We talked some more about Aereo on this week’s podcast.

Forbes did a very good job of summing up the decision:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2014/06/25/aereo-loses-big-as-supreme-court-calls-it-equivalent-to-cable-tv/

Included was a link to the full .pdf of the Supreme Court’s deciding and dissenting opinions:

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/13-461_l537.pdf

But despite the ruling and “pausing” its service as a result, Aereo hasn’t completely thrown in the towel just yet. They’re now calling on their subscribers to petition Congress, so it seems there was a “Plan B” after all:

http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/01/after-losing-in-the-supreme-court-aereo-turns-its-sights-to-congress/

Dolby Atmos

There’s so much information still coming out, but a great place to start is Dolby’s own FAQ:

http://blog.dolby.com/2014/06/dolby-atmos-home-theaters-questions-answered/

In addition, we linked to Onkyo’s Atmos page previously, now it’s Pioneer Elite and Yamaha’s turns:

Pioneer: http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/PUSA/Home/Speakers/Elite+Speakers/Turn+your+Home+into+a+Home+Theater

Yamaha: http://usa.yamaha.com/news_events/audio_visual/yamaha_elevates_premium_aventage_av_receivers/

And a link to the image showing the new ceiling speaker locations from an upcoming product manual:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5g22hb9thwq7eav/Atmos%20Ceiling%20Speaker%20Positions.jpg

Pioneer has sold off a large portion of its AV division.

Despite the very recent announcements of new Pioneer Elite brand AV Receivers and speakers, the sale has been made final, and Baring Private Equity Asia now owns a controlling 51% share of Pioneer’s AV division, while Onkyo now owns an unknown portion of the remaining 49%.

No idea yet what this will mean for consumers and Pioneer fans, so we’ll just have to wait and see:

http://online.wsj.com/articles/pioneer-to-sell-most-of-audiovisual-equipment-business-to-onkyo-hong-kong-fund-1403605311

AV Rant Listener Lars:

wanted to discuss the THX Baffle Wall:

http://www.thx.com/professional/cinema-certification/speaker-layout-and-baffle-wall/

Rob H. thinks they ought to rename it a “Baffle Compensation” wall instead. It’s a good design, and anyone installing speakers more or less on the front wall or inside of a cabinet structure behind their screen ought to follow these practices. But the whole point is to compensate for the placement of the speakers.

Lars sent us a link to a custom installer website where they tried to dress it up and market it a little more strongly than THX’ own website:

http://www.acousticfrontiers.com/home-theater-blog/2013/3/22/baffle-walls

AV Rant Listener Lars —

also wanted our takes on the newest M&K Sound speakers, the S300 Series.

They have a very similar design to the iconic M&K S150 monitors, but the S300 are bigger, louder, and using new Scan-Speak drivers. They’re also pretty darn expensive, with a 5.1 system coming in at $17,700 MSRP.

Thankfully, in between the time we recorded and when we’re posting this link, it appears as though M&K Sound updated their website. Have a look at the lineup:

http://www.mksound.com/300-series

AV Rant Listener Gary —

asked whether the marketing speak behind Sharp’s Quattron displays was to be believed. He was skeptical of their claims of producing “1 billion more shades of color” and forwarded the Wikipedia page about Quattron.

While you shouldn’t always believe everything you read on Wikipedia, this is one case where they’re closer to the truth than the marketing. Mathematically, having that 4th yellow sub-pixel actually creates more than 4 billion extra possible combinations! But due to the way content is encoded and the way display backlights work, we’re more in agreement that Quattron really “serves no useful purpose”:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quattron