Movie servers were once a very big deal in the home theater space but the growth of digital streaming services and access to thousands of films on Hulu, Vudu, Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Disney+ put a serious damper on the category. Cinephiles like myself with over 3,500 movies on DVD, Blu-ray, and UHD 4K were once willing to spend thousands of dollars on a dedicated movie server. Not so much anymore due to the cost and because I discovered that I’m willing to find the physical disc and use one of the 4K players in my home.
But if you’re the kind of person who wants access to their movie collection on every television at home with the swipe of a finger, Kaleidescape’s new Terra 72TB (terabyte) movie server may just be your ticket – a very expensive one.
The $23,995 Kaleidescape Terra 72 terabyte movie server has been unveiled at CEDIA 2021 and offers some impressive features. However, it does require the company’s Strato C movie player for an additional $3,000 to complete the package. The combined system delivers lossless multi-channel audio and lossless 4K Ultra HD (UHD) video, thanks to a superior video compression solution utilizing 4 to 5x the video bit rate of competing digital video services.
“The Kaleidescape Terra 72 is the largest 4K movie server we have developed to date, designed specifically for customers looking to move from disc to digital or increase their collection through our award-winning movie store,” said Tayloe Stansbury, CEO, Kaleidescape. “The new offering can store nearly 1,200 high fidelity 4K UHD movies in unrivaled quality, delivering faster download speeds and a seamless playback experience for the ultimate movie collector.”
With the power to download feature-length 4K movies in as little as 10 minutes on a gigabit internet connection, the Terra 72 can also download content while supporting playback on multiple Strato players. The foundation for a multi-room Kaleidescape Strato system, the Terra 72 movie server can support any number of Strato C players and serve up to 10 simultaneous 4K UHD playbacks.
“With the increase of 4K UHD titles available, especially now with HDR, Dolby Atmos and DTS-X formats, we are seeing tremendous demand for the new Kaleidescape Terra 72 movie server,” explained Jim Goodrich, CEO, Cinelife. “Many customers who have been Kaleidescape owners for years, want the ability to increase and consolidate their collections onto a single server, with the added reliability and playback quality only Kaleidescape offers.”
The Kaleidescape movie store has the largest collection of 4K titles available and boasts over 12,000 titles for purchase and more than 8,000 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 nearly 400 4K UHD titles not available on Blu-ray. Kaleidescape’s proprietary kOS operating system enables Terra 72 to provide the advanced content protection required by Hollywoodmotion picture studios for the highest-fidelity renditions of their movies.
Extremely reliable, the Terra 72 movie server stores high-fidelity movies on an array of enterprise-quality hard drives and is designed to continue operating even if a hard drive fails. When the failed drive is replaced, its movies are automatically restored from the cloud. In addition to storing movies, Terra 72 provides caching, staging, and computing services that improve player performance. The Terra is also available with either 24TB or the recently announced 48TB capacity, and multiple Terras can be combined for more storage.
The Kaleidescape Terra 72TB is priced at $23,995 MSRP and is available now.
For more information: www.kaleidescape.com/systems/movie-players-servers/
