I’ll stick with my 4K Blu Rays. Love ‘em.

You stepped in it big time with this one, some of us are taking our silver discs to the grave and nobody is changing our minds.

This is a complete and utter joke of a price for this. It’s actually shockingly bad. This company is just creaming it in. You can already do this on plex for free, use a shield and rip your media to a synology nas or unraid server. Costs you 100000x less and you have full control. This product is trying to replicate that and then charge rich people who are clueless about tech essentially. It’s criminal. Kind of makes me mad honestly. Imagine only including a 1tb hdd to try and upsell you to a 25 grand server nas device that’s proprietary to them. This is 100% disgusting behavior and should be called out - no one should support this company.

The best is that you can spend very little for a flagship high end AV receiver that is obsolete on all digital and video stuff but still very capable as a 2 channel amplifier

It's still too expensive. I would rather buy 4K discs for top-notch audio and video. Plus, it's cheaper overall.

Interesting but I’m not sure it will be adopted in its current offering, vs 4k players.

My biggest issue with Kaleidescape is that they charge 20x for mediocre hardware and storage without no self-hosting option. "Apple gigabyte" is practically free compared with what Kaleidescape charges for theirs. They say it's better than Blu-ray, sure, but is it $5k better with the Same Day delivery for disks from Amazon? I highly doubt it.

I’ve never heard of that before and didn’t know what it was. Thanks for the explanation

Unfortunately I'm in New Zealand so cannot get this product it looks cool but I'll just keep buying 4k movies even though they are quite expensive here but streaming is crap but has a purpose eg Landman Lioness Yellowstone 😂

An additional thought, by buying the occasional movie on disc and having watched it a couple of times, i'm a very popular Uncle as i give the discs to my Nephew.

I do not trust my movie collection to anyone’s proprietary platform after the whole Sony store debacle.🎉

I’d rather buy the 4K Blu-Rays, punch the digital code into Apple for the day that they go lossless quality, and I work slowly on building my own home server digital movie jukebox.

I'll make due with my $300 NAS + VLC on my Android based TV. Lol

Interesting product and service, did not know something like this existed so thank you for bringing this to my attention. Also great if audio and video quality can exceed physical media, I can get behind that. Not so great is the price which for me would be a hard pill to swallow. Loving that pair of modern art in your room, simply spellbinding! Happy holidays for the both of you! 🎄✨🎆

I love my KODI+NAS, which in comparrison costs nothing and has much more features and flexibility BUT I admit it is a lot of work.

NO sorry Andrew you've got that ALL WRONG physical media is better quality sound and most importantly picture quality is better than streaming, watch the same movie on say netflix Disney plus then on a 4K Blu-ray disc and the Blu-ray will look ans sound better and a 4K Blu-ray is yours to keep forever not to disappear like on alot of streaming platforms

You are not going to rip a 4k blu ray or even a 1080p blu ray bit for bit.

I love my 84 TB PLEX server all 4k movies.

I’m pretty sure those that prefer physical media would always stick with discs but for someone like myself that does care about the video and audio quality but likes digital media, I would say this will be something I’m very interested in. It really depends on the price of the player itself as well. I wonder if their library includes foreign films as well.

I have alot of movies on Vudu/fandango since they are 4k & atmos. Have yet to see anything in dtsx on there. But the sales and bundles are a good deal. Some I have on disc to compare. The sound is compressed, yet better than most streaming channels, but the disc version is noticeably better. This product seems pricey for what it is, especially the added storage. But hopefully it opens the door for other companies to make similar products and bring the price down.

An uber high end toy for people with way too much money.

The fact you can't connect a NAS or External Drive is a complete deal breaker

This seems like bad value per dollar, especially when something like Plex offers the same sort of functionality in-home, while also allowing you to have your own “personal Netflix” to stream while away. That’s an enormous advantage in my book. For some people though, convenience or not having to do any setup work is worth a lot, I suppose. Based on price and limitations, this seems like something that would be best for those with a high-end dedicated theater they had someone else set up.

