Latest / Inside Integration / Episode 116: 25 Years of Kaleidescape: The OG Media Server

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Episode 116: 25 Years of Kaleidescape: The OG Media Server · Inside Integration

0:00
Welcome to the Inside Integration podcast.
0:01
My name is Chris. I am joined, as usual, by my
0:04
partner Jason. What's going on, everybody?
0:06
Today we are we are taking a little stroll, little stroll
0:11
down memory lane, as I mean, seems like we we always do every
0:15
one of our episodes kind of. We're old, we don't have
0:17
anything to look forward to, so we got to look back.
0:20
It's true. Remember when this industry
0:23
wasn't? A cluster the remember when
0:25
conversation Jesus. That's all we do.
0:28
I mean, that's all we do. I think that's that's a good
0:30
vehicle maybe for a side, maybe for a side podcast.
0:33
And it's just we just bring on like, you know, other relics of
0:36
the past like ourselves, and we'll just talk about, you know,
0:39
things like S video and soldering connectors.
0:42
People who were adults in the previous century.
0:46
Yeah, yes, I get it. The adults you worked under who
0:48
are still adults and you are now.
0:50
Too right? Yeah, exactly.
0:53
But but no, we are popped up in the news today that it is
0:58
Kalidescape's 25th anniversary, which as soon as I read that, I
1:03
was like, Nah, there's no way. Holy shit, that really was 25
1:06
years ago that I was doing that. And maybe, maybe a few of you
1:10
felt the same. I.
1:12
Mean not only can Kaleidescape drink legally, but it can also
1:15
now rent a car. It's true without any sort of
1:17
surcharge, right? Here we go.
1:19
It's pretty, pretty awesome for Kaleidescape.
1:21
I'm excited for them. I hope they're going to go on a
1:23
nice vacation or get to get a rent that cool.
1:27
Go rent a car with its friends in Mexico.
1:30
You know, sure you'll get that awesome Kia Rodeo or whatever
1:34
they sell. I don't even know what a Kia is,
1:36
honestly. So there, there, there's that.
1:39
Yeah. So what are you going to do?
1:40
And if you're, if you're in the dark as to what Kaleidescape is,
1:44
although I mean, they've been around for, for a very long
1:46
time, 25 years. 25 years, apparently.
1:48
Apparently, and so that they were a, they are sorry,
1:55
basically a content distribution system for your own home.
1:58
So the idea when they started out was that you would, you
2:03
know, it was a, it was a basically your own DVD rips,
2:06
right. So you had your movie collection
2:09
and you didn't want to manage 300, you know, DVD cases or, or
2:13
whatever the case may be, and you would RIP them onto a drive.
2:18
And what was awesome about it was first of all, this is one of
2:21
the first pieces of consumer electronics gear that I can
2:24
remember that really leveraged and necessitated a home network,
2:27
right? Like that was if you had a a
2:29
Kaleidescape server and some players around the house, like
2:33
they needed to be networked. And that was that was of utmost
2:37
importance. And honestly, 25 years ago, we
2:40
weren't even really getting our feet wet with Wi-Fi at that
2:43
point. So definitely a little bit
2:47
ahead. Yeah.
2:47
And I mean, when you think of what this box actually did at
2:50
the time, when you know, anything that was comparable was
2:53
usually like, you know, it was self built or it was like
2:57
Windows Media Server if if you want to send chills down some
3:00
some DIY or spines, right? So that that's that's a deep cut
3:05
in our drinking game. If you say Windows Media Server,
3:08
you've got to have a whole. Beer, yeah, I mean back in the
3:11
day, right. And you had, you know, you had
3:13
what, what was it XBMC and you had Kodi and you had the the
3:16
beginnings of Plex and all of these things.
3:18
And. Yeah, or you just had Windows
3:20
Media Player, because you didn't know, right?
3:22
It was just simple ripping. You could figure that.
3:25
Ripping your disk Isos and saving them on hard drives and
3:28
playing them on your Windows Home Theater PC perhaps?
3:31
Wow. Yeah, I know we're getting way
3:34
off in the weeds now, but this box came along and it was, you
3:39
know, the idea was that it would keep your DVD collection.
3:42
It would add, you know, all of the bonus scenes, all of the
3:44
whatever it was a one to one bit copy.
3:46
So there was no compression. There was no nothing.
3:48
And, you know, when you wanted to play a DVD, whether in your
3:52
master bedroom or in your living room or in your theater, you
3:55
would just pull up this menu, which was groundbreaking at the
3:58
time. I mean, I feel like that was one
4:00
of the biggest selling points back then was that and pick your
4:03
movie to watch and, and, and you're off and running, right?
4:06
Like it just basically consolidated your your movie
4:10
collection for a price, right? Well, and it but it was also the
4:15
first thing that again that would digitize.
4:17
So it really treated the disk like it was a ticket to the
4:21
movie, right? Like because it would actually
4:23
make a digital copy onto their onto their array of hard drives.
4:28
So when you think about what storage looks like now or you've
4:31
got, I don't know, I think I've got a 500 GB on a thumb drive,
4:36
Right, Right. And then you think about, I
4:39
mean, you were, I mean, you were shitting in high cotton.
4:42
If you were true on that, you were on like a full TB, like,
4:47
are you kidding me? Yeah.
4:48
I mean and I mean. 500 gig back then, What was that 20 grand?
4:52
Size some, some absolutely ridiculous, but like, you needed
4:55
that. That was your, you know, because
4:57
these were bit perfect copies. It was just pulling the entirety
5:01
of the DVD disc, you know, whatever it was 5.7 gigs per and
5:06
you know, your your movie collection size was was limited
5:09
by the amount of space that you can hold.
5:11
So they had a vested interest in having giant servers with the
5:15
biggest drives that they can possibly put in.
5:17
And man, I mean this, you know, this thing was it was, it was
5:22
super cool. It was super impressive.
