Neat hardware and I appreciate the lossless services but I cannot get down with a $40 purchase where you don’t own it in perpetuity. I had the horror of finding out some of my purchased music on itunes around 2009-2010 had been pulled due to rights issues. Physical will remain the best option for me until my bones turn to dust.
@@ThePolyesterPimp most of the time I’m purchasing on sale for under $20. if I need a new release I’ll rent for $7.99. The problem is not all can be rented on kscape
@@letsgetsmarter2186 “Kaleidescape reserves the right to modify, suspend or discontinue the Movie Service at any time, or your use thereof, without notice. You acknowledge that if Kaleidescape exercises these rights, you may not be able to access, view or use the Licensed Content in the same manner as prior to such changes, or at all.”
@@letsgetsmarter2186 page 12 of 13 in the agreement says you can lose the rights to licensed content. Don’t believe anyone who isn’t under oath or a literal license agreement. Even then the terms of services can change and can lose ownership of your purchases. It’s slimy as hell but it’s the world we live in unfortunately. Physical and NAS are the way to go for the time being.
8 TB (7.68 usable ) is approximately 7864 GB Which can hold 125 high bit rate 4k movies Means on an average 62 GB/Movie Around the same for 31 TB variant. At my nearest cinema when “Black Panther” released the actual size of the movie was around 1.2 TB (4K Dolby Atmos) “Avathar” was even bigger. A local romantic comedy movie was around 300GB. My question is how can we say that 62GB/ movie is uncompressed lossless ?
Damn still no true A/B comparisons of Kaleidescape and UHD Blu-ray. I really was hoping that you guys would have compared it. Still keeps making Kscape feel like snake oil.
Others have made comparisons, and I believe the consensus is there is little if any difference with most, but not all, content. But so what? Kaleidescape is a system with various benefits, not just a hardware appliance no different than a Blu-ray player or media server. That owners of Kaleidescape products seem to universally love them indicates there is nothing synonymous with snake oil going on. They are luxury products, and their high price also does not automatically make them snake oil. I don't understand the bashing or suggestion they are pushing snake oil. There is no "right" or even expectation that well made luxury products, with an elegant interface and functionality like no other device on the planet, be affordable to the masses.
The $8995 combo does not indicate it includes an 8TB SSD. The $13,990 combo does include an 8TB SSD. Seems a (significant) correction is in order, both in the video and the description. Or am I missing something?
For the home vs a plane/yacht the hard drive versions make sense. I have two Terra’s, Strato and still use the first gen gear via a Co-Star that merged the content. Superb system. Sorry you can’t afford it.
@@MattDapson such a childish comment, your the type of person who flashes his fancy watch, car, imac and stuff to make yourself feel important.... #positionalgood #sad
I agree it is wasteful in terms of what you’re paying for what you get but it is important to recognize that some people pay for convenience and an easily navigable/stable interface.
One big downside is inability to stream on phone or tablet for purchased movies to watch on travel. Going with 4K disc often include digital copies, and you get best of both worlds.
excellent video - for the expanded system but quite sure how many zones - it may be better to look at AV over IP from AVPro like their MXNet 1G or 10G options.
$200 for a family trip to the cinema sounds insanely expensive to me here in the UK. I'm in shock! £5 for a ticket over here. I have a meal at home beforehand, so no need to eat during the film. Parking is free. Erm, that's it. Yep, £5 per person.
Here is a tip for you. Find the cheapest thing on compare the market. I found 1 off 2.50 travel cover for a days travel. This them gives you access to all the benefits of the merkats for the year including 2 for 1 cinema tickets either Tuesday or Wednesday... For snacks. I'll pop into aldi, asda etc before hand.
@mezzup1 There would be little to no difference to a 4k disc, so what's the point? I rarely buy movies on Blu-ray anymore unless I really want them for replay value.
Kaleidescape is more about convenience. 4K disc is not convenient in any way, shape, or form. It’s also a nice bonus to get the new releases way earlier than on disc.
