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Xperinet shutters media server business

As a follow up to the latest article; it has been confirmed by CEPro that Xperinet has closed operations.

It all started on 1st August of this year when CEO John Cox sent out the quote previously posted to sales reps. Citing the downturn in the economy, Cox said they will be filing for bankruptcy unless they can find a buyer or receive $400,000 in investment.

But there is more to this story than just a bad economy. In August of 2007 the company announced a media client named the Tarpon which never shipped because they never received the software. Earlier this year they announced Blu-ray support which was incompatible with their Linux operating system so they switched to a Windows platform, but this also failed to come to market. They instead preloaded Blu-ray Disc movies to the server, but this limited the end user to loading DVDs only.

They are claiming on developing a new platform, but I wouldn’t hold my breath for this. The media server market is getting crowded and I wouldn’t be surprised if this happened to another company or two - or at least getting bought up by bigger companies.

Did Xperinet go out of business?

There hasn’t been anything in the news, but apparently Xperinet isn’t answering their phones. A Remote Cental forum has one member saying two of their three phone numbers are disconnected and they’re not answering on the third. Another member says Xperinet is not accepting UPS deliveries at their office.

I can confirm the report about the phone numbers. You can call them yourself to confirm, their numbers are on their website.

One member on the forum posted a quotation from the company, but it was not attributed to anybody and it is not clear where they received this information. (From my own sources, this was an email sent to sales representatives.)

Xperinet is presently undertaking a significant restructuring due to weakness in the US economy. Slow US sales have placed considerable pressure on the company, and we are having to retrench, and focus on engineering before we can resume sales and marketing efforts in the US.

If this is true, they haven’t posted this information on their website, they haven’t informed their dealers. However last week at least one sales representative was let go from Xperinet. (This comes to me third- or fourth-party, and I’m unable to confirm it 100%.)

Xperinet manufactures hard-drive based DVD and CD storage for home theaters and home video distribution. Last year they announced support for Blu-ray Disc. They were the first to offer slim-clients for mounting behind TVs, and the first to offer synchronization between multiple units at different locations over the internet.

If they don’t come out soon confirming they have closed up shop or otherwise, I’m sure we’ll have final confirmation at CEDIA Expo in September.

LG unveils Blu-ray player with Netflix Watch Now

LG Electronics has unveiled a Blu-ray player with the ability to stream video from Netflix. This is the second set-top device with this feature. Roku released a Netflix Watch Now player in May.

Previous LG Blu-ray players were dual-format playing the now defunct HD DVD. This new player, the BD300, follows that tradition, but this time it plays Blu-ray Discs and streams online content.

The player will ship this Autumn at a price “well below $500″ to be competitive with other Blu-ray players on the market. It will be BD2.0 with BonusView and BD-Live ability.

Netflix subscriptions with the unlimited Watch Now feature begin at $8.99 per month - just a little more than a 24-hour rental of a single title through some other services. You also receive DVDs and/or Blu-rays delivered through the mail.

The Xbox 360 and Windows Media Center platforms can also access Netflix Watch Now material.

Samsung offers third HTiB

Samsung is now offering a new home theater in a box (HTiB) with Blu-ray at $799 (SRP). The HT-BD2E features a 800W 5.1 speaker package and an integrated receiver with Blu-ray player, this is the lowest priced Blu-ray HTiB system yet.

The Blu-ray player features BonusView, which is a mandatory function now. It outputs 1080p at 60fps or 24fps, depending on the source material. The HDMI output works with other HDMI-CEC compliant devices from Samsung, such as a TV. This allows for one remote to control multiple devices.

Samsung has two other Blu-ray HTiB systems, one for $999 and another at $1,499.

Source: CEPro

Kaleidescape’s digital media plans

The market for hard drive based home media libraries is growing, and is increasingly competitive. Microsoft is pushing their Windows Vista Home Media Center products through brands such as Niveus, LifeWare, and Inteset. These products offer not only hard drive storage for video and audio, they also access online media through Netflix, Rhapsody, Amazon, YouTube and other providers. Even non-Windows based servers are adding these features. Escient, for example, has a new line named Vision which can access online radio stations and Rhapsody.

As the leader in home media storage, I contacted Michael Malcolm, founder, president and CEO of Kaleidescape, and asked him about their future plans to include digital delivery services. The original intention of Kaleidescape was to deliver content over the Internet, and they even obtained patents on this technology. They used this knowledge to distribute multiple streams of high-quality video to multiple rooms simultaneously. But seven years ago things were different, and the studios did not want to allow their content to be distributed digitally. Things have changed and all major studios are providing digital delivery. (Bold text is my question; Italics are Michael Malcolm.)


Now that the studios are willing to deliver their movies in a rights-managed format over the Internet are you looking to add digital delivery to your product? If so, would this be offered directly through you or would you use a service like Music Giants?

