Kaleidescape Strato V Movie Player/Server
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We offer free 2-day shipping on most products within the continental US.
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Orders requiring motor freight delivery may take more than two business days. Once your order has shipped, you'll receive a shipping confirmation email with a tracking number for easy tracking.
Orders that contain items that are currently backordered, special order, or out of stock will ship complete once all items are in-stock unless otherwise requested.
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At this time, we do not ship internationally and orders to Hawaii and Alaska may incur an additional shipping charge. Please contact us at 888.899.8776 or email support@audioadvice.com to confirm.
Rerouting and Address Changes
We cannot make ANY address changes once an order is placed. If you are unable to accept delivery of your package as ordered, we will need to cancel your order, return the package to sender and have you replace your order through our website.
Keep the Box
We suggest you keep the shipping box or boxes for at least 30 days. It is actually a great idea to keep boxes for audio products for the life of the product. Having the box and all packing will increase the trade-in value should you decide to move up and they are handy to have should you ever need to send the unit in for repair.
How To Receive a Motor Freight Order
The trucking company will contact you to schedule a convenient time to deliver the order. Please note that you must be present for delivery.
Visually inspect the box to make sure you see no signs of damage. If you notice any damage at all, take some pictures with your phone and make a note of them on the delivery receipt the driver will ask you to sign. If it is obvious that the product is damaged, please refuse the order and contact us immediately at 888.899.8776 or email support@audioadvice.com.
Open your box as soon as possible and inspect the product for damage and contact us if you find anything wrong.
uShip In-Home Delivery
Due to current concerns surrounding COVID-19, uShip is able to offer THRESHOLD SERVICE ONLY at this time. To ensure everyone’s safety, uShip is advising carriers to refrain from making room-of-choice deliveries. Threshold service consists of the shipment being brought into the first door of the address or the lobby of an apartment/condo, and does not include set-up, installation, assembly or debris removal.
What to Expect: Most oversized items will be delivered within 2-3 weeks. Your carrier will place your item inside the first door of the address or the lobby of an apartment/condo.
Appointment Scheduling: Your delivery partner will call 24-48 hours prior to delivery to arrange an appointment window.
How to prepare for in-home delivery:
- Determine the clearest path from the street to your home
- Measure entrances and hallways to ensure your item will fit
- Remove any wall hangings or clutter to ensure a clear path and to prevent damages
- Remove old furnishings to allow placement for your new piece
Check your furniture for damages: We rarely expect damaged furniture, but in the instance it does happen, we have you covered. Once your item’s packaging is removed, check for any damages that may have occurred in transit. Take pictures of any damages and notate appropriately on the delivery receipt. Keep possession of the damaged piece and contact us via phone or email and we’ll start the process to repair/replace your new piece of furniture. For uShip customer support, please call 800-698-7447.
At Audio Advice, we pride ourselves on customer satisfaction. We'll bend over backward to make sure you're 100% satisfied and we won't accept anything less. We offer 30-day hassle-free returns and personalized service from real, live people.
If an item doesn't meet your expectations, you may return or exchange it in its original condition and packaging within 30 days for a full refund, minus shipping fees. Items shipped back in like new condition through standard shipping carriers will only incur a flat fee of $15 to return. If the items were initially shipped through free scheduled delivery via motor freight (commonly referred to as LTL), returning them will result in return shipping fees starting at $150. These items include but are not limited to, oversized items such as TVs, certain subwoofers, floorstanding speakers, furniture, and most items weighing over 75 pounds. Return fees will also apply for exchanges. We want to treat your system as if it is our own and want you to be completely satisfied with your purchase.
Please see the instructions below. We only accept returns for any product purchased directly from our website. If merchandise is not returned in its original condition or is missing packaging, manuals, accessories or other parts, or the resale value of the product has been impaired, a partial refund will be given and calculated on a case-by-case basis.
