Of all the companies that I’ve tracked over the course of my career in A/V, perhaps none has evolved and changed more than Kaleidescape. As I said in my blog post covering the unboxing of the company’s Strato E movie player (US$2995, CA$4495, £3399), the first Kaleidescape system I reviewed was a massive, $32,000, 100-pound, multi-component system that shipped in a road case with an integrated rack and also came with a preprogrammed Crestron control system and touchscreen. Its RAID array was there to store DVDs that you ripped yourself, using the included disc transport, and they were massive spinning things, not the smaller 2.5″ SATA drives and M.2 NVMe drives we’re used to these days.
Needless to say, times have changed quite a bit since then. In the UHD era, I think most people are more familiar with servers like the Strato Ultra HD Movie Player, which cost more like $4000 in 2016, featured 4K HDR movie playback, and delivered movies to customers mostly via the Kaleidescape Store, which featured full-bandwidth downloads with file sizes that generally matched or exceeded those of their disc equivalents, along with (in most cases) all of the bonus features you’d get on the discs. It was, in a sense, a way for people to own disc-quality movies without needing to dedicate shelf space to discs.
Of course, Kaleidescape has faced heavy competition in recent years from iTunes, Vudu, Amazon Video, and the like, as well as other similar digital locker services that let you purchase streaming movies in quality that’s typically at least as good as the subscription-based providers deliver, sometimes with extras. And while bandwidth of these streams is necessarily limited, modern codecs like HEVC have largely made this less of a determining factor when it comes to video quality than it was in the HD era.
To reach the point of diminishing returns with AVC (H.264), the codec most providers used for HD, you’d need to hit 30Mbps in downlink speeds, which wasn’t always doable 15 or 20 years ago. HEVC (H.265), by contrast, starts to hit diminishing returns at around 16Mbps, and that’s with four times the resolution and, in many cases, a bump to 10‑bit video instead of 8‑bit (indeed, HEVC often does better at encoding 10-bit video more efficiently than it does 8‑bit).
And when you consider that the likes of Apple TV+ and Disney+ often push bitrates for 4K video up to 30Mbps (often overkill for UHD), the case for less compression has become only harder and harder to make.
Which is not to say that Kaleidescape didn’t (or doesn’t) have its selling points. That would be ridiculous. I have said many times—and I will die on this hill—that the company has the best UI of any movie-playback system I’ve ever seen. It is, simply put, a delight to use and navigate, and Kaleidescape’s library management is unparalleled. So, yeah, I might not be swayed by the more-bits-are-always-better argument that a lot of Kaleidescape fans lean into, but I don’t care. I think the company’s ecosystem is the cat’s pajamas with bees’ knees printed on ’em.
Here’s the thing, though: times they are a-changin’ again. Disney has reportedly declared streaming to be dead. And even if it’s just resting, Disney+ subscriptions are in decline. Americans spent 23 percent less on streaming services in 2024 compared with 2023 (and given that our economy has been in free fall this year, with the exception of the AI bubble, one assumes that trend isn’t reversing). UHD Blu‑ray sales are actually on the rise (17 percent in the first quarter of 2025 and nine percent in the first half of the year), which seems like a minor miracle given the overall decline in physical-media sales.
All of that creates fertile ground for Kaleidescape to reinvent itself yet again and speak to a new audience of people who’ve figured out that streaming is, at the very least, a losing proposition in terms of cost and access to favorite films, who also want a guarantee of a certain level of quality that streaming doesn’t always live up to no matter what the technical specifications may support, but who don’t necessarily want to run out to IKEA for new shelving.
It’s not a slam dunk, mind you, especially given that so much of non-streaming media consumption at this point is being driven by people who want to hold the things they purchase, who want to display their collections, who are likely as not to buy SteelBook releases or fancy special editions with all manner of pack-in goodies. Then again, those collector’s releases are getting harder to get hold of. I tried to snag the SteelBook release of Superman (2025) this year on the day it was announced, only to find it sold out within hours.