5:24
And the thing that made it, you know, you would, you would kind
5:26
of tell the story. I remember when these things
5:28
came out and, and we were, you know, selling them and
5:30
installing them. The the story that you would
5:32
tell was that, yeah, this will this will organize your whole
5:34
collection. This lets you share it, you
5:36
know, throughout the home and, and in different spots.
5:38
And it keeps everything safe. And it's not a disk, so it's not
5:40
going to degrade your kid can't scratch it up or whatever.
5:44
And all of that kind of fell by the wayside when you showed a
5:46
client like the the user interface that you would use
5:50
with Kalid Escape, right. So the first screen that pops up
5:54
is basically all the cover art of all the movies that are in
5:57
your collection. And as you would navigate this
6:00
thing, you would go to a movie that you would want to watch.
6:03
When you would pause or hover over something, all the other
6:06
cover art would reorganize itself around it based on, you
6:11
know, the the star of the movie or the genre.
6:13
The genre. It was, yeah.
6:15
And that blue, that user interface blew people's minds.
6:19
And it still does today like that.
6:21
There's I don't think there's anything that comes close still.
6:23
Arguably still potentially one of the number one selling
6:27
points. He's a little out of skisly
6:29
here. Check this out UI with the with
6:32
the cart with the cover art that floats and looks cool and really
6:36
sets the now that they're in HDR and some of the upgrades that
6:40
they've pulled out. So now the rich black and
6:43
beautiful contrast. So you've got this wonderful
6:46
scenery on the screen in your theater, in your media space.
6:50
Super fun. Yeah, Gladyscape was awesome.
6:52
And if you if, if you remember at the time, it was they came
6:56
out with this product and it was, it was awesome and it blew
6:59
everybody away. And then everybody, you know,
7:01
you would look at it and it was only for certain clients because
7:04
the sticker on the thing, the sticker was, was way up there,
7:07
right? Like you were absolutely, you
7:09
were paying for this high technology and this amazing
7:12
interface. And and that's, that's all well
7:13
and good, but the battle that these guys had to fight in order
7:18
to stay alive when you know, the, the, the studios saw this
7:24
thing and we're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on.
7:26
You're, you're making a ripped copy of our, of our disk.
7:30
And that in itself is, is worth. I mean dude, we could spend an
7:34
entire episode on a legal battle that these.
7:36
Guys went, yeah, you know, there's probably a whole other
7:40
episodic. There's an episodic series about
7:46
the legal battles to go from the well, quote UN quote analog or
7:50
individual copy days or physical media days to the digital space.
7:54
And I mean, Lars Ulrich, as much as I don't like that guy, I
7:58
mean, I wish he would have won his battle against.
8:01
Napster. He was.
8:03
You know the the PR machine of Napster was just in full spin to
8:07
paint this guy as a bad guy and not then.
8:10
Don't get me wrong, it's not like he did any, but he he never
8:13
did himself any favors by kind of coming across the way that he
8:16
he did. But I mean, 100% correct.
8:19
He's an artist. You should be paid for this
8:20
stuff. Like, and if you stop paying
8:22
artists for stuff, you stop getting art.
8:24
And that's, that's basically the reality of it.
8:27
All of this stuff was all going on at the same time.
8:29
You know Napster legal battles about you know, can you back up
8:34
what you have different software battles and and you know.
8:38
Even even once. Do you own it?
8:40
Who owns it? Right?
8:41
Like the you own that physical copy.
8:43
You don't owe the content of the copy, but you own the media.
8:48
Like all very, very nuanced legal wranglings will say.
8:54
All these things and when you think about the, I mean the,
8:57
the, the lawsuit in a battle like Kaleidescape has never
9:00
really been a big company, right.
9:02
Like the installed base is probably pretty small of any
9:04
numbers or anything on it. But like these guys were
9:06
fighting for a very small piece of the population to be able to,
9:12
you know, to be able to use these products and and buy these
9:14
products. And it, it kind of opened up a
9:17
lot of larger battles with for a lot of other content.
9:20
You know, here's, you know, here's the very baseline of DMCA
9:24
and you know how how we treat copyright law and and, and all
9:29
those other things. And like, these poor guys were
9:32
out here, like tilting at this windmill, like, and it's a good
9:35
thing they had deep pockets because they were able to
9:38
basically win. You know, it was, I mean, it was
9:40
a piracy nightmare that they fought their way through.
9:44
But, but imagine, like, imagine the stroke of genius they must
9:48
have felt like when they realized and figured out that
9:51
their number one customer base actually is the movers and
9:55
shakers in Hollywood. Actually is the people that have
9:58
the means and have the sway because goddamnit, I want my
10:03
movie theater to work. And what's causing this?
10:06
Oh, this is a Fox thing. Hang on a second.
10:08
Yeah, let me let me make a call. Right.
10:10
I called Jim and say, hey Jim, what the Hell's going on?
10:15
Over there and Eagle team back here, right?
10:18
Yeah, you're fucking with my Pippi Longstocking over here.
10:20
Like trying to watch some shows. What are you doing?
10:22
There was that. That was at the time of my
10:24
career when I was kind of working in New York Metro and
10:29
there were we, we did do, and I'm not bragging or anything,
10:32
but we did a lot of very famous, very well connected people.
10:35
And you know, very much the kaleidescape class, right?
10:39
And, and including that famous directors, famous producers,
10:43
people who, you know, work in finance that finance the actual
10:47
movies and production. And every one of these dudes had
10:49
a kaleidescape, right, because it was the, it was the coolest
10:52
thing. It was so awesome and these
10:54
dudes were all stoked and everything else.
10:56
And you know, that was always kind of funny to me is like, oh,
10:59
wait a minute, you're fighting as a legal battle.
11:01
But you know, all these, all these dudes are absolutely using
11:06
this thing and think it's amazing and don't want to see it
11:08
go. But you know, the lawyers are,
11:10
are on the other side. I thought, you know, it was it
11:15
was always kind of a joy to be able to put in a, a kaleidoscape
11:18
system. And there was like, there was a
11:19
couple of things associated with it, right?
