Anyone got any PlayFi devices?

[d000hg]

The soundbar I put in my home gym has DTS Play-Fi built in, which I thought would be handy for when I want to listen to music rather than watch Netflix. Apparently:

DTS Play-Fi is a premium wireless audio ecosystem for whole-home music and TV audio, supporting high-resolution and sub-millisecond playback accuracy.

In practice I find it is nice when it works but it often doesn't. It's always a case of crossing your fingers when you try to connect your phone to it whether it will see the device, connect or just hang. Every now and then you go to listen to music and the app says "hang on you need a mandatory firmware update that will take 10 minutes".

Has anyone else got this and if so how do you find it?

[DoctorStrangelove]

Feck me, from the sound of that you'd be better off with a windup gramaphone playing shellac 78s.

[d000hg]

Feck me, from the sound of that you'd be better off with a windup gramaphone playing shellac 78s.

Seems that way to me. Every innovation in making technology "more convenient" just makes it more frustrating in my view. A system that works perfectly 9 times out of 10 but the other time requires you to crawl under a table, or won't let you play media because you need to upgrade your software, isn't good. The TV my parents had never needed a firmware update, and didn't need you to dick about with sound settings to hear the dialogue. You just turned it on. When you put a CD in a hole and press play, it doesn't require an app update or decide it's going to buffer or struggle to pair over BT.

It's all a load of cack. Nice ideas but nobody cares about doing it properly and there's rarely any sort of customer service.

[northernladuk]

Seems that way to me. Every innovation in making technology "more convenient" just makes it more frustrating in my view. A system that works perfectly 9 times out of 10 but the other time requires you to crawl under a table, or won't let you play media because you need to upgrade your software, isn't good. The TV my parents had never needed a firmware update, and didn't need you to dick about with sound settings to hear the dialogue. You just turned it on. When you put a CD in a hole and press play, it doesn't require an app update or decide it's going to buffer or struggle to pair over BT.

It's all a load of cack. Nice ideas but nobody cares about doing it properly and there's rarely any sort of customer service.

Totally agree with all this. The trouble I have setting new apps/devices up. How people with zero clue about tech manages I have no idea.

[d000hg]

Totally agree with all this. The trouble I have setting new apps/devices up. How people with zero clue about tech manages I have no idea.

If they're rich they buy Sonos. If they're poor they just listen to music on the phone speaker (ugh). The thing that really annoys me is that so many of these things so nearly work brilliantly - there's one little niggle, or it works perfectly 9/10 times but the 10th time you have to reset the whole thing. "delete your app and reinstall" or "factory reset and add back to your wifi" are seen as acceptable. When you are dealing with a device with no screen that lives behind your TV, configuration is something you really don't want to do several times

[northernladuk]

If they're rich they buy Sonos. If they're poor they just listen to music on the phone speaker (ugh). The thing that really annoys me is that so many of these things so nearly work brilliantly - there's one little niggle, or it works perfectly 9/10 times but the 10th time you have to reset the whole thing. "delete your app and reinstall" or "factory reset and add back to your wifi" are seen as acceptable. When you are dealing with a device with no screen that lives behind your TV, configuration is something you really don't want to do several times

100% this

I also find setting stuff up never works seamlessly either. From memory the ring doorbell, nest and a doggy cam all took a couple of goes. Drives me nuts.