📌 Considering the Kaleidescape? Find one here bit.ly/482HyhW and bit.ly/3VRsgYu 🔌 Leave a QUESTION/COMMENT! It may be featured on the next Unplugged! Watch every UNPLUGGED here bit.ly/43NnDkT 😀If you enjoyed this video, please hit the 👍 Like button! 🙏 Please stay on topic & be respectful. ‼ Channel Policies, FTC Disclosures & 🚫 are available in the description box (beneath the video’s title).
My main problem with buying physical media is that I rarely rewatch a movie. I guess that’s why people don’t buy movies and just rent online. I can’t justify paying for a physical media ( with some exceptions of course) …plus the space problem. I can’t have a wall full of cds , dvds, blu rays , vinyl. I prefer a more clean looking space since I live in a small apartment.
Interesting to learn about the Strato V. Their pricing for the servers is however just insane, like buying a Mac with more than base storage 🙂 I wonder, how does what the Strato V offer in term of quality compare to the Bravia Core streaming service from Sony? You should have free access to the Bravia Core as it comes as a bonus with their more fancy offerings like TV's, phones and more. The Bravia Core service requires something like 100 Mbps+ to let you stream at max quality and personally I have never seen anything surpass it, although not all movies on their service is that high a quality.
My 2003 911 Carrera S cost me less, then a full build out of the KScope system. I have a massive library of DVDs and BDs and will never give them up, I cannot ever trust these companies. And we have not gone into the 'stealth' edits of older movies/tv because of 'Problematic' scenes.
Technically, a disc is merely your license. While I think the studios and record labels "lost" their battles regarding the re-selling of discs by private and third-party re-sellers, such practices were originally and may still be, technically, illegal. But I see your point.
@@andrewrobinsonreviewsthe difference is my "license" with the disc allows me to watch offline, share with people, unable to edit the content based off societal changes, superior picture and sound, bonus features, etc
@@BloopsnBleeps I mean there are other options than just streaming vs physical/disc media. You can have digital copies of films and retain the same control as discs, yet have the advantage of less space used and easier backup/playback.
@@AndySomethingWhat digital copy would you have that retains as much control as a disc? Also, the audio and video quality suffer, so if you're looking for the truest form of film preservation, it would be physical
This is not true with K-scape. You actually purchase the license differently than other digital stores. If k-scape loses the license to sell, you still have the right to play the media and redownload it. I own the Strato V - it’s fantastic
The pricing is absurd and exploitative. The price for a 96TB player is ~26k. You can buy 5x20TB hdds for $1890. The only difference I can see between models is space. So the idea of a company charging a 20k premium on a HDDs is enough for me to say thats not a company I'd like to do business with.
Hard pass. Making storage proprietary so you have to buy it from them at a 10x markup is criminal. You can also only redownload your purchases for as long as they stay in business and keep those servers running. The concept is great, but the execution puts me off.
@@stevenmichael7770 it’s not criminal, it’s how they remain legit with the studios. What’s criminal are “beta” products like MakeMKV providing a resource for users to defeat existing copy protection on discs in order to “backup” their media with other users around the world.
@@ballstadt what SHOULD be criminal is producers putting that copy protection in the first place. The vast majority of people just want to have their physical media available on other devices and to back it up in case of damage, theft, or fire. Most aren't torrenting it.
@@frostman9661 so producers and studios don’t have the right to protect their intellectual property? Weird. That’s like saying it should be criminal to put locks on your front door or your car. It should be criminal to allow you to have a password on your bank account.
$4000 to hold four 4k movies seems ridiculous. I built my unraid server with over 100TB for 2k, and can run plex over my wifi to tv or Nvidia Shield. Holds my whole collection. My 4k blurays often running at 130mbps. Not sure how this competes with a regular 4k blu ray player or a NAS or server running plex. This seems like off the shelf server rental for millionaires.
I have 100% interest in what Kaleidoscope does as stated by Andrew. I have 0% interest at the current price. The device would have to be no more than $500 to get me on board.
If Apple ever introduces a high bit-rate tier for streaming movies on their store, the Kaleidescape business will collapse. And for $4,000 you’re only getting a 1TB storage, so 10 4K files. Kaleidescape doesn’t even carry the criterion collection, which is a massive deal breaker for me.
@@Hamza-yu1ur better still if you do upgrade to a Terra prime it doesn't even stack with the 1 TB. It just becomes useless and unusable so a complete waste of money for that money. I wish they put in a 10 TB hard drive versus the flash drive would be a better value overall
@@Hamza-yu1ur as far as Apple or anyone else offering a higher bit rate streaming, I wouldn't count on it. Bandwidth is expensive. Kaleidoscope can do what they do because they're offloading a lot of the networking and bandwidth costs on the hardware. Apple TVs don't cost several thousand dollars so they're not going to be able to do that The same way. You can get high bitrate from Sony Bravia core, but that's only the only content so that's not really an answer
@@Antimonkat this was an obvious calculation. Even a 4TB drive (these are nvme drives) would allow for the full Kaleidescape GUI. At 4TB there is less motivation to buy more storage. The V is an entry way but they expect you to spend more.
Once you own a KS, the deals on owning content can be cheaper and better quality than disc. KS also offers upgrade deals vs having to buy a movie again… They also offer a discount to those who have a disc already by means of hooking up a USB disc drive and scanning what you own. The discounts are all driven by the movie houses not KS. Most disc bitrates max out around 65Mbps and KS rips can be from the master film with their relationships and over 100Mbps.
- $9,000 for a Strato V and the cheapest additional storage (8TB) - Never own anything tangible - If the business fails you have a $9,000 paperweight - AV quality compared to 4k UHD discs is a push So for an absurd 30x cost differential compared to a great 4k disc player, and all the inherent risk you take by adopting this format, the pay off is what? A run-of-the-mill UI and no wicked cool physical media collection to show off? You willingly give up ownership and pay 30x all for "convenience". That long grueling slog of opening a case and dropping a disc in a tray, oh the humanity!
Only a 75-inch or above???? Nah. Even on my 65-inch TV, the 4K disc doesn't even TOUCH a 4K stream...... both in terms of visuals and (as you mentioned) audio. Take the original BLADE RUNNER. The 4K disc resolves the grain beautifully. It looks FANTASTIC. The stream is mush.
@@StevenHemingway1 I use a 42C2 and going from a 5-10mbps stream to a 85-100mbps disc is night and day just for sharpness, clarity, and importantly colour no dithering or banding and they look like they are printed on the screen.
@@ashliehiggins Exactly. KS is the same thing. To say it's only noticeable at 75-inches is RIDICULOUS. Like I mentioned, older movies (let's take Ridley Scott's ALIEN and BLADE RUNNER) look INSANELY good on 4K disc vs the mushy stream.
@@StevenHemingway1 Kaleidescape isn't a stream, though. How large is the file on your Avengers: Endgame disc? It's under 66GB, compared to Kaleidescape's 111GB. Care to compare?
@@ballstadt Didn't say it was. Sometimes, KS is even BETTER than the disc. My point being, AR said that the difference between a stream and KS isn't noticeable below 75 inches, and I said that's not even remotely true. Seems like you didn't watch the video, so you don't know what I am commenting on.
@@StevenHemingway1 I misinterpreted your post. Too many people believe Kaleidescape is streaming. I watched the video. Your first post says "4K disc doesn't touch a stream" which, I'm still not sure what that is supposed to mean, and immediately positioned your argument as being "Kaleidescape is streaming and isn't as good as 4K disc."
Long time listener, first time caller here-love your channel, Andrew. Gotta correct you on one tiny detail: Kaleidescape doesn’t carry everything. Case in point: my latest film had a legit theatrical run earlier this year and is on Disney+, Hulu, iTunes, Amazon…but not Kaleidescape. No idea why. Anyway, fun fact: Kaleidescape actually shut down in 2016 and laid off pretty much everyone before a last-minute cash infusion revived them. So instead of dropping $4,000 on a single piece of hardware and zero movies, you could buy a Panasonic DP-UB820 and over 100 4K Blu-rays. And unless a cinephile burglar breaks into your home, you’ll always own them.
Regarding the question of why your film, Immaculate (2024), isn't available on the Kaleidescape movie store, that would be a question for your distributor, Neon, as their titles appear on the store regularly; case in point, Longlegs which retails for $17.79. To the best of my knowledge, Kaleidescape doesn't discriminate as to which titles they sell and which titles they don't, so I would encourage you to reach out to Neon to see if something can't be done. I didn't say Kaleidescape had everything, I said, they had everything I searched for comparable to AppleTV and other services. I suppose I could've gone on to say, but your mileage may vary as I can see Immaculate is available on other services but not Kaleidescape. As for the rest, you're right. Kaleidescape almost went out of business years and years ago, but that was due to issues of legality (in the eyes of the studio) with their past business model and products. As things are today, they really are no different in terms of licensing and contracts from that of other streaming platforms, so the threat of going under has less to do with their services and content than it did years ago. With respect to the rest of your argument, as stated in my review, if you want to hang on to physical media, that's great. If you want to build your own K-Scape-like server, more power to you. Different strokes for different folks.
for 4 thousand dollars, you can go to the theater approximately 80-120 times. I go to the movies approximately 8 times a year at best so that's over a decade's worth of going to the theater JUST FOR THE UNIT. There's the elephant in the room here : this service could go offline at any moment, making this one of the most expensive paperweights I've ever owned. I'm sorry but there's just no way I could purchase this. I'd rather buy a 300$ 4k blu-ray player and hundreds of movies (and live with the hassle) than risk 4 grand on that thing. don't get me wrong, I'd buy one in a heartbeat if it sold for a reasonable amount of money. But FOUR GRAND? getouttahere
Give me a 4k discs all day long. Its mine and nobody can alter or take it away from me. I look forward to me films arriving through the door and checking out the features.
