Kaleidescape Tells Dealers Injunction ‘May Never Go Into Effect’

Show of hands…who cares?

At some point dealers need to make the ethical decision to stop supporting this over-priced product that continues to sit in the gray area of the law (whether you like or agree with the law or not, should have no bearing on this decision).  For me that took place last year.  There’s a reason, most if not all other DVD ripping companies are outside of the U.S. 

I often wonder what the cost of Kscape would have been if they a) were based outside the U.S. and b) hand’t spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees in an attempt to prove a point.

I really lost interest in this product beginning a few years ago, you know when every single client required iTunes integration…

Show of hands- who thinks iTunes is the be all, end all of all A/V solutions?

Show of hands- who thinks iTunes is the be all, end all of A/V library management
for all?

Joel ^2,

I never said iTunes is the be all, end all of anything. I actually prefer CDs and Vinyl for listening to my music. The problem is EVERY single one of our clients is strolling around with an iPhone, iPad and iTunes on their computers. Guess what they all want distributed throughout their homes that Kscape has always failed to deliver, iTunes music!  I’ve got clients with 10s of thousands spent on iTunes content and haven’t purchased a CD or movie in years. Not my fault or problem really; it’s all about convenience for them. Kscape doesn’t provide that convenience so IMO it’s a dead end.

Now, if they could somehow fight off Goliath AND allow iTunes integration, they would continue to be a contender. Until then I refuse to support their neverending legal battles.

Should Kaleidescape also distribute (along with iTuned Music) Sirius / XM, Pandora, Boxee, Vudu, Hulu and TiVo too? PS.- did you buy a Tube preamp and a seperate phono stage or did you just get a receiver?

Rhetorical questions mean nothing here.  Fact is iTunes is prevalent amongst all of my clients and is here to stay. I’d prefer to distribute iTunes via the same tried and true interface in Kscape than rely upon a 99 dollar box from Apple or a closed system such as Sonos; but alas, we can’t.

And by the way I have Rogue Audio tube separates at my house because I actually still enjoy listening to music in 2ch.  Is that enough of an entry fee to allow me to rent a slip next to you?

Hey Joel - Look at that dinosaur named Kaleidescape you think is so awesome. Less than 1% of the world cares that they can’t watch a movie on a $50K DVD player.

Less than 1% of 1% play their vinyl on a $10k phono stage, yet there is still a market for it.

My yachting customers would be THOROUGHLY disappointed if there was no kaleidescape. Its still an amazing system with top quality hardware. Their integration is also perfect with almost any third party control system. The market is clearly not what it was just a few years ago, but the customers are still there. I dont see how you could complain about a niche product when our entire industry is full of them.

Maybe we should start complaining about every other company who rips customers off because they have to pay their engineers/staff huge salaries to support their niche products. I guess ill be the first to start.. damn you Nordost and your overly priced cables that I make crap loads of profit on DAMN YOU TO AV HELL!

A)  The 1% left will be the only ones with money, there is a market for Kaleidescape.
B)  Kaleidescape doesn’t force you to re-buy content you already own, for many customers, that’s over $10K
C)  An entire Kaleidescape system and 1500 movies worth owning are still less than $50K
D)  Agreed- iTunes is here to stay, just put it in the Samsung BD or the Casio watch where it belongs.