I am very much interested in this thread. I have had a lot of these thoughts rolling around in my head with the launch of the iPad. Perhaps a deeper look into B&o's MCL Gateway would help? Or, as you mentioned... 3rd party IR: IRTrans or similar.

On the surface, I am looking at the iPad as a MCPxxxx in the MAIN ROOM and the Touch(es) as a Beo4/BL1000 in a LINK ROOM(s).

Looking forward to everyone's input!

You can control every device in every room. It connects on one side to the ML network and on the otherside to an ethernet network. So your iPhone can connect to it directly via WIFI and get 2 way communication.

At the same time it can hold and stream music to an airport express connected to the TV.

Downside: it is very expensive, not all B&O TVs/hifi are supported. In fact only a few are supported, and of course, there is no app for that ;-0

I used a mac mini in office connected to BL4k, in the Living Room I have apple tv connected a BS3/BL5s. . .I use the apple remote program on iPhone to control. . 

Works well for me

MJM

chrisped wrote:

Hi Everyone,

I know it probably has been covered in various threads about Apple and B&O integration, but how could we make the iPad the ultimate B&O remote for us Mac freaks? I know the iPad does not offer any more or better integration points than the iPod Touch or the iPhone, but maybe we could summarize the challenges, options and the ultimate Mac-B&O setup in this thread.

Goal: To have an iPad controlling our B&O system and our vast digital music and video collection?

Assumptions: B&O system is BeoSystem 3 based (lets exclude the BS5/BM5 to begin with)

Use a mac mini coupled with a beoport as the beomaster part and the Ipad as the beosound part. 

Use Lintronics box or Irtrans coupled to your mac mini or the new thinkfloods RedEye wifi remote system (sends all IR signals to non-masterlink and non-B&O units.) as it will support the B&O IR frequencies. 

Challenges:

- iPad, iPod T, and iPhone (iP*) does not have IR, only Wi-Fi and limited Bluetooth. So we cannot point our Apple device towards an IR Eye and turn/off our B&O. I would also probably look funning pointing with iPad or? So how do we do this part? I know there use to be an 3rd party IR box, which could receive commands using Wi-Fi and then beam these using IR. Is this still an option? and/or are there any new options?
I like the small size Redeye system and I'll probably get one to try it out when it becomes available. 

- How do we get digital music into the B&O system (excluding the BeoSound/Master 5). Lets assume it is stored on a NAS. We would need a media server; Mini or ATV - which is best? And how do we connect this to our B&O?
Mac mini works great , coupled with a beoport. 

- How de we get video stored on our NAS displayed on our B&O TV? Same Mini or ATV ? (Controlled by an iP*)
Iphone (or Ipad) can control each mini or Atv individually through wifi. Even directly with a NAS if need be. 

- What app is the most suited app/player for playing our sources? iTunes?
Itunes works ok straight from the mini as does plex (both audio and video). If you use a Beoport I suggest to install Linkplayer.

- How/Where does the BeoPort, BM-Link and LinkPlayer fit into all this?
Really depends on how you want your content played and how far you want to integrate apple and B&O 

- What else?

Please dont hold back any ideas, if we need to build an iPad app, a mac app or a "black" box to fill a gap somewhere in the ultimate setup, maybe we can... I´m up for it.
The Ipad , when it opens up, can make way to new ideas and new ways to interface which will be explored for sure. 

Christian

This is a very interesting thread. I am also thinking of buying a iPad to use it as a remote to control my vast music library which is stored on a mac.

The Beomaster 5 concept is not really suitable for a large music collection. One has more freedom regarding structuring the library with iTunes. Therefore I am looking for a larger device than the iPhone in order to find and choose the right tracks.

.

I will likely have Ipads on the walls in link rooms for access to the apple tv library.

SO SO SO convenient AND there's a interface that you can see versus the beoport idea

I do like the interface of the BS5/BM5 BUT you would need several remotes or a great

memory if you have a large music collection.  The iPad allows you visual access to the

libraries. . THe issue becomes how can you turn on a link speaker with the iPad. .For

example I have the apple TV connected to a BS3 which distributes it via Masterlink

throughout my home.  My ONLY issue with the iPad as an apple TV remote is that you

still have to use the BEO4/5 to turn on the speaker. (you could access it manually i

assume)  But it would be nice to make the iPad/apple TV trigger the link speaker to come

on when the music begins to stream.