I think most people will find better value for the money building a 4K Bluray collection than using Kaleidescape. I know I do. I have no desire to pay a company to do all the work for me, because half of the reason I am into physical media is because I want more direct control over my library and how it is played.
Not to mention, most of us already have the media, so why repurchase? Plus there is some odd sadistic pleasure in taking the time to rip your CD's and DVD's and organize your media server/network.
It STILL comes down to you can only store a few movies at 4k on the local drive and download the rest. Your content is and always will be at the mercy of a service being around in 10 years. I own ALL of my content PHYSICALLY, can watch when I want and do not have to rely on a service or a proprietary device made by a niche company. I will rely on my home server service if I choose to do a mass storage solution.
Couldn't agree more. Why would I pay so much money for a system that can only store a few films? I have over 325 Blu Ray disks, and just beginning to get into 4K UHD disks and have no issue simply storing them on a shelf, here at home. I guess it's up to each individual to choose, and while I kinda get what Andrew is saying here it just doesn't work for me. I love physical media - and the extras that studios provide on those disks. That, paired with a 4K streaming device (I use AppleTV 4K) gives my home theatre all I'll need. I did look into a media server at one time but man - the costs are insane and -- to your point -- many times your content is only as reliable as the server (and service).
$4,000 for the player itself isnt actually the turn off I thought it would be, but $27,000 to get only another ~100 TB? Yikes, and I thought Apple's storage pricing was insulting lol. The INSANE external storage cost combined with having the same ownership drawbacks as any other digital purchase is enough for me to stray away from this option and continue with my plans to build a plex server from ripped versions of all my discs. Really great review however, very insightful on how the whole operation works!
@gingersmedia The SSD servers are targeted for Kaleidescape's marine installation market, not for typical home installation. Kaleidescape themselves will tell you there is little or no benefit to using SSD storage for a home installation, outside of energy efficiency and operating noise level. The full-size Terra servers have greater storage capacities, and also have user-replaceable hard drives in case of failure, so there's little reason to go with the SSD servers for a home theater.
It has a 1tb SSD drive so it holds a lot more than that depending on movie size and is $3600 if you get it through some places. It holds 10-12 4k Dolby vision/HDR at one time again depending on size (60-100gb each??)and if you have gig internet the servers are great and will get you a movie in 6-12 minutes. It boils down to do you have a theater or something like it (not watching on just a 48" TV using TV speakers or sound bar) where you see the biggest difference in lossless audio on a decent surround sound IMO.
I watch streaming a lot however, 4K Blu Ray you are missing a BIG POINT!!! They are not cheap but the price of extra space on Kaleidescape is ridiculous! If their service dies so does the media! For the price of a decent car you could lose it all! I rip my 4k media on the PC - if the hard drive dies i still have the disc to rip again! I despise streaming and what it does to freedom! Control all the way in wokery and what they do. If you could plug in your own external media it would be fine but I guess the studios will not allow it tossers
I agree. Or stick four large 3.5" HDDs in a Synology NAS to store those MKV files. That can be done for far less than $4,000 for your first 960GB storage. Spend the rest acquiring UHD Blu-ray movies.
As for me, long live physical media. You can't beat the Atmos or Video quality; no buffering, no dropped signals or iffy WiFi or maxing out server space.
I'm here wondering about the cost of everything. I can get a 96TB media server for about 3k + connect that to Nvidia Shield Pro or something like that. I've been running 80GB+ 4k DV movies with DTS X and Atmos for a long time now. Sounds just insane how and why someone would pay that much for some company products that also limits how you can use it. Just ridiculous if you can't connect your own media server storage.
I've played with Kaleidescape since 2015 when I sold them through Magnolia. But while they're amazing products, even if you're willing to spend the money to make the investment, it really isn't worth the cost to benefit unless you've got a media room / theater setup. Yes a large living room TV is nice to run it on, but most people aren't going to spend the time mainly watching movies or even recorded concerts that are offered in their livingroom all the time. 100% an amazing product that I would absolutely own if I've got a said media room setup. But otherwise, spending that money on impervious your audio experience will be much more enjoyed in the long run if that is not the case.
I’ve watched all, and I do mean all, of the Strato V reviews, by everyone; and not one person mentioned the Dolby Vision black frames. Wonder why? This is why your voice is needed in this community.
For me, the cost of building my own server with dedicated storage solution, a small dedicated mini pc and a shield pro stands as a better investment for building out a legal movie collection ecosystem. Afterwards the only additional costs is the purchase of additional movies and additional drives and bays. I think the major benefit of this over something like a plex server is that this has a lot less friction for adding a new film to your collection.
@steverossman8456 Or, more annoyingly, they can alter/update them, leaving you with a slightly different version of a movie. A version that you didn't buy. Edit: grammar correction
I have the Strato V for my apartment theater. At first I was skeptical. I had the original box ready to repack the K-Scape to return it. After calibrating my AVR, I actually threw the packing box away. THE most noticeable difference is with the audio. Especially, Dolby Atmos. The level of detail cannot be matched by any streaming service or even UHD Blu-Ray. I will NOT be replacing this K-Scape anytime soon.
Physical media 4LIFE! Especially with all the amazing artwork and special features included! It’s part of the experience and if you spin vinyl you’ll understand.…. Good luck with that 🍻
May I ask you an honest question? Have you ever watched one of my videos before, or did RUclips serve this to you because you usually watch movie or physical-media-collector-type videos? Not trying to pick a fight, just trying to better understand the situation. Thanks in advance for your reply.
@ been following you for awhile and I do enjoy you videos. I am a nostalgic Gen x’r that appreciates modern technology but at the same time without physical media, the world becomes a very dull and boring place. There is just something about loading a disk or dropping a needle or even pushing a vhs tape into a VCR that you can’t replace. Merry Christmas from 🇨🇦 🎄
I have Never encountered a product that so many people would love to have, cannot fit in their budget, and exhibit such anger and righteous indignation over the price, company, technology monopoly as Kaleidescape’s Strato. Reddit, home theater forums, and even this great review’s comments… pure bile.
An internal hard drive with a mere 960GB available in 2024 is UTTERLY RIDICULOUS. Quality 4TB SSDs are readily available everywhere for just a few hundred bucks.
HAHAHA, I paused the video at 5:43 immediately to post my comment. five . THOUSAND . DOLLARS . HAHAHAHAHAHA, nope. pass. I'll stick with my NAS and Plex via AppleTV. thx bye
Andrew-Looking for feedback on the best media player to use with my NAS and mountains of ripped content that I have amassed over the years. Zidoo UHD8000 or Dune HD Max 8k?
I personally prefer the Zidoo now over my once Dune eco-system. The Zidoo, at least the 8000, has a few more features and is, in my opinion, more customizable while being slightly easier to use from a cataloging standpoint.
I’ve had the R_volution 8k Player for about 6 months now and it’s fantastic. I’ve been ripping my 4k, blu-ray and even dvd of old tv shows to my 16tb internal and 22tb external hdd. I have about 17tb of total shows and movies and the rvideo player makes them so easy to identify and organize. I have a mini too and hope to get the R_volution server/ripper soon. I recommend you get ahold of one and review it. You won’t be disappointed, I feel sure. The feeling of building your own “streaming” service as well as accessing your old discs out of storage boxes has been a cool part of the process and you feel like you didn’t waste all that money buying all those discs since 1998. makemkv for the win! Keep up the great work Andrew!
I will keep buying physical media. This shows support for the artists and I can watch what I want when I want . Unedited and never loose the right to watch on my home movie theatre
Physical media is going NOWHERE. All this unnecessary hysteria over LG no longer manufacturing and selling disc players is nothing more than a tiny insignificant thunderstorm in a massive pudding bowl. Remember folks: there is Sony and the best which I have three from: Panasonic. And I bought no less than a dozen titles during the Christmas retailer period. So what have you got to lose? Certainly not physical media! Don’t lose it. Continue to support it! Capische? 😉 👍👍
Once Sony is out...which is soon...look at the PS5 Pro. Physical media is pretty much dead. You guys are being hysterical over LG. No one who streams their content gives a crap about that news. I have two kids in my home. My wife is watching Bridgerton on the big screen tv in the living room. I'm watching my favorite movie on my laptop. My kids are watching their stuff on their iPads in their own rooms. All of this is on ONE subscription. You can't do that with physical media.
Great video Andrew - best to you and Kristy. I have a 150" 2.35 screen and 4K projector, and looked at this system. I have about 1,000 discs and at least half are 4K. The average price paid for my discs is about $18 (Criterion 4K is $24, Amadeus arrives in 4k in February for $25). I can't imagine a format in the next 5-10 years that is better than a 4K 100 GB disc. To conclude, I love the idea of the Kaleidescape but the upfront costs, the walled garden issue and the increased costs of the movies makes this prohibitive for a collector, even when I have the $$. Thanks!
The key issue, for me, is content. I haven’t seen a movie in months, YEARS , that had a storyline, script, acting, cinematography, that captured my attention beyond just one viewing. I guess I’m just not a “movie person.”
Being a person who prefers watching movies on Blu-ray, I'll say I'd love to embrace Kaleidescape. There's just two glaring issues. The first is, THE PRICE is ABSURD. The second, is it's still tied to the internet with proprietary hardware. In other words, you still don't actually OWN what you buy on there. Internet dies? You're screwed. The upside to owning a movie on disc or porting the files to your own digital hard drive, is it's forever in your hands. For that, sadly, the Kaleidescape is a deal breaker to me for that.
