The Gift Of Streaming: Convenience
The rise of streaming has provided an unbelievable level of accessibility to movies and shows, new and old. Before streaming, you’d have to pay a rental fee or see if your movie was available to purchase at your local retailer. While the accessibility is an absolute win, we all silently lost something in the transition: quality.
Streaming companies like Netflix, HBO, and Disney+ aim to strike a balance between video quality and smooth playback. To avoid buffering on a broad range of connections, even slower ones, they compress the size video of the video. This makes the content easier to stream, but lowers the quality of the video being delivered. The way they compress the content is carefully decided. To many, streamed videos look good enough, but it’s far from what’s possible. Many of us have been enjoying streaming content for so long, we have trouble remembering what uncompressed content can look like.
What Streaming Gave Up For Convenience
To most people, the video quality from streaming is sufficient. However, most streaming services, at their best, are using less than one quarter of the data we used to experience on Blu-ray. Less data means less detail in our videos.
Depending on your setup, this may not be as drastic as it sounds. On larger TVs or in dedicated viewing rooms, that loss of detail becomes hard to ignore. You’re not just watching with less clarity—you’re missing out on the immersion.
Streaming Audio Compression: Robbing True Immersion
However, the video quality loss is nothing in comparison to the audio compromises. Streaming companies compress the audio by over 10x compared to Blu-ray! If you have a performance soundbar or any form of surround system, we’d encourage you to get a Blu-ray or stop by our showroom to experience the difference.
Back to back, you realize how much clearer and alive TV audio is. It’s the difference between listening to a movie and being immersed in the story. It doesn’t matter how nice your sound system is, if you have garbage coming in, you can only get garbage out.
How To Get Blu-ray Quality with Streaming Convenience
We’re not blind to the fact that Blu-ray is quickly dying. However, there is a way to get high-quality movies and TV shows right from your couch:
Kaleidescape appears to be the only solution for those with a high-performance TV space and want to enjoy it to the fullest extent. Instead of streaming high-quality videos in real-time, which would require an insanely fast internet connection, it downloads them locally. That way, regardless of your internet connection, you can watch any of your favorite movies with the visuals and audio that will pull you into your movie.
Kaleidescape’s Achilles Heel
If Kaleidescape offers the convenience of streaming with quality that matches or surpasses Blu-ray, why isn’t everyone using it?
For starters, Kaleidescape isn’t a subscription app you can download on your smart TV or smart box. They have hundreds of movies and TV shows that extend back decades, but you buy them once and can enjoy them as many times over as you wish. Pricing is often comparable to digital purchases on other platforms, and they run regular promotions.
The huge benefit of this method is that you own a copy of the media you purchase with Kaleidescape. With streaming, you pay a monthly subscription for the rights to watch content. If the streaming service loses the rights to your favorite movie, you lose access to it too. Depending on who you are, this could be a pro or a con: you’re limited to the content you purchase but once you buy it, no one can revoke your access to it.
The largest limiting factor is the cost of the required hardware. In a not-so-distant past, an entry-level Kaleidescape system could cost nearly $10,000. However, Kaleidescape has recently released a very lucrative entry-level offering. It stores and plays the highest quality 4K content they offer at a new entry-level price of $2,999.
Who’s Best Suited For Kaleiscape
If you’re used to paying about $80-200/mo for all your cable and video streaming needs, we can understand how this could feel like a big investment. However, if you have a high-performance sound system, a larger TV or simply value the difference between watching a movie and being immersed in it, there truly is no substitute.
We were skeptical at first too. It wasn’t until Kaleidescape brought a unit to our showroom and let us watch the same scene back-to-back on our Apple TV and then Kaleidescape that we realise how substantial the difference is. Once you understand how nice your system can sound and look, it’s hard to go back.
If you want to experience how massive the difference is, we encourage you to schedule an appointment and stop by the showroom and experience it for yourself. You can schedule a time by calling us at 415-456-7000 or clicking here to send us a message.