News

Kaleidescape Announces Support for High-Def Content (31/1/2005)

Kaleidescape, Inc., the company that created the first Entertainment Server for whole-house video, announces support for delivery, storage, and playback of high-definition video content on Kaleidescape Systems. With this announcement, Kaleidescape demonstrates its continued commitment to deliver the highest quality home theater experience, and is the first and only product in its category to offer hard disk support for the life-like detail and quality of high-definition video.

As of 2005, Kaleidescape will provide dealers and customers a way to showcase this new capability by including high-definition 1080i versions of two 52-minute movies, encoded at 35 megabits per second (approximately double the rate of broadcast HD): Kalahari, The Great Thirstland; and Kalahari, The Flooded Desert. These award-winning wildlife films by Tim Liversedge provide a stunning portrait of the wildlife of Africa's Kalahari Desert.

Kaleidescape's high-definition support begins with securely pre-loading movies at the factory on Kaleidescape Disk Cartridges. When these movies are played back by the customer with a Kaleidescape Digital Movie Player, the video output is displayed in high-definition 720p or 1080i format, via either HDMI or YPbPr component outputs to the display. The high-definition digital content is stored securely on the Kaleidescape System as part of the same movie library containing the customer's DVD movies.

The Kaleidescape System was designed to be an excellent platform for the distribution, storage and playback of high-definition motion pictures. The Kaleidescape System is the first Entertainment Server to take advantage of the enormous storage capacity of hard disk arrays to deliver pre-loaded high-definition video. In the future, high-definition movies will be made available for purchase for Kaleidescape Systems. These movies will be pre-loaded by Kaleidescape at the factory on the customer's Server prior to shipment, or on disk cartridges that can be added to existing Kaleidescape Systems. Kaleidescape is working with content providers who would like to offer their movie productions in high-definition to Kaleidescape customers.

The Kaleidescape System is available in most international markets; the Base includes a Kaleidescape Server with sufficient storage for 180 DVDs (expandable to 500 DVDs), a Digital Movie Player for playback in a single zone, and a DVD Reader for importing DVDs. These components are connected by the household Ethernet network. A scalable system architecture permits an additional Digital Movie Player to be added to the network for each desired viewing zone, and additional Kaleidescape Servers to be added for storing thousands of DVDs.

www.kaleidescape.com