Kaleidescape Cinema One

It adds an entirely new dimension to home movie watching

Encased in a metal box, the Kaleidescape Cinema One looks like your average Blu-ray player, but it is just not that. Winner of the Red Dot Design Award 2014, this niche player has built-in storage for 600 DVDs or 100 Blu-ray quality movies. You can expand the storage by using an external storage array or by linking it to another Cinema One unit.

The set comes with an HDMI output, coaxial digital and stereo analog audio outputs, a USB port, an Ethernet port for a wired network connection (a USB WiFi adapter is also included in the package), and an IR input for integration with an advanced control system.

Besides watching content off a disc, you can buy more movies from the online Kaleidescape Store. Once you have the movies inside the box, a beautiful user interface lets you search for movies by title, actor, genre, director, length and even by rating. It also comes with a bunch of movies pre-installed. If the film you have stored is Standard Definition and the Kaleidescape’s store has a High Definition version of the movie available, it offers you an upgrade for a small fee.

Its nifty remote control lets you choose your favourite movie, scene or song with ease. For better control, you can download its control app on your iPad. There is even a special remote handset for kids.

The device supports most optical disc formats, including BD-Live and Profile 2.0 discs. It also supports Dolby digital, DTS digital surround, and MPEG audio. There is no optical audio out, though. Also, while you may import a Blu-ray movie, the disc has to be in the drive—due to copyright issues—for you to watch it.

There are other downsides, too. You can’t stream movies stored on the Cinema One to another TV set in your house, and its web interface is not too helpful. But overall, the home movie-watching experience has never been this wonderful.

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Gagandeep Singh Sapra