This was a great comprehensive and fair review. I like what they do and have considered it. I think the two deal breakers for me are: 1. There is currently not enough of quality gain over physical disc. Based on lots of user forums and reviews, most movies don't have any noticeable differences. 2. The issue of losing everything if something happens to Kaleidescape. I would hope that a luxury product like this would offer some kind of legal deal with the studios so they would honor your purchases if K was to disappear. Otherwise, you're out thousands of dollars for the hardware and your entire digital collection.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion about what they prefer, for me I love physical media, especially 4k discs. For me the reason is the connection I have with my collection that I have on my shelves, it's not clutter or waste, sure if I throw it away to landfill it's waste, but why would I? Plus with all forms of streaming and server services, they burn constant electricity to keep them live and it's not a small amount, my discs use some power when I choose to watch them, but all the rest of the time they use no further energy that was used when they were first made, some of which was several decades ago.
Im sure the stratto is great and it does have the advantage of having some titles not available in 4k anywhere else and the ability to get them early so I don't want to say there is not any value there. However the price is insane, and while they have been around for a while there is a lot of risk involved. For that same price and some time you can buy a 4k collection physically, then rip them, then put them on a NAS or a harddrive and use an nvidia shield to play them digitally with DV and Dolby Atmos, and the shield can AI upscale titles not in 4k to a 4k version (which im certain kaleidoscope is doing this). Then outside of the risk of a hard drive dying, no one can take these away from you and you will pay far far less in the long run.
yea dont understand it . too many free services and media players out there. been using Kodi to share content throughout my entire house. using NAS and local hard drives. majority of smart devices support these apps for free. I have 20TB,s of content for a fraction of what they want for this package. in all formats
I will NEVER spend money to buy a movie that I can't hold in my hands. EVER. Not to mention Kaleidescape is ridiculously expensive to the point it isn't even a reality for most people. Even if I could buy it, and I could figure out a way, I won't because buying a digital movie is just not going to happen. Physical media is more than just the video itself. It's about the packaging, and the fact that I can go grab it off of a shelf and pop it in whenever I want, and nobody can take away access to it. If studios stop releasing physical copies of movies, they will be sorry.
This is why I wait for AR to weigh in before I pull the trigger on something. Dude answers all (or near all) my questions-even ones I hadn’t thought to ask. Well done sir.
Physical Media all the way.....i like tangible...yeah i touch n feel person. Digital can vanish into thin air whilr physical u got for ever and cant erase
My concern is with losing access to what I've paid for, which is alleviated by physical media. New formats are inescapable. I've paid for music in 45, 33, cassette, disc, and digital formats, many songs albums in multiple of these. Even services that remain in business have removed access to media people have "bought", highlighting your point that technically we've really only ever paid for revocable licenses in the digital age. Given the price of their external storage, I doubt this device compatible with any other drive options. I'm also concerned that at some point they'd add on "subscription" or other recurring fees to watch or otherwise access purchased content. Thanks to you and Kristi for giving us great information on a range of audio and video options, including on subwoofers 👍🏿 Merry Holidays and Happy New Year! I hope you take off the rest of this week and enjoy a little anniversary/birthday/mental health break, you both deserve that.
Good review, but something you didn’t mention here and so many of the commentors here don’t realize, there is the Disc to Digital option that Kaleidescape provides. This means you can actually “rip” a a DVD or Blu-Ray disc you own into your Kaleidescape Library. Unfortunately 4K is not an option at this time. But for a fee, that DVD or Blu-Ray version can be upgraded to 4K in your library if the 4K version is available. I think this feature adds to the value of a system like this. And since almost every 4K disc sold comes with a Blu-Ray copy as well, just scan in the Blu-Ray version into your Kaleidescape Libray, and for a nominal fee you can have an offsite 4K version of your physical disc. Kinda the best of both worlds.
I built 2 home NAS servers and "stream" content to myself. Cost of hardware? About $1k. Cost of software? FREE. Completely open source via Linux and GitHub. I have BD discs for the home theater projector room, and stream other content via my home network. This is kind of like electric cars. Not ready for primetime quite yet. Love the channel! Merry Christmas to you guys🎄
High cost of entry doesn’t make sense over physical media. And the overly priced storage adds insult to injury. I want to be able to sort through my library of movies to watch and not be limited to ~5 titles simultaneously.
You want to sort through your library and not be limited to five titles simultaneously? How are you watching five movies simultaneously on a Blu-ray player?
@ understood…but for the cost of entry doesn’t make sense to me. I have a wall of BlueRay videos that I can easily pick through. Plus, in 5 yrs can you guarantee this company will still exist? I can’t imagine the mass market is willing to adopt this high level, which is why they are likely having to charge so much. I can buy an awful lot of physical disc movies for $4k. In theory, I love the idea…but again the cost is ridiculous for extra storage…$27k how many TB was that for?? I think that is what irks me the most. If there was an option to add or access a NAS or similar then it would be a bit more enticing.
Interesting product and service, did not know something like this existed so thank you for bringing this to my attention. Also great if audio and video quality can exceed physical media, I can get behind that. Not so great is the price which for me would be a hard pill to swallow. Loving that pair of modern art in your room, simply spellbinding! Happy holidays for the both of you! 🎄✨🎆
The huge difference for me is with my physical media library (approx 800 titles), I look through it and make a decision very easily. When I scroll through stuff on a screen it takes way longer to commit and make a decision. The experience of that frankly means a lot less to me. I have stopped movies I wasn’t liking and went on to scroll for another one many times. Never once have I done that with a disk from the collection. It’s that way with all of these services. Music means less now, movies, TV. It’s all in over abundance and disposable.
A less than 1TB internal SSD for a $4,000 media player... KScape must think we are all a bunch of saps. You can get a Zidoo or Dune player that does almost the same thing. Throw in a modest NAS storage unit and some patience in archiving your Blu-ray and 4k Blu-ray collection and you can have similar AV quality and instantaneous access to your collection for a fraction of the price.
Something I mention in the video, though, for a lot of folks, the idea of spending weeks, months, or even years maintaining their own media server is a non-starter; same as the cost of a K-Scape system is for you.
@andrewrobinsonreviews KScape is fine... if you have the money and can afford to lose your collection if, god-forbid, they go under, which they almost did a couple times. What I find outrageous and a non-starter, for me (and for many people if you read a lot of the home theater boards), is their external server prices. Their cost per TB of storage is far, far beyond any reasonable expectations. There must be a sizeable dealer markup on the hardware; more than most AV gear. Toys for the well-heeled only. Normal folk need not apply.
This is simply for a completely different class of buyer. It won’t ever replace physical media for me. The price is astronomical compared to 4k disc player and the storage is incredibly small. I’m someone who often doesn’t know what I’m in the mood to watch until I browse my collection. No way I want to wait that long to download a movie every time.
Want to watch 3D movies? Kaleidescape offers you nothing. Want to watch 'your' movies on another device? Sorry, you have to use their player. Don't literally have the worlds fastest internet connection? It's quicker for you to get in the car, drive to the mall, buy it and drive home than it would be to buy it.... and cheaper. Not a millionaire? Sorry, but if you want more than a handful of movies in your collection, you need to win the lottery. And why are the heck are there two Christmas trees wrapped in garbage bags either side of the TV???
Has 3D ever been less popular than it is right now? Non-factor for 99% of the movie-buying public. When I have a theater like I do, I don't want to watch movies anywhere else. It will never be quicker for me to go to the mall to buy a disc, even with 100Mbs internet connection. I'm nowhere near a millionaire, I simply prioritize what I want to have and I get there. I still have more than half of my Kaleidescape server storage available, adding movies is still generally cheaper than buying the discs. Anything else?
@@ballstadt Lol, well that's nice for you and your home theatre, but dedicated home theatres are extremely niche and are either dead or dying according to Andrew. Andrew has even made a video on this subject and about why he ditched his dedicated theatre. In 2024 people just watch movies on various devices, like a PC, laptop, phone, tablet, or if you want to take your movie to your friends place, you cant. Thanks for your arbitrary 99% statistic, but 18 Blockbuster movies were made in 3D in 2024 this year, including the Deadpool Wolverine movie featured in this video and these: Despicable Me 4, The Garfield Movie, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, Inside Out 2, Kung Fu Panda 4, Transformers One, Venom: The Last Dance, Wicked (2024 film), The Wild Robot. We know enough people are watching 3D movies to be profitable, because they continue to make them. Every dedicated home theatre projector continues to provide 3D capability and so for dedicated theatres, not having 3D capability makes no sense. About download/upload times please watch the video again . At 11:14 at less than 100mbps it took him 7 hours to watch a movie... Andrew then says.... "unless you're rocking crazy fast internet, do not even consider the strato V or ANY Kaelidescape product". You cant get to the mall and back in 7 hours? what are you walking? You didn't spend all your money on Kaleidescape and forget to buy the car did you... If the product works for you though, then that's brilliant, have fun. For everyone else, just in my opinion, please don't waste your money.
@ check again on projectors. JVC and Sony are dropping 3D support in all but the top of the top of the top of the line. Gladiator II downloaded to my server this morning (to make sure it’s ready and waiting at release) in 14 minutes at approx 800Mbps. There’s no way a download at 100Mbps would take 7 hours unless there is something else misconfigured in the system.
Hard pass on the Strato. Way overpriced, overrated, and if you have a PC, 4K UHD burner, you can copy all your 4K UHD Blu-ray’s on to a SSD drive. I use 4 4TB SSD’s in RAID config., cost me less than $1200 total. I use MakeMKV software, and I get bit perfect processing with all the codecs, even with the 100gb movies. Only drawback is the time it takes to copy each 4K UHD Blu-ray, even using USB 3.0 is time consuming. The only way I can see this being of real value is to someone who doesn’t want to fuss with burning Blu-ray’s, and has the money to waste, then by all means, go for it. But there are definitely better options if you have the patience…
@@andrewrobinsonreviews The only question I have regarding Keleidescape Strato V is what happens to your monetary investment if/when the inevitable happens: Keleidescape goes out of business. Two reorganizations already? Like you both, I invested time and $$ in discs and infrastructure to run a movie server with 13x 18TB HDD’s (and counting) in RAID 6 using MakeMKV. Yes, it’s expensive, and slower than NVMe, but the Read/Write speeds from the RAID card are very good. AV8802A and B&W Cinema S2 LCR backbone. The only chink in the armor is the 2019 Vizio PX75 Quantum X. Will 2025 be the year I upgrade to OLED? P.S. T-sips looked good, yesterday - hard for this Aggie to say!
