Phantoms and Dialog in limbo

[Confused]

I do not own a Phantom, but I do have some sympathy with those that do and who feel a little abandoned by Devialet. It reminds me of the early days with the Expert range. There was a kind of "golden period" where there was a firmware update every six months, often with some decent enhancements. The updates then started to slow to nothing, and from the outside it appeared that Devialet had limited resources, and all of those resources were being fed into the Phantom project. During this time AIR was very unstable for many of us, so it was not like the Expert project was mature and everything perfect. Furthermore, it then turned out that the "big one" for Expert, Devialet "SAM", was in fact a spin-off from the DSP work that had been done specifically for Phantom. It now looks a bit like the opposite is true, and that the Pro CI board is getting all the attention, to the detriment of Phantom.

But is this the case? It might look like it, but one casual observation I would make from the OAC event is that this was an Expert Pro event, and it was hosted by the top two guys from the newly formed Expert "Core Team". (see the Munich 2018 thread for more details on this.) There were some Phantom questions, but the answers sometimes started with something along the lines "well we are not directly involved with Phantom now......". This I think could have made the Phantom side of things, as seen through the lens of the OAC event, seem far more negative than they really are. Or not? Does anyone know?

This begs a couple of questions. Is there a Phantom "Core team" and "Extended team" for Phantom, similar to that for expert, and if so, who are they? Also, are Devialet planning any dealer events for Phantom, similar to that run for Expert and CI recently? (At least two in the UK last week) OK, the Phantom is a lower priced product versus the Expert, but it is not exactly cheap, plus I assume Phantom is achieving much higher sales numbers. So why not a Phantom event or two? If there is more going on that nobody is aware of, it might be a good idea to let us know and get a bit of the Phantom "buzz" back.

The link below takes you to the photographs of the slides that Guillaume posted from the Munch event this year. They clearly show the Expert / CI teams, it was an Expert presentation after all, but I have to say it would not have been that strange if the personnel for the equivalent Phantom teams were also shown, in terms of Devialet's new structure under the new CEO. Does anyone know any details? Clearly there must be some kind of Phantom team, but the number and type of people involved might give a hint as to what the future might hold.

https://devialetchat.com/Thread-Munich-2...ght=munich