The fine folks at THX have taken note of the current home theater landscape and deemed it sub-par when it comes to surround sound. That may or may not be true, but I’d like to think someone at THX thought that at some point. Developed in conjunction with Radiient, the THX Roomcaster system taps ultra-wideband wireless technology to unshackle your surround system from its wired overlords. The technology can also be embedded into AV receivers, game consoles, headphones and anything that sends and receives content.
While transmitting in the 3-to-10 GHz range, THX Roomcaster beams uncompressed, 24-bit, low latency, eight channel (up to, at least) audio up to 30 feet away. So, if you’re looking for a wireless surround sound solution that delivers high quality audio then you’d be a fool not to ask for a THX Roomcaster system.
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I hate wires, so I need to know more about the power. Are they suggesting multiple electrical outlets along a wall, or battery powered speakers?
http://www.radiient.com/Radiient-Early-Adapter-Kit
“THX Roomcaster speaker backpack adapter:
…
Power requirements: 100 – 240VAC, 50/60Hz; 5W maximum operating, 1W standby”
So, it would sound like each speaker needs a plug, and that powers the speaker.
I’d like to know the power draw of each speaker, but, living in an old house with lath and plaster walls, this is really really tempting, save for the $2500 early adopter price.
(The *actual* power draw, I should say…. I see the whole 5W max operating thing up there…) =)
I saw the Radiient demo at CES. What good is THX complience which deals with speaker to speaker delay, when lip sync to video is an obvius issue.
I saw the Radiient demo at CES, too, and there was no lip-sync issue with the video.
In the original surround sound systems (using the Halfer Circuit) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hafler the center channel carried only the mono information. The two front speakers carried the mono and stereo information. The surround speakers carried only the stereo information with the mono stripped out. All this from only wiring 5 speakers into a stero amplifier. Since most movies are mixed with the voices in the center of the screen (meaning mono) there is little to no voice in the surround channels. Dolby used the Hafler Circuit inside their chip with the addition of a time delay for the rear channels.
That is a long winded way of saying that voice in the surround channels should not be an issue since it should not be there in the first place. Otherwise, if you used a mere stereo system with your television, voices would be coming from offscreen even when you can see the actor on screen. No competant sound mixer dude would put the voices there.