@ Yes, of course that’s what you do. You also have the means to justify spending that much. Just giving a better perspective on alternatives for someone who may already own a PC or laptop, and doesn’t want to spend as much…
This review completely left out the single most compelling advantage the Kaleidescape system offers: rentals. There is simply no other way to rent a movie in full lossless quality anymore. Physical media rentals are gone. Any streaming rental will have lossy audio. For anyone who frequently rents films before purchasing them, this system is unmatched. I wish this had been discussed during the review, with some coverage of rental prices vs. Apple, etc. I do not have a K system... yet, but if I were to buy it, renting is the biggest reason why I would take the leap.
@@andrewrobinsonreviews This kind of reply is why you're the best a/v reviewer out there. If you do a follow up for Friday's video, I'd love to see you talk about rentals. Also, can't wait for the 90 review to drop. Cheers.
I find it improbable that someone who spends $10k on a K-scape and minimal storage is rubbing two pennies together when it come to a $20 rental vs a $25-30 purchase. However, the cost differential of buying a premium 4k blu-ray player over a K-scape would leave you with enough leftover to buy about 600 HDR/UHD discs at around $15/each.
TBH I prefer physical media, then ripping it to my NAS then using VLC via my Nvidia Shield TV, that way also if anything goes wrong I can just bust out the disk and watch it from there.
5:50 until the service is shutdown... I would love to have acces to high quality content, you only have to pop in a UHD blu-ray to see and hear just what you've been missing out on with streaming services but I am very, very reluctant to start buying everything in a new format again, especially if that format is digital only.
@@florisbackx1744 Kaleidescape is the only disc-quality digital product that has legitimized itself with the studios and sought agreements to be above board. Ripping discs is still a gray area in terms of copyright violation. MakeMKV is forever in donation “beta” because they know their business model is walking a fine line. Zappiti closed up shop on the run from copyright lawsuits and rebranded. How long before the others are doing the same.
To answer ur question at 15:33, Kleidescape will always be a luxury product and wont see mass adoption, their main issue is having to pay licensing to these studios which will keep the price of their products extremely high. I do think once streaming services can stream at the same quality as a disc then physical media will die off, much like how we can have high res lossless format with music now, but ofcourse this relies on us having very fast internet speeds which we are still a long ways from. And as for new formats, i dont really see much improvement beyond 4k for a long time or if at all, but studios will do everything they can to make us double dip nd buy new formats or limited release. But then again who knows, tv manufacturers might pedal 8k down our throats and studios are in the business of making money so i can imagine them creating new trends and fads to get us to spend
You only need a few hundred meg to stream uncompressed which is becoming pretty common place these days. It's only a matter of time until enough people have full fiber that Amazon and/or Apple deem it worthy to offer uncompressed streaming. It's not really a question of people having good enough internet the internet is already there for most people it's about them being willing to provide the upload bandwidth they'd need to.
Think you said it all in your comments: "...gives you the closest experience to physical media there is. ...on par with physical media.", but without all the benefits of physical media. 😅 Can you imagine, forking out all that dosh for a limited changing catalogue of censored films, the kerfuffle of deleting and downloading, then be told, "...sorry, we're going out of business." 🙄
I appreciate your honest thoughts. I am a physical media guy and will NEVER switch to streaming ( I do have some streaming but for some tv shows and backup in case cable DVR misses something). I hate the fact that streaming services will remove content without notice. More often than not, it is related to rights issues. At least with a physical disc, no one can take those away from me. Plus if a studio decides to censor a movie (recent trend), having an older disc is a true way to preserve it. So many movies are being lost due to not having a physical release. I love walking over to my movie racks and choosing a title...weather it's a DVD, Blu-Ray or 4K...just browsing that way is so satisfying. Many of us feel the same way in taking pride in TRUE ownership of our movie collection. Again...to each their own. But those out their that do not buy physical copies of their favorite movies take a chance of losing them forever! Physical Media is FAR from Dying! If you follow it at all, you will see that there are many, many titles being released each and every week. It is going strong, even though it is not when you consider the lack of stores selling them. It's become more of an online thing. But there are many choices for buying movies.
I like that you acknowledge the elephant in the room (pricing) and address that this player may not be for everyone. I personally will probably never get one of these because I’m way into deep with my own personal media server but I still appreciate the review as I like checking out new tech even if it’s not for me.
This review was bound to bring out the villagers with their torches (more than a subwoofer review ) and all I can say is let them come. Keep at it Andrew, stasis is not a good thing.
This is an interesting device, but at $4000 this is basically wildly out of reach for 99% of people. You could easily get a full home theater system with TV and surround sound for that price. No doubt physical discs can be a bit of a pain, but if you were to go that route instead, you could easily get yourself a 4K player and 200+ movies for the same price. Not to mention that they're yours forever and no company bankruptcy or licensing issues can take them away from you. Additionally, most of these 4Ks will come with a digital code as well allowing you to watch them on virtually any device. If you don't already have a $20,000+ home theater and more money than you know what to do with, this shouldn't even be on your radar.
This product has a great idea on paper. However, the extra servers needed to store a good quality library is just far too expensive for most people. Surely accompany like Netflix or Apple can come out with a product that rivals this for for less money Due to the cost, I can’t see this company being around with its current pricing format for decade to come (which is what you would want with this kind of financial outlay
All the performance deficiencies tied to compression, and streaming is why I purchased the final season of Game of Thrones on 4K disc…so the epic dark battle scenes could be watched without blur and grainy textures. Sounds like this hard drive system achieves the same quality as 4K disc (or close to it). Very impressive. I recall seeing an older system from them at a HiFi shop in Toronto back in 2019. Very impressive. Great video!!!
YOU CAN STORE 88 MOVIES FOR ONLY $8000, PLUS THE PRICE OF THE MOVIES? Let's start a pool to guess when these guys go bankrupt. This is a product for owners of mega yachts who don't have high speed internet.
Excellent video, I appreciated the alternatives with dune. I personally adopted Plex years and years ago and I’m on my 4th or 5th iteration of my plex server. I currently have a 60tb nas with a Mac Studio capable of streaming multiple 4k streams simultaneously, and my total investment is around $5000, but the time investment is so high that to do it all over again I would probably consider something like the strato. The thing that turns me off on switching the most is the inability to import existing things that I own, this means that I end up losing a large percentage of my library or end up maintaining 2 systems, for that reason I’m out. One other thing to bring up is the need for multiple kscape if you have multiple tvs, with plex I’m able to go from the living room to the bedroom or the office and watch the same thing I was just watching on something as simple as a Roku.
$27,000...? I get it. This product is for people of the upper middle class / professional class and upper class. It's a iron clad niche product. But for that money... There are alternatives that a person can take and gain greater value than this (Obviously... If he / she is tech savvy). You can buy a streamer / media player, Plex Pass, a 4K blu ray player and a Hi-Fi speaker system for that price range.
📌 Considering the Kaleidescape? Find one here bit.ly/482HyhW and bit.ly/3VRsgYu
🔌 Leave a QUESTION/COMMENT! It may be featured on the next Unplugged! Watch every UNPLUGGED here bit.ly/43NnDkT
😀If you enjoyed this video, please hit the 👍 Like button! 🙏 Please stay on topic & be respectful.
‼ Channel Policies, FTC Disclosures & 🚫 are available in the description box (beneath the video’s title).
My main problem with buying physical media is that I rarely rewatch a movie. I guess that’s why people don’t buy movies and just rent online. I can’t justify paying for a physical media ( with some exceptions of course)
…plus the space problem. I can’t have a wall full of cds , dvds, blu rays , vinyl. I prefer a more clean looking space since I live in a small apartment.
@@gkal7217 nice thing about kscape, you can also rent for less (and then buy at a discount if you really want to own it)
Interesting to learn about the Strato V. Their pricing for the servers is however just insane, like buying a Mac with more than base storage 🙂
I wonder, how does what the Strato V offer in term of quality compare to the Bravia Core streaming service from Sony?
You should have free access to the Bravia Core as it comes as a bonus with their more fancy offerings like TV's, phones and more. The Bravia Core service requires something like 100 Mbps+ to let you stream at max quality and personally I have never seen anything surpass it, although not all movies on their service is that high a quality.
@@gkal7217 bot comment
My 2003 911 Carrera S cost me less, then a full build out of the KScope system. I have a massive library of DVDs and BDs and will never give them up, I cannot ever trust these companies. And we have not gone into the 'stealth' edits of older movies/tv because of 'Problematic' scenes.
I'll never give up physical media. Unless you have the disc, you're renting the rights to watch your content and it can be removed or edited
Technically, a disc is merely your license. While I think the studios and record labels "lost" their battles regarding the re-selling of discs by private and third-party re-sellers, such practices were originally and may still be, technically, illegal. But I see your point.
@@andrewrobinsonreviewsthe difference is my "license" with the disc allows me to watch offline, share with people, unable to edit the content based off societal changes, superior picture and sound, bonus features, etc
@@BloopsnBleeps I mean there are other options than just streaming vs physical/disc media. You can have digital copies of films and retain the same control as discs, yet have the advantage of less space used and easier backup/playback.
