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Dolby Atmos

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ddilts399:
Anyone running atmos yet? If so thoughts??  Kicking around sticking 4 speakers in the ceiling.

kovacs01:
I agree, it is tempting to go from 7.2 to 7.2.4............

But, right now, there is not enough content that takes advantage of it.  And, I would need a new receiver.  Not gonna do a $3000 upgrade until I know it is something that will become industry standard.

jpicken:
Not running it. I thought about it but am holding off.

Seems like they were really pushing it at CEDIA.  I like the theory behind it.  I have heard it at movie theaters. I do think it adds to the cinema experience. From a content standpoint, it seems pretty established for the big studio releases. At this point, there are over 200 titles that were released in the format, but not every title released in the theaters with Dolby Atmos has an Atmos Blu-Ray Soundtrack.  

So, there are only a limited number of Blue-Rays. From the streaming side, Sony's 4K service and supposedly Netflix's 4K service will offer titles in Dolby Atmos.  However, I think it will be a while until ATT U-Verse, TWC and Dish Network versions of the movies will have the extra sound channels embedded in the bitstream.  I get 5.1 Dolby Digital, but that seems to be the extent of what they offer at this point (No Dolby True HD or DTS-MA).

Being an early adopter would be a significant investment for me to do this with my system. I would need a new pre-pro + 2-4 channels of amplification + 2-4 new ceiling-mounted speakers that are timbre-matched to the other 7 in the system.  The thought of spending $4K to get the extra sound channels for less than 1% of the material I view, is not a good value proposition.
Maybe when there is more content available down the road, it would be worth pulling the trigger.

That day may never come though. Not many of the big technology pushes by the hardware industry like 3D TV are sucessful. When most people are happy to look at video from the 3.5" inch screen of their cell phone or listen to poorly compressed mp3 audio on their phone through shitty headphones, I don't know if there is a big enough market to really drive some of this stuff.

ddilts399:
I am going to wait for 4k Blu, UHD blu whatever they want to call it and DTS:X I guess.  It is tempting, but don't want to have to upgrade the processor again that quickly if there is something not supported or cant be firmware flashed. I also would have to add another amp, so it definitely would be a hefty investment, but I really like the idea. What I really would like to see is 4K projection take a nose dive in prices by this holiday season.

Sunsanvil:
Cheers to that.

As a part time journalist/technical writing in the CE world, I'm all for Atmos, but 99% of "home theaters" dont even implement 5.1 correctly, and 4k done wrong is going to be worse that 1080 line done right.

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