Kaleidescape Launches Download Store With Thousands of Warner Titles
Kaleidescape, Hollywood’s legal scapegoat for the digital content age, has emerged as a digital download trailblazer with the announcement Monday of the Kaleidescape Store. The purchase and download website is stocked at the onset with roughly 3,000 films and 8,000 TV episodes from Warner Bros. Digital Distribution. After years of ongoing legal wrangling with the DVD CCA over the Content Scramble System used in DVDs, Kaleidescape appears to have rebounded comfortably with a Hollywood-sanctioned method for delivering bit-for-bit video downloads to Kaleidescape servers.
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Warner is the first company Kaleidescape has partnered with on a multi-year license agreement for digital downloads, but the agreement isn’t exclusive and Kaleidescape is seeking agreements with other studios, and vice versa, Tom Barnett, senior director of marketing, told us. The appeal of Warner was its “progressive” view and early success in digital downloads, Barnett said. Warner was the first major studio to screen a movie on Facebook, the first to deliver a movie on an app and the first to embrace UltraViolet, he noted. The agreement has an UltraViolet component as well. Customers who purchase a Warner title at the Kaleidescape store can get a lower-res UltraViolet version for tablets or smartphones, Barnett said. In the future, customers will be able to convert their owned DVDs and Blu-rays to UltraViolet titles for a fee, he said. Kaleidescape software can tell users whether they own a title and in what form, he said.
"We believe that this consolidation is a pre-requisite for mass adoption of electronic movie purchases,” said Kaleidescape CEO Michael Malcolm in a statement. Two companies are “simplifying how movies are purchased and enjoyed at home,” he said. Kaleidescape server systems have always been praised for simplicity in organizing and finding titles, but their five-figure price tags have relegated them to the luxury class of movie buffs.
The time may be coming for that to change, Barnett said. Today, a Kaleidescape system starts at $14,500, down from introductory prices of the mid-$30,000s in early days. Kaleidescape will continue to “live at the high point in the curve,” Barnett said. “That doesn’t mean we think there isn’t another full generation of price improvement we could do,” he said. “Even if we were selling a $3,000 movie server, that’s going to be one of the more expensive things you're considering as a source device.” Whatever the price range Kaleidescape plays in, it will still be a custom brand, he said.
James Goodrich, owner of custom electronics dealership CineLife in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., is fine with a democratization of the Kaleidescape brand, as long as there’s differentiated product. “I think it’s good for Kaleidescape,” he said. “Anything that helps Kaleidescape do better as a company, I'm for that as a dealer.” Goodrich calls himself a “believer” in the Kaleidescape OS and said “it would be nice to bring other people in. … I'd be fine if they created their own download box at three or four grand and put it in a bunch of people’s homes” with a limited version of the full Kaleidescape experience.
But the current version sticks close to company roots as premium offering, Barnett said. Premium Kaleidescape touches include 1080p resolution, 24-frame-per-second progressive scan video using high-end video codecs such as H.264. Convenience features enable viewers to watch movies directly from the beginning without ads or trailers, and bookmarks in the software allow viewers to jump to favorite scenes in a movie or any song in a concert, he noted. Audio performance is maintained, too, with Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio lossless soundtracks, he said. Extra content, including director commentaries, alternate endings, deleted scenes and disc documentaries are included as well.
Goodrich hopes that what dealers might lose in hardware sales on the server side, they might make up in storage sales. He said dealers are hoping for a 4 TB drive to come out soon that could store more than 200 DVDs or some 6-70 Blu-Ray discs.