@@AndySomethingWhat digital copy would you have that retains as much control as a disc? Also, the audio and video quality suffer, so if you're looking for the truest form of film preservation, it would be physical
This is not true with K-scape. You actually purchase the license differently than other digital stores. If k-scape loses the license to sell, you still have the right to play the media and redownload it. I own the Strato V - it’s fantastic
The pricing is absurd and exploitative. The price for a 96TB player is ~26k. You can buy 5x20TB hdds for $1890. The only difference I can see between models is space. So the idea of a company charging a 20k premium on a HDDs is enough for me to say thats not a company I'd like to do business with.
Hard pass. Making storage proprietary so you have to buy it from them at a 10x markup is criminal. You can also only redownload your purchases for as long as they stay in business and keep those servers running. The concept is great, but the execution puts me off.
@@stevenmichael7770 it’s not criminal, it’s how they remain legit with the studios. What’s criminal are “beta” products like MakeMKV providing a resource for users to defeat existing copy protection on discs in order to “backup” their media with other users around the world.
What's criminal is cracking copy protection to "backup" your media.
@@ballstadt what SHOULD be criminal is producers putting that copy protection in the first place. The vast majority of people just want to have their physical media available on other devices and to back it up in case of damage, theft, or fire. Most aren't torrenting it.
@@frostman9661 so producers and studios don’t have the right to protect their intellectual property? Weird. That’s like saying it should be criminal to put locks on your front door or your car. It should be criminal to allow you to have a password on your bank account.
@@ballstadt Not remotely comparable examples my dude... If I bought a painting from an artist the artist doesn't own it any more. I do.
$4000 to hold four 4k movies seems ridiculous. I built my unraid server with over 100TB for 2k, and can run plex over my wifi to tv or Nvidia Shield. Holds my whole collection. My 4k blurays often running at 130mbps.
Not sure how this competes with a regular 4k blu ray player or a NAS or server running plex. This seems like off the shelf server rental for millionaires.
I have 100% interest in what Kaleidoscope does as stated by Andrew. I have 0% interest at the current price. The device would have to be no more than $500 to get me on board.
If Apple ever introduces a high bit-rate tier for streaming movies on their store, the Kaleidescape business will collapse. And for $4,000 you’re only getting a 1TB storage, so 10 4K files. Kaleidescape doesn’t even carry the criterion collection, which is a massive deal breaker for me.
@@Hamza-yu1ur better still if you do upgrade to a Terra prime it doesn't even stack with the 1 TB. It just becomes useless and unusable so a complete waste of money for that money. I wish they put in a 10 TB hard drive versus the flash drive would be a better value overall
@@Hamza-yu1ur as far as Apple or anyone else offering a higher bit rate streaming, I wouldn't count on it. Bandwidth is expensive. Kaleidoscope can do what they do because they're offloading a lot of the networking and bandwidth costs on the hardware. Apple TVs don't cost several thousand dollars so they're not going to be able to do that The same way. You can get high bitrate from Sony Bravia core, but that's only the only content so that's not really an answer
@@Antimonkat this was an obvious calculation. Even a 4TB drive (these are nvme drives) would allow for the full Kaleidescape GUI. At 4TB there is less motivation to buy more storage. The V is an entry way but they expect you to spend more.
I have no doubt the quality is top notch. But in my opinion, physical media is still king in the way of price and “really” owning the movie.
So true
Once you own a KS, the deals on owning content can be cheaper and better quality than disc. KS also offers upgrade deals vs having to buy a movie again…
They also offer a discount to those who have a disc already by means of hooking up a USB disc drive and scanning what you own. The discounts are all driven by the movie houses not KS.
Most disc bitrates max out around 65Mbps and KS rips can be from the master film with their relationships and over 100Mbps.
- $9,000 for a Strato V and the cheapest additional storage (8TB)
- Never own anything tangible
- If the business fails you have a $9,000 paperweight
- AV quality compared to 4k UHD discs is a push
So for an absurd 30x cost differential compared to a great 4k disc player, and all the inherent risk you take by adopting this format, the pay off is what?
A run-of-the-mill UI and no wicked cool physical media collection to show off?
You willingly give up ownership and pay 30x all for "convenience". That long grueling slog of opening a case and dropping a disc in a tray, oh the humanity!
You have access to all your purchases.....until you don't.
Only a 75-inch or above???? Nah. Even on my 65-inch TV, the 4K disc doesn't even TOUCH a 4K stream...... both in terms of visuals and (as you mentioned) audio.
Take the original BLADE RUNNER. The 4K disc resolves the grain beautifully. It looks FANTASTIC. The stream is mush.
@@StevenHemingway1 I use a 42C2 and going from a 5-10mbps stream to a 85-100mbps disc is night and day just for sharpness, clarity, and importantly colour no dithering or banding and they look like they are printed on the screen.
@@ashliehiggins Exactly. KS is the same thing. To say it's only noticeable at 75-inches is RIDICULOUS. Like I mentioned, older movies (let's take Ridley Scott's ALIEN and BLADE RUNNER) look INSANELY good on 4K disc vs the mushy stream.
@@StevenHemingway1 Kaleidescape isn't a stream, though. How large is the file on your Avengers: Endgame disc? It's under 66GB, compared to Kaleidescape's 111GB. Care to compare?
@@ballstadt Didn't say it was. Sometimes, KS is even BETTER than the disc. My point being, AR said that the difference between a stream and KS isn't noticeable below 75 inches, and I said that's not even remotely true. Seems like you didn't watch the video, so you don't know what I am commenting on.
@@StevenHemingway1 I misinterpreted your post. Too many people believe Kaleidescape is streaming. I watched the video. Your first post says "4K disc doesn't touch a stream" which, I'm still not sure what that is supposed to mean, and immediately positioned your argument as being "Kaleidescape is streaming and isn't as good as 4K disc."
No thanks, physical media is way better and I actually own it. For the price of the Strato, I can buy numerous and I do mean numerous 4K movies.
Truth
A good disc player and 4k DVDs are still much cheaper and not really less convenient.
Long time listener, first time caller here-love your channel, Andrew. Gotta correct you on one tiny detail: Kaleidescape doesn’t carry everything. Case in point: my latest film had a legit theatrical run earlier this year and is on Disney+, Hulu, iTunes, Amazon…but not Kaleidescape. No idea why.
Anyway, fun fact: Kaleidescape actually shut down in 2016 and laid off pretty much everyone before a last-minute cash infusion revived them. So instead of dropping $4,000 on a single piece of hardware and zero movies, you could buy a Panasonic DP-UB820 and over 100 4K Blu-rays. And unless a cinephile burglar breaks into your home, you’ll always own them.
Regarding the question of why your film, Immaculate (2024), isn't available on the Kaleidescape movie store, that would be a question for your distributor, Neon, as their titles appear on the store regularly; case in point, Longlegs which retails for $17.79. To the best of my knowledge, Kaleidescape doesn't discriminate as to which titles they sell and which titles they don't, so I would encourage you to reach out to Neon to see if something can't be done. I didn't say Kaleidescape had everything, I said, they had everything I searched for comparable to AppleTV and other services. I suppose I could've gone on to say, but your mileage may vary as I can see Immaculate is available on other services but not Kaleidescape.
As for the rest, you're right. Kaleidescape almost went out of business years and years ago, but that was due to issues of legality (in the eyes of the studio) with their past business model and products. As things are today, they really are no different in terms of licensing and contracts from that of other streaming platforms, so the threat of going under has less to do with their services and content than it did years ago. With respect to the rest of your argument, as stated in my review, if you want to hang on to physical media, that's great. If you want to build your own K-Scape-like server, more power to you. Different strokes for different folks.
for 4 thousand dollars, you can go to the theater approximately 80-120 times. I go to the movies approximately 8 times a year at best so that's over a decade's worth of going to the theater JUST FOR THE UNIT. There's the elephant in the room here : this service could go offline at any moment, making this one of the most expensive paperweights I've ever owned. I'm sorry but there's just no way I could purchase this. I'd rather buy a 300$ 4k blu-ray player and hundreds of movies (and live with the hassle) than risk 4 grand on that thing. don't get me wrong, I'd buy one in a heartbeat if it sold for a reasonable amount of money. But FOUR GRAND? getouttahere
The puppy was a nice touch. I needed that. lol
Give me a 4k discs all day long. Its mine and nobody can alter or take it away from me. I look forward to me films arriving through the door and checking out the features.
Absurdly overpriced, for $2500 you get a 60tb Synology NAS, a Nvidia Shiled or a Zidoo player and still have money left for a few movies.
I think most people will find better value for the money building a 4K Bluray collection than using Kaleidescape. I know I do. I have no desire to pay a company to do all the work for me, because half of the reason I am into physical media is because I want more direct control over my library and how it is played.
Not to mention, most of us already have the media, so why repurchase? Plus there is some odd sadistic pleasure in taking the time to rip your CD's and DVD's and organize your media server/network.
It STILL comes down to you can only store a few movies at 4k on the local drive and download the rest. Your content is and always will be at the mercy of a service being around in 10 years. I own ALL of my content PHYSICALLY, can watch when I want and do not have to rely on a service or a proprietary device made by a niche company. I will rely on my home server service if I choose to do a mass storage solution.
Couldn't agree more. Why would I pay so much money for a system that can only store a few films? I have over 325 Blu Ray disks, and just beginning to get into 4K UHD disks and have no issue simply storing them on a shelf, here at home. I guess it's up to each individual to choose, and while I kinda get what Andrew is saying here it just doesn't work for me. I love physical media - and the extras that studios provide on those disks. That, paired with a 4K streaming device (I use AppleTV 4K) gives my home theatre all I'll need. I did look into a media server at one time but man - the costs are insane and -- to your point -- many times your content is only as reliable as the server (and service).
$4,000 for the player itself isnt actually the turn off I thought it would be, but $27,000 to get only another ~100 TB? Yikes, and I thought Apple's storage pricing was insulting lol. The INSANE external storage cost combined with having the same ownership drawbacks as any other digital purchase is enough for me to stray away from this option and continue with my plans to build a plex server from ripped versions of all my discs. Really great review however, very insightful on how the whole operation works!
