Question about Bose Receiver (1 Viewer)

[Charlie Campisi]

I was on Best Buy's site today and looking at the specs for the Bose Lifestyle 48 system. (Why do I feel like one of those guys who says "I was just changing channels and I saw 4 hours worth of movies on Cinemax.") Anyway, the specs for this $4k system say that it doesn't have a built in Dolby Digital decoder, though it does have a "Bose-exclusive Videostage 5" decoder. Is this right? Does this $4k system have no way to play Dolby digital 5.1 in 5.1 sound?

 

[John Garcia]

If you are actually looking to purchase, let me just be the first, and certainly not the last, to say, don't waste your money on Bose, DD or not.

Just because it doesn't say it has a DD decoder, does not mean it will not do basic 5.1.

 

[Charlie Campisi]

Have no fear - I already have my system for now: Denon 1804, Swan 2.1's, C3 and R3's, and a Hsu stf-2 sub. I am looking at smaller systems for the family room and also for a friend who has no patience to listen but whose wife has instilled a "speakers must be small" mandate. I had directed him to the Rocket Tykes/Kenwood package and since he can't listen to them, was trying to find systems at Best Buy whose specs were worse/same/better than the Tykes/Kenwood for comparisons sake (hoping to make the point that for the same specs as the Tykes, he'd be paying a lot more.) He said the dreaded four letter "B-word" at one point so I wanted to check their specs. Funny, they don't post any. Secondly, noticed that the $4k system doesn't decode Dolby Digital. I found that very odd and was wondering what the Bose system does with a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack.

 

[John Garcia]

Whew! That's good.

If it plays DVDs, it MUST do DD, since Dolby Stereo is the minimum requirement for DVD. Dolby Stereo is still a Dolby Digital stream and is handled the same as a 5.1 stream. The only thing I might wager a guess at is it has some proprietary decoder that does whatever it does to give you the same 5.1 effect, they just can't legally call it a DD decoder.

How about Gallos? - www.roundsound.com

Mordaunt Short Genies.

In-wall or on-wall speakers?

 

[BrianWoerndle]

AFAIK it will accept a Dolby Digital 5.1 input. It is decoding the DD bitstream in its own way. Bose is never happy unless they do everything in their own proprietary way

 

[Charlie Campisi]

I figured there had to be some explanation. I suppose I should thank Bose - if they just made things simple I wouldn't have had to come to the forum and spend some time interacting with you nice folks.

 

[Garrett Lundy]

Maybe it saves them from having to pay Dolby for royalties?