11:21
Like you had, I mean, back in the day, like there was a
11:25
service that you would ship all of your movies to and they would
11:28
come back on like on removable hard drives, right?
11:33
And that was a really cool ground breaking customer service
11:37
kind of thing, right? Like you don't, you don't want a
11:39
home owner to sit there and feed disks into this thing one at a
11:41
time, right? And and of course there were
11:43
home owners who would look at the thing and say, all right,
11:45
well, it's going to be 5 bucks each disk to RIP.
11:47
I'll sit here and I'll make my kid do it or whatever you.
11:50
You are, you are, you are tripping me out, man.
11:53
Just as a sidebar, when when I was an integrator at Wilson
11:56
Technologies, we were an early adopter of the collide escape.
12:00
The, the owner Dave Wilson bought, you know, Kenwood,
12:03
Exelon DVD changers and bought that whole station so that we
12:08
could RIP movies for customers and load the man.
12:13
And I mean, we had that. I mean, we had smoke pouring out
12:16
of that Kenwick. We're trying to RIP discs for
12:19
customers. It never really panned out as a,
12:22
as a viable option, at least for us, but we we certainly gave it
12:25
a shot and did it for a lot of customers.
12:27
Oh my. God, well, we, we definitely the
12:29
the integration from I worked for, we definitely expanded our
12:31
warehouse guys skill set by training him how to RIP music
12:36
discs for request and NVIDIA discs for Kaleidoscape and just
12:41
had them set up. Here's your RIP station.
12:43
And you know, this, this poor kid, he's, you know, checking in
12:46
boxes and doing stuff and he, you know, the disc pops out, he
12:49
runs over like Pavlov's dog pops a new disc in and it's, and it's
12:53
off and running. But you know that that whole
12:56
that service and and that whole thing, it it spawned other
12:59
smaller services, right, like ready to play was another one
13:02
that would that was their whole model was that they would accept
13:06
discs media and they would send them back out.
13:08
And you know, like that's that's amazing to think of is that at
13:13
that point, and you know, that was a way to get around
13:16
copyright stuff. I own this disc, I own this
13:18
movie and therefore I own the content on it.
13:20
And that's what all these battles were about was whether
13:22
you actually do own the content. Surprise you, you don't.
13:27
But you know, that's that was part of the magic of this whole
13:31
thing is that you would deliver a home, you know, you would
13:34
deliver a system and you would walk the client through the
13:36
system and show them here's your collide escape.
13:39
Here's your, you know, here's your entire movie collection.
13:42
And we didn't have to sit in your house or do anything else
13:44
Like it's it's done and it's here.
13:46
And like they would just be blown away.
13:48
And you know, everybody, you know, the feedback that we got
13:51
from it was like, wow, my family watches more Movies Now than
13:54
they ever did before. Because there's, I guess,
13:56
something insurmountable about physically opening up at this
13:59
box and putting the thing in and walking over.
14:02
This is the clientele we cater to.
14:04
Oh my God, what a barrier. Eventually.
14:06
Oh my gosh. But you know, that was always
14:08
the, the big feedback was like, you know what, on a whim, I just
14:10
wanted to watch The Godfather and I did.
14:12
And it was 3 clicks and I'm in, you know, like, and this is
14:16
again, you have to remember that this is way before the time of
14:19
any kind of streaming or anything else.
14:20
This is like 2001, 2002. There was no such thing.
14:25
Now we take it for granted, right?
14:26
Like. I was just about to say, man,
14:29
Netflix, HBO Max, none of these apps would be a damn thing if it
14:37
wasn't for Kaleidoscape setting the bar on what AUI would be.
14:40
Let's just go ahead. Sure.
14:42
Be straight. They're flowers, man.
14:44
Absolutely. Like convince me, you know,
14:47
whatever, convince me I'm wrong kind of thing.
14:49
Like bring it like there's you can't.
14:52
It's just not, not possible. Not flight escape.
14:55
There is no constant UI now. It's true.
14:57
And and that was a big part of that was a big part of their
14:59
business model was that they had their own store where you could,
15:03
you could select stuff you want, you would pay for it.
15:06
And because file sizes and Internet speeds and stuff were
15:09
what they were back then, you could watch it tomorrow right
15:13
like there was no man set this thing to download let it go all
15:16
night long. I okay, I got 3 movies and
15:18
they're going to download and we'll be able to watch them
15:20
tomorrow at this time right like that's.
15:22
Forgot about that. That was, you know, you used to
15:25
have to actually wait for stuff and for them to, you know, for
15:29
them to survive. And, and this is like everything
15:31
we've thought about so far for the last 10 minutes or so has
15:35
just been like the mechanical, like the, you know, the, the
15:39
concept and the UI and everything else.
15:41
And like, far be it from us to spend an entire episode glazing
15:45
Kalideski. But I think it is one of those
15:46
like it's absolutely one of those pivotal products that you
15:50
know, it, it's kind of a benchmark, man.
15:52
You know, like you're anybody who's been in this industry for
15:56
as long as we have like remembers what it was like
15:58
before and remembers what it was like after and what kind of a
16:00
groundbreaking thing this was. And you know B.
16:03
KAK, right? And you know it's before
16:07
Kaleidescape and after Kaleidescape, right?
16:09
That's it and. Before, you know, before the
16:10
days of walking through CEDIA and and seeing that interface,
16:14
you know, on every single display monitor as a demo, right
16:17
like that. Ubiquitous.
16:19
Ubiquitous. Would be the word, you know,
16:22
that's that's saying one thing, but on the other side of it was
16:26
you had these bit perfect discs and they were absolutely one for
16:31
one encoded and you needed the hardware behind them to actually
16:35
play that stuff to be to look as nice as possible, right.
