8K media pioneer Kaleidescape says it’s bringing up cinematic picture quality up a notch with the launch of its latest flagship movie player, the Strato K. It comes with not just support for 8K movie playback, but introduces an entirely new format that should improve just about every movie. It’s called 4K Cinematic, and it’s meant to deliver enhanced image quality for 4K content.
In case you don’t know Kaleidescape, it’s an alternative to movie streaming giants like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. You have to buy one of its expensive media players, and you’ll then be able to pay a little extra to download individual reference-level video with lossless audio and enjoy high quality content that simply isn’t possible through regular streams.
Kaleidescape said the Strato K is based on a completely new 8K video processing engine that’s not only designed for 8K content. It’s also the engine that powers the 4K Cinematic format, increasing both the colour information and image fidelity. According to the company, you get full chroma resolution at up to 4:4:4, plus much higher bitrates.
Because 4K Cinematic preserves more of the colour data and comes with higher bitrates, it means that the content should appear much more detailed and natural-looking, almost as if things look in reality. It means you’ll be able to enjoy content that’s much closer to the creator’s original intent.
According to Kaleidescape CEO Tayloe Stansbury, the Strato K is the highest-fidelity video player money can buy. “It brings movie lovers closer to the filmmaker’s intent, with cleaner detail, true-to-life colour and a more natural presentation that dramatically improves the viewing experience of any display,” he promised.
It’s notable that the Kaleidescape Strato K is the first movie player that has ever been certified by the 8K Association, which means it meets that organization's strict performance and interoperability standards. The 8K Association is made up of a host of companies interested in pushing 8K resolution content, including Samsung Electronics, Panasonic, Hisense, TCL, Xperi, AU Optronics, IMAX, MGM and Kaleidescape itself.
The 8K Association’s executive director Juan Reyes said Strato K is a major milestone for the 8K ecosystem, and will play a “key role” in its growth as more 8K content comes available.
Kaleidescape believes it has a unique opportunity to popularise 8K content. While 8K TVs have been around for several years already, the market has not yet gained much traction due to a dearth of native 8K resolution content. The major streamers have so far declined to embrace the 8K format due to the much bigger bitrate requirements, and while Blu-ray discs could theoretically be used to distribute such content, there are significant technical and capacity issues that would have to be addressed first. Given that physical media appears to be dying, nobody has made a serious effort to establish an 8K Blu-ray ecosystem.
The 8K industry has therefore been stuck in a kind of limbo – nobody wants to shell out the extra money to buy an 8K TV set if there’s nothing to watch on them, and that means there’s no incentive for filmmakers to make 8K material.
Kaleidescape’s media players offer a viable delivery mechanism for 8K content. As with its earlier hardware, the Strato K can be used as a standalone media player or as part of a wider setup. The device is capable of storing a handful of movies on its built-in 1TB solid-state drive. If users need additional storage to create a bigger library, they can pair the Strato K with one of the company’s Terra servers, which dramatically expand the capacity and support multi-room playback, allowing users to watch high-quality movies throughout the house.
To access content, users must pay to download titles from the Kaleidescape Movie Store, which is very possibly the world’s most comprehensive library of full-reference quality video with support for audio formats like Dolby Atmos and DTS:X. It provides access to thousands of films, TV series and other content available in 4K, 4K Cinematic and 8K resolution.
To appease existing Kaleidescape customers who already own 4K movies from its store, the company said they’ll be able to download the 4K Cinematic version for free. However, they’ll have to invest in the Strato K, which is the only one of its players with the required chipset and processing power to support the new format. The existing Strato S, Strato C, Strato E, Strato V and Encore devices don’t support it.
That’s a nice little freebie from the company, but do bear in mind that it is making plenty of cash from its customers. The Strato K comes with a hefty $4,995 price tag for the Strato K, which translates to around £3,775 at the current exchange rate. On top of that, movie downloads typically cost between $15-$30 per film, depending on the title, though it is also possible to rent titles for 30 days at a lower price.
Of course, if you’re going to invest in an expensive Kaleidescape player, you’ll want to make sure you have a premium TV to make the most of its full-reference quality pictures, such as Samsung’s new S95H, LG’s G6 OLED TV or perhaps Sony’s new Bravia 9 II, which comes with an RGB LED panel.
Kaleidescape’s high prices make it unclear if it’s going to help popularize the 8K format any time soon, but perhaps the new 4K Cinematic format will pave the way for that to happen, for it promises to significantly improve the quality of almost every 4K movie available today. And if that entices enough people to invest in the Strato K, it would mean there are plenty more people out there with a device capable of supporting 8K. Whether it’s enough to temp more film studios to create 8K content remains to be seen.
