Kaleidescape Turns Blu

The M500

By : Chris Tribbey | Posted: 11 May 2010
ctribbey@questex.com

High-end movie server company Kaleidescape will begin shipping two new players May 18 that offer support for more than 3,300 Blu-ray Disc titles, roughly 95% of the Blu-rays released in America.

The M500 ($3,995) and M300 ($2,495), when coupled with a Kaleidescape server, offers 1080p/24 video and Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio.

The M500 copies Blu-rays, DVDs and CDs. However, to address studio concerns, the Blu-ray Discs must be present to enable playback. In August 2009 the company lost a court battle with the studios regarding Kaleidescape’s compliance with the DVD Copy Control Association’s license to the Content Scramble System (CSS).

“We have invested a great amount of time and resources in developing the M-Class
architecture, which is our platform for future innovation,” said Michael Malcolm,
Kaleidescape’s founder, chairman and CEO. “We now have the tools to improve our
world-renowned user experience and offer an even greater variety of content.”

The two new players also have an updated user interface, including video bookmarks, an expanded movie guide with 135,000 video titles, indexing of songs on concert discs and control triggers for automatic adjustments of screen masking, lighting and on-screen “curtains.”

“We’ve never had a single customer return, and we have the most complete database in the world,” noted Linus Wong, director of product marketing for Kaleidescape. “The folks that have seen the new user interface for these new models have provided really positive feedback.”

He added that by requiring the Blu-ray Discs to be present, “we believe we’re squarely within the requirements of the [Blu-ray] license.”

By the first half of 2011, Kaleidescape also will unveil a new Blu-ray loader.

“Blu-ray is obviously gaining momentum, and we think it’s going to be around for a while,” Wong said.