NEWS: Kaleidescape to support Blu-ray! (official)

[Beoliving]

As potential new customer for a K System (exploring others as well, but K is on the top of the list in the moment) the anouncement of Blue Ray support are great news!

To give it a positive spin, the long time to the 2009 release of the new player can be used to consider and budget some serious server upgrades. (the sales guys at K must be very supportive of these news...). Reading in an other post calculating 1.000 US for 1TB disk would be a dream for me as the MSRP in Euro in my country is 1.650 Euro (roughly 2.400 US$) incl. VAT.

From the storage point of view, a 1U server is hard to justify anymore as it will be filled up quite quickly with HD content (that was the server I had on my list until yesterday...)

Also very interesting if K will enter the "movie on demand/download" business. At the end of the day this is the most obvious business model for me as we store the content on a HDD anyway and put the DVD in a big dark box somewhere. Just go the K movie store, download the stuff to the server and you are done. For the film studios by far the best solution to have the content on a closed system like the K. Much more secure than selling a disc!

Karsten

[rgbyhkr]

Originally Posted by josh

Actually, I suspect they may be building such a transaction engine anyway. They're practically pre-announcing that they'll offer a content download service at some point, so they'll need the ability to bill their customers for content anyway. Adding in the billing of "managed copy license" purchases would be simple in that case.

--josh

If MMC does come with a fee, there has already been mention of online "clearing houses" used by the industry to collect the fees. Basically, the industry will setup a backend system online that all hardware manufacturers will have to make their products interface with to provide electronic payment and receive back authorization for using MMC for a given disk. That of course means that those devices will require internet access. Not a problem for the K system, but it will require K to design the interface to for customers to process payments. The smart move would be to do it in a way that is as minimally annoying as possible. So, maybe they let you enter CC info via the web ui or onscreen just once, and then offer selections for "auto-payment" on/off (wouldn't require you to confirm payment each and every time), etc.

Jeff

[rgbyhkr]

Originally Posted by multimedes

Lets assume that by beginning of 2009 'K' will sell us 1Tbit storage for $1k and 1 BR disc takes 25Gbit of storage, hence 40 disc per Tbit. We will therefore already be paying $50 to store 1 BR disc assuming one pays $25/disc.
Hence I don't believe there should be any additional license fees paid by the 'K' customer, this is a business decision to be made between K and the studios any additional fees should be paid by K and taken out of their margins.
If the studios are confident that K have address the copy protection issues to their satisfaction then why shouldn't the same principles apply to making back up copies of a BR disc as for DVD and CD.

Just to clear up something. K's ability to rip BR discs will not be as a result of a direct deal between them and the studios. It will be a capability that the studios offer to all manufacturers as a feature of the BR format and, for the privledge, they may charge users a fee for it. If so, that fee will be applied to all users who want to take advantage of Mandatory Managed Copy (MMC). Now, you could argue that K should pick up this fee given the system's cost, but I don't see a snowball's chance of them (or any other hardware manufacturer for that matter) picking up that cost for consumers. It will just be an unfortunate aspect of the format - higher disc prices up front and an extra fee for the ability to transfer content off of the disc.

Originally Posted by multimedes

Finally if the studios did try to charge extra fees for storage on servers how would they manage the making of back up copies from Bluray read/write devices?

Des

The fee would seemingly apply to any usage of MMC. So, whether you wanted to offload content to a portable device, onto a home server, or for a backup, you'd have to pay to do so - legally. They basically offer you all these various usages for one price. It makes more business sense to sell it that way than to say X amount for usage A, Y amount for usage B, etc. It's easier for consumers to understand and they likely make more money with one fee.

Jeff

[cinelife]

Agree with Jeff, K will not be subsidizing our importing.

In response to the question "Will the studios charge me a fee for making a copy of the Blu-Ray disk on my player?" K's answer was "maybe."

Obviously many unanswered questions, but plenty of time to get the answers (2009)

Jim

[beosoto]

Excellent news, it really does show how BR is winning the battle, what will happen with HD DVD in the future???

[rgbyhkr]

Originally Posted by beosoto

Excellent news, it really does show how BR is winning the battle, what will happen with HD DVD in the future???

With Warner dropping HD-DVD, the future of the format looks dim. It seems unlikely that even a player like Microsoft will be able to save it. Without studio support, it can't compete with Blu-Ray. Last I remember, the stories from early Jan about Warner's drop mentioned that Paramount could do the same. Paramount had been HD-DVD exclusive but decided to drop that exclusivity and do BR as well - that came around the same time as the Warner announcement. Some folks thought that Paramount was dropping HD-DVD altogether, but Paramount clarified taht and said they had no plans to do so. However, Paramount has an escape clause in its HD-DVD contract that gives it an out if Warner drops HD-DVD. So, conceivably, Paramount could drop out at any time. Personally, I think we'll see that happen this year and HD-DVD will become officially dead.

Jeff

[bti]

The way the guys at K-Scape have talked to us about importing Blu-rays is as follows:

1. The Blu-ray standard allows for an owner to make a backup copy of a disk they have bought
2. The Blu-ray standard doesn't detail how this would be possible
3. The standard allows for the rights holder to make an additional charge for this backup copy.

