Kaleidescape today announced a high-end movie player for people that have a lot of Blu-rays they want to access and watch without dealing with discs. The $2500 set-top box is called Kaleidescape Alto. It is essentially a large hard drive, with a nice menu system that categorizes movies you own or buy from their service. Its main selling point is that it doesn’t actually stream movies, instead it first downloads them to the device, so they can playback without any compression or artifacts. The Alto can store up to 400 movies in Blu-ray quality and can be combined with other Alto players to create a system that supports up to four viewing zones.
Kaleidescape Alto is the first movie player to import 100% of its locally-stored content from the cloud, via downloads from the Kaleidescape Store. With over 8,500 movies and 1,600 TV seasons licensed from the major motion picture studios, the Kaleidescape Store offers movies in pristine picture with high-fidelity audio and all the convenience of Internet downloads. Downloads from the Kaleidescape Store are delivered in Blu-ray quality with no added compression, no video noise, and no buffering. What does all that mean? Finally, you can purchase and download movies and TV shows—with the exact same audio and video quality of Blu-ray discs from the comfort of your living room. The Kaleidescape Store is also aware of all of the titles that customers own, enabling it to make intelligent recommendations.
Due to copyright restrictions, the Alto movie player will only work in the United States and Canada. Its main use case if for custom home theater or whole-home A/V installations.
“Our goal has always been to deliver Kaleidescape’s high-end experience to millions of families,” said Cheena Srinivasan, founder and CEO of Kaleidescape. “What makes Kaleidescape Alto possible is our Store, with incredible content, including movies available for download soon after their theatrical release. We help consumers discover and enjoy the finest movies, and we help the studios develop the emerging electronic-sell-through market segment. We have always served the custom residential market, and we plan to continue to build our success there.”
Price and Availability
Kaleidescape Alto is available for purchase in the U.S. and Canada for $2,495 through a network of authorized Kaleidescape residential system integrators.
