Cinema One Set-Top Box Is Incredible But Too Expensive

The Kaleidescape Cinema One is a home set-top box that is intended to feature all your favorite movies in the highest quality. And it can--if you're able to get past the sticker shock.

Priced at $3,995, the Cinema One is beautifully designed but much too expensive, according to Yahoo Tech's David Pogue.

"Every aspect of the Cinema One has received loving attention," Pogue described. "The remote control lights up when you use it. The onscreen interface is clean, lovely and so simple a neighbor could use it."

The Cinema One, which works by copying all of your CD, DVD and Blu-ray discs  onto its hard drive, brings together the screen quality and bonus features offered by discs while giving users the ease of online streaming.

Everything down to the bonus features is reproduced onto the 4-terabyte hard drive without losing any quality, according to Pogue. The device holds 600 movies on DVD or 100 from Blu-ray.

Your movie collection can be viewed onscreen in list format or as DVD covers. When you hit play, the actual film begins playing, skimming over FBI warnings and anything extra.

For $40 extra, the set-top box has a special children's remote with easy-to-use buttons. It also has a protective feature that hides all movies for grownups from the screen as soon as any button is pressed.

But the Cinema One has another catch besides its listing price: the anti-piracy insurance. If you want to watch a Blu-ray, you have to find your original disc and insert it. Since the movie has already been copied to the Cinema One hard drive, you're not playing the actual disc; you're just confirming that you own it.

While it's a bit inconvenient, at least the requirement is only for Blu-ray movies, which can also be purchased for $2 on the Cinema One store if you already own the film, Pogue noted.

Is the Cinema One worth the four grand price tag? Pogue said no.

"[It's] a success as a product. But the price is nuts," he wrote. "Don't forget that movies on discs won't be with us for much longer--the future is streaming or downloading--so you're making a huge investment in a machine whose purpose is winding down."