Please add support for DTS for the Sonos Playbar.

I own a Playbar and a Sub. My TV is an LG 42LW5500, connected on it are a Bluray Player LG BD420 on HDMI1, and a Sat Receiver VuSolo on HDMI2. From Sat receiver, the sound is Stereo, DD2.0 or DD5.1, those are correctly passed through to the Playbar. From the Bluray Player, in the setup, the Audio Digital Output was set to DTS, on the Playbar, even if you chose DD5.1 or DTS, it was always Stereo. I've changed on the BluRay Player from DTS to BitStream, now DD5.1 is passed through, but, of course DTS stays as Stereo. In my case I have two limitation regarding DTS, first the TV, I suppose it do not support DTS pass through, and the Playbar! I can understand Bernd's frustration, but I don't have buy the Playbar by Sonos, so I had only 14 days to send it back the device. If we suppose that DTS will be supported in the future, then I have to buy a Toslink Switch. I think the sound for the music is amazing for all Sonos devices, and this was the first, and I use more the Playbar for the music as for the TV, so my decision would to not return the Playbar. We are in the beginning of the Playbar history, I think to implement DTS is not simply add some more lines of source codes, I want to give Sonos more time to do it, when I see the quality of the products and the software, the engineers are serious and smart guys!
But one point disappointed me, this is the "zero" reaction of Sonos regarding the future implementation or not of DTS.

Tom, in fact Sonos is after more than two month of increasing user requests for a simple answer as 'YES' or 'NO' still unable or unwilling to give clear and strong commitments to current customers. There is no Sonos commitment saying the 'beta:PLAYBAR v1 without DTS' is from a hardware point of view capable of doing full DTS support whenever Sonos decides to do so, if they do. There is no Sonos commitment saying the 'beta:PLAYBAR v1 without DTS' is going to be upgraded with DTS on time, in the near future or whenever. There is no Sonos commitment saying the 'beta:PLAYBAR v1 without DTS' is going to be upgraded with DTS anyway, even if the hardware is capable to work for a DTS upgrade. There is even no Sonos commitment saying in case we do a DTS upgrade for the 'beta:PLAYBAR v1 without DTS' it's going to be for free for current customers. Due to all those missing commitments and the weak 5.1 implementation I returned all Sonos equipment and got my good money back. Make the voice of your good money heard, return the scrappy 'beta:PLAYBAR v1 without DTS'. Return it ! Return it ! Return it !

Bernd, I appreciate your passion, many of us are in the same camp, but I think I speak for many when I say you've made your point now. You've returned yours and suggest others do the same. I get an email alert every time you make or edit a post. I don't particularly want to count them but it gets quite tedious when my phone beeps every five minutes to see the same copy/pasted text being pasted over again.

I second that.

Sorry about that. I was not aware every re-edit is re-send as an email to all other user, 'cause I never saw any re-sends anywhere. Going to do it in Word and just go for a sinlge copy on future posts. Please accept my apologies for any inconvinience. Bernd

Dear all, please find attached the last Sonos statement regarding DTS (and transcoding) related connectivity issues for the ‚beta:PLAYBAR without DTS‘ from the German support team. German ORIGINAL : Es ist bei Sonos bekannt, dass diverse Fernsehmodelle keine Lizenzen haben, um den Ton einer externen HDMI Quelle über den optischen Ausgang wiederzugeben. Dies führt dazu, dass die PLAYBAR keinen Ton abspielt, was jedoch vom Fernseher abhängig ist. It is well known at Sonos, that several HD-TV sets are missing the license to play out the audio of an external HDMI source on their optical output. Therefore the PLAYBAR is not playing any audio, but this depends on the HD TV set. I’m speechless … words fail me.

