DVD Server for the Home

Friday December 19, 2003

A self-contained home DVD Server that allows you to store all your movies on hard drive and access via an Ethernet connection them from anywhere in the house has just been released in California. The Kaleidescape System reads up to 440 movies onto a single server without loss of quality and copyright protects them so that they cannot be transferred to PCs, rewritten to blank DVDs, or accessed via the Internet.

The basic system consists of one Server, one Movie Player, and one DVD Reader with the option of adding more screens or other elements as needed. Once downloaded the movies become an easily navigable library that includes sorting by title, genre, director, or actor, plus the ability to log favourites and exercise parental control over which movies are available in each viewing zone - no more finding the cover but not the DVD!

Individual preferences such as audio settings and screen aspect ratio and can be saved for each screen and there's also a Kaleidescape Movie Guide Service being launched concurrently that automatically provides detailed information about thousands of titles as they are imported. The online Guide Service provides the information about the movie, including: title, cover art, genre, rating (US MPAA), cast, directors, synopsis and video bookmarks that allow you to tag your favourite scene or skip the trailers and always begin at the start of the feature.

The Kaleidescape System provides an interesting bridge between the current disc-based DVD scene and the imminent coming of widespread HD content. When you stop buying discs and start buying DVD by wire, you're going to need somewhere secure to store them and play them from.

The base Kaleidescape System lists for US$27,000 and includes Server with sufficient 5 cartridges or enough storage for 160 DVD movies, a Movie Player and a DVD Reader.

An unlimited number of Movie Players can be added for US$3995 per zone.