The press release seems to concur with this. Given (1) if K-Scape can get and agreement on (2) then the studios may well invoke (3)

I suppose we'll just have to wait and see.

Beyond the Invisible
K-Scape Dealer
London, UK

[JerryL]

Normally I am very enthusiastic about these kinds of things- but- this time I would say I am very cautiously optimistic.

The date says it would be 2009 which, given my experience with consumer electronics products, seems like it could slip to 2010- potentially more than 2 years away.

The paying to make a backup is a terrible idea. If Blu Ray becomes a mainstream standard, they could price the discs $1 higher and build this right into the initial disc purchase price. The whole managed copy thing is something the industry has got to get a handle on because there are so many easily available rippers for DVD its funny how many people I know who rip DVDs have no idea its illegal- they think that since they can copy CDs its the same thing. I know all of us here know better, but they honestly do not feel like they are acting criminally. The same thing will be true for any next gen format w/o massive consumer education. IMHO the industry should just find a way to allow for a legal copy or two to be made.

My experience with Kaleidescape is they are a first class company making a first class product so, while I am very glad K has announced something and I am hopeful- I would not view this announcement as instantly changing anything- yet it is encouraging. I guess I always knew that the servers could store the data- its the codec that is at issue and I knew we'd need new readers and players for that.

Fingers crossed that Kaleidescape can make this go. Don't get me wrong, I love my K scape, my whole house loves it, its just that theres a lot that can change- I take this announcement more as a kind of letter of intent to do something- which is a lot better than nothing- but its not that they are shipping the new player in 6 months either.

Btw- as to hard drives- yep- we will want bigger drives- if you have spots open in your server- I have been advised by their tech support that you can actually add in larger capacity drives, but to get the benefit of the larger capacity, you need at least 2 of the larger drives so they can do some form of RAID among themselves. I have to say the ease of implementation of such a powerful system is something I still marvel at. Also keep in mind that if a new BR Disc is say 40gb (I know it can go to 50 but lets talk average here) and if you already have the DVD9 of that movie on your Kscape- you could delete the DVD9 version and put in the BR version and that would get you to a net ~33gb hit- so there is a small mitigation (again, guessing the average DVD is 7GB). To imagine how many BR discs you could store, however much space you have left in terms of number of discs, if you divide that by 6 I think its a very conservative estimate.

Btw part 2- as to HDDVD- IMHO- its over. The player price cuts are a way for whomever has inventory to get something for it before they announce the format's death. I am sure they will find a way to play out 2008 but I wouldnt be surprised to see at the 2009 CES next January the remaining HDDVD exclusive studios announcing Blu Ray support.

[rgbyhkr]

Here's my take on this:

- K will be at the mercy of whatever the studios decide to do with MMC. They will be unlikely to secure a standalone agreement for BR content offloading regardless of whether MMC comes to light or not, so whatever the entire industry gets from MMC, K will have no more and no less. This includes pay for rips, limitations on how and to what content can be copied, etc

- Because K likes to stay legal, if MMC comes to fruition, K's implementation of BR MMC may be more limited than what you see from other solutions. Sure, they can apply things like collections, bookmarking, etc, but if MMC officially limits certain kinds of use or transfer, K won't push that boundary while others might. I have this strange feeling that when MMC drops, it will have a host of user unfriendly restrictions. K will have to abide by these unless they can find creative loopholes like they did with DVDs and the CSS license. Other manufacturers may choose to cross the line to make their products more attractive.

- A 2009 release date gives K the ability to hopefully release a player that includes the necessary items for MMC. The reason why they haven't released a player that supports BR/HD-DVD playback already is because they didn't want to have to go back again to release a unit that supported MMC. The assumption is that MMC may require additional hardware support.

- As for paying after the fact for MMC, it seems like something they will do. The issue is how to handle discs out there right now with MMC coming later. Given comments I saw when MMC was being discussed before BR or HD-DVD even launched, all BR discs sold now would be able to be used with MMC once it hits. From a price standpoint, they can either build the cost into the price of the disc or give you the option to pay for that later. Unless BR pricing from the start was taking MMC capability into account, they would lose revenue on discs sold before MMC pricing went into place (assuming that pre-MMC discs could be used for MMC). Alternatively, they could create new pricing with MMC included on new discs, thus screwing early adopters. I think they would see the compromise as offering MMC on every BR disc out there and letting folks choose to pay for a feature they may or may not want.

One interesting note here is what Fox and Warner are doing with a very few standard def DVDs (Family Guy Blue Harvest, Live Free or Die Hard, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, etc). They are, right now, including offloadable versions of the movie included with the DVD version. I think Fox was charging a $5 premium (MSRP difference) for the 2-disc version of Live Free or Die Hard with the digital copy vs the single disc version without. Now, there may be more special features or extras on the 2-disc version, but that gives you an idea of how they are pricing the "digital copy". I think they are slated to release 40 titles with digital copy this year to test out the appeal. that might have an impact on how, when, and what we see with MMC.

Jeff

[JerryL]

Cant disagree with anything Jeff says. Good points.

One thing I would point out to the copy police out there is look at Apple's sales of their family packs of software. If the price is right, people will pay to keep it legitimate- so long as also understand the issue at hand.

http://www.tuaw.com/2007/12/19/colum...-family-packs/


btw- Ive bought Apple's family packs.