16:38
So along with, you know, Kaleidescape being super
16:42
convenient and super easy to use, and AUI is great, and it's
16:45
a whole groundbreaking concept. Like you needed the right
16:48
componentry in that player to be able to play this thing as good
16:53
as you possibly could. So it made sense.
16:56
OK, I'm an integrator and I'm building $100,000 theater in
17:01
somebody's basement or rec room or whatever it is.
17:03
I've got the best projector. I've got the best sound.
17:06
Well, what am I going to feed this thing as a source?
17:08
DIRECTV receiver? No.
17:10
You know, the cable box. Probably not, right?
17:13
You know. Yeah, Scientific, Atlanta or
17:15
Motorola? Right.
17:16
It was, it was either a reference Blu-ray player, which
17:19
you know, again, same idea, or it was a you know, it was a
17:22
kaleidescape. And one of the reasons that you
17:25
would integrate this thing into every high end home theater was
17:28
because that was the best reference source that you could
17:31
find. It was it was on par with a,
17:34
with an actual physical disc player in every single case,
17:38
right. So you would put on a movie and
17:39
it's black levels were amazing and it just looked better and
17:42
sounded better. And, you know, you could
17:45
actually watch a concert video and get the, you know, you can
17:49
enjoy the audiophile qualities of the space while you're
17:53
actually able to see, you know, the Eagles, you know, croaking
17:57
out whatever, you know, whatever their hits were right, like.
18:00
Hotel California for the nine. Oh my God.
18:04
That I'm I'm convinced that that hell freezes over disk sold
18:08
pretty much exclusively to people in our channel and that's
18:11
what. That's Circuit City.
18:14
A lot of just survive, right? Entire displays of the Eagles.
18:19
Every boomer age dad. Oh, I'll pick this up.
18:23
Guys, oh man, look at that. Yeah, put that in a vet every.
18:27
Every every old dad would have vet got that from his kids as a
18:31
Christmas present one year. Like oh I liked it, it's great.
18:34
I'm going to watch this once. Yeah, and never Gary Savage.
18:38
And many a motorhome trip definitely played that.
18:41
I thought maybe there's no question.
18:43
But you know, and, and again, that was that was the thing,
18:46
right? Like here's your reference
18:47
source. So, so just to recap, they
18:51
created an entirely new, you know, they, they, they pushed
18:55
the envelope and did something that could have, could have gone
18:58
wrong, could have been illegal, could have been sued.
19:00
Their, you know, their ashes off for it, right?
19:02
So they create that, they create the mechanism, they create the
19:05
hardware, they create the, the movie store concept, right, the
19:09
UI and everything else. Like I, I feel like, you know,
19:14
maybe they don't get as many flowers as they should, even
19:16
though we're, we're spending a whole episode glazing them, you
19:18
know? Yeah, Well, I mean, I think, you
19:20
know, I was going to make a sore jaw joke, but I'm not going to.
19:26
What I was going to say is I looked at the list of movies
19:31
that were posted here about like just the titles that they've had
19:38
over the 25 years that were their number one movie, you
19:41
know, like 25 years, 25 movies. It's it's their publication.
19:45
And when you kind of look at this collection as a whole, you
19:49
kind of go, OK, well, somebody's got pretty, we'll just call it
19:54
run-of-the-mill taste pretty, pretty average.
19:57
Right. Somebody's a Jerry Bruckheimer
19:58
fan, right? Yeah.
20:00
You know, I mean, you know, like we don't have to go title for
20:02
title, but you know, you got a couple of Harry Potter's, you
20:05
got you're finding Nemo's, your Incredibles, your Lord of the
20:08
Rings, you know, and you move through into the Frozen's and
20:12
the superhero era and all of that stuff.
20:15
So, you know, we could talk and again, get get sore about all
20:21
all the things we have to say for for Kaleidoscape.
20:24
But when you look at the evolution of that filmography,
20:30
think about how much movies have changed in that time to where
20:35
all of this this high end experience that took him back in
20:40
2001. What what that's all amounted to
20:43
today. Like all of this stuff is
20:45
available on your phone in your in the sky.
20:50
Like like Kaleidescape basically grew up with Hollywood here and
20:56
brought, you know, kind of brought us with them.
20:59
It's true. Like on this journey, like I
21:01
don't think it's a lot of hyperbole.
21:03
Like without a technology product like this, how would
21:08
people have engaged as deeply as they do with content And how
21:12
like what other mechanism would somebody have come up with other
21:15
than this? Like I'm just, I'm kind of at a
21:16
loss for. Well, it's.
21:19
What? You know what else would have
21:20
happened along the way there? What, what I kind of find
21:23
fascinating, and maybe this is, again, maybe this is due to, you
21:26
know, the, the, the clientele that it's, that it's marketed
21:28
towards and, and the people who actually installed these things
21:30
is that this is very much, you know, our, our industry and kind
21:35
of, you know, life and technology in general is on this
21:37
trajectory of cheaper and more convenient, right?
21:42
Like I will if if I can pay less for something I will put up
21:45
with, you know, shittier video quality or.
21:48
If I can just so I can have. It just so I can have it right
21:51
if I can have you know a, a music track on my phone I will
21:53
put up with you know MP3 compression artifacts that kind
21:58
of thing because it's it's convenient I can take it
22:01
anywhere it's it's inexpensive blah blah blah.
22:04
This kind of breaks that mold, right?
22:06
So like Kaleidescape is very much an outlier where no, you're
22:10
buying this thing because of the quality.
22:12
You're buying this thing because of, you know, you're not going
22:14
to get an instantaneous download on it, which is fine.
22:17
You know, not, and you know, nowadays it's, it's not the, you
22:20
know it, it's waiting 8 minutes to download something, which
22:23
seems like a lifetime when you're used to just clicking
22:25
into Disney plus and, and having Gravity Falls start, right.
