You have to be a certain type of movie freak to even consider products like the Kaleidescape Compact Terra 22TB and Terra 88TB Movie Servers, but there is a method to the madness here. Some will say that high-end movie servers are only for those consumers building $100,000+ home theater systems and that most people can just get off the sofa and insert a new Blu-ray disc in their player or stream a film and be done with it. Fair enough.
Some of us don’t have the budget for a $100,000 dedicated home theater room — because we invested a similar amount in our movie collection over the past 4 decades. Guilty as charged.
Movies over a Porsche any day of the week.
Using the Kaleidescape Compact Terra 22TB or Terra 88TB Movie Servers with one of the Kaleidescape movie players gives you access to over 14,000 films that are available for purchase and 9,000 which you can rent.
But what about the rest of us who already own thousands of films on Blu-ray, UHD 4K Blu-ray, and DVD?
Many of the films in my collection are not available on any platform because of age, language, destruction of the master, and obscurity of the title. My family also doesn’t share my love of Japanese, Korean, and Russian cinema and it’s a fight when I desire to watch one of them on our living room TV or basement projection system.
I would love to have a Kaleidescape movie server system that can hold all of those films, give me access to thousands more via streaming, and also let me access them using one of their dedicated players in my office home theater room where I can watch Kurosawa and enjoy my ramen with Tyrion and not have to listen to “movie snob” comments for 2 hours.
The Kaleidescape Compact Terra 22TB and Terra 88TB Movie Servers are almost begging me to sell one of my kids to finance the purchase.
The process of transferring your existing film collection requires the help of a dealer or custom integrator and there are some additional costs involved.
You are loaned a Kaleidescape Alto system that ingests, reads, and remembers that you own a copy of the DVD, Blu-ray, or UHD 4K Blu-ray disc. It does not rip or save a copy of that disc to the server; there are licensing rules that prohibit that.
Once that is complete, it provides the digital version offered at a discount in the Kaleidescape movie store for purchase into your system. The purchase can be done at any time; which is a relief because paying immediately for 3,700 films would not be a very popular financial decision.
If you own films that are not available in the movie store, you are not able to side load them into the server by copying them on the Alto.
One benefit for owners with large DVD collections is that when you load a DVD, you don’t necessarily get a copy of that version of the film. Kaleidescape has worked with the studios to get you the most recent version offered on Kaleidescape and that also includes any format upgrades that are conducted automatically as the content team upgrades titles in the movie store.
That would usually entail special editions, bonus content, and updated surround formats like Dolby Atmos and DTS:X if they are available for a specific film.
When it comes to the pricing, we reached out to the company for some clarification.
- Every studio and title can be a bit different.
- The average upgrade price from DVD to HD or 4K can be $9 or less.
- Older DVD titles can cost as little as $1.72 to purchase as a download.
- Once the customer is done cataloging the discs, they don’t have to buy them all at once and can purchase them as their budget allows.
All of that information should give you a clearer understanding of the process and how much it might cost to build out your library with existing films that you own.
The inability to add films that you already own because they are not in the movie store might be a deal breaker for some; there is no guarantee without going through the exercise that the system would have the 538 foreign films in my collection, 300 Criterion Collection titles, and all 254 music-related DVDs and Blu-ray discs.
Having used some of the more recent Kaleidescape servers in high-end home theater systems and dealer showrooms, I am convinced on a technical level that it would be worth the investment.
The investment on my end would probably exceed $20,000 including the server, 3 players, and the new downloads — not a small chunk of change but something that would organize over 40 years of film collecting and provide me with the best possible version of each film.
The new servers announced today are designed for very high-end systems and customers such as myself with huge storage demands.
Kaleidescape, maker of the ultimate movie player, announced today the release of the new Kaleidescape compact Terra 22 terabyte (TB) movie server, replacing its compact Terra 18TB, and the release of the new Terra 88TB movie server, replacing its Terra 72TB server.
These new products are now available from Kaleidescape’s dealer network.
“Kaleidescape is committed to acting on customer feedback, streamlining our product line to meet our wide range of customer needs in the 4K UHD era while maintaining the unrivaled quality, faster download speeds and seamless playback experience that define Kaleidescape,” said Tayloe Stansbury, CEO, Kaleidescape. “This new server lineup offers five different storage capacities, spaced roughly a factor of two apart from each other.”
Customers can now choose from the compact Terra 6TB, compact Terra 12TB, compact Terra 22TB or the larger Terra 48TB or Terra 88TB. This sequencing provides efficient options for those who want storage flexibility on a smaller scale, or for those with larger collections looking to expand as more 4K UHD titles become available.
Both the Terra and compact Terra lines can download a UHD 4K movie in as little as 10 minutes.
The new Terra 88TB can store nearly 1,500 high-fidelity 4K UHD movies, serve up to 10 simultaneous 4K UHD playbacks, and enables fast downloads while simultaneously supporting playback on multiple Strato players.
Extremely reliable, the Terra 88TB movie server stores high-fidelity movies on an array of high-quality, enterprise-class hard drives and is designed to continue operating on the rare occasion of a hard drive failure. If a failed hard dive needs to be replaced, movies are automatically restored from the cloud.
The compact Terra 22TB can store over 350 4K UHD movies or over 650 movies with a mix of 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and DVD-quality titles, and serve up to 5 simultaneous 4K UHD playbacks. The compact Terra allows customers the flexibility to add playback zones and grow their movie collection over time. Up to four compact Terra servers can be combined in a single system for more storage.
The Kaleidescape movie store has the largest collection of UHD 4K titles available and boasts nearly 14,000 titles for purchase and more than 9,000 for rent. Users can rent or download movies in reference quality 4K HDR with lossless Dolby Atmos and DTS:X audio, surpassing even 4K UHD discs in both convenience and quality by going beyond optical disc capacity and bit rate limits.
In addition, Kaleidescape offers over 700 4K UHD titles not available on Blu-ray Disc.
The Kaleidescape compact Terra 22TB movie server will be priced at $10,995 and the Terra 88TB will be priced at $25,995. Accompanying Strato C players are priced at $3,995 each.
For more information: kaleidescape.com
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ORT
September 21, 2022 at 1:42 am
Cool. I have movies too. I am going to have to open up my LaserDisc and see why the drawer doesn’t operate. If it is dead, I will look for a used one. I just bought a quasi-SVHS player/recorder with DVD burning capabilities. Of late, I only buy a film I know I will enjoy more than 50 or so times.
ORT