Kaleidescape went bankrupt - feeling pessimistic about Tesla today

[Spidy]

The irony is this: The reason that start-up Kaleidescape got the attention of studios in the first place is that all the big Hollywood producers, actors, directors and other A-listers all owned Kaleidescape systems! They all wanted the premium movie-watching experience that only Kaleidescape provided.

And now they won’t be able to enjoy that experience, thanks in part to the crippling lawsuit they inspired.

It's funny, because it's the same story in Germany. GEMA (our RIAA) blocks many videos on youtube due to the record labels, but it actually pisses off artists, because they themselves obviously also use youtube, want to share their content and know that's where the customers are.

Favorit facebook post

 

[DonL]

Kaleidescape was not that smart at all in my opinion. I don't care how good the product was or how expensive it was. They kept making products that progressively became out of date. No on is buying hundreds of disks anymore. Its all electronic now. Physical media is almost a thing of the past.

Kind of akin to blockbuster trying to hang on. No one rents anything anymore.

Kalaidescape wasn't DVD based--they would copy DVDs to hard disk so that you didn't have to keep up with hundreds of disks. There is no resemblance to Blockbuster.

 

[habanero69]

I'm still a big fan of physical media. Yes, I have hundreds of DVDs. They are all alphabetized in DVD cabinets. DVDs are far more reliable than hard drives. I've been through countless hard drive failures, but I've never had a DVD disk fail (aside from letting a careless person excessively scratch a disk). You also maintain indefinite ownership, which you might not have with your digital media. Physical copies are also available long after electronic copies have disappeared from stores. Just last week I wanted to buy a music album, but it wasn't available on electronic media sites like iTunes. But physical copies can still be ordered. The only risk is not having easy ways to back them up, and having manufacturers stop selling players and potentially not having a way to rip the disks onto newer media.

Primarily, it comes down to failures for me, really. I've spent countless hours restoring failed servers and computers over the last 20 years (for things other than movies), but I have spent exactly 0 time fixing DVD failures, because DVDs don't fail.

Embrace the cloud. It is here, it is becoming mature, and it's essentially the future. What if you had a fire in your home? You would lose all of your media; NO BACKUPS. Hence the cloud. I understand the desire to OWN something; you paid for it, it's yours and you can do what you want with it. The cloud, not so much. But for safety and convenience, it is hard to beat. Sans being hacked of course...

 

[tonglaji]

I can build a vastly superior system to Kalidescape for under $500. I can't build a superior car to Tesla at pretty much any price. That's the difference. Kalidescape was selling useless technology that pandered to the movie studios out of date business model... they SHOULD go out of business. No business should stay around when it's products are out of date and completely useless and can be replaced with off the shelf, commodity hardware that costs a tiny fraction of what they were selling it for.

I am into home theater stuff for years, and oddly enough, I've never heard of this company! After looking at their webpage for a few minutes, I think the above assessment is exactly correct. If you look behind their marketing jargons, what they offered are a glorified media server plus some streaming end point. Given movie content delivery is all digital from source to TV, there is no value-add whatsoever in their products. The cheap $100 commodity products does everything just as well. I can't imagine how anyone could bearing paying $4000 for their product, let along the horribly looking device with the obsolete disc slot. I'd say good riddance!

 

[McMuggets]

I think that the world of physical media is dead, and Kaleidescape was trying to grow in the wrong industry. Who buys Bluray and DVD's anymore unless they are on sale at $5.99 at the local Walmart and you wanted something to keep the kids busy for a few hours? I keep an unplugged Bluray player around collecting dust, just in case someone has a disc they want to play. Otherwise, there's Netflix and people using their own servers via Plex etc. For pennies or sometimes free.

 

[Garlan Garner]

Kalaidescape wasn't DVD based--they would copy DVDs to hard disk so that you didn't have to keep up with hundreds of disks. There is no resemblance to Blockbuster.

What I'm saying is that their equipment/hardware was dvd and cd based. They sold expensive equipment.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Nothing like Tesla. Very high resolution doesn't _really_ add much and you know, there's always a movie theater.

 

[jelloslug]

Honestly, I'm surprised to hear that they were in business up until yesterday....

 

[McRat]

I ripped my DVD/Blurays to my home computer using open source software. Using a decent wifi router allows everyone in the house to watch movies of superior quality to the offerings of Cable, NetFlix, FireTV, Hulu, etc. Too much compression is why your blacks and dark grays look terrible, and why fast changing action scenes freak out.

You really have to watch something like Avatar Bluray from a home network vs. "HD" (this term is used to mean Hardly Decipherable) Netflix, FireTV, Cable.

People say they cannot tell the difference are not comparing apples to apples. When your blacks look like dark rainbows and action scenes are made of square blocks, you STILL have a long way to go before you approach the ripped bluray quality. You have less resolution, less frames per second, fewer colors on the pallet, erratic audio, and STILL can't get it close to smooth.

Sort of like too much compression on a ripped CD. If you can't hear the difference, you're running some very old stereo equipment.

 

[omarsultan]

This thread is heading down the same direction as similar threads on the various AV boards and it kinda misses the point. Few are going to argue that Blu-Ray connected to a 4K monitor and a good 9.2 THX surround system is not by far the best home theater experience you can have, but, for most folks, their buying decisions are more complicated than that.

The analogy I usually use is telephone voice quality. Companies like Sprint, AT&T, etc use to compete on crystal clear voice quality ("you can hear a pin drop"). And then cell phones came out and they had comparatively crappy voice quality, but you know what, consumers were OK with that because they got something valuable in return for the diminished quality: convenience and portability.

The same is true with home theater. While iTunes or Plex or whatever will never match the PQ or AQ of high-end system, they are cheaper, more convenient and more portable, which, I think is a trade off many, if not most, consumers will be willing to make.

BTW, as background, I have a two channel audiophile quality system that cost about as much as the original 60kWh Model S. I love the sound it produces, but I rarely have the time to just and listen to music anymore, so it sits crated up in the garage. I keep telling myself I'll set it up again, but....