Watching Top Gun in 4K with HDR and Dolby Atmos was an excitingly new watching and listening experience for me
Kaleidescape gave me a month with the Compact Terra 6TB movie server and Strato C movie player. The Compact Terra 6TB I was loaned came preloaded with 73 movies. It was a nice mix of Ultra HD 4K HDR, HD, and SD movies. Movies with HDR were marked with “HDR” to make them easy to identify. Mad Max Fury Road, Pacific Rim, Ready Player One, Jungle Cruise, A Quiet Place Part II, and Top Gun were just a handful of the great movies downloaded onto my demo Compact Terra 6TB server. You may laugh at me for being into Top Gun since it is from 1986, but let me tell you, Kaleidescape has Top Gun in 4K with HDR and Dolby Atmos. Watching Top Gun with the Kaleidescape was an excitingly new watching and listening experience for me.
My audio-visual cabinet is in the process of being remodeled but this is how the Kaleidescape Compact Terra 6TB movie server and Strato C movie player looked in my family room with the Screen Innovations motorized Solo Pro 2 projector screen up and out of the way to show the speakers behind the acoustically transparent screen.
Currently, my family room setup consists of a Sony VPL-VW675ES projector paired with a 110-inch Screen Innovations (SI) Solo Pro 2 Unity AT screen. A Sony 77-inch Class – A80CJ Series 4K UHD OLED TV rounds out the family room. I’m currently employing a full Definitive Technology setup for my audio. I am using their Demand Series D5c center channel speaker, two Demand Series D11 large bookshelf speakers, four Disappearing™ Series Round DI 6.5R 6.5” in-ceiling speaker, two SR9080 high-performance bipolar surround speakers, two Ultimate-in-wall (UIW) RCS III Reference in-wall/in-ceiling speakers, and two Descend Series DN10 subwoofers.
All components are run through a Marantz SR8015 11.2 channel 8K AV receiver. I used my 7.2.4 setup to really test out Kaleidescape’s high-fidelity audio claim. I am here to tell you that the Kaleidescape did not disappoint and definitely lived up to its claim. The end-user truly gets high-fidelity multichannel sound utilizing a Kaleidescape system.
The image and sound quality of the Kaleidescape never left me wanting more. Kaleidescape has deals with major studios to provide 4K Ultra HD content, even when those studios are not even interested in releasing that 4K Ultra HD content on Blu-ray discs. Having agreements with the major studios is part of what makes using the Compact Terra 6TB movie server and Strato C movie player special.
While you could typically stream movies in 4K Ultra HD and HDR, the compression would result in visibly inferior picture quality on a high-quality display. Moreover, you would need to subscribe to multiple streaming services. Those streaming services include services like Netflix, Disney+, and Hulu. We cannot forget networks like ABC, CBS, NBC, and numerous others to get to all the movies and TV shows you want, especially if you want them in 4K Ultra HD and HDR.
Watching movies and shows with the Compact Terra 6TB movie server and Strato C movie player was a great experience. When you hit play to watch a movie, it goes right to the movie’s beginning, which is usually the studio’s title sequence (i.e., Walt Disney Pictures, Sony Pictures, or Universal Pictures). The end-user no longer has to sit through time killers like trailers and FBI warnings. For those of you who love to watch your favorite scenes, Kaleidescape allows you to bookmark scenes. I also found scene bookmarking extremely helpful for my photo shoots for my projector reviews.
I am awarding the Kaleidescape Compact Terra 6TB the Hot Product award from Projector Reviews!
Kaleidescape states, “Kaleidescape elevates every other component in your theater, with higher-fidelity video source material, lossless audio, and integrative cues to control lighting, shading, seating, lenses, and screen masking.” The Kaleidescape Compact Terra 6TB server and Strato C player most definitely elevated my movie-watching experience to home theater quality. That is why I am awarding the Kaleidescape Compact Terra 6TB Movie Server the Hot Product Award from Projector Reviews. It is hard to go back to stockpiling 4K Ultra HD Blu-Ray movies and heavily compressed streamed movies once you use a Kaleidescape system.
The ease of use combined with full fidelity makes the Kaleidescape well worth the price of admission. Check out Projector Reviews’ Maximize your home theater with Kaleidescape for additional information on building two amazing home theater systems that Technical Reviewer Paul Wilkie put together. Lastly, I think the biggest takeaway from this review could be the fact that after writing this review, I’ll be reaching out to Kaleidescape to spend my own hard-earned cash to buy one of their systems.