Add it all together, and I think Kaleidescape is as well-positioned as it’s ever been to speak to cinephiles who want to invest in a collection of curated films—especially those who might be willing to spend $3000 on a 4K source device but not a lot more than that. Or those who want to start at that level with room to grow and build, adding multi-terabyte servers down the road for additional storage. And the Strato E is the most affordable device the company offers with 4K video playback capabilities. It supports HDR10 and Dolby Vision HDR (the latter a recent addition to Kaleidescape’s format support), as well as lossless Dolby Atmos and DTS:X audio. So it’s functionally the same as purchasing a shiny silver platter (at least the same, if not technically superior on paper with some releases), but shelf space isn’t a concern, titles can’t be sold out, and modern fiber-optic internet connections make the massive downloads way less of an issue than they were ten years ago at the dawn of the UHD era. Plus, even if Kaleidescape loses the right to distribute a film, if you’ve purchased it, you can continue to download it as long as the company stays in business. That’s kind of a big deal, especially given that the Strato E can only hold about five UHD movies at a time.
Setting up the Kaleidescape Strato E
While the media landscape is changing and Kaleidescape is evolving to adapt, there are some things about the Kaleidescape experience that remain the same. Many things, in fact. At its heart, the Strato E still shares all the same DNA with larger and costlier server systems designed for use in world-class home cinemas with advanced control systems such as Control4 or Crestron or the like. Dialing into the IP address of the unit via a web browser on the same network, you have access to oodles of configuration settings related to audio and video, including the exact formats your A/V system supports.
You can diagnose problems related to HDMI EDID. You can set screen aspect ratios for the UI itself, as well as for movie playback. You can manage your library and see how long it took you to download movies and bonus features. You can set up lighting and shading automation features independent of your control system’s software.
But I worry I’m making the setup sound more complicated than it actually is. Depending on your needs, there’s a good chance that all you need to do is unbox the Strato E, connect to your A/V system via HDMI, plug in an ethernet cable, add the power cable, and start watching. Which is exactly what I did, with a system including an Onkyo TX‑RZ30 9.2-channel A/V receiver, a pair of GoldenEar Triton One.R towers, a GoldenEar SuperCenter Reference center, and two SVS PB‑4000 subs, along with a quartet of GoldenEar SuperSat 3s overhead. For the display, I relied on my Vizio P75‑F1 TV, placed six feet from my main seating position.
One thing that sets the Strato E apart from other Kaleidescape systems I’ve reviewed and/or lived with (full disclosure: I had a long-term loaner from the company for a few years so I could review movies for Cineluxe) is that it doesn’t come with any form of remote control. You’ll need to either purchase one from a Kaleidescape dealer, use the Kaleidescape app, or have your advanced control system programmed to support the player. On the latter front, the good news is that my Control4 system recognized the Strato E the instant I got it connected to the network, offered up an SDDP IP driver, and made setup as easy as could be. All I had to do was drag the driver into the right room in my project, make the A/V connections, and decide where to position the player in my Watch list. So if your integrator is doing your install for you, don’t expect to pay much more than the cost of a standard truck-roll to get it all up and running.
For everyone else, the app features a remote-control tab with a virtual touchpad, and also some really robust library-management tools, including the ability to quickly see what movies you own that are and aren’t downloaded to the Strato E at the time, to delete downloaded films to make space, and to initiate new downloads.
Since, as mentioned above, the Strato E’s half-terabyte NVMe drive holds only about five UHD/HDR films—at least unless you pair the player with a Terra server—this device’s UI is a little different from what I’m used to. And I wanted to hate it. Y’all, I wanted to hate it so bad. For me, the Kaleidescape experience is all about that floating and constantly rearranging grid of cover images, which flutter and flip around to surround the image at the center of the screen with similar films. It’s a big help when you kinda know the flavor of what you want to watch but not exactly the title of what you’re in the mood for.
Sans add-on server, the Strato E provides you a row of the (up to) five films you have downloaded, with suggestions from the store as well as access to films you own but haven’t downloaded in the row above.
Is it what I’m used to? Far from it. Does it work in practice? Brilliantly. And it proves to me, yet again, that Kaleidescape’s biggest strength is its ability to create world-class user interfaces.
How does the Strato E perform?
I’m going to focus the report of my evaluation on three films in particular, because they are exhaustively illustrative, in my opinion. The first is a film I used in my recent review of the Magnetar UDP800 Universal Disc/Media Player: The Wizard of Oz (Warner Bros.).