Non-Returnable Items
The following items cannot be returned or cancelled:
- Special/Custom Order Items
- Open Box Products
- Gift Cards
- In-ear headphones cannot be returned once the packaging has been opened due to personal hygiene reasons. Please contact our customer care team if you'd like help choosing.
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Turntables With a Broken Stylus: All turntables ship out with the stylus intact. If you return a turntable or phono cartridge with a broken or missing stylus you will be subject to a return fee. Please be careful when setting up your turntable and contact us with any questions.
Is It Easy To Return An Item?
Yes, simply give us a call at 888.899.8776 or you can email our support team at support@audioadvice.com. Many times our team of experts can help figure out why the product might not be working like you expected and get things fixed over the phone, so don’t be surprised if we ask a few questions, we love troubleshooting!
If our tech help can not make you happy, we will email over a return shipping label with a Return Number.
Hopefully, you saved all of the original item’s box and packaging inserts. You will want to pack back up your return or exchange in the same way it came out of the original box. Once you have everything packaged correctly, tape the box on the top and bottom to assure it stays together. If Audio Advice shipped the item to you inside a second box, it's a good idea to use that same extra box to help prevent damage on its way back to us. To avoid it accidentally coming back to you, use a magic marker to cross out the old shipping label or just tear it off.
The return shipping label we send you will have our address on it, just make sure you take the box to the right shipper (UPS, FEDEX, or USPS) as per the label.
If you are close to one of our stores, please let us know if it is more convenient for you to return it to us directly. You will still need to get a return number by contacting us and shipping and/or restocking charges may apply.
When Will I See My Refund?
It usually takes around 7-14 days for the refund to show up on the payment method you used. We do inspect all returns for damage and accuracy of the item inside the box before issuing a refund. Some items may be subject to shipping and restocking fees.
Can I Exchange My Purchase For Something Different?
Sometimes those big speakers just don’t fit in the room or you might have bought a small subwoofer and later found out you’d love a bigger one. If you would like to make an exchange within 30 days of receiving your item, just give us a call at 888.899.8776 or email support@audioadvice.com and we will help work out the details. Additional shipping charges and return costs may apply.
How Do I Cancel An Order?
If the item has already shipped out or is a special order item, it is not possible to cancel the order. Please contact us at 888.899.8776 or email support@audioadvice.com to start the return process.
What If I Find Shipping Damage?
We need to know right away about any shipping damage. Please contact us at 888.899.8776 or email support@audioadvice.com within 48 hours of your delivery so we can get the ball rolling on making things right. It’s very helpful to take some pictures and email them to us if possible.
Can I Refuse A Shipment?
You can, but unless the item is damaged, shipping and restocking fees will be deducted from your refund. If your item arrives damaged and you are lucky enough to be there, snap some quick pics and refuse the order. Then contact us so we can get a replacement on the way.
What Happens If My Order Is Defective?
This is actually pretty rare, most consumer electronics work fine out of the box 99.9% of the time. We’d like for you to contact us first by calling 888.899.8776 or email support@audioadvice.com so we can help get to the bottom of things. If your item is indeed defective during the first 30 days, we can usually exchange it for a new, replacement unit.
What About Service After 30 Days?
Audio Advice has a great relationship with all of our brands and can help you with warranty service by the brand after our 30-day guarantee period. Even after the warranty expires, we can arrange for service by the brand on products purchased from Audio Advice. Just call 888.899.8776 or email support@audioadvice.com.
How Do You Determine A Restocking Fee?
You may not believe it, but sometimes we receive items back that were put in the box with zero packaging and are completely destroyed or are missing many of the pieces that came with the item. We also track serial numbers and will get back different serial numbers. We’ve even seen different items than what we shipped out be returned. However, it’s very important to package your return properly so that nothing goes missing or gets damaged in shipping, which will result in a restocking fee or even no refund at all. If a product is opened and the market value of the product is reduced, then a restocking fee may be applied to the cost of restocking and the reduced market value of the product. The bottom line is if you treat us fairly, we will do the same.
