dCS Puccini Clock

What a bunch of nonsense.

Nothing wrong with having to pay for extra features that expand units functionality, IMO.

If they ask you to pay for software update that fixes bugs etc - that would be another story.

It is gouging.

I think dCS is sort of a joke, at this point. I mean the prices for their products, as good as they are, are so disgustingly inflated now that they are basically the exclusive playthings for oil sheiks and other greedy corporate types. At a certain point, "high-end" just becomes "high-falutin" nonense. Selling a licensing for firmware that enables functionality that the unit should have included to begin with? The only reason for requiring such a license is that they know that once the upsampling functionality is enabled, users will be able to use music server on the cheap products like Squeezebox and Transporter to great effect, bypassing the need for U-Clock, Scarlatti Upsampler and whatever other outrageously overpriced USB to SPDIF converter they can cook up this year. They are basically holding proper music server functionality hostage.

If Microsoft could enable true 1080P output on its standard XBOX with the flick of a switch but we were expected to pay them a license for the firmware update there would be mass upheaval. I have $100 sound cards and $300 PC graphics cards that get almost monthly driver updates free of charge. My computer motherboard practically gets a free firmware update everymonth--in some cases enabling radically new functionality. But as an audiophile, I am supposed to simply lap up David J M Steven's marketing bullshit and pay for a basic functionality fix--why exactly? I can only conclude that dCS finds its customers to be saps who are easily parted from their money.

I wouldn't give them another nickel.

Blackstonejd,

I have to agree with you. I have wrongly thought, that the new "upsampling from digital inputs feature" requires additional hardware updates.

Since it is only a case of software update, I think this is unfair.