Now I see why they do a follow-up podcast for every video. These moronic comments make me want to rip my hair out.

love the product concept and will absolutely pay for convenience but the price for proprietary expanded memory is insane, a complete prebult NAS of a smiliar size would run you 3-4k, 10k if it used SSD's over HDD's. If you could push and pull media from a personal server i could get behind this but being completely locked into a walled garden is a pass from me.

While I totally get that the price of this product is something most would need to consider heavily before purchasing, I think many people who argue for a Plex system or something similar do so because they don't want to pay (and aren't paying) for the actual content. The same audience that would argue that you should buy a CD or vinyl to "support the artist" likely doesn't think twice about stealing other types of content, like movies.

Give me a 4k discs all day long. Its mine and nobody can alter or take it away from me. I look forward to me films arriving through the door and checking out the features.

I went the Plex route with a 20tb unRaid server years ago and spent a TON of hours ripping disks. Still have all the physical media. I don't find myself going back to it as often as I use to and frankly not as happy with the Plex interface as I once was. Played around with Jellyfin and does seem to check the boxes I'm looking for.

TBH I prefer physical media, then ripping it to my NAS then using VLC via my Nvidia Shield TV, that way also if anything goes wrong I can just bust out the disk and watch it from there.

I just dont get the appeal of these products at this price point, I have no idea how the price is justified. The concept of easily accessing perfect rips of 4K discs is neat, but that should just be a service or storefront, like we have for FLAC files in music. You mentioned you guys ditched physical media a while ago, so I'm curious if youve got any UHD discs for direct comparison to the quality on this? I'm assuming they're basically the same files In terms of the local media server, have you tried Plex? I'd put money on the metadata issues being solved immediately

Only a 75-inch or above???? Nah. Even on my 65-inch TV, the 4K disc doesn't even TOUCH a 4K stream...... both in terms of visuals and (as you mentioned) audio. Take the original BLADE RUNNER. The 4K disc resolves the grain beautifully. It looks FANTASTIC. The stream is mush.

As for me, long live physical media. You can't beat the Atmos or Video quality; no buffering, no dropped signals or iffy WiFi or maxing out server space.

Physical media all the way! We would love to see a review of the Magnetar UDP800 or UDP900.

Your review is the best argument I've seen to not purchase a disc of every movie I really love. If Kaleidescape would allow you to download those top-quality movies and save them to your own NAS, I could see jumping into the future. But those storage prices... I need that puppy video again. *dons tinfoil hat* And someday you know they will shut down and you'll have to buy your digital movies all over again.

Long time user of digital media - nothing against owning physical, I own a few select Dvd and Blu-ray and Ultra I love (parted with LD as they were very unwieldy to keep) but was always obsessed with converting my collection to digital - this started well before Netflix in the very height of Video CD and the early days of Dvd. I have converted my collection several times as the fidelity of video and sound was better - it is a pain to purchase and convert them to digital and then sell the physical media but I cannot do it any other way to ensure the ownership of my collection. I use several 4tb to 8tb ssd’s to house the digital copies which play on my local Plex server through Apple TV. Although I have purchased some digital copies from Apple and Amazon, it doesn’t feel as secure as having the copies with me on SSD’s. Still, it would be nice to have a service such as this to take the time away from the process of converting physical to digital and then cataloging and adding all the meta data.

In my teens and 20s, I bought all my CDs, and I now have about 500 of them. These days, I very, very rarely buy new ones because my musical tastes were formed over those 20 or so years. Most of the CDs I buy now are from charity shops for €2. I presume it’s the same for DVDs, etc. My buddy pays a monthly subscription to Roon and still listens to the same music he enjoyed in his 20s. I think, after 40 years, he’ll own nothing, and all that listening will die with him.

