Real is also a paying member of the DVD CCA, and Kalidescape’s ‘win’ is under appeal.  Real tried to duplicate Kalidescape’s product in my opinion.  The reason Real is being fought tooth and nail is that they want to sell a $300 product, and not a $30,000 product.

Remember that Kalidescape is the only manufacturer that went to the trouble to get a license from the DVD CCA. Technically it’s illegal to put protected DVD content on any device without that license. (What constitutes fair use is another issue, of course.)

I, too, would think the price is a typo. IIRC their full system starts at about 30K, the smaller system is 10K. (Unless this is a price drop on the smaller system.)

Surely that’s meant to be 799.50 dollars.  For a starter system it sure is expensive.  I agree with Aedile, WooHoo! and Paul.
I can get network attached media servers for around 400 euros with a 500GB hard drive built in. And then connect it up to a NAS and you have almost unlimited storage and the whole thing would still cost less than 8000 dollars.

I can’t help but agree with people taking issue with the price-point.  As a dedicated home theater enthusiast, and some-time professional, I have spent a lot of time around kaleidescape boxes.  While they are slick, there is nothing here that can’t be done with XBMC.  For under $1000 you can have a system which, with very little massaging gives you the same level of service for a single zone, along with 4 terabytes of raid5 storage, blu-ray capable and has a NICER interface (see wall mode on the Aeon Auriga skin).  The only thing I’ve seen Kaleidescape do that XBMC still can’t do is the cool flying shuffle stuff, and XBMC does more than just video/music.  Can also do web-based video, photos, etc.  The trade-off is, of course, that it takes slightly more time to set up and maintain.

-aedile-

for the record, they are not “ripping off” anybody.

And the simple fact is that the two products are very very different.

At the end of the day however, the real difference is the experience.  how the K UI works, and the speed of the box, and many other features make it a product that is head and shoulders different… and there are lots of people that will see that difference.

However just looking at two boxes that both simply serve up dvd’s it seems simple to just draw an apples to apples comparison.  much like a lexus LS and a scion.  they both do the same thing.  however HOW they do it is very different.  and for some people (plenty if you look at lexus sales) the difference is worthwhile.

And it still remains to be seen if the real box will see the light of day.  and nobody has any real idea of its feature set, or its UI/speed/reliability/quality, etc.