Review on Immerse Yourself in JVC EXOFIELD Theater: 7.1.4 Multi-Channel Surround Sound, XP-EXT1 Personal Home Theater System by Doug Powell

Returning for a full refund in about a week. The sound quality was pretty good, maybe a 3.5/5 I'd say. I listened in DTS-HD 5.1 for most of my test and it took me a while to adjust my ears, but after a few hours I was able to get a pretty good picture. The effect of the rear speakers is much more convincing when they sound like they are behind you than the front center speakers when they sound like they are in front of you. I've demoed a few Atmos tracks and have never been blown away by high levels of virtualization. A deal breaker for me was a lot of data transfer issues. I've tried every possible configuration with my Sony A8G and Denon X3700H and couldn't get a full passthrough. When I tried to connect the Exofield to the 3700H Monitor 2 output OR Zone 2 output I lost 4k; The maximum available resolution for my Shield TV Pro was 1080p. When I tried connecting my players to Exofield and then eARC via Exofield with HDMI on 3700H I was able to get 4k but lost: -23.976fps - 24fps - 10bit - 12bit - YCbCr - Dolby Vision - HDR10 In other words , I would limit myself to 59,940 fps and 8-bit RGB SDR. No skipping Dolby Vision (they don't advertise it, to be honest) or HDR10. In modern home theater there have been too many compromises for me. I'll just wait for the second generation of this technology that will keep the video signals working properly. That would be 2 stars as I think this can be used without many compromises if you're watching non-Atmos and/or non-HDR content like regular Blu-rays, but minus 1 full star for Micro-USB, no USB Type-C.