[UPDATED] Sony announce their 2016 home audio product line, Google Cast abounds

Sony has announced their 2016 line up, including several new home entertainment products from sound bars to receivers, wireless speakers and more. Included amongst these new goodies from Sony are four new Google Cast compatible devices, the HT-NT5 Soundbar, STR-DN1070 AV Home Theatre AV Receiver and two wireless speakers the SRS-ZR7 and the SRS-ZR5.

HT-NT5 Sound bar

Their new sound bar comes with 2.1 speakers with the option to expand up to a 6.1 system with additional satellite speakers. It supports 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi as well as Bluetooth Audio and NFC pairing. Along with Google Cast the speaker also supports Spotify Connect and Pandora out of the box.

Available June 2016 for $999 RRP

STR-DN1070 AV Home Theatre AV

For home theatre enthusiasts finding the right AV Receiver can be a bit of a challenge. Does it have enough inputs? Does it have enough outputs? Can I connect up my legacy devices? Does it support the latest standards and technology?

The Sony SRT-DN1070 is Sony’s latest attempt to answer yes to all of these questions. The 7.2 Home Theatre receiver has 6 HDMI inputs (1 one the front panel), 2 HDMI outputs, 1 x SPDIF optical out, 3 x RCA audio inputs, 2 RCA video inputs and 1 RCS monitor out. It also supports RJ45 LAN and Wi-Fi (bands not listed) and Bluetooth Audio with NFC pairing.
Supported Audio standards include:

• DTS HD/DolbyTruHD/Dolby Digital+
• Dolby Digital/DTS
• Dolby Digital EX
• DTS 96/24
• Dolby Prologic
• Dolby Prologic II
• Dolby Prologic IIx
• LPCM (2 CH/5.1 CH/7.1 CH) through HDMI
• Dolby Dual MoNO
• 96k/24 bit PCM

Supported Video Standards include

• HDMI® Pass Through
• 4K Output
• HDR ready
• 1080p/24p
• Video Up Scaler & Converter (Analog to Component/HDMI)
• Video Down Converter (Analog to Analog)
• CEC Control
• 3D over HDMI
• Audio Return Channel
• A/V SYNC
• Assignable HDMI Video IN

Being a “network” device it has out of the box support for Google Cast as well as other streaming service including AirPlay and Spotify Connect
While there are few things missing for uber home theatre geeks, such as Dolby Atmos, this system would be great for someone who’s looking for a very capable and future-ready receiver.

Available June 2016 for $1,399 RRP

SRS-ZR7 Wireless Speaker

Wireless speakers are becoming more and more popular as we continue towards the dominance/ ubiquity of portable devices to stream audio from. The SRS-ZR7 is a solid device that includes Wi-FI, wired LAN as well as Bluetooth with NFC Pairing. The speaker also includes input via headphone jack, USB (A and B) and HDMI.

From a streaming media perspective it includes support for Google Cast and Spotify Connect. The sound quality should be fairly good with 2 main drivers and 2 Woofers.

Available July 2016 for $479 RRP

SRS-ZR5 Wireless Speaker

The SRS-ZR5 is the is the baby of the family, however it’s still packing all of the features of the bigger SRS-ZR7 just with one speaker and a single Woofer.

Available July 2016 for $379 RRP

This is an impressive line-up from Sony and we’re excited to see Google Cast being integrated in so many of their latest offerings. UPDATE Australian pricing and availability now included. Unfortunately, we’re unsure about Australian availability at this stage. We have reached out to Sony Australia to confirm which, if any, of these will be available locally and will let you know what we find out. Sony have a reliable history of bringing their home entertainment line-up to Australia so we are hopeful.

We are still waiting for feature parity with Chromecast devices to come to the Google Cast standard including features such as multi room audio streaming. Hopefully it won’t be long until we see an announcement on this, after all there is a big Google conference on the horizon.

Are you interested in any of these? Let us know in the comments.