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How big is your budget?

http://www.kaleidescape.com/
http://www.kaleidescape.com/products/

Beautiful stuff. Flawless operation. Drains your bank account.

How big is your budget?

http://www.kaleidescape.com/
http://www.kaleidescape.com/products/

Beautiful stuff. Flawless operation. Drains your bank account.

Nope, I have a mail slot the mailman puts it in the slot and I dont have to leave the house. And again, it is only a problem with ADD and ADHD people... normal people can click buy on amazon.com and do other things until the DVD shows up in the mail... Only the people that have severe mental disabilities have a problem with the "gotta watch it now.... gotta gotta gotta.... gimmie.... gotta watch it now....." mentality.

Normal people will go, "Hey that looks neat, click buy and when it arrives watch it. I rip them to get rid of the wasted 5 minutes of ad's and "you are a stinky thief" propaganda that is forced on DVD and Bluray owners when they play a disc. That way I can crash on the couch, select the movie from my XBMC interface and press play. So convenient that most rich people do this... but they use a commercial product called http://www.kaleidescape.com/ There is a multi million dollar industry built around ripping a DVD into a private VOD server... even Crestron, the uber-rich-man's automation system as one... http://www.crestron.com/resources/product_and_programming_resources/catalogs_and_brochures/online_catalog/default.asp?jump=1&model=ADMS

And it sucks for theater playback. It's why I encode to H264 and AC3 passthrough. far better audio than using the crappy AAC.

I use handbrake to make my own http://www.kaleidescape.com/products/ setup for a fraction of the cost using XBMC. I even have a automatic DVD ripper using Handbrake CLI and a bash script to watch the dvd drive on the content server.

I tried ripping the audio to AAC, it destroys the movie sound in a real theater setup. AC3 passthrough preserves it completely.

it's definitely not about buy the movie or not.

When the fastest Blu-ray player takes over 40 seconds to boot up (PS3 and others take over a minute) and some movies force previews and other crap onto you (this is after the player boots up)....one of the main purposes to "rip" is to bypass all these headaches.
(some of it will also be to set up a HTPC system that stores all...much like what Kaleidescape (Wiki) does for DVDs)
(my own player takes the amount of time that it takes for me to go to the bathroom and back...but I guess I can't really complain too much as I got the damn thing for free....o well)

anyways...I was under the impression that a PS3 can still rip blu-ray titles with easy (with any cell3 linux distro and a simple dd command)

There exist at least two legal caching DVD player systems: Kaleidescape, and RealDVD. IANAL but I have heard that these are possible because, when the original contract for a legal DVD player was drawn up, no-one thought to include a clause forbidding caching or requiring the disc be present in the drive whilst being played.

I have heard that for both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, the contracts do in fact specify no caching, so the convenience of caching is legally impossible.

I'm not rich enough for a Kaleidescape but I plan to get RealDVD once available. The hi def disc formats need to wake up and smell the coffee.

http://www.kaleidescape.com/company/pr/PR-20070329-DVDCCA.php

Basically, if you're in compliance with the CCA requirements, there isn't anything they can do about it.

The CCA is now trying to change the license to prevent copying, but every storage system on the planet is going to file complaints and litigation if that happens.

Who cares if they know or not?
He's not doing anything wrong

Who cares if they know or not?
He's not doing anything wrong

Article mentioned that he is using a kaleidescape system. They are fighting for copying rights, although restricted. Here is the latest press release on it:
http://www.kaleidescape.com/company/pr/PR-20070329-DVDCCA.html

Did he win in court because he pointed out the license agreement didn't prohibit this usage, or did he win on other grounds?

Looking at the Kaleidescape website it appears this system looks like it does everything MCE extenders are going to do, but I'd rather go with DIY (read cheaper) hardware. I've looked at Pluto and it looks to be a decent choice, but I'm not sure it's the best choice. Anyone have any references to DIY slim boxes for playing movies/music from a backend server? I don't care so much for DVR/TV, I'm more interested in playing XViD/Matroska/etc and MP3's anywhere, while making it simple enough for my wife and kids to watch/listen to different media files at the same time in different rooms.
Jonah HEX

Kaleidescape not Kaleidescope (kaleidescape.com)

Of course they'll both be used, if the content industry has their way. It's not the content industry doing this, though -- it's a hardware manufacturer; they have a completely different set of interests. Content-industry folks want to sell more copies of content, even if they have to suppress some innovation in the process. Hardware manufacturers, by contrast, want to innovate and sell more hardware -- but need to avoid lawsuits if any of the innovative and interesting functionality they add could be argued to assist copyright-infringing activities; see what happened to these folks for an example of what the content industry does to hardware manufacturers who get a bit too uppity.

This distinction being what it is, hardware manufacturers' interests generally align much more closely with those of consumers -- and if they can convince Congress and the courts that watermarking without heavy DRM is an appropriate way to allow them to innovate while still adequately protecting the content folks' interests, the content industry just might have to give.

In your particular example, the true story part leaves out a few details.

Primarily that the company -- Kaleidescape that was the subject of the true story was doing roughly the same thing - essentially making it impossible to digitally pull the ripped video off of their unit's hard disks in a redistributable manner. They were doing it in conjunction with the DVD Copy Control Association and thought they had the sign-off from them to go forward. They got sued anyway.

I hope Thompson gets the same. You can't bargain with these bastards, give them an inch they will take your thumbs.

So do yourself a favor and learn about a software package before you badmouth it. I just pointed out something that no commercial PVR will likely EVER have, yet is so damn useful it could be it's own product.

If you want a movie, server, look here: http://www.kaleidescape.com/products/server.html
5.5 terabytes and you can even buy movies pre-loaded. Yes, you can add additional servers.

