Kaleidescape launched its online offering in beta late last year, and now it's officially open, becoming what it claims is the first store to provide "internet delivery of Blu-ray quality movies." The Kaleidescape Store goes beyond other 1080p services (Vudu, iTunes, Xbox and PSN come to mind) by promising the disc-equaling higher bitrates, extras and lossless audio options they don't have. There's no streaming to be had here, only downloads, with file sizes we saw ranging from 23GB (Austin Powers) to as much as 55.4GB (Inception) and everywhere in between.

While the store is only built to work with Kaleidescape's high-end disc-playback systems -- these usually start in the thousands of dollars, and you'll need M-Class hardware for HD -- it currently offers movies from Warner Bros. with an Ultraviolet copy attached, so buyers can play them back on mobile devices through apps such as Flixster and Vudu. Ultraviolet support also means $6.99 upgrades of DVD purchases to Blu-ray-quality HD, and potentially disc-to-digital type features later. Naturally, anyone interested will need an internet connection with a generous / non-existent bandwidth cap, but we imagine that's not out of the price range for these niche owners. Still, it does provide an idea of the difficulty others like Sony and Netflix will face when trying to digitally distribute feature films in 4K to a wider audience. Check out a few screens of the store in the gallery, and the Random Thoughts blog link below for firsthand impressions from a beta tester.

Gallery: Kaleidescape Store

Filed under: HD

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Source: Kaleidescape, Kaleidescape Store