HK Omni series support

PeterGroeneweg

Hay all,

Some weeks ago I bought a Sonos play:5 but within one day I was so angry at it because it doesn't support YouTube... When I read about it, some costumers where already stalking Sonos for over two year to add the support but they simply don't. Because I don't like these arrogant attitudes I returned my play:5 and bought two Harman Kardon Omni 10's. The biggest reason for this choice is that they claim to have an open programming interface!

Now my question, do you already had contact with them about their API or not? If not, shall I try to retrieve it from them?

Kind regards,

Peter

Emile

They support bluetooth, so they are natively supported!

Athomey

@Emile, could you elaborate a bit? It sounds like a community promise, but your answer is so short, it could mean anything raning from out-of-the-box, or "possible to connect through a plugin the community will have to write itself". This will bite you in the *ss if you are not more specific or more careful in your phrasings (no offense intended).

@Peter: How come you want YouTube? I've got ~14 Sonos speakers in my house and never missed YouTube. Could you explain why this is a must-have for you? Just curious. Anyways, I don't consider it arrogance that they don't build what some customers have asked for frequently. You HAVE to say no lots of times once you attract attention, or you will fail as a company. That's a given fact, however sad it is. Sonos has quite a good grip on their focus and it is working as a company (though they WILL have to modernize their vision/course to survive coming say 5 years, otherwise others will race past them). My 2 cts.

Emile

Oh, sorry about that! I meant that using them as speakers is natively supported as they are bluetooth enabled.

About YouTube; last time I checked it was against YouTube's policy to stream only audio, but hey, how hard can it be to write a youtube app yourself..

Athomey

True, true, I heard a wise man say once "it's easy" about any software piece. But I always think: Many easy things to realize together create a d*mn hard life. :-) Especially when a product starts flying, suddenly you realize tiem is limited...tick...tock...tick..... Quoting Basil Fawtly "Ah, what was that? That was your life! Oh my, do I get another one? Nope...." ;-) Thx for elaboration.

PeterGroeneweg

Athomey, there is some music which is not available at Spotify but it does at youtube. Therefore I like to play youtube. But it's not only youtube, why isn't it simply possible to hear everything what is available via my iPad or smartphone...

The kind of thing I don't like on companies like Sonos is that they only support their own apps. The same thing with Apple, I don't like them either ;-). Although I own an iPad so I know what's lagging. I do like Google much more because they support open source. That's also what I like at Homey, that you can build the apps yourself or with a community!

Athomey

Peter, ah, but does the Harman Kardon support software extentions then? I understand what you mean now by wanting YouTube. For me the radio options, streaming options (also sound from PC if you but, though with a little delay), local libraries and Spotify are way enough. Also my TV sound goes through Sonos-es in my house. Thanks for you explanation.

PeterGroeneweg

I received a link to download the (android) API. This is the only API they released. I'll see what I can do with it. Hopefully it's possible to create an app to control multiple speakers with one Homey :-). That's the most beauty full way because you don't have to stream your audio via bluetooth thrue Homey.

Floodnl

'So time flew by on the Athom Homey forum, and 2 years has past' 

Is there any news on this? it would be awsome to use my Harman Kardon AVR 161s indeed the app works fine.
A on / off switch much be more than sufficient, to use the speakers with homey and the up coming media update 1.2 would be perfect.