After two years of buildup, it seems a Sonos home theater solution is nearly upon us. The “Playbar”, as uncovered via a number of FCC filings, has been kicking around their labs since at least June. While it’s not entirely clear what the Playbar is, we’re hoping it’s more soundbar and less Jambox – to complement my new Panasonic HDTV. If our assumptions are correct, the Playbar would also benefit from the room filling wireless Sonos Sub ($700) — meaning this wouldn’t be a budget system. But, for many, the versatility of Sonos’ whole home audio is priceless.
The one thing that gives me pause is the rendering of the label on the product. If the scale is right, this really is more of a Jambox solution…
Not sure how the sound lag to distribute across your Sonos home network with the tv would work… Jambox solution, I think, would fit nicely into the existing frame work, plus easily let you take music around the house…
I think my Sonos wishlist would be:
1) Let the Sonos software play the music, a la my home computer or my mobile device. Seems silly that I need a sonos in my office, where my computer is acting as the sonos server. My guess is that this is more of a legal thing then a technological thing.
2) Seems like they need to put an Airplay/(whatever the Andriod equivalent is) into the Bridge. I went out and bought the airport express to get this functionality in place. Then they updated the software, and that seems to do it but not very elegant since it only works for apple devices that have sonos software on it. Seems like with real airplay integration with the bridge would streamline this and let people who come over with an apple device to stream their music across the network.
About all I got right now, but would be interesting to see if they could get into the home theatre space but it would not be the greatest integration into the current devices. Now if they integrated into TV hardware…. Then the noise video lag could be handled in the tv hardware, that would be how they could get into home theatre market, just not sure what TV manufacturer would let them in….
The way I envision a Sonos theater bar to work is that it has HDMI-ARC and optical inputs, so it’d receive that audio direct from the source. At the same time, it can be used for “traditional” Sonos playback as another wireless speaker system. The question for me is how would the Sub fit into this – could it work wirelessly with a home theater solution or is that where the lag would be introduced and it requires being hardwired to the Playbar. Assuming it’s not a Jambox. :)