Kaleidescape has introduced a premium 4K movie player, the Strato E, which it claims can outperform 4K Blu-ray, let alone streaming services.
It's $2,995 in the US, while UK and European pricing is yet to be announced.
Kaleidescape, the US-based maker of high-end home cinema hardware, has launched an "entry-level" 4K movie player for serious AV enthusiasts, marine installations and commercial theatre systems.
The Strato E player delivers many of the features of the company's premium Strato V player, but for considerably less cash.
Our colleagues at Techradar reviewed the Strato V and gave it the full five stars for its "outstanding" performance. And while that model cost $3,995 in the US (and considerably more in the UK – at £5,380), the Strato E is much cheaper. You can expect to pay $2,995.
Admittedly, it's not the cheapest device Kaleidescape makes – that's the 2K Strato M – but it's the cheapest 4K model, and it comes with very impressive specification.
Kaleidescape Strato E: key features and pricing
The Strato E is a reference-quality movie player that supports SDR, HDR10 and Dolby Vision, has BT.2020 colour space and 4:4:4 chroma up to 2160p/60.
It supports lossless multi-channel and spatial audio, including Dolby Atmos and DTS:X. There's Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD Master Audio and Linear PCM (up to 7.1ch, 96kHz/24-bit) support on board too, and the output is HDMI 2.1 with HDCP 2.3.
Inside the device there's a 480GB solid state drive, which is sufficient for around six full quality 4K movies, and it has Ethernet for fast downloading of movie files.
To free up space it automatically deletes watched movies after 48 hours, and those can be re-downloaded at any time – it takes about 10 minutes.
Although the Strato E is designed to work solo, you can also scale it up by adding a Terra Prime Movie Server or by connecting multiple players for a whole-home entertainment system.
The Strato E has a recommended price of $2,995 in the US, which is about £2,235 / €2,655 / AU$4,660. However, given that the UK price of the Strato V is almost double its US equivalent, you should expect to pay more if you're outside the States.
