The Kaleidescape movie system has been around for some time, but unless you were having a home cinema system installed in your basement or your barn annex, justifying the price was always out of the question.

Now that's all about to change - well, kind of - with the launch of the Kaleidescape Cinema One, a more "approachable" home offering for us mere mortals (who still earn lots of money).

For those not aware of Kaleidescape, the company makes movie servers that you plonk in your house and then load hundreds, if not thousands, of movies on to and watch to your heart's content. Kind of like a Netflix and Sky combined, but allowing you to control the available content rather than having to worry about licensing deals.

The new model, the Cinema One, is a movie server that stores up to 600 DVD-quality or 100 Blu-ray quality movies and can play them instantly at the press of the button.

The interface, which is lovely to use, lets you browse your collection by cover art or dig deeper and sort by genre, director or actor.

You can simply download Blu-ray quality movies right from the Kaleidescape Store which, says the company, is the only store that offers movie downloads with the same audio/video fidelity as Blu-ray discs - the newly announced Full HD Netflix service isn't live yet - and you'll get all the Blu-ray extras too.

Like Sonos, the Kaleidescape system can also be expanded, and if you've got the cash you can connect two Cinema One players together to double the storage, regardless of whether they are in different rooms. As you would hope, content played on one can be resumed on another.

Furthermore if you are really feeling flush, you can bolt on the optional DV700 Disc Vault that houses 320 Blu-ray discs for you to play at a moment's notice. No more getting off the sofa and firing up the PS3 - we know that's what you do now.

The Cinema One in the will cost $3,995, In the UK the system will cost £3,295. 

Meanwhile there's good news for those who already own a Kaliedescape system: the UK movie store has just gone live.