Kaleidescape Brings DRM to Blu-ray Copying

@Mark Coxon
K-scape is not likely to win on remand. The lower court originally ruled that the disc-in-drive requirement of the CSS license was optional, not required. The appellate court found that the lower court erred on this point. It’s not likely that the court will rule against the DVD CCA this time.

One important thing to remember is that the DMCA Section 1201(a)(2) bans the manufacture or sale of a device that circumvents a technological measure intended to protect a copyright holder’s rights - including the right to make and distribute copies. This means that the manufacturers cannot circumvent or provide the means to circumvent CSS or BD+ or any other protection schemes the studios have implemented.

K-Scape attempted to comply with this law by licensing CSS. When the DVD CCA found out what K-scape was doing, they filed suit - and lost. But they won at the appellate level. It’s now on remand at the district court.

This isn’t just an isolated thing, either. RealNetworks tried licensing CSS, also. They asked a court to rule that they were in compliance, or in the alternative, that they did not violate the DMCA. The court found that they violated the CSS license (same disk-in-drive provision, amongst others) and that they violated DMCA Section 1201(a)(2).

Other courts have also ruled that the DMCA removes the Sony fair-use exemption for space or time-shifting (Reimerdes).

So, unless courts start interpreting the DMCA differently or the studios start allowing for licensing in a disk-less (as in DVD or Blu-Ray less) operation, you will start seeing changer-only systems.

That said, K-scapes solution is pretty elegant. What they can do is use the changer to quickly check that the consumer owns the disk and then commence with playback from the SAN. This overcomes problems with using a changer only - you can still play multiple movies using the system without the need for a changer to serve each zone. It may also allow them to overcome the issues with licensing CSS and BD+.

The disk needs to be in the tray, hahaha, nice one kaleidescape, how high are you now? The high end is once again a joke!

@Joel
Loaded question. . .of course I’m against my rights being taken! :(

I don’t want to be construed as supporting any of this. 

I admire you for fighting the fight, but who are we lobbying to?  The Studios don’t care, and we established the major CE companies follow th profit lines.  I don’t know of any agency that can intervene, and the courts will just interpret the law as they see it.

The only way we can vote is with our $$$.  I don’t see any concentrated effort to stop buying DVD and BluRay until they allow us to store them in any container we see fit (stole your analogy) and even our friends at companies like K-scape are now encouraging us to keep going down that path by introducing changers that rely on them.

Why do we “feel some altruistic need to protect these digital plantation owners?”  (If any one guesses that reference they are married for sure or they have ovaries, why do I keep quoting Cusack/Piven movies?)

@Dave
I readily admitted the changer is the only piece that makes this new solution at least viable, although not cost effective.  If all the changer is doing is referencing a location and then pulling the disc to read the ID to make sure it’s in the machine, why $3-5k??  It doesn’t play the movie so you can’t even argue about scalers, outputs, etc.  At least Crestron can argue they play the disc and made some adjustments in the way that happens to justify the 9k (Huge stretch, even a Crestron rep told me its cheaper to rent the movie every time you want to watch it, than it is to buy the movie and store it in their machine).

A $400 disc changer could do this work fine, add some better motors, etc and it is $1k max. 

Do the Gilette thing, cheap razor, expensive blades and pass it on at 10pts to get the system sold and let the integrator and Joel make some money on the drives.

That’s a better strategy, if this is the only way to go.

More whining, still no solutions. Anyone who says the XBMC GUI is better than K-scape hasn’t used the new GUI that will be on this system. I’d say they are quite comparable, with no clear winner. And again, the user doesn’t have to touch a thing to have a great experience with K-scape, while XBMC requires quite a bit of interaction.

The 100-disc changer will hopefully be a 200 or 400-disc very soon, and hopefully prior to release (my hopes, unsure about actual product, and god I hope it’s $3k or less). It can also be used to rip movies into the system, which is a huge convenience. The one from S1 digital is unavailable, doesn’t work very well, and will only rip non-copy-protected movies anyway. The one from Crestron doesn’t rip the Blu-ray movies at all, it’s just a changer, like Escient was, so no instant access like K-scape will provide.

And to everyone who says the new player is useless without the changer ... would you rather K-scape continue selling old players knowing that the changer is on the horizon? Or should they sell the new players so clients don’t have to pay for or deal with having to upgrade later? Yeah, let’s beat up K-scape for looking out for our customers. Brilliant.

I mean seriously, stop bashing and think for a minute, folks. Sure K-scape is ridiculously expensive to anyone who can’t afford it and can build or cobble together their own solution. But all I see here is a bunch of whiners crying rip-off even though there is no other company that offers a system that can compare. There is no other company that has taken on the studios and won. There is no other company who’s product is owned by the big wigs and big talents of the very studios that are suing them. There is certainly no other system that legally rips Blu-ray discs. And there is no one posting in these comments with a better idea!

Jason Brown
http://www.AskTheAdvisors.com

@jbrown

I think that all of those whiners as you describe them still come across with more credibility than you do.

What are you exactly? A “fanboy” whos favourite pitch piece is always the greatest thing since sliced bread??

All of you PR bantering will never disquise the fact that an even “modest” multiple zone K system will always be north of $ 35,000, but more likely always well past the $ 50,000 mark.

It must be nice to live in world like yours where the sky is orange and you think it perfectly acceptable that people should have no problem paying those kinds of ridiculous prices for what amounts to a horrible 1990’s joke.

You have missed the point entirely. Everyone can see this charade for what it is. A Hail Mary, stop-gap, oh please, oh please don’t shut us down manouver.

