Please add support for DTS for the Sonos Playbar.

John M replied here 2 days ago:
https://ask.sonos.com/sonos/topics/no_clarity_on_playbar_supporting_dts_still_please_dont_be_arrogan...

I've been looking at sounds bars for some time now. Both the Bose and Sonos sound bars sound ok but from my research neither is providing enough bang for my buck at this time....Sonos has a slight edge in certain areas but I'm not upgrading my current system until DTS SUPPORT is added PLEASE count my vote

I've been looking at sounds bars for some time now. Both the Bose and Sonos sound bars sound ok but from my research neither is providing enough bang for my buck at this time....Sonos has a slight edge in certain areas but I'm not upgrading my current system until DTS SUPPORT is added PLEASE count my vote

Anyone who has worked in a software company will find this familiar. Under consideration means it hasn't been ruled out, but there's a lot more in the pipeline that is considered a higher priority, be it bug fixes, new features, or whatever else.

You can't add every feature to the roadmap far in advance of when it will be implemented, because changing technologies and unforeseen consequences mean that you may have to remove it before implementation. This will reduce user and investor confidence in your roadmap, which is a bad thing for everyone. It also means additional (and expensive!) developer hours spent on adding support for features that may not make it into the product, or because of the complexity of the overall codebase, refactoring code to include hooks for an uncertain future feature, potentially a lot of wasted time and expense, leading to a necessary increase in product pricing.

I am confident that Sonos will add DTS support before too long, because it makes sound business sense to do so. However, should it no longer make as much sense to do so - because of an industry shift to another technology for example - to commit now to the addition of this would require a licencing agreement that could cost a significant amount in vain, and the amount would have to be agreed up front before Sonos could commit, to avoid having sunk hundreds or thousands of development, QA and testing hours into a technology that would drive the Playbar price too high to sell.

Personally, I'd like to see it developed as a paid add on for up to US$100, if that would speed development, but I suspect that given the numbers of people using Sonos systems happily without DTS, this might not still be enough to make it worthwhile to Sonos.

So to all the people having temper tantrums about the lack of DTS support, please understand that Sonos is a business and to sustain their company they need to deal with the realities of finance. Register your desire for DTS support, and move on. Histrionics do not help. To those of you who are contributing intelligently to the discussion, I salute you; you are in a minority.

R.

No DTS on the Playbar is a huge drawback.  This shouldn't be "under consideration" it should be "in progress."  COME ON!

A generous description of reply there Fabian 😉  They really are a bunch of muppets.

I would assume this isn't a quick & easy decision to be taken by Sonos & I imagine DTS needs a license fee to use, which Sonos will need to pay. I wouldn't have thought it's hardware as it would be a straight "No" answer.

Similarly to IOS, apps that use AC3 (owned by Dolby), even free apps were being asked to stump up $0.99 per copy to use the AC3 codec. Shame, as I think this is a major selling point for a lot of people.

For more information:

https://ask.sonos.com/sonos/topics/no_clarity_on_playbar_supporting_dts_still_please_dont_be_arrogant

Dear all,

finally it was the perfect decision to return the scrappy 'PLAYBAR v1 without DTS and without HDMI' early in 2013. The DTS topic is still 'Under Consideration', last official reply 4m (in writing FOUR MONTH') ago, no valuable progress on a lot of other PLAYBAR related topics, a useless PLAY:1 dealing with the same PLAYBAR issues as most of the other SONOS 'equipment'.

For sure SONOS can't never ever solve those issues, 'cause - as I already stated early in 2013 - most of those issues are simply 'failure by design' created by an high-handed engineering team not listening to their customers and not understanding home theater technology and licensing.

P.S.:
Just to keep the big J updated :))

P.P.S.:
Yes, that very big J who called me 'Major of Problem Customer Town' (MPTC) !
I'm still so proud of my tin foil hat, 'cause it works fine compared with a PLAYBAR.

Could have been a new Sonos customer, but without DTS no chance...