$4000 to hold four 4k movies seems ridiculous. I built my unraid server with over 100TB for 2k, and can run plex over my wifi to tv or Nvidia Shield. Holds my whole collection. My 4k blurays often running at 130mbps. Not sure how this competes with a regular 4k blu ray player or a NAS or server running plex. This seems like off the shelf server rental for millionaires.

While these solutions are great for low maintenance functionality I find it super hard to justify with how cheap storage is now and how inexpensive a lifetime pass to Plex is. I built a 43TB server for less than the base price of that 8TB kaleidescape device. I would also argue the interface is just as good if not better. I think these are more pay for initial convenience devices like you said or people that are not as technically savvy and need a simple plug and play.

Until five or 10 years later, the company closes down, what then

I had never heard of Kaleidoscope until you subtly dropped it in videos occasionally. I think this is more of a luxury product, not unlike Tidal, when compared to Spotify. While I prefer physical media, my biggest threat to movie-watching is time. Merry Christmas and have a Happy New Year!

hi andrew. very interesting content. as always! I have a plex server on the mac mini m1. an nvidia shield as a client. With over 40TB of films (legal), I don't know which one is best for testing my Klipsch/Marantz system. What other films do you watch to make the most of the surround sound? thanks!

The most important factor for me would be time. I shall therefore stay with the Apple 4k for ease of use.

Someone please, PLEASE explain how this is better than Plex. And don’t use it “Plex is too complicated to run” excuse. If you’re truely in the market for a device at this price point, you can certainty hire someone to install and configure it for you. IMHO, this thing is the very definition of snake oil.

This review completely left out the single most compelling advantage the Kaleidescape system offers: rentals. There is simply no other way to rent a movie in full lossless quality anymore. Physical media rentals are gone. Any streaming rental will have lossy audio. For anyone who frequently rents films before purchasing them, this system is unmatched. I wish this had been discussed during the review, with some coverage of rental prices vs. Apple, etc. I do not have a K system... yet, but if I were to buy it, renting is the biggest reason why I would take the leap.

For a client, I just had to set up a new kaleidoscape server & player, and add an old server & player. Not fun. Besides, the cost of a 24TB server would buy thousands upon thousands of Blurays. A server this size would only hold hundreds of movies from kaleidoscape. And you don't get the xtras/bts The ui is not great at all. Very pedestrian. Doing a query is cumbersome. BUT if you have the means, don't care too much about the UI, go for it. Personally I'd buy physical BDs with ducats i save on the server

As of December 2024, the vinyl record manufacturing industry is facing several challenges. Lead times for pressing new records have extended significantly, with some plants quoting up to 12 months due to high demand and limited production capacity. Rising costs of raw materials like PVC have also driven up production costs, contributing to a 33% drop in vinyl sales compared to the previous year. Additionally, issues with spare parts and downtime have further impacted production efficiency. The industry is working to address these challenges, but the current situation remains complex.

My concern is with losing access to what I've paid for, which is alleviated by physical media. New formats are inescapable. I've paid for music in 45, 33, cassette, disc, and digital formats, many songs albums in multiple of these. Even services that remain in business have removed access to media people have "bought", highlighting your point that technically we've really only ever paid for revocable licenses in the digital age. Given the price of their external storage, I doubt this device compatible with any other drive options. I'm also concerned that at some point they'd add on "subscription" or other recurring fees to watch or otherwise access purchased content. Thanks to you and Kristi for giving us great information on a range of audio and video options, including on subwoofers 👍🏿 Merry Holidays and Happy New Year! I hope you take off the rest of this week and enjoy a little anniversary/birthday/mental health break, you both deserve that.

Your Leaks my Ohm 3XOs. I bought them when I was 21 and I'm 56 now and still LOVE them. Actually went from ADS L880s that I still own too.

The cost and No international availability is a big draw back .

I would like to rip my physical media. However what is suitable drive to rip 4k blu rays?