@gingersmedia The SSD servers are targeted for Kaleidescape's marine installation market, not for typical home installation. Kaleidescape themselves will tell you there is little or no benefit to using SSD storage for a home installation, outside of energy efficiency and operating noise level. The full-size Terra servers have greater storage capacities, and also have user-replaceable hard drives in case of failure, so there's little reason to go with the SSD servers for a home theater.
$4k is about $3,700 too much to consider given the options these days.
No thanks ,I rather have a 4K Blu-ray Disc and player nothing beats the quality of the 4K movie disc 😝
I'm a Blu-ray collector and love it
The fact you can't connect a NAS or External Drive is a complete deal breaker
...ummmm... Plex, anyone?
Does it work for HDR though? I found that part to not be very well fleshed out.
HDR on Plex works great
EMBY anyone?
$5000 and only holds 4 movies at a time? No thanks. I'll stick with physical media and streaming.
That’s not exactly what I said or how much the Strato V can hold.
Why would you need to watch four movies at the same time? You can still own as many as you want. Just download four at a time.
It has a 1tb SSD drive so it holds a lot more than that depending on movie size and is $3600 if you get it through some places. It holds 10-12 4k Dolby vision/HDR at one time again depending on size (60-100gb each??)and if you have gig internet the servers are great and will get you a movie in 6-12 minutes. It boils down to do you have a theater or something like it (not watching on just a 48" TV using TV speakers or sound bar) where you see the biggest difference in lossless audio on a decent surround sound IMO.
I watch streaming a lot however, 4K Blu Ray you are missing a BIG POINT!!! They are not cheap but the price of extra space on Kaleidescape is ridiculous! If their service dies so does the media! For the price of a decent car you could lose it all! I rip my 4k media on the PC - if the hard drive dies i still have the disc to rip again! I despise streaming and what it does to freedom! Control all the way in wokery and what they do. If you could plug in your own external media it would be fine but I guess the studios will not allow it tossers
Dozens of 6 TB external hard drives filled with MKV 4k files is THE WAY.
I agree. Or stick four large 3.5" HDDs in a Synology NAS to store those MKV files. That can be done for far less than $4,000 for your first 960GB storage. Spend the rest acquiring UHD Blu-ray movies.
I will never give up my movie collection.
I’ll stick with my 4K Blu Rays. Love ‘em.
I love my 84 TB PLEX server all 4k movies.
As for me, long live physical media. You can't beat the Atmos or Video quality; no buffering, no dropped signals or iffy WiFi or maxing out server space.
I'm here wondering about the cost of everything. I can get a 96TB media server for about 3k + connect that to Nvidia Shield Pro or something like that. I've been running 80GB+ 4k DV movies with DTS X and Atmos for a long time now. Sounds just insane how and why someone would pay that much for some company products that also limits how you can use it. Just ridiculous if you can't connect your own media server storage.
This, just this..
Exactly. I do the same except with Xbox Series X instead of Shield. Atmos or DTSX sound sublime through the HT-A9
I've played with Kaleidescape since 2015 when I sold them through Magnolia. But while they're amazing products, even if you're willing to spend the money to make the investment, it really isn't worth the cost to benefit unless you've got a media room / theater setup. Yes a large living room TV is nice to run it on, but most people aren't going to spend the time mainly watching movies or even recorded concerts that are offered in their livingroom all the time. 100% an amazing product that I would absolutely own if I've got a said media room setup. But otherwise, spending that money on impervious your audio experience will be much more enjoyed in the long run if that is not the case.
I’ve watched all, and I do mean all, of the Strato V reviews, by everyone; and not one person mentioned the Dolby Vision black frames. Wonder why? This is why your voice is needed in this community.
For me, the cost of building my own server with dedicated storage solution, a small dedicated mini pc and a shield pro stands as a better investment for building out a legal movie collection ecosystem. Afterwards the only additional costs is the purchase of additional movies and additional drives and bays.
I think the major benefit of this over something like a plex server is that this has a lot less friction for adding a new film to your collection.
When you buy movies on that, you don't actually own them. They can remove titles at any time.
@steverossman8456 Or, more annoyingly, they can alter/update them, leaving you with a slightly different version of a movie. A version that you didn't buy.
Edit: grammar correction
I have the Strato V for my apartment theater. At first I was skeptical. I had the original box ready to repack the K-Scape to return it. After calibrating my AVR, I actually threw the packing box away. THE most noticeable difference is with the audio. Especially, Dolby Atmos. The level of detail cannot be matched by any streaming service or even UHD Blu-Ray. I will NOT be replacing this K-Scape anytime soon.
Appreciate you sharing your own experience.
I’ll stick to the 4k discs.
Same here.
Physical media 4LIFE! Especially with all the amazing artwork and special features included! It’s part of the experience and if you spin vinyl you’ll understand.…. Good luck with that 🍻
May I ask you an honest question? Have you ever watched one of my videos before, or did RUclips serve this to you because you usually watch movie or physical-media-collector-type videos? Not trying to pick a fight, just trying to better understand the situation. Thanks in advance for your reply.
@ been following you for awhile and I do enjoy you videos. I am a nostalgic Gen x’r that appreciates modern technology but at the same time without physical media, the world becomes a very dull and boring place. There is just something about loading a disk or dropping a needle or even pushing a vhs tape into a VCR that you can’t replace. Merry Christmas from 🇨🇦 🎄
I have Never encountered a product that so many people would love to have, cannot fit in their budget, and exhibit such anger and righteous indignation over the price, company, technology monopoly as Kaleidescape’s Strato. Reddit, home theater forums, and even this great review’s comments… pure bile.
I never understood why the streaming giants dont give u an optioon to downlaod 4kuhd disc bit rates for additional cost
An internal hard drive with a mere 960GB available in 2024 is UTTERLY RIDICULOUS. Quality 4TB SSDs are readily available everywhere for just a few hundred bucks.
You're paying for more than the hardware. They're more than a hardware vendor.
Most people interested in this type of technology either have physical media or already have digital copies of the media they want.
Sunday Breakfast with Andrew & Kristi! The best part of Sunday’s! Thank you for another one!
So glad to be a part of your day. Thanks for watching!
:)
If it’s not better than my oppo 205, I’m out. Physical media is always king and I have the king of players
HAHAHA, I paused the video at 5:43 immediately to post my comment. five . THOUSAND . DOLLARS . HAHAHAHAHAHA, nope. pass. I'll stick with my NAS and Plex via AppleTV. thx bye
I have been looking for a media streamer that matches the inconvenience and expense of vinyl. Sweet!
Andrew-Looking for feedback on the best media player to use with my NAS and mountains of ripped content that I have amassed over the years. Zidoo UHD8000 or Dune HD Max 8k?
I personally prefer the Zidoo now over my once Dune eco-system. The Zidoo, at least the 8000, has a few more features and is, in my opinion, more customizable while being slightly easier to use from a cataloging standpoint.
ugoos am6b plus with CoreElec is the most versatile (loseless audio, DV P7)
with all due respect, ill stick with physical.
That's fine. You have to do what makes sense for you. Appreciate you watching all the same!
I’ve had the R_volution 8k Player for about 6 months now and it’s fantastic. I’ve been ripping my 4k, blu-ray and even dvd of old tv shows to my 16tb internal and 22tb external hdd. I have about 17tb of total shows and movies and the rvideo player makes them so easy to identify and organize. I have a mini too and hope to get the R_volution server/ripper soon.
I recommend you get ahold of one and review it. You won’t be disappointed, I feel sure.
The feeling of building your own “streaming” service as well as accessing your old discs out of storage boxes has been a cool part of the process and you feel like you didn’t waste all that money buying all those discs since 1998. makemkv for the win!
Keep up the great work Andrew!
Luv'd the 'here's a picture of a puppy' bit...Great Product! Great review!
Glad you enjoyed that moment. Thank you for watching!
"Photo of a puppy..... yall calm down!!" 😂lol
I will keep buying physical media.
This shows support for the artists and I can watch what I want when I want .
Unedited and never loose the right to watch on my home movie theatre
Amen!
Physical media is going NOWHERE.
All this unnecessary hysteria over LG no longer manufacturing and selling disc players is nothing more than a tiny insignificant thunderstorm in a massive pudding bowl.
Remember folks: there is Sony and the best which I have three from: Panasonic. And I bought no less than a dozen titles during the Christmas retailer period.
So what have you got to lose?
Certainly not physical media!
Don’t lose it. Continue to support it!
Capische? 😉 👍👍
Once Sony is out...which is soon...look at the PS5 Pro. Physical media is pretty much dead. You guys are being hysterical over LG. No one who streams their content gives a crap about that news. I have two kids in my home. My wife is watching Bridgerton on the big screen tv in the living room. I'm watching my favorite movie on my laptop. My kids are watching their stuff on their iPads in their own rooms. All of this is on ONE subscription. You can't do that with physical media.
Great video Andrew - best to you and Kristy. I have a 150" 2.35 screen and 4K projector, and looked at this system. I have about 1,000 discs and at least half are 4K. The average price paid for my discs is about $18 (Criterion 4K is $24, Amadeus arrives in 4k in February for $25). I can't imagine a format in the next 5-10 years that is better than a 4K 100 GB disc. To conclude, I love the idea of the Kaleidescape but the upfront costs, the walled garden issue and the increased costs of the movies makes this prohibitive for a collector, even when I have the $$. Thanks!
What ever the best quality is, give me......PHYSICAL it is!
The key issue, for me, is content. I haven’t seen a movie in months, YEARS , that had a storyline, script, acting, cinematography, that captured my attention beyond just one viewing. I guess I’m just not a “movie person.”
