Kaleidescape Owners & Discussion Thread

[StereoNET]

Not long now ....

[StereoNET]

https://stereonet.com/news/kaleidescape-finally-launches-in-australia

[brodricj]

The key point here is the movie store has been opened to the Australian market. Which means they can now start selling the 4K players in Australia. Previously there was no point selling the 4K players if there was no content they could play (because they couldn't access the download store). Kaleidescape has otherwise had a long presence in Australia with the DVD/BR players (the Premiere system). I've been a Kaleidescape owner for 20 years. It's great.

[brodricj]

Is anybody having issues with pricing on their Kaleidescape store purchases?

For example, Oppenheimer and Jurassic World are advertised at $5.73 for disc to digital but when I buy it I'm being charged $8.60.

I'm on the 100 Mbps NBN plan with Telstra and a HD download is taking about 1.5 hours. My server is achieving an actual 63 Mbps download speed out of the available bandwidth. Compare this to owners in the US who can download a 4K movie in a few minutes. Our NBN internet here is rubbish in comparison.

[tkubey]

I would jump off Telstra if you can onto a decent provider. Well, Telstra is decent but they are very expensive. You can get a far superior service in terms of customer service for an ISP like aussiebb (I’m with them) or launtel. Compare the prices and see if you can get 1 gbps with them. Unless you are on FTTN as opposed to FTTP in which case yes you’re right Abbot (choice words) stuffed up our internet. Thanks. 
 

The pricing you’re seeing is almost exactly the USD to AUD conversion so I assume it’s that. 
 

aussiebb is currently the best ISP in Australia in my opinion with incredible customer service and a very high quality and reliable service. 

[brodricj]

Thanks for the tip. Aussiebb says I have a HFC connection and they are offering me NBN 1000/50 for the same price as I'm paying Telstra. Don't know if that allows me to have a landline telephone.

I'm going to upgrade to a Kaleidescape 4K player. It's a choice of one because I have a Kaleidescape Premiere system and the only standalone 4K player that supports meshing with Premiere is the Strato V. You need extra hardware for that to work (a Co-Star HDMI switcher - which is a Kramer HDMI box with Kaleidescape software). The Strato V only supports 1080P UI (same as Premiere), Strato C supports a 4K UI but it won't mesh with Premiere. I don't want to buy a 4K server just a standalone Strato V with onboard storage is all I need. I haven't seen local pricing yet.

[brodricj]

I can confirm the Kaleidescape store pricing is AUD.

 

And I checked with Aussiebroadband. If I include the same home telephone benefits that I get with Telstra they are more expensive. But they do offer the faster connection speeds if I'm prepared to pay extra, which I'm not. So I'll stay with Telstra.

[StereoNET]

1 hour ago, brodricj said:

advertised at $5.73 for disc to digital but when I buy it I'm being charged $8.60

 

That definitely sounds like USD advertised price. I know it's most definitely meant to be showing AUD, as there was some testing going on around this before launch. I know someone at Kaleidescape. I'll ask the question.

[brodricj]

1 minute ago, StereoNET said:

That definitely sounds like USD advertised price.

It's very odd for them to have mixed currency pricing, if that's the explanation.

The store should display only AUD prices, whether that is for disc to digital, outright purchases or whatever.

 

[StereoNET]

Agree 100% and I know work was done around the display of AUD pricing. I reckon something has failed/reverted/gone wrong. It does and can happen.

[brodricj]

Here is a screenshot of my last three imports. HD downloads from the store take about three times longer than what an import from BR disc takes (on my Telstra NBN 100).

I mostly use my Kaleidescape for playing my CD collection. Sure, playing the CD in my Esoteric Grandioso SACD transport sounds better than from the Kaleidescape M300 player, but it is close. The convenience of the Kaleidescape compared to spinning the CD in a transport wins me over. With the Esoteric Grandioso N1T network transport on the way I suspect the SACD transport will only be used for playing my SACD collection.

 

[brodricj]

On 19/04/2025 at 10:56 AM, StereoNET said:

Agree 100% and I know work was done around the display of AUD pricing. I reckon something has failed/reverted/gone wrong. It does and can happen.

Nothing gone wrong. I worked out what is happening. The pricing is in AUD, there is no exchange rate error involved.

$5.73 is the price of the HD version (disc to download). $8.60 is the price of the 4K version. If I proceed to buy the movie initially I am only shown the 4K price, but then a new page pops up to say my system does not have a Strato player and can't play 4K content. It says the 4K version also includes the HD version. It then gives me the option to buy the HD version for $5.73 or the 4K version for $8.60. If I buy the 4K version the HD version downloads to my system. If I buy a Strato player in the future it will download the 4K version, no more to pay. So that is what I did, bought the 4K version for $8.60.

So now I have done a "disc to digital" of the movie. Both the disc import and disc to digital versions will appear on my system. The disc import version does not have video book marks, the download version does.

Prior to the store being available in Australia I would have to send the BR disc to Kaleidescape in the US (it's called a loan appointment) and the movie guide team process the disc with video book marks. I have to pay to ship the disc to Kaleidescape, pay $US10 to process the disc, and when done they ship it back to me (they pay for that shipping). I have thus avoided the loan appointment process by buying the disc to download at a cheaper price.

It is usually the case that Australian pressings of a movie do not have video book marks. There are some exceptions, such as Top Gun Maverick which is an identical pressing to the US version, so it already had video book marks. I've spent a lot of money over the years on shipping and loan appointments to get video book marks on all my movies. Many years ago the video book marking service was free, shipping included both ways. But not any more.