I wouldn't hold that against a more recent unit. More recently one of them developed a problem (initially intermittent) with the rear rollers, which has made it unusable until I get it resolved (and the out-of-service time is as much a function of me not taking the time to work on it.) I have chosen to try and troubleshoot, as the only out-of-warranty service option I was offered is swapping for a new/refurbished unit.

I'm honestly not all that worried about the optical drives, as they should be a fairly commodity part to replace should the need arise in the future.
 
The Vaults tend to be reasonably reliable long term, but actual "use" does affect longevity (obviously). I don't use any of my Vaults to playback a physical disc, my Vaults are only used for importing and storage of BR discs. I have not experienced any major problems with the Vaults.

When there are problems, they tend to present as one of these 5 issues:

1. Not all discs being recognized when importing. (Usually a disc based problem, dirty or damaged discs, metadata conflict, etc.. You can also get error messages, i.e. "Disc not recognized as a DVD/CD...." etc..).

2. Discs not loading correctly. (This is usually a result of dirty loading rollers that feed the optical drive (or the rollers that feed a disc to the Vault). You can clean these rollers yourself. Can also be an optical drive problem.

3. Optical drive failure (discs no longer import, or fail to eject a disc in the drive. Optical drive replacement fixes this issue.).

4. Power Supply failure. (Replace power supply.)

5. Discs not being ejected from the Vault. (This tends to be dirty rollers (easy fix), OR, the ejection pin at the bottom of the carousel used to push the disc into the ejection rollers is defective (cannot fix in field, unit must be returned to K for warranty exchange, or as an exchange for a -R (Remanufactured) replacement.)

I'm sure there are other issues that can arise, but my experience indicates those 5 issues account for most of the problems we see with the Vaults.

Additional notes: K will only repair/replace in-warranty products. If a product is out-of-warranty, but within 5 years of the original sale date, K "may" offer the owner a -R replacement (this requires the return of the defective component, and paying a reduced cost for the -R unit. There are limited parts available, and in most cases when those parts are gone, they're gone, and it will eventually be up to owners to locate replacement parts on their own. Fortunately, members are posting when they find 3rd party replacement parts.

Keep in mind, these Vaults were not originally designed to handle disc playback from the optical drive, they were for import and storage only (DV700) and import, storage, and internal Player with the M700. These were later software modified to allow them to act like the old Sony disc carousels for disc playback. This obviously puts more strain on all moving parts, and the rollers and optical drive in particular. These are generally well-built, but more use obviously shortens the life of some parts.

Jim
 
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