Sunnyvale, Calif. — Home entertainment server maker Kaleidescape said Tuesday it is shipping its first Mini System that integrates a complete multizone home entertainment system into a single component.
The Mini System features new cosmetic styling for living room placement, and it was designed to install as easily as a DVD player, Kaleidescape said
Carrying a $7,995 suggested retail, the Kaleidescape Mini System is about 40 percent less expensive than the current systems.
The Mini System can be expanded by adding additional servers or Mini Systems to enable playing an entire entertainment collection in multiple rooms of the house.
It has a movie zone and two additional built-in music zones to provide “whole-house entertainment” out of the box, the company said.
The Mini System is designed to sort collections of movies and music with the press of a button. Titles can be sorted by title, actor, artist, director, genre, year-of-release or run time.
In addition a new movie and music guide service automatically cross-references entertainment collections, using high-resolution cover art to quickly identify titles.
The Mini System stores up to 225 DVDs or 2,500 CDs.
The base Mini System stores up to 75 DVDs or 825 CDs and can be expanded by adding disk cartridges to store up to 225 DVDs or 2,500 CDs, or any equivalent combination. Content stored on a Mini System is protected by Kaleidescape’s RAID-K technology, and need not be re-imported if a hard disk drive fails.
The Mini System creates near high-definition output from DVDs using video processing that adapts to the type of content being viewed. It includes 10-bit 4:4:4 color processing, motion adaptive deinterlacing, two additional music zones along with the 1080p movie zone so that a movie can be watched in one room while music is enjoyed in other parts of the home.
“The Kaleidescape Experience makes choosing a movie, television show, or album interesting and fun for the entire family,” said Michael Malcolm, Kaleidescape founder, CEO and chairman. “The frustration of rummaging through discs and mediating between siblings is replaced by leaning back and enjoying your entire entertainment collection with your family. Our customers spend more time being entertained, and ultimately derive more value from the DVDs and CDs they already own.”
Meanwhile, Kaleiscape also announced price reductions, effective March 16, on its existing 1080p player, 1080p Mini Player, and disk cartridges for the 1U, 3U and 5U Servers. New suggested retails are $2,995, $1,995 and $995, respectively.
