Introducing the Kaleidescape Media Server

[Steve]

I've been expecting something like this to come along for a while now and here it is. The Kaleidescape System introduces the concept of "whole house entertainment" by centrally storing your movies on a server and distributing it to players around the house. From the Kaleidescape website:

You no longer need to deal with stacks of DVDs because it gives you a new and powerful on-screen user interface for selecting and viewing your movies. Kaleidescape is designed to complement your existing home theatre system by delivering a rich and unparalleled theatrical experience. You'll find the Kaleidescape System to be a simple, powerful, and entertaining way to get the most from your home theatre and movie collection.

The server unit supports up to 4.4TiB of hard drive storage, which is handy given that it stores DVDs without any further compression. Add to that a reader unit for actually putting DVDs into the system and then situate movie players around the house. Connect it all together with an Ethernet network and you have yourself a full entertainment system around the house. With a connection to the Internet, extra features such as cover art can enrich the experience of using the movie player. A quick skim around the website doesn't seem to reveal any pricing, but I bet it isn't cheap!

This all sounds very cool, but personally, I'd prefer a DIY setup. Get VLC multicasting from a streaming server stashed away somewhere and you could have something similar. If I ever get around to doing it, I'll let you all know how it goes. Meanwhile, I'd imagine most people would go with something like the Kaleidescape system and save themselves a lot of extra work.

[Dougal]

How much is this kit gonna cost?

U can set up cheap wireless PCs and run them as media PCs, using the same idea as Kez

[tatman]

This little bit of kit will set youback a cool £16,499.99