22:28
But like, you know, 8 minutes is a, you know, that's, that's a
22:32
long time, but you're, you're willing to wait for it and
22:35
you're willing to pay for it because it is a better
22:38
experience. And, and they've always, they've
22:40
always definitely held up that banner, right?
22:42
Because you know, it, it outperforms an Apple TV, it
22:45
outperforms a Roku. And even though those two
22:47
devices are maybe more convenient as far as, you know,
22:52
getting whatever content you want, even if it's not in your
22:54
collection and, and, and all these things, they, they don't
22:57
stand up on the quality like Kaliski just does it that much
23:01
better that it becomes a compelling argument for the
23:04
right client to say, yeah, I I want the best.
23:07
I absolutely want the best. I'm not going to suffer with,
23:09
you know, I'm not going to, I'm not going to settle for a 4K
23:12
Roku Ultra, even though it looks great to everybody.
23:15
I'm not. We're going to have one of those
23:18
two so that we could do Hulu and Peacock and everything else, but
23:22
our movies are going to be watched from a kaleidoscape.
23:24
And I think it's remarkable because that's always sort of
23:27
been like they've been the standard bearer of that more
23:29
probably more than anybody else in the industry, right?
23:33
Like who? I I would agree it's kind of
23:36
like the, you know, we're going to the Rolex watch or the high
23:40
end whiskey or the fancy car. I mean, you pick your your
23:43
aligned, you know, similar product, they're not going to
23:47
back off of quality. They're going to make sure that
23:48
it's going to sound the best and look the best that it can.
23:51
And I think I've held to that standard since day one.
23:54
I mean, I can remember the thinking that this is the very
23:57
first product that I've had my hands on that has an HDMI cable
24:00
on it that I right, really kind of remember right.
24:04
So when you think about all the inherent downsides of HDMI, one
24:09
point O we we don't need to go there.
24:12
But at least they were. They were shooting for the
24:14
stars, you know what I'm saying? It's true.
24:16
Those those first players they had, they had an HDMI and they
24:20
had component video. Component video for.
24:23
Sure. And I want to say maybe I'm
24:24
misremembering this, but I want to say that the composite video
24:28
was only for an on screen. Yeah, it was like an only for an
24:32
on screen display. They didn't even push the
24:34
content out of the composite because and I think that was
24:37
part of the anti piracy stuff that they were, you know, trying
24:40
to make sure that they were towing that line and not making
24:42
it super easy to RIP a whole bunch.
24:43
You know, RIP a disc from your friend like with the old VCR
24:48
with the old VCR taping, right? Like because there is no content
24:52
protection on here but. Man, Gary Savage is bringing
24:54
them up all kinds of what is today.
24:56
My God, dude, we had Avhs collection that was all Polaroid
24:59
but it was every new movie you'd ever seen.
25:01
There you go. Those were the days, man.
25:05
But. Yeah, those were the days.
25:07
But yeah, think about like Kaleidoscape, you know, just the
25:11
innovations that it's brought the the product family, that
25:14
it's changed like just the the whole perception of what's
25:18
capable in a home. Again, now we take it for
25:21
granted, we all walk around with this stuff in our pocket, but
25:23
Kaleidoscape is the first thing that I could think of that could
25:26
do multiple movies at the same time, could do music in another
25:30
part of the house. Like, Yep, where, where did that
25:34
concept come from? Other than we wish that all of
25:37
these things work together. But, you know, they, they kind
25:40
of faithfully executed it, I would say.
25:42
And it's, and it is, it's, it's the, you know, even the model
25:45
that they used where you have a, a server and a client
25:48
architecture, right? Where your server holds all the
25:50
content, whether that's, you know, all your video collection
25:53
or all your music collection. And now you've got, you've got a
25:57
client for music. I, I believe their music client
25:59
put out like 4 zones or something like that, right?
26:01
So like, you know, you could use this for your whole house with
26:06
all the same caveats of, you know, it's high quality and
26:09
it's, you know, you know, high bit rate and code and all that
26:12
stuff, but also serves out, you know, the, the movies and stuff.
26:16
And yeah, that's, I mean, that's probably the first and maybe
26:20
only client server architecture in consumer electronics in, in,
26:24
in the whole, you know, in our CI industry, right?
26:26
Like in our, you know, in what we do.
26:28
And you said the HDMI cable, what I remember most was the
26:33
network, right? Like this was, you know, back in
26:36
the day, like you want to say, you know, the, the, the parallel
26:39
technology at that point was a Linksys router with four ports
26:44
on it and. WRT 54G maybe?
26:47
Yeah, and like, you know, we were all, we were all kind of
26:50
learning networking at the same time because before that, we we
26:53
didn't have it, you know. So Kaleidescape back in the
26:57
beginning, I mean, I remember calling Kaleidoscape tech
27:00
support and having them walk me through some network
27:02
configurations and that kind of thing.
27:03
So they spent a lot of time, Again, this was something that
27:06
was kind of unheard of in the home at the time because
27:09
everything else was, you know, if you were getting a signal
27:11
into your house and watching on TV, it was coming in from your
27:13
cable line or your satellite feed.
27:15
It wasn't, it wasn't streaming, it wasn't distributing via IP.
27:20
And you know, that's, that's kind of wild, but man, you know,
27:23
all the all the things that these dudes went through to to
27:26
get this product going to get it off the ground to avoid getting
27:29
sued out of existence. You know, you just you just kind
27:34
of hit it to you said it, you said the people and I was just
27:38
kind of had a flash in my mind. Kaleidoscape is kind of the Hall
27:42
of Fame of who's who of the custom install industry.
27:45
When you think about the people, the number of people that work
27:49
there at a certain time or over a certain period or through a
27:54
product development cycle or what have you.
27:56
Like, I mean, the, the hallowed halls of, of, of famous, you
28:01
know, famous people from our industry that have worked there.
28:05
I mean, the list is long and esteemed, I would say.
28:09
Like there's a lot of people's DNA from our industry and
28:15
fingerprints, whatever you want to call it all over that.