Yes, that'd be awesome! I don't think the hardware is even available in my country, but I do have a server at home that I run some VMs on. It'd easily be capable to also host this as well. But the target demographic for kaleidoscape is already very small and only a fraction of those will set-up their own hardware for this.
Kaleidescape use to offer a service where they’d send you a disc drive, there by for example if you owned a specific BluRay and wanted to upgrade that specific title to 4K, once you inserted your BluRay it would show proof of purchase of the title to their server, giving you the option to upgrade to 4K at a reduced price. Sadly, I don’t think that is a service they offer anymore??
Kaleidescape is an amazing product , and i love all the new things coming into home theater ... BUT .. i have seen it before companies going under and then you loose your purchases ... so I'd hate to build a huge library and then go bye bye... there should be an option to back up your movies you buy to your own external drives... now i know they will say , well they will be pirated and then be shared to friends ... well .. hey same goes with physical media ... but we buy it so we should be able to do what we want with it... i think that would actually bring a lot more people into the Kaleidescape family.
Apart from it not being available here, I have 2 main problems with this. First of, end of life plan. What happens when Kaleidescape shuts down their operations? Second the hardware for the price. For that price, I would want to know what I'm buying. Imo it should just have drive bays, so I can buy what I need and plug that in. This video feels too much like a sales pitch.
Unless it's a Disney disc where the studio skimps on space with the audio track by not offering a dual layer disc there is ZERO difference. I've done the comparison.
@@AudioholicsPhysical media is much more important than supporting this product as you get to own a tangible license and you support the films just the same. You also have the ability to watch a film, tv show or Audio not limited to what is available but rather almost anything under the sun with little rarities and ability to import even a greater amount of titles not available in local supply. You can also purchase a bulk of your favourite titles and a solid player and have at least titles before you get into the price point of entry.
It's horrifying how expensive this is. Selection when I listen to streaming on Netflix and Amazon and Max which is far better and unfortunately the sound quality isn't as good. Great movies and great quality a great thing but the availability and expense of these individual titles Beyond the cost of the systems is just too difficult to deal with. A better business model would prefer. I would be happy to rent a higher quality video over streaming service but that is not available. Until that happens kaleidoscope is a questionable going concern
If Streaming services ever offer full HD video and lossless audio, it would spell the end of physical disc and Kscape. I just don't see that happening (at least with audio) anytime soon.
@@Audioholics but the ability to download is getting better kaleidoscope needs to find a way to make their services more cheap and I know they're at the mercy of who creates media
The server isn’t required and is not necessary if you get the Strato V. You can download a full movie in less than 10 mins. Takes longer than that to prepare your drinks and snacks.
Reference level is 0 dB ? Man that's crazy loud for small space (compare to theater's hall) :D For me -12dB is max what can achieve on some movies, for most from -15dB do -20dB, sometimes -25dB :)
@Roy88772 I listen at 80dB typically. Reference level tends to be 85db which is too loud in most circumstances. My system can easily exceed these levels but that's not the point. Safety first and low distortion and compression is key.
I have over 3000 movies and tv shows on disc. I have another 1000+ on streaming services. Kaleidescape would be awesome to have as an addition, not replacement, to these. All of it cost money. Kaleidescape is no different. It's a significant investment. So was my tv, stereo, home theater, movie players, etc. Add it all up, and it's still less expensive than the two ex-wives. If you have the disposable income, then enjoy life and treat yourself. Thank you for all the years of great reviews and information.
1. SSD or HDD, the bandwith is limited at the interface, in this case SATA connection which tops at abut 1gbps, it's more than enough for this application. 2. Server grade parts are not designed to live in homes where the air is dusty and humid, server room environment is strictly controlled, in homes, NAS grade drives are better, and server parts don't really guarantee reliability, storage redundancy does, which this product doesn't have. 3. The most offensive is the point is about compressed audio and video difference, you can't hear the bitrate difference in music, you can't hear it in movies either. The video quality depends on your TV or projector, you can't ABX a DAC, you can't ABX a player either. I'm disappointed to see this channel joined the snake oil youtuber club, everybody got a price I guess, it's about repeatable measureable data until it isn't. Running a movie server on your own is easy. You can build a dedicated server or just run it on your PC. You can add as much storage as you want with redundancy, and you don't have to buy movies from a particular company. You can even stream to outside your own home network. Also the first 2 AI bot comments, they have the same avatar.
