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

[cinelife]

It's fun to speculate about all the possibilities.

[rgbyhkr]

Originally Posted by JerryL

Second on licensing fees. Everything you all say is true- they could implement a system to charge us every X views or whatever they want but I think we would all find this an annoyance or difficult to digest. I agree that K is not going to subsidize our "right" to import movies and I also agree that our ability will come along as part of an industry wide MMC agreement. I could see, though, K working with the industry to get us a Blu Ray customer licensing agreement with one time bulk licensing fee- they would have to find a way to keep this fee to a manageable number- maybe $500? but this would allow for lifetime imports, etc.

Interesting suggestion, but probably unlikely to happen. The problem for us is that the K base represents customers willing to spend a lot for convenience. So, why offer folks like us a quantity price break? It seems more likely that they would offer something like this for everyone and not just a specific customer base. Even that seems unlikely, though. What I won't be surprised to see is a price drop for MMC as time passes. As online offerings increase, many users will turn to that instead of something like MMC. So, MMC price drops could likely come if many users don't want to pay to take advantage of it. That's a good thing for folks like us, as long as the MMC restrictions are reasonable, because MMC will likely offer us better quality content than what you can download for some time to come.

Originally Posted by JerryL

An interesting on MMC- what will it allow?

While this article is 2 1/2 years old, contains is a good example of what we could expect from MMC:

http://arstechnica.com/articles/paed...oft-hd-dvd.ars

Originally Posted by JerryL

Downloads- in an interview somewhere I read Michael Malcolm saying that their original vision was downloads so maybe some day it would be possible. I think right now with the resolution demands of HD + the bandwidth out there, it is possible but not easy. Probably 99% of Ks customer base has high speed internet and therefore its probably not a problem if you wanted to order the latest HD movie and let it download overnight.

The issue is resolution. What will the studios allow and what does K see as a desirable solution? As it is now, we don't see any download solutions that are true HD. They are all compressed, even if they claim to be HD. HD-DVD and BR look better, as they should given the vast difference in content file size. That doesn't even get into the lack of higher res audio that the download servic es might not offer for years, if ever. Actually, and I may be wrong here, but I don't think that any of the download services (iTunes, Amazon Unbox, CinemaNow, Vudu, etc) offer SD content that equals their DVD counterparts. Some get very close, but I don't believe that any offer full DVD quality for their SD content.

Now, bandwidth is certainly the main reason why the existing services downgrade the content. Sprinkle in the size of the average set they will be watched on as well as the average consumers lack of fussiness when comparing this HD signal to that and you can understand the business decision. But there may be another, very important issue at work. Will the studios allow full quality downloads from any service? Certainly, K would qualify as the most secure of any of them, but that may not be good enough. The studios, after all, can't seem to get out of their own way in the interests of progress and opening up new revenue streams. So, if the studios won't budge on full res downloads, what will K do? Let's hope they can get that issue settled.

[JerryL]

I completely agree with you and I should state that earlier I discussed 1080i as a limitation for DVD scaling- its not for HDMI, its for component- I dont know where my head was at. Anyway, I just dont want to be paying a fee every time I watch a movie- thats just not right in my book.

[Beoliving]

yes, speculation is fun

If we look back just a few years and see how much the bandwith available for an average household has increased I am sure that bandwith will be not the issue in the near future. (have a look at Japan, they start laughing if you tell them that your ultra high bandwith is 16GBs... )

I am convinced that sooner or later (maybe sooner with HD content) the physical disk as distribution method will only represent a very small portion of the overall sales. K has the perfect setup for that, only the very small user group (e.g.compared to iTunes) may give them a hard time to sign nice deals with the studios for a download service.

Just recently I took a closer look at an IPTV service with HD content, it was not even DVD quality. But this is today....Looking forward to see how good the HD (720p) movie download of iTunes will be!

Karsten

[JerryL]

Karsten,
I think you are right. And when we talk bandwidth we usually think in terms of a direct link to the source. But look at how the bit torrent model has allowed people to distribute large files more quickly and efficiently. I read some time ago that Apple was thinking of doing a kind of bit torrent option for users where you could opt in to their bit torrent system for itunes store credit and your computer's bandwidth would go along to help distribute large files. What if K implemented a similar system with their servers. That might require a new firmware or more but its just interesting speculation.

Btw- I wonder how many 1U servers they have sold because I agree- with this announcement it really means you have got to get the bigger server. Anyone Ive ever advised on this system, my advice is to get the bigger server because for a lot of the cost of joining the club, a few dollars more brings the much greater ability to upgrade. If you outgrow the 1U its far more expensive to upgrade down the road.

[JerryL]

it appears HDDVD is nearing its demise:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/...0c25aa58d?pn=1

[cinelife]

At least now the industry can focus on one format. I heard from a reliable source (at Sony) several weeks ago that even Universal had restarted discussions with the BR camp. I think anyone could see this coming given the recent defections and announcements in support of BR.

Once K made their announcement I think Toshiba knew it was time to pull the plug.

Jim

[JerryL]

Universal just went Blu

http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/sh..._Goes_Blu/1483

[cinelife]

Nice find Jerry, and good news. This was of course expected now that their contract with Toshiba is cancelled (there was a clause permitting the cancellation). The few remaining companies should be close behind.

I only picked up the HD-DVD Player because of Universal and Paramount. Anyone want to buy an A35?

Jim

[charris]

The last two weeks' news were very good and interesting for me. The K news and Toshiba dropping HD-DVD gave me a big smile. Not that I had anything against HD-DVD (I even bought a few movies) but now I feel very confident in buying more HD discs (BD). I feel it is like when dvd was released and I would buy almost any movie that came out (even if the movies was rubbish). I just hope K manages to release the new movieplayers this year and they inlude all the features we would like...

Maybe we should start a new thread outlining which features would be important for us on the new movie players. e.g BD profile 2, HTS MA support, HDMI 1.3, audio decoding or bitstreaming support e.t.c.

One think I love about K is that they care what their users and what their dealers need.