Please add support for DTS for the Sonos Playbar.

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
Quite an active imagination you've got there!

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
This thread really turned into spam. I got my playbar the day it came out and love it ever since. There are a lot of ways to work around the lack of DTS on the Playbar. My HTPC converts DTS to DD 5.1 on the fly, while watching movies. It works flawlessly with my Playbar 5.1 setup.

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
More like a religious crusade than Spam.

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
Schultz.janis, So the easy work around is to spend several hundred pounds on a noisy home theatre PC and somehow deploy that in the cabinet under my TV stand. I then need to mess around installing codecs within Windows and using a remote mouse to access the system. Not exactly what I would call convenient. Whilst I appreciate your "spam" sentiment, trivialising the DTS issue is not appreciated. If I'd wanted to run a PC machine in order to use Sonos, I'd have gone Squeezebox many years ago. But Squeezebox was fiddly and only suitable for techie people, which is why sales were poor and the product line ditched by Logitech. Sonos used to be the opposite to this, until PLAYBAR at least.

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
Bernd - I can understand your frustrations but at this point, I think your participation in this discussion is doing more harm than good. I am also very frustrated with the lack of DTS support on the Playbar but it is now a well known failing of the device and people can decide if it meets their own needs. IMO, this list should be for people to +1 the feature request and not for long conspiracy theories and rants. I think Sonos made a very bad decision to not include DTS support but they are not hiding that fact. Your attacks on the company and the people making these decisions seems completely irrational given the fact that you are not being forced to buy the device if you don't like how it functions. I really wish there was an ignore function on this list so I could just avoid having my email filled up with your "points" multiple times a day but I do not think there is. I would like to remain subscribed so I can keep up to date on this feature request but it is becoming more and more difficult with your constant spam. Now that you have made your opinion known, can you please step back for a while and refrain from additions multiple times a day? If you feel you need a platform, maybe you can start a thread on the regular forum so people that want to read your thoughts can follow you in a more appropriate setting?

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
1

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
1

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
Agreed!

So, I already posted once on this topic, but I need to add something: While I am keeping my Playbar because it's "just good enough" so far for me (DTS would make it actually "good", while not "great"), I really considered giving a new Playbar as a gift to my dad, but won't JUST because of the lack of DTS support!! My dad has all his music digitalized and is currently looking for a soundbar. I would LOVE him to have the Playbar and enter the "Sonos world", because I know he would love it, because it just works and is good quality. Nevertheless, because of the DTS issue, it doesn't really "just work" anymore and I don't want to bring a gift that causes more trouble than anything else... Until Sonos fixes this, I think my dad will have bought the Bose Solo (which he will need to buy himself, because I am not a fan), just because it is cheaper. This actually saddens me a little as it would have been the perfect opportunity to introduce my father to the joys of Sonos streaming and Internet streaming in general. But well...

So, I already posted once on this topic, but I need to add something: While I am keeping my Playbar because it's "just good enough" so far for me (DTS would make it actually "good", while not "great"), I really considered giving a new Playbar as a gift to my dad, but won't JUST because of the lack of DTS support!! My dad has all his music digitalized and is currently looking for a soundbar. I would LOVE him to have the Playbar and enter the "Sonos world", because I know he would love it, because it just works and is good quality. Nevertheless, because of the DTS issue, it doesn't really "just work" anymore and I don't want to bring a gift that causes more trouble than anything else... Until Sonos fixes this, I think my dad will have bought the Bose Solo (which he will need to buy himself, because I am not a fan), just because it is cheaper. This actually saddens me a little as it would have been the perfect opportunity to introduce my father to the joys of Sonos streaming and Internet streaming in general. But well...
I think if you are useing (or your dad) the Playbar standalone (that mean without Sub + 2 Play:3), and if we suppose that DTS will be supported, you will not ear big difference between DTS, DD, PCM sources. I´m not sure to be clear, DTS make sense only in 5.1 mode, not with the Playbar standalone.