It's on you if you can't hear the difference between streaming a movie with compressed audio vs lossless studio master. It's a massive difference, especially in bass extension and the bandwidth to the height channels. We had a Hollywood sound mixer confirm this on a livestream over a year ago. As for "having a price", I'm not sure what your implication is here. Kaleidescape has NOT paid me to do this video, NOR have they promised I could keep the gear after the period I specified in the video.
@@Audioholics The implication is you are being paid by Kaleidescape to do this, or as a favor to help the company out, or maybe the link is affilicated, or maybe setting up a server is hard enough for a lot of people you think they'd rather buy an off-the-shelf product from Dreamedia, bottom line is that I know you don't actually believe the claims you made in this video. Again, it's about measurable and repeatable data until it's not. To your point about the sound quality, some Hollywood sound mixer confirming streamed audio is compressed means nothing, a sound mixer doesn't understand the streaming technology to make a comment, he is not a reliable source of information. To my knowledge, the same mix goes into Bluray into streaming services and all channels use the same sample rate and bit depth, with the exception of Dolby Atmos, that requires its own mastering because it is object based algorithm, but this product doesn't support Atmos anyway. Bluray is uncompressed, streaming use compressed when the internet condition is not optimal, which doesn't happen that often since audio doesn't take up much bandwidth. How can you fairly claim without any measurement that bass extension goes deeper and height bandwith is limited. The compression to lossy format happens close the point of media comsumption, way after a sound mixer has done his job. Edit: I see it supports Dolby Atmos, but regardless it doesn't affect my point.
The vast majority of streaming content does compress their audio. It is often DDP, which sometimes has object based surround. Audioholics is correct that there COULD be a discernible difference in how the bass mix is in a compressed mix vs lossless mix, based solely on how compression algorithms work (normalization). Whether you can perceive this or not will come down to your ears and quality of equipment. Will the vast majority of people notice what Audioholics is saying? No, but if you do, you do.
@@AgentMoler That's fair, agreed, but compare with Bluray, streaming, and self-hosted server, I don't think this starting price 8.5k product can be justified without any measurement. This channel is one of the reasonable ones, there aren't many of them.
@@joeindia1647 There would be NO Audible difference between the 4K Blu-ray vs Kscape. The only potential difference from Disc to Kscape may be in video.
Neat hardware and I appreciate the lossless services but I cannot get down with a $40 purchase where you don’t own it in perpetuity. I had the horror of finding out some of my purchased music on itunes around 2009-2010 had been pulled due to rights issues. Physical will remain the best option for me until my bones turn to dust.
@@ThePolyesterPimp most of the time I’m purchasing on sale for under $20. if I need a new release I’ll rent for $7.99. The problem is not all can be rented on kscape
You do own the rights in perpetuity with Kaleidescape
@@letsgetsmarter2186 “Kaleidescape reserves the right to modify, suspend or discontinue the Movie Service at any time, or your use thereof, without notice. You acknowledge that if Kaleidescape exercises these rights, you may not be able to access, view or use the Licensed Content in the same manner as prior to such changes, or at all.”
@@letsgetsmarter2186 page 12 of 13 in the agreement says you can lose the rights to licensed content. Don’t believe anyone who isn’t under oath or a literal license agreement. Even then the terms of services can change and can lose ownership of your purchases. It’s slimy as hell but it’s the world we live in unfortunately. Physical and NAS are the way to go for the time being.
@@letsgetsmarter2186 not if the drive fails and they are no longer in business.
8 TB (7.68 usable ) is approximately 7864 GB
Which can hold 125 high bit rate 4k movies
Means on an average 62 GB/Movie
Around the same for 31 TB variant.
At my nearest cinema when “Black Panther” released the actual size of the movie was around 1.2 TB (4K Dolby Atmos)
“Avathar” was even bigger.