Audio Advice strives to provide industry-leading support and service while also maintaining the lowest prices available on products for our customers. We work hard with our vendors to bring our customers the best products at each price point. As a part of that process, we work with our vendors to provide the lowest pricing in our stores and on our website.
Our prices should always be the same as any other authorized dealer, including big-box retailers and major online retailers.
If you believe that you have found a lower advertised price from a legitimate authorized seller, call us and let us know so we can make sure we can correct any inadvertent error on our side. As a matter of policy, we update our prices automatically if a vendor changes its authorized pricing policies, so we generally have the best prices all the time. Increasingly, there are knock-off copies of products online, usually sold by non-authorized dealers.
Please be sure that the item meets the following conditions:
- The item is brand new, in stock, and available for purchase
- The item has the identical model number, color, etc as the item on our site.
- The seller is an authorized dealer
As always, our goal is to provide a terrific customer experience, including industry low prices. We appreciate your support.
Overview
In this article, we are going to be taking a look at the brand-new Kaleidescape Strato V. If you’re planning on attending Audio Advice Live, Kaleidescape will be showing the Strato V for the first time to consumers. We’ll go over the advantages of using a Kaleidescape system and then get into the details of the new Strato V.
Why Kaleidescape?
First, we think it’s important to discuss some of the key features and benefits of having any Kaleidescape system in your home theater or media room. When planning your home theater or media room system, it’s important not to understand the value of the source content. While streaming services are now offering content in 4K with Dolby Atmos, streamed content is still substantially compressed and in a lossy format. The leading streaming services encode video at an average of 8 megabits per second, whereas Kaleidescape, which rapidly downloads the entire movie or show, delivers the original bit-for-bit video, which can be at a whopping rate of over 65 Mbps! The same holds true on the audio side. The top streaming service's audio throughput is around 1 Mbps, while Kaleidescape delivers fully lossless audio with 6 times as much data, so you don’t lose the incredible audio experience. If you have invested in a great theater or media room, or you just want to experience movies and shows in the best way possible, there is nothing better than Kaleidescape. Movie soundtracks, compared to streaming services, come to life with Kaleidescape with finer details, improved surround effects, and deeper, more impactful bass.
If you’ve seen our full Kaleidescape line overview or some of our home theater tours, you know just how good the movie store and the entire interface of this system are. This is another key factor that sets it apart from streaming or any other way of watching content. You can easily browse their extensive store, where you can buy or rent movies, TV shows and concerts that download to your Kaleidescape for playback. Plus, the way you can browse titles in their store or in your library is just second to none. They make it incredibly easy and fun to browse the catalogs of content with tons of sorting features that make it a breeze to find anything you’re looking for. And once it’s downloaded, you don’t even need internet access to play it and never have to worry about internet bandwidth issues that could cause buffering or low quality playback.
Once you’ve decided to take the step into upgrading to a Kaleidescape, you must consider your use case to determine which model of player will be best for you. Historically, their systems included a movie player that does all of the processing and a movie server that stores the content. There are a few options here depending on how much storage and speed of downloads you wish to have. However, we often had people tell us that they would love to get into the Kaleidescape system, but the cost was just over their budget. We kept pushing our friends at Kaleidescape to produce a less expensive model that would reach a larger audience. Well, they’ve delivered on our requests. The new Strato V comes with a much more affordable price tag that makes this system intriguing to a lot more people.
