Sonos v. Heos Comparison

If comparisons are against competitive prosucts are not allowed it does not say much about a company’s confidence in its products!


Um, this thread is a comparison against a competitor’s product... There are hundreds of similar threads here, as a simple search will show...

I know. Then why was it rejected? You’re stating the obvious. I was playing devil’s advocate as to the reason for deletion. I suggested a few reasons. The list was not exhaustive.

I just rescued the thread Atari posted, it was caught by our automated spam filter and held for moderation review, nothing sinister I assure you.

Have a good weekend everyone!

It seems the patent infringement case Sonos vs Denon is closed?

Denon vs. Sonos reaches settlement, HEOS line will go on unchanged
Denon says its 'direction with HEOS is unchanged' after resolving its Sonos patent infringement case, which began four years ago.

https://www.cnet.com/news/denon-and-sonos-reach-settlement-over-wireless-speaker-patent-case/

Obviously, Denon is paying Sonos for infringement, and subsequently licensing the technology they stole. Also, does their "direction with HEOS is unchanged" statement mean it is unchanged from before or after they stripped some of the patent infringing functions from their app?

As of 5/21/18 @ 7:40 AM PT, the functionality that was removed from App has not been restored. If it is going to be restored I imagine there will be an update by the end of the week. Programmers don't typically work on the weekend unless it is any emergency. The announcement was made on Friday, so we'll see.

Curious just before the IPO

Yea I figured when I saw that - they wanted to clear up current lawsuits before the IPO.

We don't know that Denon can actually put anything back - they may just have settled and are paying for the remaining issues.

Looking at some of the major quotes from the case:

“[p]art of D&M’s plan to make Sonos-copy products included reproducing Sonos’s dynamic-grouping, synchronization, and group-volume control technology, which D&M internally lauded time and again.”

“[t]he infringing HEOS features are software-based and … D&M allegedly could have easily and readily implemented alternative synchronization and volume control features that would apparently avoid infringing Sonos’s patents.”

“D&M continued to sell HEOS products that infringe the ‘258 and ‘949 Patents, and continued releasing new marketing materials and promoting the HEOS features that infringe those patents.”

“D&M’s HEOS Apps included a nearly identical group volume control interface as can be found in Sonos’s patented App. …[t]he HEOS device’s synchronization mechanism is identical to the mechanism claimed and described in Sonos’s 258 Patent.”

Does anyone have the details of the 258 and 949 patents?

At a glance, the above implies that that the main issue in the App is volume control and sound grouping. Sound grouping was not changed within the product, and for good reason, if they removed that feature they would have killed their own product as sound grouping is essential. The main thing that is missing right now is volume control of all speakers using one slider. Instead you have to change the volume of each speaker independently, which is inconvenient and annoying.

This may seem small but really is an essential feature of a whole home audio system.

Update: As of 5/25/18 @ 8:25 AM PT, still no update to the Heos App restoring functionality. No updates at all.

In all honesty - HEOS looks like a decent system. The thing that scares me the most about it is that there is not a large user base (not even any type of online discussion on) and there seems to be very little communication via Denon on the future of the system. Seems just to closed off to me. I mean Sonos isn't exactly great on the communication side but you do know their general direction - and there is discussion on Sonos all over the internet (from AV sites, to Reddit, to this Forum). Denon is all crickets.

HEOS just doen't have the feel of a long term player in the market with a strong user base.