I think this is akin to a wireless version of the BS5/BM5 (much more affordable).  I do

appreciate that apple TV quality may not be as good as the BM5, however, I try to DL or

rip at the highest bit rate possible soas to prevent the lackluster music coming through.  

I will be getting at least two iPads with the idea that they will be permanent remotes for

my apple TV and will be used in conjunction with my appleTV/BS3 link. . .

CoolDude has covered a lot of the important points.

I've been using a Mac front-end to control my media playback, and have described this here when I began doing so in 2007. Afterwards, a number of very sophisticated solutions for integration have been suggested by other members. Since there are so many possible avenues/approachoes/solutions, I think it's probably useful to describe some overall goals with an installation.

1. Very important to me was having simple control of content, in my hand, with a two-way remote that let me select sources. That was solved with iPod Touch and iPhone, and will be similarly simple with the iPad, though maybe not as portable as the two other units. But I will still like having the larger control surface, and am in fact using a MacBook today to control my Mac mini, which is the core of my setup.

2. Storage capacity. This is easily solved with storage devices such as those from ReadyNAS, they can be easily connected to a network and controlled through a Mac media centre. I have 4TB of storage space, and won't have filled it up anytime soon.

3. Simple control of peripherals and storage.

This is where the iPad will really come into its own. The larger screen will allow for better feedback. Today, I'm using the MacBook for this, but it's not as elegant solution as what will be possible using an iPad. Screen sharing on the MacBook gives me a replica of the Mac mini desktop on the MacBook screen, and I can then do all kinds of control and administration tasks through that (organizing sources, maintenance of server, etc.)

It's very simple, but not entirely push&play -- so maybe there's room here for the kind of integration that Linkplayer affords, in order to ease the user experience.

4. Porting HD audio and video from the media centre to the B&O speakers and screens.

Let's face it - B&O have not been able to create satisfactory media centre solutions, and events have not only overtaken B&O in this respect, they're left in the dust, with inferior offerings. Maybe new mgt will fix this. In 2005 I was told to "pack your Mac, go back" when I showed top mgt what was in the pipeline from Apple, and what this would mean for A/V-companies.

So we're left with having to create workarounds in order to get the best possible A/V experience from the excellent B&O screens and speakers. But getting HD audio from a Mac mini or similar is no problem at all, and you can even get it in various resolutions. It's rumored that Apple will offer "auto-detection" of resolutions, meaning we'll no longer have to go into Audio MIDI Setup (utility) in order to change these - my DAC which is connected to my BL5s autodetects resolutions, but this is an area where work can be done.

I have absolutely excellent images from ATV when I watch HD-movies, looks simply brilliant. Audio is not as good as top resolution audio from a Blu-ray disc, since the 5-channel from ATV is not high-resolution. So this is an area where we'll have to hope that higher resolutions will be offered for download.

Setting up for porting from a Mac to speakers and screens is simple - though I've found I have to use non-B&O intermediate devices to get the best quality.

5. I'm using Ethernet and Wireless for transfer of content. Wireless works excellently, even for high-resolution content and with various users using the same net at the same time - but I find that having ethernet from the room the server is in (they can be noisy) to the Mac mini has completely (totally and absolutely) eliminated any drop-outs during playback.

===

In the future, I'll be using an iPad for main-room control and admin, but I will continue using iPod Touch and iPhone for general control of playback in other rooms. The remote in these controls both iTunes on the Mac mini and the ATV, and I can stream content with ease.

The content sharing functions built into iTunes also make it easy to stream video at high quality, using the wireless that Apple offers.

Regarding digital networking I  can tell you that B&O is currently working on a Cat7 Ethernet network technology to replace masterlink as my dealer told me. The new product should be introduced to the market this year. 

This issue does of course not solve the missing media center from B&O