Remember Denon and Marantz being really good back in the day, will they be enshittified now?
Samsung is paying $350M for audio brands B&W, Denon, Marantz and Polk
331–340 of 344 posts
Re: Samsung is paying $350M for audio brands B&W, Denon, Marantz and Polk
#332Remember Denon and Marantz being really good back in the day, will they be enshittified now?
Doubt it, Masimo has been a terrible (recent) steward of this brand. "Warranty support" that includes shipping at your own expense, undefined reply times etc. This can only get better. Samsung is great on that side.
Re: Samsung is paying $350M for audio brands B&W, Denon, Marantz and Polk
#333Now there are more avenues for Samsung to shove bloatware down our throats. I have a modestly high-end home theater and it is utterly maddening waiting for devices to “boot” and “handshake”. And after the wait, I’m presented with another “User Agreement” to sign that insists on shoveling ads down my throat and harvesting data. How much do you have to pay for a quick boot, no ads, and a private movie or music experien…
I hate to be that guy but how on earth do you have a "high-end" system (your words) that does all this? Sure, there is some boot up time to warm everything up, but there are no ads and no user agreements etc on mid to high end systems. Even my entry level system (denon avr, lg c1 oled, appletv4k and ugoos as media players) does not take more then 10 seconds from totally off to showing the menu / plex interface, and n…
OP here.
My system is very similar to yours. I’ve got a UHD player, XBox, Plex Server, and a half-dozen retro gaming systems in the mix. But apparently I'm not as patient as you (and others that responded) are.
I find 10 seconds to be intolerable and unnecessary. I’m old enough to have been spoiled by the analog world where power meant you were ready.
Not only is the time-to-wait painful, occasionally the HDMI handshake fails or the TV powered on quicker than the receiver’s signal was output and its input selection “picks” the wrong input or wrong display settings. So now you have to consider the order you’re powering things up, because the TV is “smart” and if you tell it to choose an input that isn’t ready, it’ll self-select one it thinks is ready.
And if I’m using HDMI-ARC, which I frequently do when using an over-the-air signal, if the TV powers on sooner than the receiver, the TV falls back to its own speakers. So now I’m stuck navigating the TV menu to get the audio through my SVS speakers instead of the ones in the TV.
Occasionally my TV has an “update” and then its apps have updates and then the update presents a new “user agreement” with all the data harvesting options pre-selected. If I don’t use my system frequently, two of the devices in the chain may want to update!
And after all that, if I’m watching physical media I then have to wait for the disc to be read and navigate through forced ads or trailers or piracy warnings. If they aren’t forced, I still have to intervene to skip them and get to the menu. But don’t select anything too fast on the menu! It has its own animations it wants you to watch before it will show you what options you have.
And all of that whining doesn’t even cover the wasteland of options available to remote control and make sense of the Rube-Goldberg AV system. The best option (Logitech Harmony) bailed leaving consumers with nothing but the Chinese schlock that hollowed out the market in the first place.
Re: Samsung is paying $350M for audio brands B&W, Denon, Marantz and Polk
#334Earlier quoted context omitted.
> They don't have R&D to recoup because the can just buy my product, x-ray the PCB, and then make duplicates. Too much effort when they can just go to the company making them and get cheaply made copies :)
No, you actually want to reverse-engineer the PCB so that you have schematics. That allows you to more easily replace components with cheaper alternatives and/or modify the firmware to continue working on your unintended hardware. (Fake products typically replace the on-board components with cheaper variants, like using lower-rated caps, to squeeze out a tiny bit more profit margin. Like really in the $1 per 10k unit…
I took the cheap joke route, but thank you. That was informative.
Re: Samsung is paying $350M for audio brands B&W, Denon, Marantz and Polk
#335Earlier quoted context omitted.
"How much do you have to pay for a quick boot, no ads, and a private movie or music experience? Just like every retailer has embraced usury with their credit card programs, every technology company has decided they are in the data harvesting business." isn't like this our goal here??? I mean we are comment on YC site that produce startup aiming just that
>> isn't like this our goal here??? I mean we are comment on YC site that produce startup aiming just that NO! I've been here long enough to remember PG saying to build something people WANT. YC has become less about technical founders building an MVP and more about the investors finding something they can make money from. The later often depends on "monetization" which has become the driver of enshitification, which…
People WANT Tik Tok. Sad but true.
Re: Samsung is paying $350M for audio brands B&W, Denon, Marantz and Polk
#336Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Samsung remotes are using RF. They may also have IR but if so it is operating in parallel to the RF. The TV remote will turn off the monitor even if I wrap the remote in a blanket which should block IR or hold it behind some blackout curtains.
A typical blanket will transmit about half of light at 940 nm (the wavelength used by most TV remotes).
OK, this is getting interesting. I've done some tests.
First, some pictures [1].
The first picture is the front of the TV remote and what I presume is the window in front of the IR diode.
The second picture is what is supposedly the location of the IR sensor on the monitor.
The third picture is my hand attempting to block the IR emitter on the remote.
Here is what I've found.
1. If I block the emitter with my hand the remote has no trouble turning the TV on and off. Even if I've blocked it with my hand and am holding the remote behind the couch so there is no line of sight to the TV it still works.
2. It also still turns the monitor on and off, but the range is greatly reduced. I have to be within a meter of the monitor.