Correct
Being a person who prefers watching movies on Blu-ray, I'll say I'd love to embrace Kaleidescape. There's just two glaring issues. The first is, THE PRICE is ABSURD. The second, is it's still tied to the internet with proprietary hardware. In other words, you still don't actually OWN what you buy on there. Internet dies? You're screwed.
The upside to owning a movie on disc or porting the files to your own digital hard drive, is it's forever in your hands. For that, sadly, the Kaleidescape is a deal breaker to me for that.
This was a great comprehensive and fair review. I like what they do and have considered it. I think the two deal breakers for me are:
1. There is currently not enough of quality gain over physical disc. Based on lots of user forums and reviews, most movies don't have any noticeable differences.
2. The issue of losing everything if something happens to Kaleidescape. I would hope that a luxury product like this would offer some kind of legal deal with the studios so they would honor your purchases if K was to disappear. Otherwise, you're out thousands of dollars for the hardware and your entire digital collection.
I love my KODI+NAS, which in comparrison costs nothing and has much more features and flexibility BUT I admit it is a lot of work.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion about what they prefer, for me I love physical media, especially 4k discs. For me the reason is the connection I have with my collection that I have on my shelves, it's not clutter or waste, sure if I throw it away to landfill it's waste, but why would I? Plus with all forms of streaming and server services, they burn constant electricity to keep them live and it's not a small amount, my discs use some power when I choose to watch them, but all the rest of the time they use no further energy that was used when they were first made, some of which was several decades ago.
Quality is not better than the disc. It's a marketing ploy.
Unless you've experienced what Kaleidescape offers directly, I'd say you'd be hard press to prove if it's disc media or a server file.
Long Live Physical Media! Remember your video about how much fun it is to interact with vynals? That's exactly how I feel about movie discs.
Im sure the stratto is great and it does have the advantage of having some titles not available in 4k anywhere else and the ability to get them early so I don't want to say there is not any value there. However the price is insane, and while they have been around for a while there is a lot of risk involved. For that same price and some time you can buy a 4k collection physically, then rip them, then put them on a NAS or a harddrive and use an nvidia shield to play them digitally with DV and Dolby Atmos, and the shield can AI upscale titles not in 4k to a 4k version (which im certain kaleidoscope is doing this). Then outside of the risk of a hard drive dying, no one can take these away from you and you will pay far far less in the long run.
yea dont understand it . too many free services and media players out there. been using Kodi to share content throughout my entire house. using NAS and local hard drives. majority of smart devices support these apps for free. I have 20TB,s of content for a fraction of what they want for this package. in all formats
I will NEVER spend money to buy a movie that I can't hold in my hands. EVER. Not to mention Kaleidescape is ridiculously expensive to the point it isn't even a reality for most people. Even if I could buy it, and I could figure out a way, I won't because buying a digital movie is just not going to happen. Physical media is more than just the video itself. It's about the packaging, and the fact that I can go grab it off of a shelf and pop it in whenever I want, and nobody can take away access to it. If studios stop releasing physical copies of movies, they will be sorry.
Physical media all the way! We would love to see a review of the Magnetar UDP800 or UDP900.
Ditto.
This is why I wait for AR to weigh in before I pull the trigger on something. Dude answers all (or near all) my questions-even ones I hadn’t thought to ask. Well done sir.
Appreciate that!
@@andrewrobinsonreviews I May disagree with Andrew on this one, but he is one of my top 3 sources for TV reviews. 👍👍👍
Physical Media all the way.....i like tangible...yeah i touch n feel person. Digital can vanish into thin air whilr physical u got for ever and cant erase
My concern is with losing access to what I've paid for, which is alleviated by physical media. New formats are inescapable. I've paid for music in 45, 33, cassette, disc, and digital formats, many songs albums in multiple of these.
Even services that remain in business have removed access to media people have "bought", highlighting your point that technically we've really only ever paid for revocable licenses in the digital age.
Given the price of their external storage, I doubt this device compatible with any other drive options. I'm also concerned that at some point they'd add on "subscription" or other recurring fees to watch or otherwise access purchased content.
Thanks to you and Kristi for giving us great information on a range of audio and video options, including on subwoofers 👍🏿
Merry Holidays and Happy New Year! I hope you take off the rest of this week and enjoy a little anniversary/birthday/mental health break, you both deserve that.
I like to actually own what I pay for🤷♂️
Great Sunday everyone!! & Merry Christmas for those who celebrate 🙌
So glad to see you! Happy Holidays to you, too!
Good review, but something you didn’t mention here and so many of the commentors here don’t realize, there is the Disc to Digital option that Kaleidescape provides. This means you can actually “rip” a a DVD or Blu-Ray disc you own into your Kaleidescape Library. Unfortunately 4K is not an option at this time. But for a fee, that DVD or Blu-Ray version can be upgraded to 4K in your library if the 4K version is available. I think this feature adds to the value of a system like this. And since almost every 4K disc sold comes with a Blu-Ray copy as well, just scan in the Blu-Ray version into your Kaleidescape Libray, and for a nominal fee you can have an offsite 4K version of your physical disc. Kinda the best of both worlds.
I built 2 home NAS servers and "stream" content to myself. Cost of hardware? About $1k. Cost of software? FREE. Completely open source via Linux and GitHub. I have BD discs for the home theater projector room, and stream other content via my home network. This is kind of like electric cars. Not ready for primetime quite yet. Love the channel! Merry Christmas to you guys🎄
You got me with that clip of the puppy. Great comedic timing.
High cost of entry doesn’t make sense over physical media. And the overly priced storage adds insult to injury. I want to be able to sort through my library of movies to watch and not be limited to ~5 titles simultaneously.
You want to sort through your library and not be limited to five titles simultaneously? How are you watching five movies simultaneously on a Blu-ray player?
@ understood…but for the cost of entry doesn’t make sense to me. I have a wall of BlueRay videos that I can easily pick through. Plus, in 5 yrs can you guarantee this company will still exist? I can’t imagine the mass market is willing to adopt this high level, which is why they are likely having to charge so much.
I can buy an awful lot of physical disc movies for $4k.
In theory, I love the idea…but again the cost is ridiculous for extra storage…$27k how many TB was that for??
I think that is what irks me the most. If there was an option to add or access a NAS or similar then it would be a bit more enticing.
No thanks. Too expensive and a closed propriety eco system. If they go bust, like Zapitti , you will lose access. Happy to keep storing 4k discs.
Interesting product and service, did not know something like this existed so thank you for bringing this to my attention. Also great if audio and video quality can exceed physical media, I can get behind that. Not so great is the price which for me would be a hard pill to swallow.
Loving that pair of modern art in your room, simply spellbinding! Happy holidays for the both of you! 🎄✨🎆
You mean the speakers 😉
@andrewrobinsonreviews Boom you got me there! 😂
The huge difference for me is with my physical media library (approx 800 titles), I look through it and make a decision very easily. When I scroll through stuff on a screen it takes way longer to commit and make a decision. The experience of that frankly means a lot less to me. I have stopped movies I wasn’t liking and went on to scroll for another one many times. Never once have I done that with a disk from the collection. It’s that way with all of these services. Music means less now, movies, TV. It’s all in over abundance and disposable.
A less than 1TB internal SSD for a $4,000 media player... KScape must think we are all a bunch of saps.
You can get a Zidoo or Dune player that does almost the same thing. Throw in a modest NAS storage unit and some patience in archiving your Blu-ray and 4k Blu-ray collection and you can have similar AV quality and instantaneous access to your collection for a fraction of the price.
Something I mention in the video, though, for a lot of folks, the idea of spending weeks, months, or even years maintaining their own media server is a non-starter; same as the cost of a K-Scape system is for you.
@andrewrobinsonreviews KScape is fine... if you have the money and can afford to lose your collection if, god-forbid, they go under, which they almost did a couple times. What I find outrageous and a non-starter, for me (and for many people if you read a lot of the home theater boards), is their external server prices. Their cost per TB of storage is far, far beyond any reasonable expectations. There must be a sizeable dealer markup on the hardware; more than most AV gear.
Toys for the well-heeled only. Normal folk need not apply.
I prefer hard copy.
This is simply for a completely different class of buyer. It won’t ever replace physical media for me. The price is astronomical compared to 4k disc player and the storage is incredibly small. I’m someone who often doesn’t know what I’m in the mood to watch until I browse my collection. No way I want to wait that long to download a movie every time.
Agreed the downloading would drive me nuts
Want to watch 3D movies? Kaleidescape offers you nothing.
Want to watch 'your' movies on another device? Sorry, you have to use their player.
Don't literally have the worlds fastest internet connection? It's quicker for you to get in the car, drive to the mall, buy it and drive home than it would be to buy it.... and cheaper.
Not a millionaire? Sorry, but if you want more than a handful of movies in your collection, you need to win the lottery.
And why are the heck are there two Christmas trees wrapped in garbage bags either side of the TV???
Has 3D ever been less popular than it is right now? Non-factor for 99% of the movie-buying public.
When I have a theater like I do, I don't want to watch movies anywhere else.
It will never be quicker for me to go to the mall to buy a disc, even with 100Mbs internet connection.
I'm nowhere near a millionaire, I simply prioritize what I want to have and I get there. I still have more than half of my Kaleidescape server storage available, adding movies is still generally cheaper than buying the discs.
Anything else?
@@ballstadt Lol, well that's nice for you and your home theatre, but dedicated home theatres are extremely niche and are either dead or dying according to Andrew. Andrew has even made a video on this subject and about why he ditched his dedicated theatre. In 2024 people just watch movies on various devices, like a PC, laptop, phone, tablet, or if you want to take your movie to your friends place, you cant.
