Kaleidescape - Strato E 4K Movie Player - Black

Finally an excellent value! Quality is as expected and storage capacity (4 4K movies) is totally fine as long as you have 1Gbps internet service (~10min download time). Activation process could be a bit easier/simpler though. But not a big deal. I guess my only con really is the lack of a remote control in the box. The phone app works fine, but just feels like totally unnecessary “cost saving”. I do appreciate both cat-6a and THX hdmi cables being included though. I would definitely recommend this purchase to anybody looking for an top tier streaming solution for any dedicated Home Theatre.

I think you have to address this first and foremost…this is a luxury item. The player itself is solidly built and comes with all the things needed to set it up (minus a remote). Unless you buy a remote separate you will have to use your phone. Once set up it is fairly straight forward. You set up an account with Kaleidescape and you can view and purchase movies on their platform. The positives - you are getting the raw uncompressed video/audio source, so in some cases it may be better than a disc copy (by a very slim non recognizable margin) For those just starting movie collections, they have a wide variety of movies at reasonable prices compared to disc copies off Amazon. You are able to connect applicable external blu-ray drivers to it and insert your current physical media to catalog your collection and if a digital copy is available you may be able to purchase it at a reduced price. *note you are not ripping your disc to the library Negatives Upfront the cost, this is the cheapest 4k unit and can hold roughly 6 4k movies internally before you need to start offloading space. Additional storage is limited to Kaleidescape brand equipment only which comes at heftier price tags. Compared to personal NAS setups. The store is somewhat limited in their selection to I’ll say more modern movies unless they’ve been remade into 4k recent releases. I attempted to find some movies I like on blu ray and their store only have them in SD. If you don’t have a good high speed internet service, it will take longer to download these movies to your server. I ultimately decided it was not going to pay off it’s investment over physical media as long as physical media is still an option.

Have really been impressed with this product. I rent movies so the strato e's 3 movie hard drive has not been a problem for me. The product is impressive and if you plan to rent vs own a large collection the E can bring you into the Kaleidescape space for a fraction of the price.