Kaleidescape Strato k
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Hello everyone,
It's been a while since I have sold a Kaleidescape player let alone a full house system. When I worked for a company, we sold them here and there maybe 10 or less jobs a year.
One of my higher end clients who just loves buying new tech out of the blue reached out asking about the Strato K player. Now I'll admit, I was a bit rusty in my K game but I went and researched it and found it to be a pretty awesome stand alone to get you into the system player. You can add Servers and more players at will which is what he wants to do and give it a whirl.
Now he has a pretty high end system. All NAD with a Sony OLED 83 inch and Revel Speakers. It's one killer sounding system. He currently gets his media from Apple TV and also has a Panasonic UHD Blu Ray player.
We will most likely have it this week and one it's in we are going to go over there and put it in.
It got me thinking , in today's streaming more lazy world of consuming media, do you think Kaleidescape is something you would consider for your system? I'm gonna deep dive the quality as I have in the past and honestly it's superior in every way. When you spend thousands and thousands of dollars on Projectors or high end OLED's, it's not a bad idea to feed it the best signal possible. Just like us in our audio, we try to give our systems the best sounding sources so we can enjoy or speakers .
What are your thoughts?
It's been a while since I have sold a Kaleidescape player let alone a full house system. When I worked for a company, we sold them here and there maybe 10 or less jobs a year.
One of my higher end clients who just loves buying new tech out of the blue reached out asking about the Strato K player. Now I'll admit, I was a bit rusty in my K game but I went and researched it and found it to be a pretty awesome stand alone to get you into the system player. You can add Servers and more players at will which is what he wants to do and give it a whirl.
Now he has a pretty high end system. All NAD with a Sony OLED 83 inch and Revel Speakers. It's one killer sounding system. He currently gets his media from Apple TV and also has a Panasonic UHD Blu Ray player.
We will most likely have it this week and one it's in we are going to go over there and put it in.
It got me thinking , in today's streaming more lazy world of consuming media, do you think Kaleidescape is something you would consider for your system? I'm gonna deep dive the quality as I have in the past and honestly it's superior in every way. When you spend thousands and thousands of dollars on Projectors or high end OLED's, it's not a bad idea to feed it the best signal possible. Just like us in our audio, we try to give our systems the best sounding sources so we can enjoy or speakers .
What are your thoughts?
Dan
My personal quest is to save to world of bad audio, one thread at a time.
My personal quest is to save to world of bad audio, one thread at a time.
Comments
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Nope. I'd build my own server with clients setup to stream through Plex, Kodi, Jellyfin, or Emby. Rip the physical media, and it really can't be taken away from you (which is what I've done for almost 15 years). I don't trust that if the company ever went kaput, that all that media purchased from Kaleidoscope would disappear and I'd be left with an expensive brick. As long as someone is building Blu-ray drives for a computer, I'll be able to use my physical media.See profile for rigs. Nothing else here.
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Nope. I'd build my own server with clients setup to stream through Plex, Kodi, Jellyfin, or Emby. Rip the physical media, and it really can't be taken away from you (which is what I've done for almost 15 years). I don't trust that if the company ever went kaput, that all that media purchased from Kaleidoscope would disappear and I'd be left with an expensive brick. As long as someone is building Blu-ray drives for a computer, I'll be able to use my physical media.
Fair point.Dan
My personal quest is to save to world of bad audio, one thread at a time. -
The upfront cost for the hardware is steep for what it is, which is why I've never been interested in their systems. It may make sense for someone who hasn't accumulated a lot of physical media in 4K format or for those who can't tolerate having physical media in their living space cluttering things up. Their system relies on content downloads into a proprietary playback system to avoid bandwidth limitations of online streaming, nothing more than that really.
The thing that bugs me is if someone wants to watch a movie on the system they have to repurchase something they've probably already paid for in a different format. The price of "Cinematic 4k" content, which is really just similar to 4K disc content, can be competitive with buying physical media. Prices for true 4K video and high resolution audio content seem to range from $14.99 for older releases to $24.99 for the latest. Rentals can be $4.99 to $7.99 it seems.
Prices should be lower than for physical media since no retailer stocking charges and physical production costs for the media and cases. It's a niche product since most people are more than happy streaming content on demand. -
Some companies remove content you've purchased fair and square. I just posted a link a few months ago about that. Unless you own the physical media, you really never own anything you download. That was proven in the article I linked, they can remove or disable anything you have bought and saved to your server.
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Another drawback is that purchased content can only be viewed on a Kaleidescape hardware system since it's a proprietary closed licensing system. Also not possible to play MKV or MP4 files from a home media server through the system although a couple of my TV sets and Oppo 4K players can do that without limitations.
It seems like it might make sense for someone who has a high-end dedicated home theater room and frequently has friends and family over for latest release movie nights because of wanting to avoid the expense and irritation of going to a commercial movie theater. -
Doesn't seem like any positive feedback on this brand.Dan
My personal quest is to save to world of bad audio, one thread at a time. -
Kaleidescape has been around for quite a while and from what I have seen over the years the people who have invested in the system seem to like it a lot for ease of use. Turns out there is an upgrade path for a few dollars per movie for people who own a movie on 4K disc. In theory the 4K cinematic content on Kaleidescape may be of slightly higher quality than on 4K disc, but it seems only on a very big screen.
A bit of a shill here from an influencer, but it's useful background, and he acknowledges the prices for the hardware are way too high:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_9fI_hLkDk
