That's always the question that is asked. What if? Really, we could say that about everything. The 4k player market for physical discs has been slowly dying. Down to just a few players on the market. Panasonic still has their players out there. For their top-of-the-line player, you're going to drop $1000. Now check out some players made from other countries like Magnetar. Their new 4k players came out and just to get the entry level model is $1800 and goes up to $3300. That's just for the player. Still have to purchase all the physical discs. What if Magnetar goes out of business in the next 5 years, how will those players be serviced? Remember Oppo? who would've thunk Oppo would go out of business? Their players sold like hot cakes. Then boom, gone.
Kaleidescape has been around for 25 years. They've had their ups and downs, but I really think their new-ish CEO has really pushed the company forward. They have released so much new stuff within the last 2 years. I would say more new things in the last 2 compared to previous decade or more. The entry price has been cut down. Their digital library has been growing non-stop. Which, they have massive deals in place with almost every single studio. The studio's send them the actual metadata file to which K-scape can make even better.
Their brand-new players now support 8k, which of course nothing is out for, but now is future proofed. But what they've created is a new 4k format called 4k Cinematic. Which is added at no additional cost when purchasing a movie. What K-scape did was expand the bit rates and jump the color chroma up to 4:4:4. Movie theater chains are now purchasing K-scapes to use in their theaters. When they play older movies, they can now show them in true 4k picture and lossless sound quality.
Don't get me wrong, I do like physical disc. I continue to purchase physical discs every single week. The biggest issue for me is, I'm running out of space. I don't want to keep an entire room filled with bins that are full of movies. I rip all of my movies to HDD's and use a Zidoo UHD8000 to watch. I sometimes call it the "poor mans" version of K-scape. But in reality, it's not too far off the cost of having a K-scape. When you add in cost of player, movies, HDD's and other.
Again, to each his own. The home theater hobby is open to do whatever makes you happy. K-scape will most likely always be there, and it will always be a love hate with tons of people. If people do end up pulling the string and getting one, they will not be disappointed.