TiVo is still a company that matters becuase they innovated. They were (one of?) the first companies to really get timeshifting right. They made it work well and made it cheap enough that people could afford it. They did this when there were no real competitors out there. Yes, I know ReplayTV was there, but at first Replay had some real problems that made TiVo look good by comparison...those problems were short-lived, but they gave TiVo the head start it needed to be the marketshare winner.

What TiVo needs to do is innovate some more. Bring us something that consumers want but can't get elswhere. Do something like Kaleidescape (but WAY cheaper!), add good TV time/place shifting, stream videos from Netflix, just BE the the entertainment hub in every way possible. Hell, partner with Nintendo to get some Wii hardware under the hood and integrated. Do...something! Because just adding more drive space and HDTV is not going to keep the lead.

Start with decoupling the server from the client. They've started that with the sharing idea, but go all the way. There is NO reason that I should need a recorder in every room. I only need one recorder (as long as it has multiple tuners), but I need many players. And if the players are cheaper and smaller, then you have a new product to market.

Most of this isn't hard. MythTV does much of it already, but Myth just doesn't yet do all this in a consumer friendly off-the-shelf hardware package. TiVo can bring this to reality. They have the street cred with retailers to get a revolutionary new device on Best Buy's shelves.

Hell, just partner with MythTV and offer GOOD prepackaged Myth boxes for all I care, but do something besides offering my yet larger HDDs in lieu of real innovation. 60 hours of TV is plenty. Give me a reason to sit down and watch it.

Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/

There's a company in the movie server business already called Kaleidescape, and they make the coolest DVD server that costs more than your SUV. They'll no doubt defend their name if this thing hits the street as a "Kaleidoscope."

If they keep that name for production, I have a feeling these guys may have an issue with it. But I guess the way justice works in the US, whoever has more money is right, so Apple shouldn't be worried.

Yeah right. Sounds to me like only "approved" setups will be allowed. That is, any company that doesn't play by their rules (paying fees, restricting the technology of course) won't be allowed to make a TiVo-like device.

Indeed, this has already happened with DVD-CCA. There is no good way to have a "approval committee" and have it be an open and free market. Let me show you why...

The DVD-CCA is made up of content producers and consumer electronics companies. You think thats a good balance? You think CE companies are on your side? WRONG. The CE companies are just as greedy as the content producers. Look at Kaleidescape. They come out with an extremely innovative home entertainment device, allows you to put your DVDs on a hard disk and then watch them on demand from anywhere within the house. I've seen a demo of the system, it rocks, especially for those who have a pissload of DVDs. Its also expensive, but hey, its really good. You're kidding yourself if you think your Meedio or whatever DVD-On-Demand system you have setup equals this.

Needless to say, they've been sued. Why? They do hold a DVD-CCA license to decrypt the CSS on DVDs (and then turns around and encrypts the data again using its encryption to store it on the systems HD, in accordance with the DVD-CCA specification). The consumer electronics companies on the DVD-CCA panel want to keep this device off the market until they do the R&D, testing, etc needed for them to put their own device like this on the market. Or if they cant because Kaleidescape has the patents and want money, well then just kill off the idea permenantly. Its ugly. Its anti-competitive. Its probably illegal, but hey, you got millions to fund an anti-trust suit against DVD-CCA? (if you do, please donate to the EFF and ask them to fight this cause)

It just goes to further my opnion that the digital age will destroy these entertainment cartels. Maybe not for another 10 or 15 years, but it will, at some point.

Speaking of which, you can buy almost the entire Criterion Collection here.
They also have this good collection

Speaking of which, you can buy almost the entire Criterion Collection here.
They also have this good collection

Albeit at astronomical prices.

..and I forgot this one: Whole House Entertainment

Because the Kaleidescape Server stores the movies on fast disk drive technology, it virtually eliminates all of the overhead and waiting that is commonplace when playing a standard DVD: no loading of physical media, no waiting for the DVD menu to appear, and no confusing options to select; the movie just starts.

The DivX codec itself requires a license does it not? [...] If any compression is going on, it will probably be to an open format such as XviD.

Saving a DVD to disk requires one as well. Currently there is only one product on the market that is legally allowed to do so.

http://www.kaleidescape.com/

The Kaleidescape is an enormously overpriced beast ($20k+ for the lowest end model). It's so controversial that the DVD consortium (those diefied few who deign to control such lofty things as DVD technology licensing) still won't even publicly admit they granted Kaleidescape a license.

I serioulsy doubt that this other company is legally allowed to save DVDs to disk.

That said, maybe they think they can get away with disregarding the legality...in which case, not paying for a legal DivX license isn't so terribly unlikely.

Have you seen this [apple.com]?

Just this week I found a product called Kaleidescape. It seems to be the equivalent of storing all your CDs on your hard drive in iTunes. It's super expensive, but looks very cool. You just load your dvds into the reader and it burns it to the HD. You then put a networked player in every room and play any DVD at any time. The thing is, it seems like it would promote piracy. Why buy a dvd when you can just rent it from Blockbuster and load it to your system? ;) This would make it all too easy to do that.

Here's a review on that system. (Scroll down.)

It may actually do well, judging by that brief 2nd shot (picturing the obviously 6-inch-tall woman) as the GUI looks beautiful from that one shot.

I was just about ready to throw down and write my own GUI controller to manage all my media, given the likes of the unspeakably overpriced yet gorgeous interface of Kaleidascape .

*holds breath until American release date and pricing press-release is issued*

-VolVE

The disadvantage is that it is a) not cheap (starting at $27k) and b) not f/oss.

but then again, it is exactly what you are looking for