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Unsought experience
May. 31st, 2018 11:25 amExperience is what you get when you were expecting something else.
I got some experience with that refurb Roku Stick I ordered. I thought I was doing a good thing by getting the very latest model, but it turns out it has a wee little incompatibility issue with my old receiver. My old receiver only does plain-vanilla Dolby Digital and DTS. However, online streaming services carry their signal in DD+, which isn't compatible, and so plays via older devices as stereo rather than surround.
To play surround through older DD devices, there's one specific version of Roku that I need—the 2016 Roku Ultra. It, alone, has the ability to downmix DD+ to DD and work with older receivers. 2017 models do not.
Of course, Roku customer service didn't know anything about this when I contacted them to ask about it. They only asked me if I'd already tried the troubleshooting guides on the website. (I had.) But that's what customer service representatives do.
I only learned the actual reason for it by dint of Google and a Roku user forum thread. And there's no way I would ever even have thought to look into Dolby Digital vs. Dolby Digital+ before actually getting the device and coming face-to-face with the problem. So, back it goes to Amazon.
At least I learned something, and picked up a little experience in home theater setup. But, as I said, I was expecting something else.
( Plumbing the depths. )
I got some experience with that refurb Roku Stick I ordered. I thought I was doing a good thing by getting the very latest model, but it turns out it has a wee little incompatibility issue with my old receiver. My old receiver only does plain-vanilla Dolby Digital and DTS. However, online streaming services carry their signal in DD+, which isn't compatible, and so plays via older devices as stereo rather than surround.
To play surround through older DD devices, there's one specific version of Roku that I need—the 2016 Roku Ultra. It, alone, has the ability to downmix DD+ to DD and work with older receivers. 2017 models do not.
Of course, Roku customer service didn't know anything about this when I contacted them to ask about it. They only asked me if I'd already tried the troubleshooting guides on the website. (I had.) But that's what customer service representatives do.
I only learned the actual reason for it by dint of Google and a Roku user forum thread. And there's no way I would ever even have thought to look into Dolby Digital vs. Dolby Digital+ before actually getting the device and coming face-to-face with the problem. So, back it goes to Amazon.
At least I learned something, and picked up a little experience in home theater setup. But, as I said, I was expecting something else.
( Plumbing the depths. )