When I originally reviewed the 4K Kaleidescape download of the film for Cineluxe, I didn’t own the UHD Blu‑ray yet. I don’t even think it had been released, and it wouldn’t be for weeks. So this was my first opportunity to really compare Kaleidescape’s transfer to the disc.
And the first thing I noticed is that the Kaleidescape Store release has been updated in several meaningful ways since I first reviewed it. Firstly, it now features Dolby Vision HDR, and while the UHD Blu‑ray does as well, my Oppo UDP‑205 will only access the HDR10, and the Magnetar UDP800 would only access the HDR10+.
There’s not a meaningful difference between the HDR10+ and Dolby Vision versions, at least as rendered by my Vizio TV, but the point is that what Kaleidescape delivered was at least as good as what’s found on disc. Grain structure was gorgeous, detail was phenomenal, and the transfer had a delightfully filmic look that’s utterly captivating.
But there’s another on-the-fly update to Kaleidescape’s offering that’s perhaps more meaningful. One of the biggest omissions from the UHD Blu‑ray release of The Wizard of Oz is the original mono sound mix. The same was also missing the first time I reviewed the Kaleidescape download. But there is now a two-channel mono lossless option. And while I still stand by my assessment that the 80th-anniversary 5.1 remix is shockingly good—much subtler and more faithful than most such tinkerings, infinitely better than the 70th-anniversary remix, and now my preferred way to experience the film—it’s nice that the mono original is there for purists or merely for the sake of comparison or completion. The UHD disc doesn’t have that. But Kaleidescape does.
The next film worth discussing is Avengers: Endgame, which reveals something important about modern hybrid block-based codecs such as H.265. If this is the sort of film you gravitate toward on movie night—and, to be fair, it’s exactly the sort of film I turn to depending on my mood—it’s a little hard to see as many advantages of Kaleidescape’s throw-all-the-bandwidth-at-it approach to quality. Comparing the Kaleidescape store to the Disney+ transfer via the smart TV app built into my Vizio, I found that the Strato E had a slight edge in terms of artifacts and high-frequency detail when looking at a paused image. After pressing Play, those differences became harder to see.
Via a good streamer with a dedicated H.265 decoder, though—like my NVIDIA Shield TV Pro, as well as my Roku Ultra—I couldn’t tell any meaningful difference between the Disney+ stream and the Kaleidescape download. Even when paused. And in motion, with audio levels matched—which is an absolute damned nightmare to attempt when switching back and forth between inputs on an A/V receiver—the fidelity of the sound was also incredibly consistent between the two. But Kaleidescape did a better job of approximating reference levels, which gives it a huge leg up, in my opinion.
But there’s one title above all else, in my experience, that demonstrates something important about the Kaleidescape ecosystem. The Godfather Part II in Ultra HD—available here in both HDR10 and Dolby Vision presentations—is everything the cinephile in me wants from a transfer of this film.
It is, simply put, as faithful a presentation of the original analog elements as we could ever hope for. But it is grainy. And its contrasts aren’t cranked. Blacks aren’t crushed, but neither are they rock-solid. And the Kaleidescape transfer is true to that. It may not be the stuff of videophile dreams, but it’s a cinephile’s wonderland.
Comparing the Kaleidescape download to the UHD Blu‑ray, I’m not seeing any confirmable differences. Comparing the Kaleidescape download to the iTunes stream, though, accessed via the Apple TV+ app on the NVIDIA Shield TV Pro, is illustrative. Apple’s transfer is fine. It’s totally watchable. I would not grump if this were the only version of the film I had access to. Make no mistake about it. It’s way better than HD Blu‑ray quality.
But the Kaleidescape download smoked it like cheap salmon. The image had more depth, more nuance, more consistency. Its grain structure was more organic. It better preserved the different styles Gordon Willis employed for the prequel and sequel portions of the film.
Are the shortcomings of Apple’s presentation a choice or a technical shortcoming? I don’t know. Is this one of those exceedingly rare cases where you need a higher bitrate to do the image justice? Maybe. Did Apple’s encode need higher coefficients across the board to preserve both high- and low-frequency information (or is it Paramount’s encode, handed over to Apple? Dunno)? Or did someone at Apple (or Paramount) decide that, for a streaming audience, that grain needed to be smoothed over to appease the normies? Again, dunno.
