Kaleidscape is shutting down

[Dean Roddey]

The high end media server company is no more.

http://www.cepro.com/article/kaleidescap...srinivasan

[jkmonroe]

i appreciate what theyve done, but this is another example of pricing for a market that is totally artificial. At even $1K, I would have probably bought in, but their business model can be accomplished by off-the-shelf components and open source (or otherwise free) technologies.

[Dean Roddey]

But, to be fair, isn't that why they didn't price it lower, because they'd then be a lot more competing with that sort of thing?

Also, to be fair, you can't really accomplish what they had with off the shelf components. You can do something like it, but the thing that they had that's not possible to replicate is extremely good metadata. If you want to create a 'just works' system, that's an important thing. They didn't just get metadata from some generic source, they created their own and went through it by hand to make sure it was exactly perfect, including things like offsets to key scenes and stuff like that. That let them have a really super-slick browsing interface, because all the data was high quality and very detailed, and you always got the right data, which is always an issue otherwise.

And there's also the case that no one who would be their type of customer would ever spend their time building something by hand really, so that's probably not much to do with their demise.

[potts.mike]

If I remember, they couldn't get Blu Rays working like DVDs did?

[batwater]

The real issue was the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that made it illegal to copy DVDs and later Blu-Ray and the legal battle Kaleidoscope fought against Hollywood.

[Dean Roddey]

From what the article says though, they worked out a streaming deal with the studios. Ultimately, from K's perspective, that should have been even better for them, since it means that they don't have to deal with a lot of issues both politically and technically. As long as streaming the blu-ray content was technically feasible, that should have been ultimately a better deal for them in some ways. They still have the really good metadata and that's local, and that's what provides them with the really nice interface. The other bits were (originally, at the time) necessities because you couldn't stream the content like you can now. If the streaming worked, they could simplify their systems, presumably.

[batwater]

Agreed however from what the owner said in the article it was the protracted legal battle that drained their financial resources.

[znelbok]

Even if the streaming option was created - they are never going to win against Netflix and others. They are too small fry and it would not be enough to make a difference.

Their model should have included some added services that no others could offer - something that personalised the system for the user. If you are paying a premium for a service you expect to get a premium service and streaming is not a premium service - not in today's market - even Youtube offers 4K video now.

It is a real shame, but the DMCA has really screwed up things in the states for you guys - one of the worst set of laws probably ever introduced in modern times. It has really inhibited innovation.