Pulse Cinemas recently held a week-long series of events welcoming a new member of the Kaleidescape family, the Strato V. Joining the party were Tim Barnes, VP International & Marine Sales, and Priscilla Morgan, Chief Operating Officer, visiting from the U.S. to introduce this new, lower cost of entry product and underline why Kaleidescape is the best option for high-quality content.

Strato V software update now live. Important updates as of September 9th to this story below! 

During the launch of the products, the Kaleidescape team promised important updates to the software were imminent and the following functionalities have just been added to the platform as planned.

OSD Store support on Strato V

Strato V now has access to the on-screen store. Standalone and grouped Strato V users can browse, purchase, queue downloads.

Trailer playback is not supported on Strato V yet. This will be added in the next kOS release.

New ‘Movie Store’ row on Strato V

Strato V users will now see a new ‘Movie Store’ row at the top of the Collections view. This row will be populated with four titles which are the most purchased on the store in the last 24hrs.

Only un-owned content will appear, and it will stay fresh – updated daily.

Branding updates and Dolby Vision support

The on-screen display and store have been updated across the Encore line to use the new branding style that more closely matches the web store. The system now uses the updated 4K badging (which includes SDR/HDR10/Dolby Vision/Dolby Atmos), and allow the purchase and download of Dolby Vision content.

Co-Star support for Strato V

Grouped Strato V players can now be paired with Premiere M-class players. This includes Crestron, Kramer, and Lumagen switches.

Read on for the rest of this story

If you have not got across the details yet, the Kaleidescape Strato V Movie Player delivers 4K Dolby Vision playback with lossless audio, offering performance and quality at a lower cost of entry. The player, two years in the making, is a direct response to market feedback and is a major launch for the company, hence the presence of both Tim and Priscilla for a week-long series of presentations and meetings.

Priscilla explains the importance of the launch and the initial reaction to the product: “The UK market is really important to us. We made it a point to come over right at launch to meet with studio partners, Pulse, dealers, designers, integrators, and press. This week has been wonderful because we were able to demo the new product, have great conversations, and answer questions. Every session has been well received, and the one statement we kept hearing was ‘this product is a game changer.’”

There was also news on more content for the Kaleidescape system. Priscilla reveals, “We just signed a major studio and added around 1,000 titles to the UK store – that’s approximately a 20% increase in fantastic content available for our customers. AND we have also launched our new player – Strato V – and for the first time can offer movies in Dolby Vision. Currently, we have over 100 Dolby Vision titles available, with more coming every week.”

Tim explains some of the key attributes installers were keen to learn about the new player, “Strato V is Kaleidescape’s next-generation movie player. Providing stunning 4K Dolby Vision playback with lossless audio, Strato V works on its own or as part of a larger Kaleidescape system. Standalone, Strato V has storage for approximately 10 reference-quality 4K movies and downloads movies in as little as 10 minutes during playback, without sacrificing performance.

“Kaleidescape has delivered on what customers have been asking for: Dolby Vision with lossless audio at a lower cost of entry. Strato V is perfect for new customers, and if they choose to expand their catalogue, they can easily do so by adding Terra Prime servers for more storage and additional players for multiple viewing zones.”

With the product now available to order, the support and continued evolution of the product will not end there. Tim underlines, “Kaleidescape provides software updates periodically throughout the year that are automatically rolled out to products, including Strato V, which provide enhancements to user experience, new features, and bug fixes. There are no costs associated with customers to receive these updates, and no action is required.

“We are also updating the formatting of some of the HD titles on the Kaleidescape movie store to ensure the best possible playback with our Strato V player, thereby replacing some older HD authoring formats. As always, we’re focused on making sure that the movies that are most valuable to our customers are available to them.”

 Priscilla underlines further abilities of Strato V, “Dolby Vision is an exciting technology that improves video quality by employing a dynamic set of video parameters. Combined with lossless audio and reference video, Kaleidescape continues its mission to deliver the best possible version of the movie."  

Strato V Reception

Mike Beatty, Pulse Cinemas Managing Director (Projects Team), immensely enjoyed introducing this new part of the Kaleidescape story to dealers. “We were confident the impact would be positive, but the reaction has surpassed our expectations; this is indeed a game changer for the brand and the response has been overwhelmingly positive.”

The Strato V can currently be seen on demo at Pulse Cinemas HQ in the Main Cinema, and during the launch week the team took the opportunity to do some A/B  comparisons with Apple TV+, usually reckoned to be one of the better quality streaming services. Kapes Patel, Pulse Cinemas, Business Development and Technical Director, explains, “The impact of these comparisons surprised many. We used some clips from Top Gun: Maverick and The Greatest Showman. The image with the Kaleidescape is clearly more natural and smoother. Perhaps the biggest difference is in the audio. The Strato V delivers more immersion and needs far less volume to do it. Come and experience it for yourself, and we are confident you will be impressed.

“For me, as well as the obvious implication for projects on a budget or rooms that are not the main viewing space, don’t forget if you are creating a high-performance cinema, you need to spec a high-performance source to get the most out of those other elements: projector, speakers. This new price point opens up options there as well. From our initial stock run, these units are being snapped up fast, so get in touch to get involved with the Kaleidescape Strato V!”