A local romantic comedy movie was around 300GB.
My question is how can we say that 62GB/ movie is uncompressed lossless ?
Damn still no true A/B comparisons of Kaleidescape and UHD Blu-ray. I really was hoping that you guys would have compared it. Still keeps making Kscape feel like snake oil.
Others have made comparisons, and I believe the consensus is there is little if any difference with most, but not all, content. But so what? Kaleidescape is a system with various benefits, not just a hardware appliance no different than a Blu-ray player or media server. That owners of Kaleidescape products seem to universally love them indicates there is nothing synonymous with snake oil going on. They are luxury products, and their high price also does not automatically make them snake oil. I don't understand the bashing or suggestion they are pushing snake oil. There is no "right" or even expectation that well made luxury products, with an elegant interface and functionality like no other device on the planet, be affordable to the masses.
Recently installed strato c with terra, I’m loving it, played Edge of Tomorrow invasion scene demo and it was a true atmos experience
900 for a Synology, 480 for 24TB drives, free Plex. $3780 144TB which is about 114TB in a raid that has redundancy.
The $8995 combo does not indicate it includes an 8TB SSD. The $13,990 combo does include an 8TB SSD. Seems a (significant) correction is in order, both in the video and the description. Or am I missing something?
Amazing video super informative ❤
9 grand and ya only get 8TB is comedy gold .. they are def marketing for people who have money and just have no clue
For the home vs a plane/yacht the hard drive versions make sense. I have two Terra’s, Strato and still use the first gen gear via a Co-Star that merged the content. Superb system. Sorry you can’t afford it.
@@MattDapson lol jackass.. it’s not “I can’t afford it” I’m not dumb enough to pay that. My Plex server does the job at wayyyyy less
@@MattDapson such a childish comment, your the type of person who flashes his fancy watch, car, imac and stuff to make yourself feel important.... #positionalgood #sad
@@MattDapson" Positional Good" 😂😂😂😂
I agree it is wasteful in terms of what you’re paying for what you get but it is important to recognize that some people pay for convenience and an easily navigable/stable interface.
One big downside is inability to stream on phone or tablet for purchased movies to watch on travel. Going with 4K disc often include digital copies, and you get best of both worlds.
rich people just buy movies. I don't think this product is meant for regular people
excellent video - for the expanded system but quite sure how many zones - it may be better to look at AV over IP from AVPro like their MXNet 1G or 10G options.
$200 for a family trip to the cinema sounds insanely expensive to me here in the UK. I'm in shock! £5 for a ticket over here. I have a meal at home beforehand, so no need to eat during the film. Parking is free. Erm, that's it. Yep, £5 per person.
Here is a tip for you. Find the cheapest thing on compare the market. I found 1 off 2.50 travel cover for a days travel.
This them
gives you access to all the benefits of the merkats for the year including 2 for 1 cinema tickets either Tuesday or Wednesday...
For snacks. I'll pop into aldi, asda etc before hand.
@@spacemanwho All good for those who need to save (not me - I'm not the person blowing $200 on a single cinema trip!)
@@mrtickleuk lol. Good point.
You compared it with streaming, why not a 4k disc?
@mezzup1 There would be little to no difference to a 4k disc, so what's the point? I rarely buy movies on Blu-ray anymore unless I really want them for replay value.
Kaleidescape is more about convenience. 4K disc is not convenient in any way, shape, or form. It’s also a nice bonus to get the new releases way earlier than on disc.
for 8k you can get a nice NAS and lot of original blu rays and a bluray drive to rip the disks, and the most important part, YOU OWN THE MOVIES.
It would be interesting if they sold the OS as a license and you could then pair it with your preference of hardware.
Yes, that'd be awesome! I don't think the hardware is even available in my country, but I do have a server at home that I run some VMs on. It'd easily be capable to also host this as well. But the target demographic for kaleidoscape is already very small and only a fraction of those will set-up their own hardware for this.
