Kaleidescape still on track to deliver a pricey Blu-ray player this year

Apparently unfazed by the fact that its target demographic openly disses the Blu-ray format, Kaleidescape is moving ahead with plans to deliver a Blu-ray player by the end of 2009, says the company CEO. We always suspected claims that the Mini Player's DVD upscaling "rivals Blu-ray" was a bit of a reach, even given the $3,000 price. Sadly, when the "doesn't have to rival Blu-ray, because it is Blu-ray" deck comes out, though, the ripped-for-whole-home-use joy you might expect from Kaleidescape will have to wait -- on deck for initial delivery is CD and DVD importing, but Blu-ray discs will be playback only for now (with Kaleidescape remaining "optimistic" that Blu-ray import gets support somewhere down the road). Then again, it's probably safe to assume that if you can afford to get into a Kaleidescape setup, you can afford a few extra copies of every title to sprinkle around the compound.

[Via Format War Central]

[towergrove Posted Mar 2nd 2009 12:31PM]

A basketball player disses blu and he is representative of the entire demographic? I dont even know who this basketball player is?

[Dragun Posted Mar 2nd 2009 2:06PM]

What's truly sad is, there isn't a decent demographic for a $3000 BR deck even if the economic times were better.
Then the company making the device spends all this money on R&D plus on manufacturing and then no one (or almost no one) buys them. All their investment goes to waste, they have layoffs and possibly close and then they want money from the government to stay alive because they made really bad decisions!?
I know if I made a bad decision, no one would "bail" me out; I think if the companies make stupid choices and can't afford to recover, they should be left to die. The whole bail out encourages bad and greedy decision making. That may sound cruel, but companies that don't need help aren't getting anything for making good decisions so why reward the incompetent?

[SanFranSoxFan04 Posted Mar 2nd 2009 10:35PM]

Adding support for Blu-ray to a premium product could hardly be categorized as a really bad decision. For Kaleidescape to rely solely on it's stellar CD and DVD and ignore Blu-ray would in fact be a bad decision. Ask any Kaleidescape dealer, sales manager, support person how often they get asked when Blu-ray support is coming and the answer would probably be "every day."

The economy has certainly affected sales for Kaleidescape and similar high end manufacturers but the demand is still present. What manufacturers are seeing is consumers taking more time to evaluate their purchase and compare features and relative value across different products. This has opened the door for competitors like Niveus, FusionResearch and Axonix who do offer a Blu-ray player with their Media Server.

If Kaleidescape failed to offer a Blu-ray solution they would eventually be in trouble as anyone dropping $8,000+ on a media server demands the very best in quality and unfortunately for Kaleidescape, the very best is not standard definition DVDs.

Not sure what bail outs have to do with a profitable company like Kaleidescape, you kind of lost me there.

[Dragun Posted Mar 3rd 2009 11:09AM]

Ya I'm sure so many people are asking for it; yes some are, but don't exadurate.

Bail outs have to do with hand outs for the stupid decision many companies have made.
The timing on this is bad; I'm not saying they shouldn't make or release such a device, but if they wait until things improve a bit, they would also be able to reduce the cost somewhat.
Sure there are rich people looking for the best of the best and most of them are still rich even today, but the priority should be pushing more people to adopt Blu-Ray to overall reduce all prices and costs instead of ensuring their version of the super tier device is out there.

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 3rd 2009 1:05AM]

I've never even heard of Kaleidascape. Or any of the other 3 "high-end" companies that Casey made mention of in his post. Besides I doubt the supposed better av quality is that discernable to the eyes & ears.

What exactly is better about the picure from a Samsung BR player and a Kaleidascape BR player???