Kaleidescape Brings DRM to Blu-ray Copying

After all this time, this is the best that K-scape could come up with? 

Sounds like they are pretty sure they’re losing a lawsuit soon…only an attorney or a brain-dead studio exec could have come up with something as hairy brained as this. 

This solution is not a solution or oriented at the AV installation industry or it’s clientele….its aimed at killing the industry.

Let me see if I have this right…I buy a $5,000 bookcase to lock in about 100 BD disc (assuring that I need more then one), so I can record the media - already on a $20+ storage media, in a over-priced $9,000 dinosaur with a pretty GUI, so that the dinosaur builder can look into my collection at any time they want.  The studio’s would just love this - maybe that why K-scape threw it out there!

Didn’t we just go through this with a “lipstick-on-a-pig” thing just months ago!!!!!!

It not for me or my clients - let freedom reign!  Good-bye K-scape it was a nice ride.

Ditto that said above. The END is definately in site. Its 2010 and the days of physical media going round and round in carousels is long over.

Looks like I will simply start pitching those $ 1,500 Niveus ZONE players coupled to a HP WHS as a stop gap measure until digital downloads and streaming fully take over everything anyway.

My guess is the next to fold up shop will be Imerge whos Sunfire’s Theater Grand “cousin” already did so, followed by S1, Vidabox & Niveus and all the other tiny glorified Media Center firms who will all finally get sued in one fell swoop and simply walk away. 

Then all that will be left will be the hackers “tinkerers” toys.

I’m an audio guy so I don’t normally jump into video conversations but frankly, the solution here is really easy.  Instead of adding a changer, K-scape should have just added a shredder.  Insert the Blu-ray, let it rip and then cut it to shreds…all in the same machine;-)

I love all the whiners in here. None of them have provided a legitimate, realistic alternative.

The BDA license agreement specifically states that the physical media must be present during playback. They added that because the original K-scape system was functioning legally from day 1 based on the DVD CCA agreement.

The only thing I can think of as an alternative would be uniquely serial-numbered discs, but it would have to be done like computer software and you’d have to enter a crazy 28-digit serial number for every disc and the server would have to authenticate it every time you wanted to play the movie, just like Windows Update does. That would require a constant Internet connection, so when the net is down, so is your movie system. And then every studio would have their own serial-numbering and authentication system and that would be another nightmare waiting to happen ...

This new K-scape system, with the changer, is the only legal way to archive Blu-ray discs and make them easy to sort through, fast to load, and have the ability to watch them on any room in the house. Oh yeah, it’s fast, like 2-3 seconds from the K-scape movie list to the movie actually playing, I’ve seen it first-hand.

It’s also the only one that’s rock-solid reliable and easily Crestron-controllable. That windows server you built on your kitchen table is cool and all, but it’s no Kaleidescape. I’ve built a couple of them myself, and for the tech-savvy DIY-er they’re ok, but for someone who can afford a K-scape and doesn’t want to dick with a Rube Goldberg solution, there’s no comparison.

And if you think Kaleidescape isn’t working on a downloadable option, you’re out of your mind. They are very smart guys. Think about it, if this changer solution makes nice with the studios, it may open a few doors for downloadable content in true Blu-ray quality in the not-so-distant future. C’mon guys, use your heads. Don’t hate the player, hate the game.

Jason Brown
http://www.AskTheAdvisors.com

Gents,

I know this isn’t the solution we were all hoping for. I hold the highest respect for Kaleidescape. Not only for their solid, reliable technologies and friendly user interface, but for their courage too.

I would like to say that selling more drives / space and having more ripping business is first on my mind, but it isn’t…

We want a legal way to import BD and other content directly to our servers. We bought it legally and want to keep it that way.

Note to all- Cloud storage is a decade away from being main stream (no pun).
And downloaded content is going to be a blunder for many more years if you want a real library (because you will have to buy it again)

ONLY SUPPORT MANUFACTURERS WHO DIRECTLY SUPPORT YOU AND HAVE A VESTED INTEREST IN YOUR GROWTH

@jbrown
I definitely don’t hate the player, but that doesn’t mean this was not a poor move.  I think the disappointment comes from a dealer base that thinks a lot of K-Scape on the whole, and now sees this as a long anticipated let down.