Thanks for your arbitrary 99% statistic, but 18 Blockbuster movies were made in 3D in 2024 this year, including the Deadpool Wolverine movie featured in this video and these: Despicable Me 4, The Garfield Movie, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, Inside Out 2, Kung Fu Panda 4, Transformers One, Venom: The Last Dance, Wicked (2024 film), The Wild Robot. We know enough people are watching 3D movies to be profitable, because they continue to make them. Every dedicated home theatre projector continues to provide 3D capability and so for dedicated theatres, not having 3D capability makes no sense.
About download/upload times please watch the video again . At 11:14 at less than 100mbps it took him 7 hours to watch a movie... Andrew then says.... "unless you're rocking crazy fast internet, do not even consider the strato V or ANY Kaelidescape product". You cant get to the mall and back in 7 hours? what are you walking? You didn't spend all your money on Kaleidescape and forget to buy the car did you...
If the product works for you though, then that's brilliant, have fun. For everyone else, just in my opinion, please don't waste your money.
@ check again on projectors. JVC and Sony are dropping 3D support in all but the top of the top of the top of the line. Gladiator II downloaded to my server this morning (to make sure it’s ready and waiting at release) in 14 minutes at approx 800Mbps. There’s no way a download at 100Mbps would take 7 hours unless there is something else misconfigured in the system.
Hard pass on the Strato. Way overpriced, overrated, and if you have a PC, 4K UHD burner, you can copy all your 4K UHD Blu-ray’s on to a SSD drive. I use 4 4TB SSD’s in RAID config., cost me less than $1200 total. I use MakeMKV software, and I get bit perfect processing with all the codecs, even with the 100gb movies. Only drawback is the time it takes to copy each 4K UHD Blu-ray, even using USB 3.0 is time consuming.
The only way I can see this being of real value is to someone who doesn’t want to fuss with burning Blu-ray’s, and has the money to waste, then by all means, go for it.
But there are definitely better options if you have the patience…
While I'm not a hard pass, I agree with everything you said, and it's what I do, too.
@@andrewrobinsonreviews The only question I have regarding Keleidescape Strato V is what happens to your monetary investment if/when the inevitable happens: Keleidescape goes out of business. Two reorganizations already?
Like you both, I invested time and $$ in discs and infrastructure to run a movie server with 13x 18TB HDD’s (and counting) in RAID 6 using MakeMKV. Yes, it’s expensive, and slower than NVMe, but the Read/Write speeds from the RAID card are very good. AV8802A and B&W Cinema S2 LCR backbone. The only chink in the armor is the 2019 Vizio PX75 Quantum X. Will 2025 be the year I upgrade to OLED? P.S. T-sips looked good, yesterday - hard for this Aggie to say!
@ Yes, of course that’s what you do. You also have the means to justify spending that much.
Just giving a better perspective on alternatives for someone who may already own a PC or laptop, and doesn’t want to spend as much…
This review completely left out the single most compelling advantage the Kaleidescape system offers: rentals. There is simply no other way to rent a movie in full lossless quality anymore. Physical media rentals are gone. Any streaming rental will have lossy audio. For anyone who frequently rents films before purchasing them, this system is unmatched. I wish this had been discussed during the review, with some coverage of rental prices vs. Apple, etc. I do not have a K system... yet, but if I were to buy it, renting is the biggest reason why I would take the leap.
Very good point, yes, full-quality rentals is an upside and apologies for not making a bigger deal of that fact. Good catch!
@@andrewrobinsonreviews This kind of reply is why you're the best a/v reviewer out there. If you do a follow up for Friday's video, I'd love to see you talk about rentals. Also, can't wait for the 90 review to drop. Cheers.
You can still rent 4k blu ray discs in the UK
I find it improbable that someone who spends $10k on a K-scape and minimal storage is rubbing two pennies together when it come to a $20 rental vs a $25-30 purchase. However, the cost differential of buying a premium 4k blu-ray player over a K-scape would leave you with enough leftover to buy about 600 HDR/UHD discs at around $15/each.
TBH I prefer physical media, then ripping it to my NAS then using VLC via my Nvidia Shield TV, that way also if anything goes wrong I can just bust out the disk and watch it from there.
5:50 until the service is shutdown... I would love to have acces to high quality content, you only have to pop in a UHD blu-ray to see and hear just what you've been missing out on with streaming services but I am very, very reluctant to start buying everything in a new format again, especially if that format is digital only.
@@florisbackx1744 Kaleidescape is the only disc-quality digital product that has legitimized itself with the studios and sought agreements to be above board. Ripping discs is still a gray area in terms of copyright violation. MakeMKV is forever in donation “beta” because they know their business model is walking a fine line. Zappiti closed up shop on the run from copyright lawsuits and rebranded. How long before the others are doing the same.
To answer ur question at 15:33, Kleidescape will always be a luxury product and wont see mass adoption, their main issue is having to pay licensing to these studios which will keep the price of their products extremely high. I do think once streaming services can stream at the same quality as a disc then physical media will die off, much like how we can have high res lossless format with music now, but ofcourse this relies on us having very fast internet speeds which we are still a long ways from.
And as for new formats, i dont really see much improvement beyond 4k for a long time or if at all, but studios will do everything they can to make us double dip nd buy new formats or limited release.
But then again who knows, tv manufacturers might pedal 8k down our throats and studios are in the business of making money so i can imagine them creating new trends and fads to get us to spend
You only need a few hundred meg to stream uncompressed which is becoming pretty common place these days. It's only a matter of time until enough people have full fiber that Amazon and/or Apple deem it worthy to offer uncompressed streaming.
It's not really a question of people having good enough internet the internet is already there for most people it's about them being willing to provide the upload bandwidth they'd need to.
Think you said it all in your comments: "...gives you the closest experience to physical media there is. ...on par with physical media.", but without all the benefits of physical media. 😅
Can you imagine, forking out all that dosh for a limited changing catalogue of censored films, the kerfuffle of deleting and downloading, then be told, "...sorry, we're going out of business." 🙄
I appreciate your honest thoughts. I am a physical media guy and will NEVER switch to streaming ( I do have some streaming but for some tv shows and backup in case cable DVR misses something). I hate the fact that streaming services will remove content without notice. More often than not, it is related to rights issues. At least with a physical disc, no one can take those away from me. Plus if a studio decides to censor a movie (recent trend), having an older disc is a true way to preserve it. So many movies are being lost due to not having a physical release. I love walking over to my movie racks and choosing a title...weather it's a DVD, Blu-Ray or 4K...just browsing that way is so satisfying. Many of us feel the same way in taking pride in TRUE ownership of our movie collection. Again...to each their own. But those out their that do not buy physical copies of their favorite movies take a chance of losing them forever! Physical Media is FAR from Dying! If you follow it at all, you will see that there are many, many titles being released each and every week. It is going strong, even though it is not when you consider the lack of stores selling them. It's become more of an online thing. But there are many choices for buying movies.
Thanks for inserting the puppy montage. I was this close to having a conniption.
I like that you acknowledge the elephant in the room (pricing) and address that this player may not be for everyone. I personally will probably never get one of these because I’m way into deep with my own personal media server but I still appreciate the review as I like checking out new tech even if it’s not for me.
This review was bound to bring out the villagers with their torches (more than a subwoofer review ) and all I can say is let them come. Keep at it Andrew, stasis is not a good thing.
This is an interesting device, but at $4000 this is basically wildly out of reach for 99% of people. You could easily get a full home theater system with TV and surround sound for that price.
No doubt physical discs can be a bit of a pain, but if you were to go that route instead, you could easily get yourself a 4K player and 200+ movies for the same price. Not to mention that they're yours forever and no company bankruptcy or licensing issues can take them away from you. Additionally, most of these 4Ks will come with a digital code as well allowing you to watch them on virtually any device.
If you don't already have a $20,000+ home theater and more money than you know what to do with, this shouldn't even be on your radar.
“Here’s a photo of a puppy so you can all calm down.” 😂😂😂
This product has a great idea on paper. However, the extra servers needed to store a good quality library is just far too expensive for most people.
Surely accompany like Netflix or Apple can come out with a product that rivals this for for less money
Due to the cost, I can’t see this company being around with its current pricing format for decade to come (which is what you would want with this kind of financial outlay
All the performance deficiencies tied to compression, and streaming is why I purchased the final season of Game of Thrones on 4K disc…so the epic dark battle scenes could be watched without blur and grainy textures. Sounds like this hard drive system achieves the same quality as 4K disc (or close to it). Very impressive. I recall seeing an older system from them at a HiFi shop in Toronto back in 2019. Very impressive. Great video!!!
YOU CAN STORE 88 MOVIES FOR ONLY $8000, PLUS THE PRICE OF THE MOVIES? Let's start a pool to guess when these guys go bankrupt. This is a product for owners of mega yachts who don't have high speed internet.
Kaleidescape ran out of cash and was closed for 10 days in 2016 before they were re-funded by a new owner.
Excellent video, I appreciated the alternatives with dune. I personally adopted Plex years and years ago and I’m on my 4th or 5th iteration of my plex server. I currently have a 60tb nas with a Mac Studio capable of streaming multiple 4k streams simultaneously, and my total investment is around $5000, but the time investment is so high that to do it all over again I would probably consider something like the strato.
The thing that turns me off on switching the most is the inability to import existing things that I own, this means that I end up losing a large percentage of my library or end up maintaining 2 systems, for that reason I’m out.
One other thing to bring up is the need for multiple kscape if you have multiple tvs, with plex I’m able to go from the living room to the bedroom or the office and watch the same thing I was just watching on something as simple as a Roku.
Speak for yourself! I buy all the dvd’s for a nickel and a dime!!
Vinyl as well
You will own nothing and ….
$27,000...? I get it. This product is for people of the upper middle class / professional class and upper class. It's a iron clad niche product. But for that money... There are alternatives that a person can take and gain greater value than this (Obviously... If he / she is tech savvy). You can buy a streamer / media player, Plex Pass, a 4K blu ray player and a Hi-Fi speaker system for that price range.