This 246TB SSD media server is built for millionaire cinephiles —Kaleidescape's newest home theater vault supports 25 simultaneous 4K streams, stores up to 2,300 4K cinematic movies
The ultimate luxury cinema upgrade
Kaleidescape, a maker of luxury home theater equipment, has revealed its latest media server, the "Compact Terra Prime 246TB SSD." As the descriptive name suggests, it's a compact movie server with 246TB of storage for opulent home theater setups. We didn't get a price, but it's likely to be $150,000+ given what the company's other servers cost. It can be combined with Kaleidescape's $4,000 Strato V media player to form the highest-end movie-watching experience possible outside of actual theaters.
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The Compact Terra Prime uses the same chassis as the aforementioned Strato V player and holds 2x enterprise-grade 123TB SSDs inside. We didn't get confirmation on what kind of SSDs these are, but we can infer from the specs that it's a pair of Solidigm D5-P5336 drives. It's the only SKU that makes sense; each of those is a PCIe 4.0 ultra-high-density NVMe SSD using 3D QLC NAND, likely in the U.2 form factor. Anyhow, the combined 246TB capacity can hold up to 4,000 standard 4K movies, or 2,300 "4K Cinematic" / 8K movies, or 6,800 HD movies.
To understand what 4K Cinematic means, you have to know that Kaleidescape is not just a manufacturer. The company also runs an online movie store that directly licenses master copies of films from major studios. The platform hosts extremely high bitrate content for purchase that exceeds most 4K Blu-rays. As such, the 4K Cinematic tier promises 110 Mbps video with 4:4:4 chroma subsampling, with no compression. You also get support for HDR formats such as Dolby Vision and lossless audio formats like Dolby Atmos.
Watching these movies requires a proprietary Kaleidescape media player. The server isn't necessary, since the company's latest Strato V comes with 960 GB of onboard storage to hold up to eight 4K Cinematic movies at a time. When you combine a player, a server, and a movie store, you get the absolute pinnacle of home video: Blu-ray's high fidelity and online streaming's convenience in one place. The Compact Terra Prime 246TB simply represents one enormous piece of the puzzle.
The server weighs just 4 pounds, or less than 2 kilograms, and measures out to 7.87 x 1.52 x 10 inches. It has two fans that cool the NAND at a maximum noise level of 20 dB. The back of the device has a 2.5 Gbps Ethernet port that Kaleidescape promises can download a 4K movie in just 4 minutes if you saturate its throughput. This matters because you cannot stream movies from the company's online store; they must be downloaded locally first as part of the uncompromising experience.
Once available, though, the server supports up to 25 instances of 4K playback simultaneously. That's more than even most full-fledged movie theaters ever do. The Compact Terra Prime 246TB is also constructed entirely out of aluminum. You'd expect that kind of build quality given what it costs. Kaleidescape didn't reveal an MSRP, but its 120TB SSD server currently costs $34,995. Doing simple math, the 246TB version should cost double, if not more. It's available now, but you can only purchase it through select Kaleidescape partners on a made-to-order basis.
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Hassam Nasir is a die-hard hardware enthusiast with years of experience as a tech editor and writer, focusing on detailed CPU comparisons and general hardware news. When he’s not working, you’ll find him bending tubes for his ever-evolving custom water-loop gaming rig or benchmarking the latest CPUs and GPUs just for fun.
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re3eyul the only purpose of this is to say "I can throw outrageous amounts at anything" , bling culture . exemplifies the "money doesn't buy you culture and/or education" to the point. I've got a neighborhood full of these primitives around here.Reply -
Ricket5 Reply
There are people for who it makes sense. Home theater and home audio cater to the money is no object crowd at the high end. My turn table and speaker setup cost five figures and it's not remotely high end. It's also all hand me down gear.re3eyul said:the only purpose of this is to say "I can throw outrageous amounts at anything" , bling culture . exemplifies the "money doesn't buy you culture and/or education" to the point. I've got a neighborhood full of these primitives around here.
A friend of mine works in flim mastering. He's got a six figure home theater in his basement. To him, something like this is pocket change. He's already go better <Mod Edit> stuff you can't buy anyways. -
usertests Reply
I imagine a lot of their customers are connected to Hollywood and the film industry. If you are making 6-7 figures and are into film, you would probably get one of Kaleidescape's boxes (which start at only $4,000), and maybe a $10k-50k TV or projection system. For a real home theater experience.re3eyul said:the only purpose of this is to say "I can throw outrageous amounts at anything" , bling culture . exemplifies the "money doesn't buy you culture and/or education" to the point. I've got a neighborhood full of these primitives around here.
For a 246 TB system, the SSD cost alone is probably around $50k. -
txfeinbergs Yeah, as one of their customers (for about a year now), I did not buy this product obviously, but you don't even need it. You can get one of their $3K movie players and get the same experience. Sure, you will have to download your movies from their servers when you want to watch them, but in trade off you get pristine audio and visual - even better than Blu-Ray 4K quality. To me, that was worth it.Reply
If you are interested, you can buy directly from a dealer on these forums: https://www.kscapeowners.com/XF/ and save about 1/3rd the retail cost.
One note though. The article is not correct in one aspect. If you want the 4K Cinematic level of bitrate, you need a Strato K, not V. -
txfeinbergs Reply
5 year - and everything is replaceable.Bigshrimp said:I wonder if it has a 1-year warranty, lol. -
jpow111 Proprietary to the max. You can only view the movies you purchase from them, and you can only on their hardware.Reply -
ThisIsMe My plex server can easily stream that many direct play UHD movies from spinners for way less. Granted, that’s assuming some variation of different movies are being streamed (some can be the same movie of course) since they’ll be read from different disks in the pool. Depending on the movies played it can get closer to 30 max (if they’re around 45-60mbps, but for higher bitrate movies (around 80-100+mbps) it’ll be closer to 20-ish. It’s all about how you configure the storage pools and how the media it stored on them.Reply -
ThisIsMe Replytxfeinbergs said:but in trade off you get pristine audio and visual - even better than Blu-Ray 4K quality. To me, that was worth it.
I would argue that only counts for some movies and only newer releases. And the difference is usually minimal. However, there are some cases of publishers that do intentionally lower the bitrate on some UHD disk releases to use cheaper disks (less available space) or to prevent higher bitrate copies from floating around. That said, comparing a 95mbps stream with lossless 7.1 atmos audio to something that’s 101mbps is pretty moot and not worth 7-10 times the cost.
Just my two cents. Not everyone will agree. -
SethRogensBiggestFan Reply
You must not be familiar with home theaters or Kaleidescape. Six figures isn't much in home theater. This will cost six figures by itself and you still need a player. This is for the seven and 8 figure theaters.Ricket5 said:There are people for who it makes sense. Home theater and home audio cater to the money is no object crowd at the high end. My turn table and speaker setup cost five figures and it's not remotely high end. It's also all hand me down gear.
A friend of mine works in flim mastering. He's got a six figure home theater in his basement. To him, something like this is pocket change. He's already go better <Mod Edit> stuff you can't buy anyways.