Yeh, they definitely don't seem to understand what we are saying, nor have they tested it.
To be absolutely clear:
*** We are not complaining due to lack of selectable DSP modes such as music, movie, pro logic, etc when casting ***
*** We are complaining as it is currently locked in multi-channel with no sub when casting and the FW update they have released, which is supposed to allow 2 channel / multi-channel toggling, does absolutely nothing. The toggling remains disabled as it has been on the last couple of FW updates. ***
My own personal opinion is that simply adding the subwoofer to the current multi-channel output is not enough. If you have your rear channels setup in a home theatre layout rather than as a seperate set of mains in a different room/location, the multi-channel output sounds awful as it's directly replicating the front output to the rears and thus resulting in a absolute mess of a soundstage. If the rears are going to be on and pumping out the same signal as the fronts, it would probably sound better in mono (and that isn't saying much).
My strong feeling is that if Sony are adamant that all output selection must be disabled when casting, it should be locked to something reasonable for the majority of casting applications - a stereo music signal (especially since the casting function does not include video). This means a 2 channel output with subwoofer dictated as per usual large/small speaker setup. This is likely to result in the best experience for the majority of people and will still provide a listenable experience in the event of a multi-channel signal being cast. It will, however, mean that people who have used their rear speaker outputs to instead locate speakers in other rooms will lose output on these secondary locations.