Kaleidescape use to offer a service where they’d send you a disc drive, there by for example if you owned a specific BluRay and wanted to upgrade that specific title to 4K, once you inserted your BluRay it would show proof of purchase of the title to their server, giving you the option to upgrade to 4K at a reduced price. Sadly, I don’t think that is a service they offer anymore??
@nathanjones4039 You can still do this (at least with the new Strato V). They do not provide the drive, however.
Kaleidescape is an amazing product , and i love all the new things coming into home theater ... BUT .. i have seen it before companies going under and then you loose your purchases ... so I'd hate to build a huge library and then go bye bye... there should be an option to back up your movies you buy to your own external drives... now i know they will say , well they will be pirated and then be shared to friends ... well .. hey same goes with physical media ... but we buy it so we should be able to do what we want with it... i think that would actually bring a lot more people into the Kaleidescape family.
Apart from it not being available here, I have 2 main problems with this. First of, end of life plan. What happens when Kaleidescape shuts down their operations? Second the hardware for the price. For that price, I would want to know what I'm buying. Imo it should just have drive bays, so I can buy what I need and plug that in.
This video feels too much like a sales pitch.
9 grand how many 4K bluray is that? between 500-600 and what happens if the company goes bankrupt it is like MadVR is a joke
Is it just me or is the audio clipping on Genes mic throughout this video?
Yes, we had an unrealized mic issue and didn't know until post-production.
@@Audioholics Thanks for the clarification Gene.
Question for you folks. What's the difference between 4k remux vs the quality of a movie on KS?
8tb and 125 movies you can extrapolate 65gb per movie, same of a 4k bluray disk
Unless it's a Disney disc where the studio skimps on space with the audio track by not offering a dual layer disc there is ZERO difference. I've done the comparison.
Guess what? Too expensive Lol
@@medic14165 understood
I'll stick with 4k disc.
@@Z22-m5o I'm sure you feel important saying that. Thanks for sharing 👍
@@Audioholics Thank you.
@@AudioholicsPhysical media is much more important than supporting this product as you get to own a tangible license and you support the films just the same. You also have the ability to watch a film, tv show or Audio not limited to what is available but rather almost anything under the sun with little rarities and ability to import even a greater amount of titles not available in local supply. You can also purchase a bulk of your favourite titles and a solid player and have at least titles before you get into the price point of entry.
@@Tidbitkidwho said you can’t have both Kaleidescape and a disc collection. I have both.🤷♂️
@@Audioholics I'm sure you felt important for saying that. Interesting attitude about a comment. These systems are incredibly expensive.
It's horrifying how expensive this is. Selection when I listen to streaming on Netflix and Amazon and Max which is far better and unfortunately the sound quality isn't as good. Great movies and great quality a great thing but the availability and expense of these individual titles Beyond the cost of the systems is just too difficult to deal with. A better business model would prefer. I would be happy to rent a higher quality video over streaming service but that is not available. Until that happens kaleidoscope is a questionable going concern
If Streaming services ever offer full HD video and lossless audio, it would spell the end of physical disc and Kscape. I just don't see that happening (at least with audio) anytime soon.
@@Audioholics but the ability to download is getting better kaleidoscope needs to find a way to make their services more cheap and I know they're at the mercy of who creates media
You obviously have never seen or heard what this product does. You really dont know what you are missing till you try it out
to much money for a media player
It is my understanding that the new all in one server/player has Dolby Vision unlike the others.
@scottruiz7138 yep, but sadly, I did this review right before the Stato V was released 😞
No matter how reviewers try and justify the cost , its expensive. And only 8tb ? It is snske oil with adjectives.
The server isn’t required and is not necessary if you get the Strato V. You can download a full movie in less than 10 mins. Takes longer than that to prepare your drinks and snacks.
Reference level is 0 dB ?
Man that's crazy loud for small space (compare to theater's hall) :D
For me -12dB is max what can achieve on some movies, for most from -15dB do -20dB, sometimes -25dB :)
@Roy88772 I listen at 80dB typically. Reference level tends to be 85db which is too loud in most circumstances. My system can easily exceed these levels but that's not the point. Safety first and low distortion and compression is key.