28:17
I mean crazy. Sure, sure.
28:18
And I mean, I can't think of something that's been as
28:22
innovative, right? Like we talk about what's coming
28:24
next and whatever, but like this was absolutely a milestone.
28:28
You know, this was really just, this is up there with going from
28:32
tube TV's to flat panels in terms of paradigm shifts and UI
28:37
and and storage and, and just your content as a concept.
28:41
But yeah, that's, you know, again, definitely felt like it
28:45
was worth it for us to to spend an episode because it was, I
28:47
mean, it was a big part of my install career.
28:49
Like this was always something to aspire to.
28:51
Like you would, you would kind of look at jobs as they would
28:54
come in and you'd be speccing them and you would flag certain
28:57
ones that were OK this one, we could probably sell a collide
28:59
escape into this one. We can, you know, we can do this
29:02
demo for this client and they're going to be floored and they're
29:05
probably going to go for it, you know, like that was an
29:07
aspirational part of do. You remember what they cost?
29:10
Do you have any? Do you have any recollection of
29:12
what case Cape was in those days?
29:14
10 grand. 15 grand. I mean, back then, I want to say
29:17
that man, and you know what? I'm, I'm, I'm dying here because
29:21
I quoted so many of these freaking things.
29:25
Like off the top of my head, I want to say and, and I'm I'm
29:28
probably wrong, but, and we're going back a long time.
29:30
I want to say that the players were about 6 grand and the
29:33
server was probably more like 15 depending, you know, depending
29:37
on size and and everything else. Depending all of that.
29:40
Yeah, and and that was always the, you know, that was always
29:43
the big hurdle, right? It's like you would hit the sub.
29:45
OK, three players you need, you know, whatever it was at the
29:49
time, like, and it sounds paltry now, like, OK, you need 10
29:52
terabytes of server space, which is like, that's a laffer, right?
29:56
Go to target and get that. Yeah, I got that on my desk.
30:00
But like, you know, and, and it was unheard of at the time.
30:02
Oh, and by the way, you also need to, you know, you need to
30:06
encode all your disks. That's going to be 5 bucks a
30:08
disk, however many that is. And yeah, it was, you know, that
30:12
was the thing. And that's why, like you never
30:14
discussed the price until you did the demo, like with this
30:17
present. And that's, that's, that's
30:18
pretty good sales advice no matter what.
30:20
But until you get a client into the right situation to show
30:24
them, you know, to literally hand them a remote and say, hey,
30:27
pick something to watch. And, you know, and that magic
30:30
moment of moving the thing on the artwork and they get it.
30:35
And then all of a sudden everything kind of moves around
30:37
and they get that too. What's going?
30:39
On and then they yeah, and then they hit the button on, you
30:43
know, whatever the shittiest low res, they would always pick the
30:45
crappiest movie that you had in there, right Like, you know,
30:49
watching Blazing Saddles on a Kaleidoscape is a huge waste of
30:51
horsepower, but whatever, it's your.
30:53
Face Wizard of Oz? Yeah, Kill.
30:54
Me something right, but and and it and it automatically starts
31:00
playing and it goes and then you tell them, you know a couple you
31:03
know a minute or two into it right, you tell them to pause it
31:05
and then the pause screen comes up with all the information and
31:08
the actors that are in it and the BIOS and whatever.
31:11
Like you overwhelm. It's like this wave wash it like
31:14
I I must have this. I need to have, you know, you,
31:18
you've just test drove the Ferrari and now we're going to
31:20
talk, OK? You can get this experience for
31:23
X amount of dollars. Like you weren't selling this
31:26
thing without showing somebody what the experience was, unless
31:28
they had a buddy who had one and and they were just, you know,
31:31
envious, right? It's scalable too, like you can
31:34
build up. Yeah, yeah.
31:37
Right. This is very much like, yeah,
31:39
this is we just need to get you addicted and then we're going to
31:42
have a player in every room in your house, right?
31:44
You'll you'll want this in your bedroom probably and you'll want
31:47
this in the theater and Oh yeah, you can absolutely block off
31:51
some movies that you can't see on the other player.
31:52
Don't worry about that. Oh my God, remember like man
31:55
partitioning movies out. And just what kind of content is
31:59
this? It's not content that you should
32:01
be able to see, buddy you. You know, yeah, you just brought
32:04
up something that I haven't thought about in a very long
32:05
time, but that's another angle. Lotus, too, is the, you know,
32:08
all the different ways that you can carry your collection,
32:12
right? Like you could go through.
32:13
And there were definitely some, you know, some very savvy
32:17
clients who would sit there in their theatre with their
32:19
Crestron tablet remote and, you know, and make movie
32:24
collections. They would take collections.
32:25
And it would be like, you know, my daughter's favorite movies or
32:28
whatever it was. If it, if it wasn't a pre, you
32:31
know, if it wasn't a predefined category, they were making their
32:34
library their own. And that's something you know,
32:37
to to kind of look at. Totally unique.
32:40
Yeah, the parental control and the other options that kind of
32:43
came across as as all part of that.
32:46
And again, all things that we take very flatly for granted.
32:50
Now, I think you could very easily make the argument the
32:54
flight escape kind of set the bar for what the expectation is
32:57
there because of of their exposure to that executive
33:00
crust. We, you know, we'll say right,
33:04
like, right. And I'm just, we'll leave it,
33:08
you know, we'll leave that there.
33:09
I, I was just thinking, think about how is your perception of
33:14
a brand like Kaleidoscape changed over the last 25 years?
33:18
You know, you think about kind of where they, you know, where
33:21
they position themselves at the beginning when they started out
33:25
in 2001 to we'll say they've certainly had some ups and downs
33:31
away, you know, as every company does.
33:35
But to be where they are now is frankly kind of like, like I'm
33:40
cheering for him. Like I don't know how to say it.
33:42
Is that is that the right way to put it?
