DTS subsidiary Phorus has developed a multizone wireless-audio technology that, for the first time, brings Apple AirPlay-like features to Android smartphones and tablets and to Amazon’s Android-based Kindle tablets.
Phorus CEO Danny Lau holds the brand’s wireless speaker, and CFO Sharon Graves holds the brand’s receiver/transmitter.
The technology, named DTS Play-Fi, also offers some advances over AirPlay.
Play-Fi will appear in a Phorus-branded $199-suggested tabletop speaker and in a $149 tabletop transmitter/receiver, which connects to a home’s existing hi-fi systems and tabletop speakers via analog output. Bother products will be available Oct. 1 through Amazon and Phorus’s web stores.
The DTS subsidiary, based in Encino, Calif., also plans to leverage DTS’s audio-licensing expertise to persuade suppliers of A/V receivers, tabletop speakers and other home-audio products to embed the technology in their products.
The technology could easily be applied to Apple’s iOS devices and to Windows-based smartphones and tablets, but Phorus is focusing on Android for now because of Android’s large installed base.
With the products and an Android app downloaded from the Google and Amazon stores, consumers will be able to stream MP3 and FLAC files stored in native form on their Android devices to multiple speakers and transmitter/receivers throughout the house via Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n. Android devices will also stream music files stored on a DLNA-connected PC or network-attached storage (NAS) drive, then redirect the files to the Play-Fi devices.
The company plans an upgrade to add streaming of native AAC and Ogg Vorbis files.
The Play-Fi app will also support streaming of Pandora apps loaded onto Android devices, and the company plans to add support for additional Internet music services.
Although the technology uses a home’s Wi-Fi network, Phorus CEO Dannie Lau told TWICE that the company overcame Wi-Fi quality-of-service limitations by prioritizing Play-Fi traffic on a Wi-Fi network, compensating for the typical types of interferences suffered by Wi-Fi networks, and synchronizing audio throughout the house by reducing latency to 7ms, which he said is not noticeable.
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