New Strato V All-In-One Movie Player
The just-released Strato V is an all-in-one movie player and server inside one box that is about the size of the Strato C movie player. It features lossless multichannel audio, including Dolby Atmos, Dolby TrueHD, DTS:X, and DTS-HD Master Audio. It plays back true 4K Ultra HD, with bitrates up to 100 Mbps and frame rates up to 60 fps! It also supports SDR, HDR10, and Dolby Vision. In fact, this is the only Kaleidescape that supports Dolby Vision. In addition, it can upscale both SD and HD content into 4K for an improved image on legacy movies or shows. It also works with universal remotes and popular control systems like Control4, so you can program your system so that when you hit play on your movie, your lights can dim and shades go down, or you can set up any other automation you wish that will be integrated right into your Kaleidescape system. I will include a couple of our home theater showcase videos in the description that show off this type of automation with Kaleidescape.
The Strato V is an all-in-one player and server, so you only need this one product to get started in the Kaleidescape ecosystem. Inside, there is a 960 GB SSD hard drive that stores about 10 reference 4K movies at a time. They’ve even created a new streamlined interface just for this unit that is optimized for browsing a smaller library. Now, you might be thinking that 10 movies isn’t a whole lot to have on your system at a time. Well, this is where the speed and efficiency of this system come in. When you choose a movie to download or rent from the store, you can download it in as little as 10 minutes with a gigabit ethernet connection, even while watching a movie on your system at the same time! The idea is that you can purchase as many titles as you’d like and keep a few on your system at a time. When you want to browse your library to look for something to watch and find one that you’ve already purchased or want to purchase, simply start the download, go make yourself some popcorn and a drink, and by the time you’re back, that movie is ready to be played in its full lossless glory. You can even set it up to delete movies from your system after 48 hours to keep space clear for your next download. And any deleted movies still show up in your account so you can download them again at any time. You can also access the store from your phone or computer, so you can easily choose a movie before coming home from work or finishing up your round of golf and have it ready to play by the time you are home. While you might not be able to watch something as quickly as streaming if it’s not already downloaded, we’d argue that waiting that handful of minutes or simply planning ahead is worth the incredible quality increase you will get from a Kaleidescape movie.
The Strato V is a much more affordable option than their other products. As of launch it will be starting under $4,000! The Strato V is ideal for someone who wants to get into the Kaleidescape ecosystem and have the best of the best when it comes to watching movies, TV shows, and concerts in their theater or media room but doesn’t currently have the budget for the other Kaleidescape products. One of the best parts is that when you are ready to take the next step and add one or more of their Terra Prime movie servers to store more movies at once, you can simply use the Strato V as your player and add the server directly to that system without purchasing a new or different player. Doing this will turn the interface back into the full Kaleidescape experience and let you scale your system to your needs.
This is all housed in a modern black anodized aluminum and glass chassis roughly 8 inches by 1.5 inches by 10 inches. With their custom rack mount, you can fit two of these in one rack unit, or they offer a custom wall mount.
In addition, Kaleidescape has integrated all new electronics and grounding topology into the Strato V with the addition of player-side lossless decode for high-bitrate audio codecs. This provides flexibility to maximize sound quality with a range of downstream components.
Overall Recommendation
Overall, we are very excited to see Kaleidescape continue to improve its offering, take our feedback to heart, and make an all-in-one player that is affordable yet extremely powerful. There is no doubt that if you’ve spent time creating an incredible theater or media room, a Kaleidescape will take it to the next level. If you want to purchase one, there are great stores like Audio Advice around the country that sell Kaleidescape. If you don’t have one near you, you can purchase directly from AudioAdvice.com. If you are considering purchasing a Kaleidescape or upgrading or building a theater, feel free to stop by one of our award-winning stores or call or chat with our experts and we would love to help you figure out the best solution for you.
We’re here to help!
If you have further questions, contact our experts via chat, phone, or email. Or simply visit one of our world-class showrooms to experience speakers, projectors, TVs, and everything in between for yourself before you make a purchase!
If you’re planning your home theater or media room, check out our Home Theater Design page, where we have everything Home Theater related, including our FREE Home Theater Design Tool.
When you buy from Audio Advice, you’re buying from a trusted seller since 1978. We offer Free Shipping, Lifetime Expert Support, and our Price Guarantee. We look forward to serving you!
