My initial reaction was was not positive.  I have been ripping CDs in WMA and FLAC to the Beosound 5/BM5 without any problems.  However I mentioned it to my wife and she thinks it is a great idea.  She wants me to order it tomorrow.  There might be a large group that really wants this.  I never planned on ordering something like this.

Puncher wrote:

If the drive is transferring the digital audio over USB to the BM5 where it is then compressed into WMA format then it seems daft not to offer the facility to play the CD (USB) stream too, but then it is B&O we're talking about

I don't see much point in playing a CD and not copying it to the library (I'm sure the copyright mafia would, though). According to the sales pitch on the B&O site, you can start playing after the first track has been copied, and I wouldn't expect that to take long.

I can see this being simply an user interface issue - by not offering direct playpack, they avoid a special use case and it's easier to keep it simple for everybody.

Exactly  :aimed at computer-phobics... Not the case of ANYONE in this forum normally!

And playing a CD without ripping it is just plainly stupid : you have access to ALL your CD library in lossless at the turn of a wheel, or via the 2-way Beo6 (15th of november...), so WHY ON EARTH WOULD YOU STILL WANT TO PLAY A F*** CD with all the reading errors that you can have, the slow access time and everything (like spending hours to find out that the CD you wanted to play was in fact in the basement and not in the livingroom)????

Here is the official presentation :

Let me guess,

it's not possible to select tracks on a cd

If people find this device ugly then I am sure it is just a normal USB laptop CD drive in fancy casing and that it is just the software which will be updated so you could just attach a normal USB CD drive into the BM5 out of sight like I did with my hack...

Easy ripping for computer-phobics 😁 and working nicely!

Needs the new SW 6.05 and retails in Austria for EUR 320 including VAT. 

Very cool.

Can you post more pics, please ?

Only for the BS5 foot ?

The "slice" can be added to all existing BM/BSd 5s and can be used for all variations of
stands or wall mountings.  

Does it give an option as to what format for the ripping? I hope Apple Lossless will be added in the future.

Does it ask for confirmation for the tags?