Last year was full of surprises. Who could have guessed that renowned pop star and humanitarian Michael Jackson would be revealed as an imperfect father? That a Ben Affleck movie would disappoint? Or that a $400 device the size of a deck of cards would be the audio industry’s biggest hit?

That device—Apple’s iPod digital music player—earned so many fans for one reason: convenience. Suddenly we could access thousands of songs whenever we wanted. Even people who had never downloaded a song in their lives bought iPods … by the millions.

Now what if you could do the same with movies?

Place a DVD in the DVD reader’s tray (left) and Kaleidescape automatically identifies it and retrieves its cover art. You can pick DVDs by genre, title, and so forth from the server’s animated menu (right). (Click images to enlarge)

One company has. Kaleidescape, a Mountain View, Calif., startup, has created what is, in essence, an iPod for movies. From a beautifully designed menu that appears on your TV screen, you can choose any movie in your collection, which is sorted by title, genre, cast, director, etc.  You can skip FBI warnings and overly ornate DVD menus and go straight into the movie.  You can select your favorite scenes in a movie for easy access later.  You can pause a movie in your home theater and finish watching it in your bedroom. And you can do all this in multiple rooms—simultaneously.
The Kaleidescape System includes three components and a lifetime subscription to Kaleidescape’s Movie Guide service, which provides information and cover art for your DVDs. The server is a box of computer-style hard drives that stores movies imported from DVDs and plays them on demand.  The DVD reader extracts video and audio from DVDs and transfers it to the server.  The Movie Player is the part that connects to your TV; place one in any room where you want Kaleidescape service. The components connect with CAT-5 computer networking cable.

The system’s server, in its standard configuration, includes five removable 300-GB hard drives, enough to store about 160 full-length DVD movies.  A server installed with the maximum 12 drives provides enough space for approximately 440 movies; additional servers can also be installed. (Click image to enlarge)

The Movie Player operates like a DVD player, except that it fetches movies from the server instead of from an actual DVD. Each server can feed up to seven players. Each Movie Player displays all the movies on all the servers as a single list.

Kaleidescape has thoughtfully provided a robust parental guide system based on Motion Picture Association of America ratings. It can place password protection on adult-rated content so that tykes looking for Santa’s Wonderland cannot stumble upon the hilariously foul-mouthed Bad Santa.

The Kaleidescape System does not include a remote control, but the company says it works with any universal remote, with touchscreen systems by AMX, Crestron and the like, and with wall-mounted keypads from such multiroom audio specialists as Audio Design Associates and Sonance.

The Kaleidescape System is truly plug and play. I plug the server, DVD reader and Movie Player into my home network and they instantly find each other. Like a DVD player, each Movie Player can be configured for the TV screen shape and audio system to which it is connected. It takes longer to remove the units from the boxes than it does to get them running.

Loading movies is a snap. The DVD reader eagerly accepts your DVDs and reads the data from each one in about 20 minutes.  The server stores your DVDs bit for bit: No data is changed or discarded. It preserves all of a DVD’s contents, including multiple audio tracks, special features, and even the hidden featurettes known as “Easter eggs.” During loading, two blue LEDs behind the DVD reader’s milky-white front panel pulsate, indicating that “feeding” is in progress. When the DVD reader sits above the server in the system rack, its blinking LED “eyes” and the server’s linear blue LED “smile” remind me of both Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors and HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Feed me, indeed.

Once a DVD is loaded onto the server, the system retrieves the cover art and related information from the Internet.  When Kaleidescape’s Movie Guide service encounters a DVD it doesn’t recognize, it asks you for the DVD’s UPC and title so it can find the information for you. For example, the Movie Guide service is unfamiliar with the fourth series of BBC America’s Absolutely Fabulous, so I provide the requested information, and a couple of days later the system’s server receives both the cover art and the disc details automatically.

Even though the digital data that provides the picture and sound is the same as you get from a DVD, the Kaleidescape System is, in essence, a DVD player.  Thus, Kaleidescape’s engineers endowed it with high-end circuitry, including Faroudja’s excellent DCDi progressive-scan conversion.  The Movie Player has enough video outputs to suit any video display, from a 20-inch TV set to a state-of-the-art video projector.  The company says the system is HDTV-ready; once HDTV DVD standards are defined, updated versions of the DVD reader and Movie Player will be offered.
In one way, Kaleidescape’s picture is superior to that of a DVD player. Most recent movies are provided on dual-layer DVD discs, and a sometimes irksome pause occurs during the layer change:  The picture freezes for a second or two and the audio mutes. The server fixes this problem, “stitching” the two parts of the program together on its hard drives. Using a test DVD designed to make the layer change difficult, I can barely perceive the change—it’s as quick as an eye blink. When watching movies, I cannot perceive it.

For DVD fans—which means pretty much everybody—Kaleidescape provides unprecedented convenience. We may be seeing a lot of DVD racks at the Goodwill store soon.

DESCRIPTION
Whole-house DVD server and delivery system consisting of high-capacity multiple hard-disk server, DVD reader and Movie Player, connected via wired local area network (LAN)

CONNECTIONS
Movie Player outputs: Composite, S-video, component (interlaced or progressive scan) video, RGBHV provided (inactive, labeled “for future use”); Toslink optical and coaxial digital outputs; stereo analog audio outputs; DB-9 connectors for RS-232 control and service; USB port (inactive, labeled “for future use”); wired IR input jacks on front and back
Movie Player input: RJ-45 100BaseT LAN connector
DVD reader input/output: RJ-45 100BaseT LAN connector
Server input/output: RJ-45 100BaseT LAN connector

DIMENSIONS
Movie Player: 1 x 17 x 26 inches (hwd)
DVD reader: 1 x 17 x 14 inches (hwd)
Server: 8 x 17 x 20 inches (hwd)

PRICE/CONTACT
PRICE: One server with five 300-GB hard-disk cartridges, one DVD reader, one
Movie Player: $27,000 (includes lifetime subscription to Movie Guide service). Additional 300-GB drives, $700 each; additional Movie Players, $4,000 each; additional servers: $12,700 (supplied with one disk for data redundancy only), $20,400 (loaded with 12 drives)
CONTACT: 650.625.6100
www.kaleidescape.com