Sonos Playbase Nears Release

If this is but a Playbar with a base attached, having no HDMI or support for modern codecs, I question the decision making at Sonos.

Sorry Chris I really meant with newer tv's. The stands seem more more 'leggy' now.
My understanding is this is not really designed to go in your rack/take up space on a shelf.

ah - I get what you mean sjw. Yea they do seem to have gone more toward legs on right and left instead of center stands. Looking at my stand on my living room TV - its really large (ok measured vs. online specs for playbase and it does still fit on top of the Playbase - playbase is pretty big.) Looking at the height with the Playbase only being at 2.3" most TV's with legs on both sides you should be able to slide the playbase below the TV still. Worst case someone may have to fashion something below the left/right legs to hold the TV up an extra 1/2" or so.

hmmm... it would also fit perfectly on shelf below my TV on wall in my Sunroom. Ok now I've gone from ditching it to wanting 2 of them (ok again if sound quality is there - which I imagine it is - and it supports all the modern Codecs...assuming those TV's will pass it through which I haven't ever tested on them). Lots of ifs that I will go through but I don't know the average consumer would. Of course I'm sure they have done a lot of market research on.

Playbase specs: https://www.cnet.com/products/sonos-playbase-sound-stand-for-tv/specs/

No Hdmi
No DTS
No High /Res audio.

LOL
Wow
Other TLA's

So this looks more and more like a repackaged PlayBar. I'm uncertain that the changed form factor will be materially different...

I get that many tech companies push forward new product that are incremental improvements rather than 'bleeding edge' (Every product release update Apple has ever made it seems is accused of not going far enough...)

But, there certainly could be material changes 'under the hood'... so I'm interested in seeing what the details are when it is actually available... what it actually sounds like, etc....

I just would have thought HDMI input to future-prof the product would have been a given... I thought I'd read that an optical input lacks the bandwidth to do DD+ or other formats (DTS) ... I get Sonos doesn't support them now... but thought they might like to hedge their bets...

You read wrong then. Optical is more than capable of passing standard DTS.

I'm not much of a spec guy... clearly not standard DTS then, but it is articles like this one that make me wonder about 'future proofing' with an HDMI as opposed to only Optical.

https://www.cnet.com/news/hdmi-vs-optical-which-digital-audio-connection-to-use/

We don't know that those are accurate specs yet as far as dts.