Kaleidescape

2001-2014; Founding and early history

Kaleidescape was founded in 2001 by Michael Malcolm, Dan Collens, and Cheena Srinivasan. Malcolm had previously founded Network Appliance and CacheFlow. Malcolm self-funded the startup and the company spent over two years developing its technology in "stealth mode".

Kaleidescape originally focused on building home theater movie servers that could store digital copies of customers’ DVD and Blu-ray collections. Its first movie server was introduced in 2003 and allowed customers to import DVD content onto a series of hard drives, utilize the company's movie guide database to identify and sort films, and then present the customer's movie collection in an onscreen user interface.

In 2004, the DVD Copy Control Association, the licensor of Content Scramble System (CSS), the technology for the copy control of DVDs, sued Kaleidescape for breach of contract. The DVD CCA alleged that its CSS License did not permit Kaleidescape's movie servers to serve DVDs from copies on hard disk. In June 2014, Kaleidescape and DVD CCA reached a settlement agreement and as of 2019, the company had license agreements with 29 studios to allow the purchase and download of content from its movie store. The case, although only for breach of contract and not a copyright case, was considered by some to be an important recent test of fair use precedent, given advancements in technology and the digital media rights field.

2010-2014; Addition of Blu-ray

In 2010, Kaleidescape released its M300 and M500 Blu-ray players as part of its Premiere line for home cinemas. The M500 had Blu-ray copying abilities to allow customers to import Blu-rays, DVDs, and CDs onto home servers. To address the copyright concerns of movie studios, Kaleidescape required the Blu-ray disc to be present when the content was played from the server. Later that year, Kaleidescape launched the industry's first Blu-ray server with its release of its new 100-disc Blu-ray vault. The vault, when paired with the M300 or M500 players, could rip, store, and stream copies of Blu-ray movies throughout a home.