3. Blocking the receiver with a finger is similar, but the range reduction is more. I have to have the remote within maybe half a meter.
4. Blocking the remote with electrical tape has no effect on its effectiveness with the TV.
5. Blocking the remote with electrical tape almost completely prevents it from affecting the monitor. Maybe 1 in 20 times it will still turn the monitor on/off if near the monitor.
6. Blocking the receiver with electrical tape is similar.
7. Blocking the receiver by hand or electrical tape has no affect on the monitor's remote controlling the monitor.
8. The TV remote can turn the TV on and off and the monitor remote can turn the monitor on and off even if I go down the hall an into the bathroom and close the bathroom door so there is no chance that any IR signal is making it to the device.
9. The monitor remote does not turn the TV on/off even if held near the TV.
10. I also have an Amazon Fire Stick and its remote can turn the TV and monitor on and off. It uses IR for TV control functions (and RF for Fire Stick control).
11. As with the TV remote my hand fails to block the Fire Stick remote.
From this I think we can draw some conclusions but also some questions are raised.
• The TV remote can fully operate the TV using RF. The TV also responds to IR.
• The monitor remote can fully operate the monitor using RF. The monitor also responds to IR.
• The RF for each remote includes specific enough device identification that they do not operate the wrong device. The IR does not.
• IR is hard to block. Why doesn't my hand stop it? With the TV remote the window is big and curved so I could see some of it not being quite covered, but the Fire Stick remote has a smaller window that is much flatter. When pressed tightly into my palm it should be completely covered.
• Electrical tape almost seems to completely stop it, but I did still have an occasional signal get through.
• When turning the TV off from the couch I should be able to stop it from affecting the monitor by simply covering the window with my palm. Even though that apparently still leaks enough IR signal it reduces the effective range, which should be enough to stop it from affecting the monitor. It will still work with the TV via the RF signal.
Re: Samsung is paying $350M for audio brands B&W, Denon, Marantz and Polk
#337Earlier quoted context omitted.
The thing is, traditional receivers wanted to be the "brains" of home theater, switching video inputs, managing audio, turning everything on. That role is no longer sensible when used with smart TVs/Apple TV boxes/Android TV boxes. As a result, traditional receivers are relegated to be being audio decoders and amplifiers. Honestly, I think there's already more manufactured and lying around than the world really needs…
Yes, but vinyl is making a strong comeback, and with that comes the need for traditional receivers. Even CDs are making a comeback -- as many indie artists publish CDs (and some do vinyl), which implies demand for standalone CD players with a receiver (like those made by the Denon, Onkyo, etc.) I have a HomePod in my living room and it gets used, but I also have a traditional receiver hooked up to my external speaker…
‘The two things which brought me to vinyl is the expense and the inconvenience.’
Re: Samsung is paying $350M for audio brands B&W, Denon, Marantz and Polk
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
A typical blanket will transmit about half of light at 940 nm (the wavelength used by most TV remotes).
OK, this is getting interesting. I've done some tests. First, some pictures [1]. The first picture is the front of the TV remote and what I presume is the window in front of the IR diode. The second picture is what is supposedly the location of the IR sensor on the monitor. The third picture is my hand attempting to block the IR emitter on the remote. Here is what I've found. 1. If I block the emitter with my hand th…
>If I block the emitter with my hand the remote has no trouble turning the TV on and off. Even if I've blocked it with my hand and am holding the remote behind the couch so there is no line of sight to the TV it still works.
Near-infrared light is biologically important, which is why we know it will go through your hand and most fabrics. I used to dose myself with near-infrared light by sitting in the sun wrapped in a polyester blanket to filter out the UV light.
Re: Samsung is paying $350M for audio brands B&W, Denon, Marantz and Polk
#339Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There is no more "Nirvana" That cacophony was considered quality music?
Subjectivity aside, I'm pretty sure Nirvana's target audience was teenagers using cheap headphones or their car stereos, not boomers with expensive HiFi setups, so that really is a funny remark.
Re: Samsung is paying $350M for audio brands B&W, Denon, Marantz and Polk
#340Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have my TV on which doesn’t bother me but I understand why it’s not ideal for all setups. If I select a song on my iPhone and airplay it to my AppleTV, it does a handover. If you want to stay within the Apple ecosystem without the TV part, you could use an AVR with airplay built-in. Or get an AirPort Express, which can join a wifi network and become an Airplay client, and connect it via optical (mini toslink) to an…
At the risk of turning this into "please describe your setup in increasing detail to me," do you use Spotify for anything? I have a Marantz AVR and honestly it's kind of buggy, but I'm trying to connect directly to it from Spotify (mostly because that's just where my listening history is). Perhaps it would do better connecting into an Apple TV and running spotify on there?
I use a Chromecast Ultra for this, works with Spotify, Tidal, Youtube apps. Or, if you don't care about 4K get a regular 3rd gen Chromecast. These are NOT the newest gen Chromecasts with Google TV, these are 'dumb' devices that just receive streams and don't run apps.
Unfortunately as of a few years ago Google TV/Android TV forces ads for useless content in the home screen, taking up bandwidth and slowing load times. The 'dumb' Chromecasts can still talk to the AVR over HDMI-CEC to turn on power, adjust volume, etc.