Bringing back an older topic (sorry, just getting started on this thread now!)

Originally Posted By: gonk
The surround processor is, by definition, the hub for all audio sources. It has grown to become the hub for all audio and video sources, but it is still the device to which source devices are connected.

Sounds great.

Originally Posted By: gonk
Leaving connectivity off because it will only support old technology is not a great way to promote customer loyalty.

I'd agree with this. But I'd also propose that "Leaving connectivity off because it will only support NEW technology is not a great way to promote customer loyalty."

Originally Posted By: gonk
For decades now, though, we have been dealing with each new source technology by creating new source devices for the technology.

Yup, and it's a serious PITA.

Originally Posted By: gonk
Why does network media suddenly need to be integrated into the processor? Why wouldn't it be just as well served by someone producing a good quality, robust standalone source device?

It seems to me like this statement contradicts the stuff above. Why not replace "network media" with "HDMI" --
"Why does HDMI suddenly need to be integrated into the processor? Why wouldn't it be just as well served by someone producing a good quality, robust standalone upsampler/video-converter/video-switcher?"

I think we can all agree that a network media server is a (nascent) source of audio & video. The internet is also a source, although less defined, with zillions of standards, and even more proprietary stuff.

One of the nice things about DLNA is that it is a standard -- in much the same way that HDMI is a standard. The quality of the DLNA standard isn't up to where HDMI is today. But it's probably about where HDMI was at version 1.0 (but with more interoperability issues, due to crappy software vendors and little formalized testing).

I don't see much difference between saying "We should support HDMI (1.4) because it's a new standard" and saying "We should support DLNA (version whatever) because it's a new standard".


I'd argue that a receiver should NOT support proprietary standards (as much as I want it to for my own use smile ). So Netflix, Amazon VOD, even YouTube & Hulu, etc should be right out. Besides, there are lots of DLNA media servers which support these proprietary standards as input, and output a standard DLNA media stream.


I think there are perfectly reasonable arguments for why NOT to support DLNA. However, I don't think that saying it's not future proof is a good reason. With that same argument, you should say that it shouldn't support HDMI, since (as you said) there have been 5 versions in the last 7 years. BTW, there have been fewer version of DLNA in the same time period.


So, good reasons NOT to support it:
  • Too much work to get reasonable schedule/quality/price-point
  • Not enough user demand.
  • The oracles tell you that DLNA won't be around in a few years


But that said, I think there is user demand (I want it!), and my oracles tell me it'll be around for a while.

However, I can still totally understand a decision that it will be too complex & costly.