Press Release Kaleidescape Announces New Strato E Movie Player (1 Viewer)

[Ronald Epstein]

Kaleidescape Announces New Strato E Movie Player

New Entry-Level Movie Player Delivers Lossless Audio and Reference-Quality 4K Video

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIFORNIA – May 19, 2025 – Kaleidescape, maker of the ultimate movie platform, today announced Strato E, a new entry-level 4K movie player for residential, marine, and commercial theatre systems. Strato E supports reference 4K video output with SDR, HDR10, and Dolby Vision. Like all Kaleidescape movie players, Strato E supports lossless multi-channel and spatial object-based audio, including Dolby Atmos and DTS:X.

Strato E enhances our movie player lineup, with Strato M as our reference 2K player, Strato E as our entry 4K player, and Strato V as our flagship 4K player; Strato C remains the best player for compatibility with our legacy products.

“Our goal is to bring Kaleidescape to more customers by offering a range of movie players that fit the needs of a variety of projects,” said Tayloe Stansbury, chairman and CEO of Kaleidescape. “Strato E stays true to our commitment to performance and quality, with a lower cost of entry.”

Strato E works on its own or as part of a larger Kaleidescape system. As a standalone system, Strato E provides a single playback zone that holds a half-dozen movies on an internal solid-state drive – downloading a movie in about ten minutes over gigabit Ethernet. The streamlined interface, optimized for navigating a small movie library, offers automatic offloading of watched movies 48 hours after playback to make room for more movies. Purchased movies can be re-downloaded at any time. All movie players can also be grouped with Terra Prime movie servers to increase movie storage.

Kaleidescape Strato movie players provide access to the Kaleidescape movie store, the world’s only digital movie collection with lossless audio and full reference video quality. The movie store offers thousands of 4K and HD titles for purchase or rent, including movies, TV series, and concerts. Kaleidescape movies are downloaded, not streamed, so there is never buffering or loss in quality.

To learn more, visit: https://www.kaleidescape.com/strato-e-movie-player/. Strato E is available now through authorized Kaleidescape dealers: https://www.kaleidescape.com/find-a-dealer/.

About Kaleidescape (www.Kaleidescape.com)  
Kaleidescape is the ultimate movie platform. Kaleidescape has been designing, manufacturing, and selling state-of-the-art movie players and servers for over 20 years. Kaleidescape digitally delivers movies with lossless audio and reference video. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, Kaleidescape products are assembled in the USA.

 

[Sam Posten]

I’m interested after having played with the big boys at Trinnov and KEF. I’ve reached out to see if they can supply us with a review unit. Cc @andrew @John Dirk

 

[John Dirk]

I continue to be amazed by the product strategy of this company. They recently released the 2K Strato M which will likely have no interested buyers. Now they're releasing a 4K model for only $1000.00 more? Why not just scrap the 2K model [which is doomed to fail anyway] and sell the Strato E for a bit less? I'd think anyone willing to shell out $3000.00 for the Strato E would just add an extra $1000.00 and get the superior V model. As things now stand, they appear to be carrying too many SKU's for no good reason.

 

[JohnRice]

I continue to be amazed by the product strategy of this company. They recently released the 2K Strato M which will likely have no interested buyers. Now they're releasing a 4K model for only $1000.00 more? Why not just scrap the 2K model [which is doomed to fail anyway] and sell the Strato E for a bit less? I'd think anyone willing to shell out $3000.00 for the Strato E would just add an extra $1000.00 and get the superior V model. As things now stand, they appear to be carrying too many SKU's for no good reason.

Exactly. I'm kind of sick of companies playing stupid games like this.

 

[Robert Saccone]

I looked around but couldn’t find pricing. Anyone have a pricing reference?

 

[Sam Posten]

$3k

 

[Mark-P]

I looked around but couldn’t find pricing. Anyone have a pricing reference?

Best Buy has prices. Strato E (entry level) is $2995, compared to Strato V (flagship) at $3995, Strato C (legacy) at $2995 and Strato M (reference) at $1995.

 

[DaveF]

Such a curious product.

What’s the difference between E and V? Is it solely +$1000 for +480GB storage?

 

[John Dirk]

I looked around but couldn’t find pricing. Anyone have a pricing reference?

Prices for all current offerings are listed here.

https://www.audioadvice.com/collections/kaleidescape?page=1

 

[John Dirk]

Such a curious product.

What’s the difference between E and V? Is it solely +$1000 for +480GB storage?

Seems so, but that's the problem. It's getting hard to make sense of their convoluted product catalog.

 

[JohnRice]

That seems to be a strategy these days. I reviewed an EverSolo music streamer a while back. At that time, they had one model, which had two variations. Even at that time, the two variations didn't make a lot of sense to me, but people ate it up. Now they have so many models, it's getting silly. The problem is, people still seem to eat them up. Even getting multiple units that basically duplicate each other. As well as not understanding them to the point of buying stuff without having the slightest understanding of what they are, wanting them to do things they can't do. A specific example is, they all have an hdmi ARC input now, and people widely assume it functions as an hdmi video output as well, like with a surround receiver. Except these units don't have video output. The hdmi ARC connection functions only as an audio input.