We have been watching this drama unfold for the past eight years. With regard to digital distribution of movies via the Internet, the studios have progressed from a state of denial to one of cautious experimentation. Some studios are now willing to make some content available for Internet distribution, but usually only in sub-DVD quality formats. While this represents great progress for the studios, the vast majority of movies people actually want to watch in their homes are not available for Internet delivery, and those that are available are more suitable for watching on a laptop, not on a home theater screen. In fact, most of the movies people would like to watch in their homes are only available on DVD. We believe that electronic delivery of high definition movies is inevitable, but we also believe that it will be years before we will see the selection of movies available online approach anything like the selection available today on DVD. Kaleidescape plans to support Internet delivery of video entertainment. We plan to support third-party Internet delivery services as they become viable sources of significant numbers of high-quality motion pictures.

On a similar discussion, are you considering adding Internet radio streaming or Internet music downloads through Rhapsody, Pandora or a similar service?

Yes. Internet radio and streaming Internet music are on our road map. Eventually the Kaleidescape System will provide the user interface to all types of entertainment sources and distribute them throughout the home.

Early this year, Kaleidescape also announced plans for Blu-ray Disc support. In the mean time they’ve released an upconverting 1080p media player that has been compared to Blu-ray quality.

I was still curious about their Movie Collections. Would these be converted to high-def where possible?

Finally, now that a lot of movies are in high-def on Blu-ray and HD DVD, considering most studios are now archiving their movies in high-def, will you be changing your movie collections to high-def where available? Criterion Collection is now releasing Blu-ray movies, that would be a great collection to have in high-def available in one of your Kaleidescape Collections.

We will consider this in the future. However, today the number of movies in one of our larger DVD collections is approximately the same as the total number of movies available on Blu-ray. So, the studios will need to dramatically increase the number of titles available on Blu-ray before it will be possible to design interesting collections of Blu-ray movies.

While I have seen a lot of smarmy, anonymous comments about the price of the Kaleidescape systems, I haven’t seen any product that has the same build quality, back end support and engineering know-how as this one. Their products simply work, they work well and they work solid. They’re also the only DVD storage system with a DVD-CCA license.

The sales representative I spoke with wanted to reassure me that Kaleidescape intends to remain the market leader, not allowing any company to pass them up in innovation. He mentioned plans for growth which have me excited to see what the next few years will bring.

My thanks to Michael Malcolm for spending his valuable time answering my questions.

Correction: Originally I had reported the Blu-ray player was confirmed for first quarter 2009. I have been informed this is wrong information. There is no date given for a release on this product. I imagine this will be pushed back until there is a much larger library of Blu-ray releases. I apologize for this false report.

Correction part two: For clarification purposes, the Blu-ray product will not be “pushed back” because it was never announced for the first quarter. Michael Malcolm wanted to comment on this matter personally:

Earlier this year we announced to dealers that we planned to release a Blu-ray player in 2009. We never mentioned any quarter, and many dealers have assumed this means 4th quarter. We have been working diligently do produce a Blu-ray player in spite of the fact that there is not a large library of Blu-ray releases. We have not pushed back the delivery of this product, but it is still too early to even schedule a release date. Also, Kaleidescape does not make a practice of pre-announcing release dates of future products. It is unusual for us to announce anything about what we are working on for the future, as we did for Blu-ray.

Kaleidescape and the Kaleidescape logo are trademarks of Kaleidescape, Inc.; they are registered in the United States and certain other jurisdictions. Other trademarks and trade names are owned by third parties and may be registered in some jurisdictions.

Sony ships new Blu-ray player

Although announced in February, Sony’s latest Blu-ray set-top player has just begun shipping last week.

The BDP-S350 is a BD1.1 player, meaning it has all the BonusView features available. It is also “BD-Live ready” pending a scheduled firmware update. This requires a 1GB flash drive (not provided by Sony) placed in the rear of the player.

Another notable change is its physical size. It’s now 55% smaller than the previous BDP-S300, and uses 43% less power in standby mode. Sony is proclaiming this player “green.”

I have used this new player, and I gave it a tryout in the form of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Mans Chest. This disc is loaded with BD-Java menus and operates sluggishly on the previous BDP-S300. First I opened the tray while the movie was playing and noticed that it opened much faster, in a few seconds. The S300 player took over twenty-seconds to open. When the tray was closed again the first preview played in approximately twenty-seconds. A loading screen played in the form of the key used to open Davy’s chest. With the S300, that loading screen took over fifteen-seconds to begin displaying, and almost double before the preview played. The BD-Java menu has a 3D skull on the top of the screen speaking while a storm rages through the surround speakers. On the S300 the menu lagged a portion of a second between buttons, but the S350 had immediate response.

This is very promising. So far this is the fastest player I have seen. I’m hoping to try out the new Pioneer Elite BDP-01 player soon.

For $399, the BDP-S350 is also reasonably priced in the mid-fi category. Otherwise, Sylvania and Maganavox have players in electronic retailers at $299.

Source: CEPro

Onkyo planning Blu-ray launch

One of the few hardware manufacturers to actually release an HD DVD player will be releasing a Blu-ray player later this year. Onkyo’s previous high-def effort was a rebadged Toshiba player which sold so poorly they pulled their support for HD DVD within months.

While they have not released model or pricing information, the initial player will support all Blu-ray audio formats on board, and will feature HDMI 1.3 (this is pretty much standard now). Considering this is the extent of the information provided, I can only assume Onkyo will build this player and I’m sure we’ll see an Integra version shortly after release.

Source: TWICE