Kaleidescape has announced two players with Blu-ray capabilities for its media server setup - the M500 and the M300. The M500 allows you to import Blu-rays onto your media server as well as playback, the M300 is simply a playback machine.

The M500 and the M300 both allow DVD and CD playback as well as the Blu-ray functionality. Once you've loaded your discs up to the server, you can then watch back the content via any Kaleidescape player in your house in glorious 1080p. At £2995 for the M500 and £1995 for the M300, chances are you're not going to have too many players lying about the house though.

Another problem is that, because of legal wrangles with the film industry, Kaleidescape has had to compromise and, as such, to play Blu-ray movies via the server the disc will still have to be present in a player. Kaleidescape has said it is working on a disc-loader to overcome this inconvenience in the future.

The user interface is very impressive however, Kaleidescape states that it has movie guide info for over 135,000 titles including around 3300 Blu-ray titles.

If you've got a few grand to spare then you can't really go wrong with Kaleidescape's players. They are the Rolls-Royce of the media server world.

You can pre-order direct from Kaleidescape now, shipments will commence on 18 May.

• See also - Kaleidescape Mini System debuts

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