I have over 3000 movies and tv shows on disc. I have another 1000+ on streaming services. Kaleidescape would be awesome to have as an addition, not replacement, to these.
All of it cost money. Kaleidescape is no different. It's a significant investment. So was my tv, stereo, home theater, movie players, etc. Add it all up, and it's still less expensive than the two ex-wives. If you have the disposable income, then enjoy life and treat yourself.
Thank you for all the years of great reviews and information.
Nice discussion
OK what do I do with my 80k movie collection then? 😂
1. SSD or HDD, the bandwith is limited at the interface, in this case SATA connection which tops at abut 1gbps, it's more than enough for this application. 2. Server grade parts are not designed to live in homes where the air is dusty and humid, server room environment is strictly controlled, in homes, NAS grade drives are better, and server parts don't really guarantee reliability, storage redundancy does, which this product doesn't have. 3. The most offensive is the point is about compressed audio and video difference, you can't hear the bitrate difference in music, you can't hear it in movies either. The video quality depends on your TV or projector, you can't ABX a DAC, you can't ABX a player either.
I'm disappointed to see this channel joined the snake oil youtuber club, everybody got a price I guess, it's about repeatable measureable data until it isn't. Running a movie server on your own is easy. You can build a dedicated server or just run it on your PC. You can add as much storage as you want with redundancy, and you don't have to buy movies from a particular company. You can even stream to outside your own home network.
Also the first 2 AI bot comments, they have the same avatar.
It's on you if you can't hear the difference between streaming a movie with compressed audio vs lossless studio master. It's a massive difference, especially in bass extension and the bandwidth to the height channels. We had a Hollywood sound mixer confirm this on a livestream over a year ago. As for "having a price", I'm not sure what your implication is here. Kaleidescape has NOT paid me to do this video, NOR have they promised I could keep the gear after the period I specified in the video.
@@Audioholics The implication is you are being paid by Kaleidescape to do this, or as a favor to help the company out, or maybe the link is affilicated, or maybe setting up a server is hard enough for a lot of people you think they'd rather buy an off-the-shelf product from Dreamedia, bottom line is that I know you don't actually believe the claims you made in this video. Again, it's about measurable and repeatable data until it's not.
To your point about the sound quality, some Hollywood sound mixer confirming streamed audio is compressed means nothing, a sound mixer doesn't understand the streaming technology to make a comment, he is not a reliable source of information. To my knowledge, the same mix goes into Bluray into streaming services and all channels use the same sample rate and bit depth, with the exception of Dolby Atmos, that requires its own mastering because it is object based algorithm, but this product doesn't support Atmos anyway. Bluray is uncompressed, streaming use compressed when the internet condition is not optimal, which doesn't happen that often since audio doesn't take up much bandwidth. How can you fairly claim without any measurement that bass extension goes deeper and height bandwith is limited. The compression to lossy format happens close the point of media comsumption, way after a sound mixer has done his job.
Edit: I see it supports Dolby Atmos, but regardless it doesn't affect my point.
The vast majority of streaming content does compress their audio. It is often DDP, which sometimes has object based surround. Audioholics is correct that there COULD be a discernible difference in how the bass mix is in a compressed mix vs lossless mix, based solely on how compression algorithms work (normalization). Whether you can perceive this or not will come down to your ears and quality of equipment. Will the vast majority of people notice what Audioholics is saying? No, but if you do, you do.
@@AgentMoler That's fair, agreed, but compare with Bluray, streaming, and self-hosted server, I don't think this starting price 8.5k product can be justified without any measurement. This channel is one of the reasonable ones, there aren't many of them.
@@joeindia1647 There would be NO Audible difference between the 4K Blu-ray vs Kscape. The only potential difference from Disc to Kscape may be in video.
you can build your.........oh beat me to it
No thanks 🙏 I’ll keep my UNRAID nas.
@@CarlosGomez-THX_1138 exactly X 1000
Only if you’re rich.
I like it wish I could get on but way to rich for my blood !!!!
his scientologist head LOL