Daniel J SaitContent is of course king for a platform like Kaleidescape and the company has been hard at work enhancing its offering.
Cheena says: “A big focus this year has been the addition of more content. I can’t make specific announcements right now, but we are working hard to expand our catalogue and expect to reveal good news at CEDIA Expo in Denver this September.”
Capturing the best content is key, but is only half the story as high-quality delivery and presentation of that content is another cornerstone of the Kaleidescape proposition.
Cheena says: “We are renowned for our interface, its ease of use, intuitive operation and attractive design has won many fans. Our aim is to build software that fires people’s imaginations and reconnects them with their content, currently the best content that is available is via discs and that has been our focus. We of course recognise that things are changing and our on-line store is growing in popularity. Registration and purchases have been steadily climbing and it has been terrific to even see some mega purchases of 100 to 200 titles at a time by some of our customers.Rest assured we will be building solutions that match whatever is the best way to deliver the content, we are completely format agnostic and are in a unique position to go wherever the best quality is available.”
“With broadband speeds rising, storage costs plummeting and TV processors increasing in speed and sophistication, digital technology is moving towards making on-line streaming or download of high quality movies and content a reality, this is all playing into our hands as we are in a position to create the very best of these types of services.”
Leveraging the strong relationships the company has with studios and exploiting it’s own technical know-how, Cheena underlines just how important the next few years will be for the company: “We are at a genuine crossroads as a company, our next aim is to make this wonderful experience we have created available to a much wider audience and deliver a range of options that mean ALL custom install projects can have Kaleidescape, not just the higher end ones where budgets are more robust.”
“Whether that is a disc based system or in the cloud, our aim is to re-position the company and make the Kaleidescape experience available to as many people as possible. Our goal is to offer a sub-$1K solution and the technology enablers are here today to help us get there.”
Delivering 4K
4K is of course the format on everyone’s lips at the moment. Hardware currently is well ahead, but Kaleidescape is committed to being involved.
Cheena explains: “Everyone is rightly excited about 4K, done well of course it looks great. But for us to be involved, the quality of the content has to be there. We are already working with studios to make sure we have access to those high-quality 4K titles when they come. “The change will be even more profound than going from analogue TV signals to digital and we are using our relationships with the content creators to make sure we will be involved. We aim to have a 4K player from Kaleidescape in 2015 and we will have attractive upgrade paths for our customers.”
“Convenience has been trumping quality in much of the content market for many years. We believe this tyranny ‘of the or’ where you have to choose between ease of access and high-quality is coming to an end. We are backing our ability to deliver both.”
But how will 4K content come to market? Cheena argues: “The Blu-Ray Disc association is working on producing the format for 4K, but we don’t know when Blu-ray disc-format based content will be generally available in the market. Significant 4K content will likely be available before then, so it’s likely to be on-line that we see the first delivery because developing standards like a new format on a physical product simply takes time.”
“Netflix has already done 4K with House of Cards, but the content was very carefully chosen so it would work. But not all movies could be so nicely encoded for 4K streaming. Video codecs, Internet bandwidth and computer processing power within TVs all need to be more advanced than they are currently for a really high quality experience for any and all kinds of movies.”
Cheena says: “For 4K delivery there are three options. Disc, Internet download or Internet streaming. Internet Download is the method that we will deploy first, but happily we can do all three, we will go where the best quality content can be delivered. Customers should not be in a position where they have to worry about the format. All they should have to worry about is, what do I like? And how do I get more of it? it’s our job to deliver that experience. We will embrace all formats —discs, downloads, as well as streaming in the future.”
Is the company worried that global super powers such as Goggle with Google Play with swallow up the market for on-line delivery?
Cheena argues: “I don’t believe we will be competing with platforms like Google Play. We will always be at the quality end of the market and be a custom install product, but we can definitely get much bigger and gain a much wider audience and that is our aim. At the moment we are included in the very best cinemas, we want to be included in all cinemas and still maintain our level of user experience and high-quality. We want to put smiles on the faces of as many people as possible.”
Requested to sum up these key development aims for the company, Cheena responds: “By 2015 we will have 4K compatibility, by 2015-16 we will have more affordable options, by 2017 we expect to have a large catalogue of the finest quality content available for download and we’ll be looking at a strengthened value proposition for the digital world.”