33:44
Like, I don't, I don't know. But like I like, I have a few
33:47
friends over there, of course. And I make no, no bones about
33:50
that. But like you were saying
33:52
earlier, they're telling the quality line.
33:55
Yeah, they're holding that batter for sure.
33:57
You know, they're, they're, they're waving the flag for
34:00
like, it's got to look good. It's got to sound good.
34:03
Yeah, it can be moderately inconvenient, right?
34:08
But, I mean, they've got a download, you know, they've got
34:10
a download store and I'm sure they've got upgrades for, you
34:14
know, for, for other ways to get contacts.
34:16
Well, that's that's the point, right?
34:18
And that's one of the nice things about it is, yeah,
34:20
there's technology changes and that kind of thing.
34:23
And I'm sure, I'm sure that there are clients out there who
34:25
have had Kaleidescape systems for 25 years.
34:28
And you know, it's maybe it's a ship of thesis at this point
34:31
where you've replaced one piece and you've replaced this piece
34:35
and now you're, you know, you're into a Terra server and now
34:38
you're thinking about, you know, getting whatever the next thing
34:40
is, right. But like.
34:41
Your concerto system or whatever laying around or symphonic
34:44
system, like trying to remember the the layers of of all of that
34:47
stuff. I know Concerto was the big one.
34:49
Yeah. And, and it's, you know, it's
34:51
very much you, you hit the nail on the head.
34:54
There's people who root for these guys and, and that's
34:57
that's an angle for sure, man. And, and count me as one of
35:01
them, right? Like the, you know, the fact,
35:03
the fact that they went to battle and have consistently
35:06
made a, a great product and it's, and it's beloved and
35:09
renowned and everything else, like, I mean, cheers, you know,
35:12
and then, you know, you see something that they're, they're
35:15
marking their anniversary by, they have a Terra prime server
35:18
now it's 120 terabytes, which it's just, you know, it's, it's
35:24
insane. It's, you know, 2004 K titles,
35:27
right? So if you've got the right
35:28
collection and, and one of the things along the way that
35:31
they've been very smart with is that you can, there are, there
35:35
are deals and stuff to upgrade your collection, right?
35:38
So like, you might have content that you bought on DVD and along
35:41
the way, you know, now you've upgraded that content via the
35:45
Kaleidoscape store or whatever to now you've got the Criterion
35:48
Collection or now you've got the 4K version of this.
35:51
Or, you know, you can, you know, you can watch the Eagles concert
35:55
in, in 4K or whatever it is. And, you know, here we are,
35:59
right. And, you know, yeah, OK.
36:01
It's, you know, it'll download a movie that you know, on a, on a
36:05
2 1/2. Now we're into like 2 1/2 gig
36:07
networking in the home, which is something that is still being
36:10
accepted, right? Like we've all we're, we're all
36:12
at 1 gig now, right? Like I said, 2 1/2 gig is
36:14
pushing the envelope, 10 gig is pushing the envelope even
36:16
further. But you know, it's there's they
36:19
just keep coming out with new stuff.
36:22
The architecture is the same. It's still a server and clients
36:25
and a movie store and AUI and they keep innovating.
36:30
They keep bringing this stuff out and they keep going.
36:32
And you know, granted it's 35 grand for for the server.
36:37
So the prices are the same. Yeah.
36:40
I mean, I guess inflation, right?
36:42
Like so 25 years later. Yeah, inflation.
36:45
That's pretty. I mean places.
36:46
I mean, it's never been a better deal.
36:47
Let's just put it that. Way the best time to buy a color
36:50
escape was 25 years ago. The second best time is now.
36:54
But you know, it's, it's out there.
36:57
And, and again, you know, we've, we've talked at length on this,
37:00
on this show for sure about the diminishment of home theatre and
37:04
how, you know, dedicated theatres or, or maybe kind of,
37:07
you know, receding a little bit and that kind of thing.
37:10
This is a product that is still made for, you know, your, your
37:14
home IMAX clientele, right? Like this is, this is something,
37:19
and the convenience of it. It's, you know, you could put it
37:23
with the right client, you could put it into all the rooms in
37:25
your house. If you love movies, there are
37:27
households who absolutely love movies you know and are well
37:31
heeled enough for something like this.
37:34
And nobody does it. They all still.
37:35
Sorry, do they all still look like the iMac though?
37:37
Like, remember, like the colors. Remember That was like that era
37:40
where everything was like a, yeah, a bubble, like a white,
37:43
white, Milky. Plastic.
37:45
Yeah, or like with the worst remote, a bit of all remotes.
37:48
I mean, not for nothing, but the actual physical handheld remote
37:52
for a Kaleidoscape. There's the simplest thing.
37:56
It was, but there's like a top three of remotes that you'd love
37:59
to just smash into pieces. I'm sure it may not be at the
38:03
top list, but boy, I'm sure it's on the podium, man.
38:08
Because my God, I can remember so many times like the places
38:12
that you'd naturally go to click for something.
38:14
It's not, it's just a little bit.
38:15
It's never going to be. It's just a little bit off or
38:17
it's like a weird size. Well, I think.
38:19
I mean, I think they knew, I think they kind of knew their
38:21
clientele, right? Because if you have a Kalide
38:23
escape system in your house, you absolutely have a control system
38:25
in your house. And one of the things that let
38:27
me let me throw this out there, now that I'm thinking about it,
38:30
they're definitely one of the first companies who made their
38:34
API available to every control system, right?
38:37
So like you could, you know, I, I remember manually programming
38:41
Savant systems with a keyboard on the screen because they had a
38:45
command for every single key. So your client could have a
38:48
keyboard on their, you know, on their iPad or whatever they were
38:51
using at the time. Crestron same thing, right?
38:53
Like that view Sonic panel. It was, it's almost like it was
38:56
made to deal with the keyboard on Kaleidescape because it was,
39:01
you know, and they had and and that's yeah, let me, let me kind
39:06
of unwind on this a little bit. Right.
