Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems 2009 CES HH Q&A Thread

I agree that Meridian's communication is poor (and that's probably an understatement), but on this forum, many of us have advocated a HD621-style solution for at least three years, if not four. We called it the "G62".

Why did we expect this? Because it was a logical thing for Meridian to do and it ticked all the boxes:

- It removed the need to feed HDMI into the processors (Bob Stuart is on record on a number of occasions as saying this would be a bad thing).

- It fitted in with the distributed processing model (decode in player) that Meridian has consistently championed.

- Critically, it would work with any and all existing Meridian processors that have an MHR SmartLink input. The hardware changes for G61, G61R, G68D, G68J, G68ADV, G68AXV, G68XXV, G68ADX, G68AXX, and 861v3/4 would have been a nightmare for Meridian. With the HD621, even 568.2MM owner are catered for.

My personal disappointment in the HD621 is twofold:

- I feel it should have had SPDIF inputs to decode external vanilla DD/DTS streams. As a modified CLUX owner, I would already be on the HD621 pre-order list if it had this functionality. As things stand, I see no urgent need to "upgrade", because my PS3/CLUX/G68 solution is already delivering the best movie sound I've ever heard.

- I suspect that the SmartLink metadata may not be custom programmable on a per-(virtual)-source basis. I may be mistaken here, but we'll have to wait for the CES answers to know for sure.