Dear all, please find attached the last Sonos statement regarding DTS (and transcoding) related connectivity issues for the ‚beta:PLAYBAR without DTS‘ from the German support team. German ORIGINAL : Es ist bei Sonos bekannt, dass diverse Fernsehmodelle keine Lizenzen haben, um den Ton einer externen HDMI Quelle über den optischen Ausgang wiederzugeben. Dies führt dazu, dass die PLAYBAR keinen Ton abspielt, was jedoch vom Fernseher abhängig ist. It is well known at Sonos, that several HD-TV sets are missing the license to play out the audio of an external HDMI source on their optical output. Therefore the PLAYBAR is not playing any audio, but this depends on the HD TV set. I’m speechless … words fail me.
With all of the tv manufacturers/moels they offer...seems like a very very very small list. https://sonos.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1931/~/television-compatibility-with-the-playbar

Dear all, please find attached the last Sonos statement regarding DTS (and transcoding) related connectivity issues for the ‚beta:PLAYBAR without DTS‘ from the German support team. German ORIGINAL : Es ist bei Sonos bekannt, dass diverse Fernsehmodelle keine Lizenzen haben, um den Ton einer externen HDMI Quelle über den optischen Ausgang wiederzugeben. Dies führt dazu, dass die PLAYBAR keinen Ton abspielt, was jedoch vom Fernseher abhängig ist. It is well known at Sonos, that several HD-TV sets are missing the license to play out the audio of an external HDMI source on their optical output. Therefore the PLAYBAR is not playing any audio, but this depends on the HD TV set. I’m speechless … words fail me.
@tua09788 To expand the list you can instantly add my three test HD TV sets: Sony KDL-40X2000, Sony KDL-40Z5800, Philips 40PFL8606K/02 As far as I’m aware the only relevant HD-TV license beyond the free license to forward a given bitstream is maybe ‚DTS 2.0 + Digital Output‘, but this is required to decode DTS 5.1 and down-mix to DTS 2.0 for stereo output on external analog audio devices … or to support the PCM 2.0 stereo workaround on the ‚beta:PLAYBAR v1 without DTS‘. Some of the Sonos support answers have a high cringe factor. (Maybe some of mine, too)

Please DTS support now 😕

Dear all, just would like to share some additional information about DTS and especially DTS licensing with you. On traditional hardware based audio equipment DTS decoding requires a DTS sound processor chip or a multi norm audio processor chip supporting DTS decoding to play out the sound of a given DTS audio stream. These sound processor chips usually have an ‘embedded’ license and you pay for this license with the chip price, cause the developer and/or supplier of the chip is partner and/or licensee for DTS technologies from DTS Inc. and the developer and/or supplier is taking care of proper licensing. For software based DTS decoding you should become a partner and/or licensee with DTS Inc. , create a valid license contract and pay for a proper license matching the license requirement of your product. As Sonos is still not sharing comprehensive information about the DTS capabilities of the current PLAYBAR hardware and the current PLAYBAR software, my expectation about the relationship between Sonos Inc. and DTS Inc. is as follows: During PLAYBAR development Sonos decided to avoid DTS licensing cost and Sonos initially saved the money for a multi norm audio processor chip on the PLAYBAR hardware and for a DTS software license, too. Therefore they are finally forced to do it in software and must go for a valid DTS software license, if they - maybe - want to do it now or later on or whenever, but right now they have no valid license for DTS at all. I would roughly guess Sonos Inc. started negotiations with DTS Inc. during the development of the PLAYBAR and the ‘big Sonos’ stopped the negotiation on a partner and/or licensee contract and affronted DTS Inc. by kicking DTS out of the PLAYBAR or maybe the full Sonos product range. Just in case my simple thoughts are quite close to the truth, I - as the affronted license and patents owner of DTS technologies - would decline to give Sonos a DTS license at all or at a minimum triple the price. Anyway, the Sonos customers are going to ‘pay the price’ for Sonos’ faulty decisions on DTS, in worth case by never ever getting properly licensed DTS on the current PLAYBAR or any other Sonos equipment. Bernd http://www.dts.com/professionals/licensing.aspx