2001-2014; Founding and early history Kaleidescape was founded in 2001 by Michael Malcolm, Dan Collens, and Cheena Srinivasan. Malcolm had previously founded
Network Appliance and
CacheFlow. Malcolm self-funded the startup and the company spent over two years developing its technology in "
stealth mode". Kaleidescape originally focused on building home theater movie servers that could store digital copies of customers’
DVD and
Blu-ray collections. In 2004, the
DVD Copy Control Association, the licensor of
Content Scramble System (CSS), the technology for the copy control of DVDs,
sued Kaleidescape for breach of contract. The DVD CCA alleged that its CSS License did not permit Kaleidescape's movie servers to serve DVDs from copies on hard disk. In June 2014, Kaleidescape and DVD CCA reached a settlement agreement and as of 2019, the company had license agreements with 29 studios to allow the purchase and download of content from its movie store. The case, although only for breach of contract and not a copyright case, was considered by some to be an important recent test of
fair use precedent, given advancements in technology and the digital media rights field.
2010-2014; Addition of Blu-ray In 2010, Kaleidescape released its M300 and M500 Blu-ray players as part of its Premiere line for home cinemas. The M500 had Blu-ray copying abilities to allow customers to import Blu-rays, DVDs, and
CDs onto home servers. To address the copyright concerns of movie studios, Kaleidescape required the Blu-ray disc to be present when the content was played from the server. Later that year, Kaleidescape launched the industry's first Blu-ray server with its release of its new 100-disc Blu-ray vault. The vault, when paired with the M300 or M500 players, could rip, store, and stream copies of Blu-ray movies throughout a home. users are able to add high-definition and standard definition movies to their collections instantly. Cinema One allows the storage and playback of up to 100 Blu-ray quality, 600 DVD quality or 6,000 CD quality titles.
2015-present In 2015, Kaleidescape released the Strato movie player and the Terra movie server. The Strato is a movie-playback device which holds
Ultra HD HDR movies as well as DVD quality movies depending on the model. The Terra provides computing and caching services to enhance the performance of the Strato, and provides extra storage space for movies purchased from the store. Content for the Strato can be added by downloading movies from the Kaleidescape movie store. In November 2020, Tayloe Stansbury was appointed Kaleidescape's new CEO. Norma Garcia-Muro also joined the company as vice president of marketing. Kaleidescape expanded into theaters in 2024 by sellings its hardware to cinema owners. Cinemas use the technology to access older movie titles, with payments for viewing the titles being paid directly to the studios by the theater. == Products ==