PS: Dream on if you think that K. will have 200 or even 400 disc changers. Chances are this will be nothing more than the S1 changer in a different box. In case you are not aware, that is a piece which started out life as nothing more than an automated carousel for cataloging discs too…for simple manual retrieval for IT types. But the OEM (Dacal)only charged $ 299 for it!!

Remember where you are. You are in a forum for industry professionals,designers and installers who must “get their hand’s dirty” on a daily basis. It’s obvious that you must really think that all consumers must be absolutely brain dead idiots, but please don’t lump the rest of us in that category.

While I’m sure that the K-scape changer will not be cheap by any means it could be less expensive than most of you are implying since it doesn’t have to be an output device. 

Really, this unit only has to be a ‘secure’ BD storage vault.  Follow my logic here, and see if I’m way out to lunch:

The device needs to be built in such a way that when a disc is inserted, it is scanned and verified as an original copy.  This information needs to be stored somewhere secure in flash memory, or another hard drive. Technically, it doesn’t even need to be stored in the changer, it could be stored on the K-scape hard drive array with the actual video file, eliminating the need for local storage and reducing cost.  It also doesn’t need any sort of input/output(s) other than a couple of cat 5 connections (for daisy chaining multiple vaults), as the amount of data this vault is passing along is minimal, and the ripping is done in the M class player so it does not have to be done in the changer… again cost goes WAY down as you don’t need video processing, output stages etc.
If the disc is removed, this same information needs to be removed from the database so you cannot circumvent the ‘physical disc is present’ rule/law. If the K-scape server can’t detect the vault, the video won’t play. All of the main software gets to stay where it is already, which also reduces the cost.

Finally, the device itself needs to be built in such a way that it’s pretty much impossible to remove discs by taking the unit apart, and circumventing the scan/remove operation.

At the end of the day, the term BD vault is probably closer to what is required than a changer. K-scape should be able to make a 400 disc version for under $1k, as they need a BD reader to get the codes off the disc, a platter mechanism to rotate the discs in and out of the vault, and a bunch of extra metal to make sure you can’t get the discs out without doing it properly, or potentially damaging the unit/discs.

I know that’s how I’d do it, as the current hardware does all of the rest of the expensive stuff already, and this solution would work with any sort of physical disc.

Sorry for the novel.

@Paul
Thanks for having my back on this, as I posted the $1k changer idea a few posts back.

You are right, the solution can work if the changer is cost effective enough. 

Read the article again, as it is K-Scape that threw out the $3-5k figure for the changer, not us, prompting all the discussion.

@jbrown
There is a better idea and it is coming in 6 months.  I wish I could take credit for it, but I can’t.  For now all I can do is give the “Cat that ate the canary grin”.  If anyone wants to get some general info on the concept, they can contact me directly.  I am a member in the CE Pro forums, you can email me there.

In the early days of software usage and corporate / network distribution many “changers’ or “carousels” had keyed locks on them.
Beforethe loaded software could be accessed, the system would check the changer to insure that the original was there. I think many would be fine with a changer storing their BD content so long as they could still be able to enjoy the value add “fair use” of the product and the changer were a simple physical storage device which was relatively inexpensive- say a Sony 400 disk for around $ 1K.

What is the point Kaleidescape if you need to have the disk in the player, high end audiofools! Way to go Kaleidescape, what a joke of a company, maybe you need the teleportation tweak from machina dynamica to really make it work.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145276

A new 2TB hard drive with SATA3 and its only $139, how can K possibly charge that much for their products that are no different that when anyone can buy in any computer store accross the country?

If it’s Kaleidescape, it’s Derek or Scott or Rusty- apologies if I have left anyone out.
They’ll know how to fix it.

Call NewEgg or any one else (Seagate, WD- etc.) and ask them if it matters which slot you load that drive into on the 14 drive array.

I love newegg too but who do you go to when you need someone who knows better than you?

@Comeon ... actually, K-scape uses the $299 Western Digital RE4 enterprise-class HDDs. And if you were ever in manufacturing, you’d know that just about anything gets marked up 5x over cost by the time it gets to retail. So if they buy them in bulk at $249, that would be exactly the $1,245 that they charge, and they even throw in a hot-swap cage for free.

It’s hilarious that people are ranting about this so much. You know those fancy new speakers you just saw? Yeah, the actual parts cost is at most 1/8th of the retail price. But for some reason, no one is whining about that. But you pay what you do because they sound and look better than if you bought the raw drivers, designed a crossover, and built the cabinets yourself. Same goes here.

You can buy 14 enterprise-class hard drives, a server chassis and 3 clients for about $10-12k ($8k if you buy cheap crap that will break and/or hiccup during playback). Then you could cobble together the software for another $500 or so and it still won’t work anywhere near as well as the K-scape solution. Nor is it legal, which means the company making the software could be sued and gone at any time. Then again, you probably stole the software in the first place, so they’ll likely be out of business from lack of sales anyway. And is Newegg going to overnight you a new hard drive for free BEFORE the one currently going bad actually fails because they keep an eye on your system health for you? I didn’t think so.

But hey at least it will match your terrible-sounding speakers with the wonky cabinet finish that you built yourself last summer.

Kaleidescape, this is why america is failing, charging that much for a simple HTPC and that much for simple hard drives! What a joke of a product and now that you have to leave the BD disk in the tray, hahaha.

I Dont know but i was doing a K server VS a Blueray Changer from Sony and for the inconvenience of going to the system and change the BR disc its not a good idea depends on the customer so a good alternative for my customer that they can store all their BR Disc or rented could be this Changer that have IP or RS 232 control…

Just Saying,,,,,