Anyway, it is starting to seem like companies are actually trying to confuse their customers into buying things that don't do what they want. Seems like a short-term strategy to me, but I won't be all that shocked if it does work long term. In the words of Gordon Gekko, "A fool and his money are lucky enough to get together in the first place."

 

[DaveF]

Kaleidascape products are truly great. The demos I’ve had: they are the TiVo and Apple of digital content. Perfect software. Completely viewer-focused. Not filled with ads trying to upsell their other services. They’re not conflicted between being your library portal and your toilet-paper retailer.

But I can’t make any sense of them as a product. Another quirk of their product lineup is they have no low-cost client units. Or rather, this brand new $3000 Strato E is their low-cost client! That is the playback device for a single display. You want to watch your K-scape library in another room: another $3000 E per room. And I think (guess) it has to download its own movies. These are the players, not the servers. You want local storage, you have to step up to a $10k+ Terra Prime server plus the $3k Strato per room.

While I have no concerns that MoviesAnywhere or Apple or Amazon are going to vanish and disappear my digital library of movies with them, it’s completely unclear what would happens to my library of purchased movies, all online because I only bought a six-movie-capacity Strato E, if Kaleidascape goes bankrupt. Something I think far more plausible than the industry-giant digital libraries folding.

And everytime I look at this product and think, this might now be an acceptable luxury upgrade for my home theater, I realize: It’s not 2015 anymore. It’s 2025 and I’ve largely stopped buying movies because why spend $25 for a digital copy of Rogue One when I’m spending $20/month and it’s on Disney along with Andor and also all the original trilogy?

 

[DaveF]

I would love to know who their core customers are, and what audience they’re going after with these price reductions.

Looking at HTF over the years: Folks here both bought $1000 disc players and bought dozens of movies monthly, if not weekly. I can see how that could translate to the modern enthusiast buying a $3000 player and buying digital movies weekly or monthly for regular watching. And also suffering the same collector-syndrome where the buying is the real fun, and viewing is secondary.

But I’m not sure that customer exists anymore.

Because the luxury disc-players and buying movies weekly thing was a 1990 to 2020 thing. Anyone who did that, has a vast library of discs, and I’m betting not looking to shift into a pure digital system now. Sunk cost, fallacy or not, is an emotional reality.

And the “kids” in their teens or 20s or 30s today are growing up not buying content. They’re streaming stuff. They’re watching movies sliced up on TikTok. They’re not even watching TV or movies: they’re watching Mr. Beast on YouTube.

I don’t know. I wish someone in the know could explain it to us.

 

[John Dirk]

Another quirk of their product lineup is they have no low-cost client units. Or rather, this brand new $3000 Strato E is their low-cost client!

Well, if you're willing to live with 2K resolution [a ridiculous ask, especially from this company] the Strato M sells for $1995.00.

While I have no concerns that MoviesAnywhere or Apple or Amazon are going to vanish and disappear my digital library of movies with them, it’s completely unclear what would happens to my library of purchased movies, all online because I only bought a six-movie-capacity Strato E, if Kaleidascape goes bankrupt. Something I think far more plausible than the industry-giant digital libraries folding.

Agreed and, if I understand the functionality, once a downloaded movie is viewed it's automatically deleted after 48 hours and only exists permanently in your digital library.

Kaleidascape products are truly great.

I haven't seen them up close but would agree, based on reviews, etc. their performance is great. My assessment of the overall product goes beyond performance, factoring in value and functionality. Sadly, Kaleidoscope falls short in both of these metrics.

 

[JohnRice]

I'm reminded of the years I was doing commercial photography. I specialized in architecture, and shot a lot of multi $M homes. At that time, in the '90s and early 2000s, a lot of them had dedicated home theaters. They were typically very expensive, flashy rooms that cost well into six figures. $5-10K seats (each, that is), silk wall coverings. Programmed sconce lighting. All that kind of stuff. If it was flashy, they had it. If it was functional, even necessary, but not flashy, they didn't have it. People would spend $10K on each piece of seating, then use a data projector from Office Depot, and a base model receiver. I am not kidding. The one thing none of them had? Take a guess. Movies. Not a single one of the these people had more than a handful of movies. The way I see it, Kaleidascape is flashy. It's expensive. It's something they can dazzle and compete with their friends over. That is their customer. Someone who goes to an installer looking to spend a ton of money on flash. I'm not saying their product is not also a quality one. The vast majority of us simply are not their customer base.

 

[John Dirk]

I always "thought" Kaleidescape had some sort of deal with studios that allowed them to release content on their platform a week or so before actual street date. I haven't seen any official statement to that effect so I could be wrong.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

This is what we used to call “solutions in search of a problem”.

 

[DaveF]

I think it’s a solution in search of an affordable price.

It solves a problem. It’s the TiVo of watching digital movies. It’s just unaffordable.

 

[John Dirk]

Credit where credit is due. This company developed a truly awesome product and did an equally awesome job locking down that segment of individuals with way more money than actual knowledge or passion for our hobby. That's all well & good but now they want to expand their customer base to include discerning enthusiasts and clearly have absolutely no idea how to go about it. I'd say it's time for a new CEO. Just think what Gary Yacoubian could do with Kaleidescape.