Apple Tv 4 and Phantom

[seb]

There is one solution without additional hardware, use Bluetooth. The other one would be to use a HDMI Matrix box, e.g. like the one linked below. Both works well. These boxes are sometimes hit or miss, I made very good experience with the View HD. The ViewHD has an HDMI in/out and an optical out which then could be connected to either the Dialog or the Phantom.

http://amzn.to/1OW2W9z

I never considered bluetooth a viable option, does it work smoothly and does it have enough bandwidth? Interesting...

I have tested it first with my Panasonic Plasma TV's Bluetooth output (one of the last THX models produced) and then also with my Apple TV 4th generation Bluetooth. Both worked. Of course I would guess that the HDMI/Optical path is superior in quality, but for a "fake" 2.1 system it worked astoninglishly well. One interesting "by-product" is that you could adjust the volume with your remote control of the TV/Apple TV. This is quite convenient. The volume settings are however a kind of scary. Why? It would make a jump to maybe "70" on the Spark app, but this is only to adjust to the Bluetooth signal. So when you use your TV's/Apple TV's remote it works fine. Just be careful when you switch input sources in Spark. Usually it would switch back to "35", but who knows ... 

Regarding the delay. My TV could change the delay for Bluetooth output. It was not perfect, but only a very slight delay was left which became almost unnoticeable after some viewing. Also Apple TV was OK. This is a complicated matter as the delay also depends on the electronics of the TV. So your milage may vary. However, the brain adjust obviously quite well and I am fine with it. 

So to cut a long story short. I would test it. If you feel it is necessary, you might add a HDMI switch. It adds some complexity to the system and there are pro's and cons. One pro is that you could connect multiple sources, another that it would convert different type of surround signals to stereo (depends on the model) however the latter is also done when you use Bluetooth. I noticed is that the model I own has one limitation though, which is the HDMI to optical is limited to CD quality. I noticed because I also have an Mac mini (my music server) connected to my TV & Dialog via HDMI and tested it for music output. So you might consider this when you connect multiple sources. This is the reason I stay with Spark/Dialog as it would connect to the Spark app on my Mac mini server and pull higher sampled sources without compromising the quality. 

For me the most annoying thing is to open Spark every time I would like to change volume when watching TV or a movie. So there is certainly a convenience factor in using Bluetooth. For now there are lot of compromises, but I am hopeful that the Devialet developers add the promised surround features in the future. At least there is a solution available that kind of works now.