Roku wireless speaker platform?

[Towen7]

https://www.engadget.com/2018/01/03/roku-connect-wireless-speakers/

If I’m reading this right it looks very interesting and has some cool potential. I wonder though if it’s somthing Amazon or Google can simply replicate.

 

[Flint]

This technology is specifically intended for third party guys to make speakers which can be fed a signal by the Roku boxes, thus making the signal wireless (you still need power for the speaker's amplifier). The intention is to make Roku the single source for all audio in the room and throughout the house. It is interesting, but Sonos already does to some extent. Home and Echo also allow similar capability if they are the source - syncing speakers, that is. But defining one speaker as "left" and another as "center" and a third as "right" and so on (including subs and surrounds) will be unique to Roku. Their primary target is the soundbar space which is massively hot right now and an obvious financial target. Imagine a Roku enabled soundbar which connects wirelessly to your Roku streaming box and a couple of small Roku enabled portable speakers for "party mode" when listening to music in multiple rooms from the Roku box.

 

[yromj]

This technology is specifically intended for third party guys to make speakers which can be fed a signal by the Roku boxes, thus making the signal wireless (you still need power for the speaker's amplifier). The intention is to make Roku the single source for all audio in the room and throughout the house. It is interesting, but Sonos already does to some extent. Home and Echo also allow similar capability if they are the source - syncing speakers, that is. But defining one speaker as "left" and another as "center" and a third as "right" and so on (including subs and surrounds) will be unique to Roku. Their primary target is the soundbar space which is massively hot right now and an obvious financial target. Imagine a Roku enabled soundbar which connects wirelessly to your Roku streaming box and a couple of small Roku enabled portable speakers for "party mode" when listening to music in multiple rooms from the Roku box.

I'm not sure about that being unique to Roku. IIRC Sonos came out with this about a year ago. I've not seen in action but a friend of mine who works for a Sonos dealer was telling me about it.

John

 

[Towen7]

I'm not sure about that being unique to Roku. IIRC Sonos came out with this about a year ago. I've not seen in action but a friend of mine who works for a Sonos dealer was telling me about it.

John

Right ... kind of
Individual Sonos speakers can be assigned to work as a stereo pair or surround channels. And they now work with Alexa.

But you can’t connect your TV to all of Sonos’s speakers, only the PlayBar and PlayBase (the most expensive of the already expensive Sonos line).

You can connect any sound bar or AVR to the Sonos system using a device called Sonos Connect but it’s only a separate input. So while you can use voice control or the Sonos app to play music to it, you’d have to manually switch the soundbar or AVR to the Sonos input. It’s not a big deal but it takes away from the seamlessness of the Sonos system.

The Roku project may solve that if the build it into AVRs.