Kaleidescape Strato k

billbillw wrote: »

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.

Doesn't seem like any positive feedback on this brand.

Well I have been installing this product over the last few decades and there is no question on the audio and video quality. I have done shootouts with the best UHD players, before that High end Blu Ray players including Oppo and the KScape Players always shine superior.

Streaming players have no chance in overall quality vs today's or even the older models.

I 'm really strongly considering getting one myself as they are not that expensive, your looking at $4000 for a Strato K player , they have a rent ability which I find kinda cool if you don't plan on rewatching movies.

Let's all be honest here, how many movies have you actually purchased and you watched more than once or twice? I know there are plenty of movies we all love and have watched countless times but generally speaking I was looking over my DVD-Blu Ray- UHD movie collection I would venture to say, I only watched most of them once. yeah I got a cool collection of movies over the generations of Disc but honestly in ways I feel I wasted a ton of cash of hundreds of movies as if KSCAPE had a rental store in the highest quality, most of my Library would be gone.

Emlyn wrote: »

Looking at the hardware in one of those players it doesn't look like it should even cost $1000 a unit despite it having a 1TB SSD included in it. They'd sell a lot more if they cut the price by 90% and charged a monthly service fee for software development and support like everybody else does.

Maybe I'd even spring for one at that price.

I hear yeah, I think their products have always been of a premium level. But no one else is doing this on their level so like high end gear speakers and cables of all things, they might be priced right. If they are getting it good for them not you and me. But we might not be of that elite level of spending on things like this.

I would certainly love to see a $1000 price point hell even $2000 would be a great price for what it can do. Think about this, there is no UHD player or any player on the market that is better. So what should a company charge for such a premium source? look at some cable prices , I mean Audioquest sell $36-40K speaker wires and arguably easily can be out peroformed buy cables costing way less. And I mean way less. Same goes for power amps , I mean do you need a $100k amp mono block to get the best performance out of your speakers? Or are you showing off how rich you are and owning the most expensive amps made? same goes with high end $100k Speakers. I have installed set up and calibrated some of the higest end speakers from Wilson Audio, Dunlevy , Dynaudio , B&W etc and I will tell you I have also installed $5-16K speakers that can compete with all of them.

So the market is the market and if someone is willing to pay $4k for a player, then the value is there. They need another company to compete with and that would have driven better pricing , or maybe not.