39:07
Like as the programmer nerd, there were commands to
39:11
automatically start a playlist or automatically start a certain
39:15
genre or go directly to a movie. So if you wanted to, you could
39:19
program a home to create this magic that, you know, you could
39:24
have it go to a western or, or whatever at the touch of a
39:27
button. Like I want to watch a western.
39:29
You can do something behind the scenes that would, you know,
39:32
randomize it and and Papa genre up or whatever.
39:36
They had all of those little command hooks built into their
39:39
API before, you know, before anybody else thought that that
39:43
was something that we should do and it contributed to the magic.
39:46
It really did so. Sure.
39:48
Yeah, You said the magic of the theater demo and all that stuff.
39:52
And I made the comment earlier about about the Wizard of Oz
39:56
that I remembered why we were just talking about the magic,
40:00
the demo that I saw with The Wizard of Oz.
40:03
I can't remember if it was a client's home or at a show home
40:05
or demo space somewhere, but it was the first place that I had
40:09
seen somebody do the curtains with the colour change of the
40:13
movie when it goes from black and white to colour.
40:15
And then the curtains open objects to match the scope,
40:18
right? So it does like the scope to go
40:20
with the curtains, to go with the lights and the whole bit.
40:23
And the client was like, I don't care how much this cost.
40:27
We're doing this this. Is what I want.
40:28
Like it just looks over, it goes, man.
40:32
What? Yeah.
40:33
Just, you know, just wrap it up like whatever this is, we're
40:36
done. I'm walking out of this.
40:38
I'm walking out here with this today.
40:40
Yeah, exactly. And that was the other side,
40:42
right? It wasn't just the command
40:43
hooks. It was, you know, the status
40:45
that the thing would report, right?
40:46
Like, you know, there were plenty of times where control
40:49
systems weren't up to the task of handling all of Kaleidescapes
40:53
feedback because. What it could do, Yeah.
40:55
It, it could, it, it told you what aspect you were in so that
40:58
if you had a cinema scope or whatever, you could have that
41:00
lens move. It had, you know, I mean, I
41:03
remember doing tons of integrations with like a Runko
41:05
projector and a stored screen and a kaleidescape in the system
41:08
and it would read, it would read the format from the disk.
41:13
It would set all you know, you would, it would send out
41:15
commands to set up all your pieces of gear.
41:18
It would move the, you know, the, the bricks controller for
41:20
the stored screen to whatever, you know, whatever the masking
41:24
that you need it to be. It would trigger the theater
41:26
curtains. It would, you know, and when you
41:29
pause the movie, there was an intermission command, right?
41:33
So like right out of kaleidoscope, you know, or right
41:36
out of Kaleidoscape, you could trigger your control control
41:39
system to, you know, put up the sconce lights because you're
41:43
going to take a whiz. Like that's the kind you want to
41:45
talk about the magic of what we do specifically in a theatre
41:50
like case scape was was was well ahead of our time and they gave
41:54
us all the fun tools that we that we could have ever wanted
41:57
for for this kind of thing. You know, try, try triggering an
42:00
intermission scene on your Roku that's playing Disney Plus like
42:03
I. I.
42:05
I. Dare you I?
42:07
I was just about to say, yeah, you know, Apple TV, huh?
42:11
What are you going to do with that?
42:12
I mean you barely get the the audio formats right on a on a
42:15
streaming box, you know? Well, and you know, I used to
42:19
make the joke all the time when I was doing trainings and stuff
42:21
where for theaters and expensive TV's and like, what's the
42:25
biggest incongruity here? You've got a $50,000 projector
42:29
with a $300 box stuck on the end of it to watch content that
42:33
doesn't, doesn't really jive. No, I think what you're, you're
42:37
missing the point. So, yeah, Kaleidoscape has
42:40
always been a nice bastion of quality.
42:43
Maybe, you know, some frustration for people over the
42:46
years and certainly a, a really solid benchmark for where the
42:52
state of the industry is for quality and audio and video and
42:55
what's the state-of-the-art. They've got hardware that's
42:58
going to be aligned with the best of the best for the time, I
43:02
would say, or none. I I don't think that's an
43:04
argument that anybody could make that they don't, you know,
43:07
again, to your point, hold, hold the line for quality.
43:09
So yeah, 25 years that is. Really makes me feel old.
43:16
Yeah. Well, again, remembering its
43:17
debut brings brings me back, I will say, to a different time.
43:24
Me 25 years ago, I mean, 25 years ago, you Chris.
43:28
I mean, what, what does that guy say about it versus now, you
43:31
know, crazy. Yeah, that guy's chugging the
43:34
heaters behind the dumpster or something.
43:38
That guy's talking kaleidescape with randos outside of the Wawa
43:41
in town so. Yeah.
43:42
Is that what he's doing? But no, that's, and, you know,
43:46
we, we wanted to, I'm, I'm glad, you know, Jason came up with
43:50
this topic. He was texting me and he was
43:51
like, yeah, it's 25 years. And like, as soon, as, as soon
43:54
as I saw that text, it was like, wow, this, it brought back this
43:58
flood of memories. And we just, we kind of wanted
44:01
to give them their flowers and, and place them like a doughnut
44:04
for, for. 45 minutes or so of them.
44:07
Yeah, again, I got my jaws sore from talking about them so much
44:10
today. It's crazy.
44:10
It's, it's a lot of fun to it's a lot of fun to think about all
44:15
those days and all that time. And to have that association in
44:18
my brain with with a quality product and a great group of
44:22
people like Kaleidescape is again also also fun.
44:25
Certainly so beside the again, beside the 40 minute plug that
44:28
we've just provided for Kaleidescape.
44:31
If, if, if you've got a topic that we should get into, reach
44:35
out to us, man. Hit us up at
44:36
inside.integration@gmail.com. Hit us up on Instagram inside
44:40
under Score integration and thanks so much for joining us.
44:45
Yeah, take care everybody. Bye bye.