What I do know is this: The Godfather Part II clearly demonstrates something that feels like a bit of a controversial take from me, although it shouldn’t be. Having a Kaleidescape does not guarantee that you’re going to be getting a significantly better A/V presentation than opting for a download or purchased stream from one of the digital locker providers. But what it does guarantee, in my experience, is that you’re going to be getting a presentation that’s at least as good as the best out there. In other words, I haven’t seen a presentation from Kaleidescape, on the Strato E or otherwise, that’s anything less than tied for first place.
So the real question is: how much is that peace of mind worth to you? How much do you value knowing that you’re not going to have to search for the best-looking (and best-sounding) option, assuming you’re not still buying physical media? That’s a question only you can answer.
What similar systems should you consider in this price range?
I mean, look. There aren’t any similar source devices, are there? You can do what I do, and build a media server that feeds into the Jellyfin app on a steamer like the NVIDIA Shield. You can rip your own discs and buy your own additional storage and make your own decisions about whether to archive your content in H.265 or AV1 or what have you. And indeed, you’ll save a lot of money in the process, since Kaleidescape charges precisely two arms and a leg-and-a-half per terabyte of proprietary storage space it sells you.
So much so that many people write Kaleidescape off as a purveyor of expensive disc drives. But I see it differently. Selling that storage space—in addition to selling film downloads—is how Kaleidescape recoups the cost of R&D, quality control, server maintenance, and all manner of other things that are hard to charge for in anything other than a subscription model.
So your options are something like this, something like the DIY server scenario I mentioned above, or a disc player like the Magnetar UDP800 and a few trips to IKEA for some Billy or Kallax or Hemnes shelving units.
TL;DR: Is the Kaleidescape Strato E worth the money?
I think I answered the question of relative value as well as I can in the conclusion of the performance section. But I want to point out something that might further complicate the answer to that question, divorced from matters of ergonomics, UI, and A/V quality.
Over the past 12 months, I’ve added six UHD Blu‑ray titles to my physical media movie collection: one of them purchased myself; the others bought as gifts from my thingstogetme.com wish list for birthdays and holidays. Of those titles, only one is available on the Kaleidescape Store.
To be fair, it’s the one that most people are mostly likely to want to own: Superman (2025). So I’m not sure how to do the calculus here. But just speaking for myself, the kinds of movies I want to own a physical copy of these days are far more likely to be released by The Criterion Collection, Kino Lorber, 88 Films, or the like, and Kaleidescape doesn’t have distribution deals with those collector-focused studios.
Yeah, that makes me the weirdo. On the flipside, there are more mainstream titles from more mainstream studios that are on the Kaleidescape Store in 4K but not available on UHD Blu‑ray disc. And that might be more your speed.
Either way, if we just look at the facts on the ground without adding the complication of tastes in cinema, questions of collectability, and the like, what we can say is that the Strato E is Kaleidescape’s most affordable 4K/HDR movie player yet, it has oodles of expansion capabilities, and its UI is wonderfully adapted to the realities of its limited storage space and converts to the more familiar Kaleidescape UI if you add a Terra Server. And all of that is good news for folks who are fleeing streaming but don’t want to go back to collecting discs or learn how to build their own DIY servers.
. . . Dennis Burger
dennisb@soundstagenetwork.com
Associated Equipment
- A/V receiver: Onkyo TX‑RZ30
- Speakers: GoldenEar Triton One.R; GoldenEar Triton One; GoldenEar SuperCenter Reference, GoldenEar SuperSat 3
- Subwoofers: SVS PB‑4000
- Speaker cables: Monoprice Choice Series 12AWG
- Power conditioners: SurgeX SX-AX15E Axess ELITE Power Management System; SurgeX XC18 Space Saver Surge Eliminator
Kaleidescape Strato E Movie Player
Price: US$2995, CA$4495, £3399
Warranty: 60 months limited
Kaleidescape, Inc.
295 N. Bernardo Ave.
Mountain View, CA 94043
Phone: (650) 625-6100
Website: www.kaleidescape.com