It seems like a scab for those clammering for a BD compatible K-scape so they have something to sell until the real solution is here.  Without the changer, this is really not that viable, as you have to get up and put the disc in the tray.  May as well load it form a single disc player at that point.  With the changer it works better, and is at least somewhat viable, but at the cost that is anticipated, will only be good for small libraries as few will pay an additional $25,000 to store 500 discs on top of the drive space cost to store a 500 movie collection in the first place.

@Joel
Nice to see you in on this one. I asked where you were at as I wanted to know your take.

I know your goal isn’t drive space market share at all costs, and do appreciate your perspective on these debates.

I agree we need to support manufacturers who support our industry, but as an aside, supporting products that have no market, i.e. this piece without the changer attachment, can be dangerous as people will go elsewhere.

Dillinger said he robbed banks “because that is where the money is.”  I don’t think this product fits that description, at least in its current form.

@ Mark, Where I would like to most point that comment is to those who profit heavily from our industry. Microsoft, Apple, Sony and the likes have the clout (with out liability, while they enjoy vast sales) which CE / Gary Shapiro don’t seem to have (or care to) in persuading Hollywood that there are legitimate customers here who don’t want to be criminalized and simply want an imporved experience their way. Since those companies mentioned are profiting allready, what incentive do they have?

Sorry I was late to the table- JD

Does anybody see the irony of all of this?  K-Scape will soon be selling you players, changers and hard drive space at a significant premium.  So before the price of storing all the movies was just the HD space but now it is both the HD space AND the changer.

The changers and players will be needed as will significant hard drive space (which is heavily marked up).  Paying 5-10k for a changer is only the beginning.  Storing 100 Blu-rays on K-Scape will also require 5TB of storage.  So what if you have a 500 Blu-ray solution?

5 100 disc changers - $37.5k
25TB storage (50TB raid) - $50k
2-3 Players - $10K

So basically we are looking at $100k here.  Setting up an HTPC with XBMC, Boxee or WMC is not hard at all.  Some dealers could offer the service to set this up for a significantly cheaper price than it would cost for KScape.  The hardware would cost less than $2k, charge fair labor ($3-5k) and everybody is happy, especially the customer who just saved $90k!

And to all the people who say that KScape offers an experience that nothing else can touch, try out XBMC and rip your movies to MKV.  You lose all the FBI warnings and the GUI is even better (in my opinion) than KScape.

Just my $.02

@Joel
I agree the other guys are happy selling discs and haven’t pushed alternates.  If the studios all go direct with their content digitally to consumers, Sony loses an incredible revenue stream on the BD format, so they sit the bench on that idea.

As far as supporting Sony CE, they are only the number 5 studio, so we really need another player, i.e. Microsoft/NBC/Universal to get that moving.  I think you may be right that Sony and Microsoft could collude to influence Hollywood’s legal stance on content rights, but then again you still have to get Fox, Time Warner, and Paramount to agree, and none of them will lose anything from our boycotting Sony and MS.  In fact, that boycott may help them, in that those manufacturers lost revenues limit ability to make films that take pieces of their box office pies.

Until there is widespread demand for a digital content machine, there is no incentive to make the content available, and really no incentive for any of them to willingly concede the rights currently assigned to them by the courts.  Any disc based solutions, IMO, prolong the problem as they continue growing disc based revenues.

If K-scape wins their case, and the BD follow up, then this machine goes away as the scab it was intended to be, and we all win. 

Again, I just see it as a quick fix, and a presently poor solution that becomes somewhat more viable with the changer.

@ Mark, always good fun…

It’s just another version of big business mopping the floors with their customers.

As I see it, the collusion has allready taken place. Both Studios and Manufacturers have colluded to create a product which prohibits you from enjoying fair use, first sale and have also created a furhter monopoly in doing so. Their can be no robust secondary market development in the current status which is a prime point in copyright law.

As far as the DMCA, what would you say about a technology which was put in place to interfere with the execution of your rights?

I am suggesting that as customers, we hold our ground and insist upon our rights.

Best- JD

@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.