That's not too bad for a B&O product, although saying that these days the cost of B&O has dramatically gone up beyond my wage rises so it's not like I'd be buying one anytime soon [:'(]

Am sure it'll fly off the shelf, as B&O has definatelly gone into the realms of if you have to ask the price then you can't afford it.

I just hope it does have the new ML in it - somehow I think that and 2 way remote will be quite a wait. 😮

Hmm, I wonder if there will be two prices.

Have been told that there are two sections. The back end which includes 500GB hard disk and can be connected to TV or monitor so you can navigate on your TV and also browse the web and show pictures but no movies.

The front end which has the screen and wheel sections.

Can be sold separately!

Russ

I do think that B&O will have to convince existing customers that the price is fair. Back in 2004 they introduced the BeoCenter 2 which was supposed to be, among other things, a fine way of operating N.MUSIC and N.RADIO. I guess it is fair to say that B&O gave up on the user interface with this product vs BeoMedia 1. And the BeoMedia 1 was supposed to be a product that would evolve with software updates for some 5 years after you bought it. So far they have only introduced one major sw-update (v.3.0) and the hardware is so far behind that it can't handle the BeoMaster 5 sw - the plan was to introduce the same platform for the BeoMedia 1 as for the BeoMaster 5. I do hope they will release a BeoMaster 5 "light" sw for the BM1.

My point: The BC2 introduced as late as 2004 and the more recent BM1 are both outdated with respect to handling harddisk based music and internet based radio. Why would the BeoSound/-Master 5 have a longer life span?

Roger

I've just purchased (well, yet to pay, but it's installed..) a Beocenter 2 and it's superb with my existing 'Mac Mini as a media server' setup. Bought a cheap 802.11n Airport Express as it's situated quite a distance from my wireless router, in an old house. Connected these two and then use the iPod Touch as a cheap two-way remote to control the audio from my Mac Mini. Ideal.

My PowerPC-based Mac Mini is the oldest model available and probably would be <£100 on eBay. However, with a refubished 8GB iPod Touch, integrates perfectly with my setup, requires fewer cables than any existing B&O setup (have you seen all the cables and 'controller box' for the Beocenter 2?) and costs considerably less.

However, I'm sure that there many on this board in particular who will buy the Beosound 5 - at £3800 - to do exactly the same thing, and will spend their time hoping a two-way remote will be developed, just because it's B&O.

Dafinity:

Hmm, I wonder if there will be two prices.

Have been told that there are two sections. The back end which includes 500GB hard disk and can be connected to TV or monitor so you can navigate on your TV and also browse the web and show pictures but no movies.

The front end which has the screen and wheel sections.

Can be sold separately!

Russ

500GB? You got to be kidding. The standard nowadays is 1 Tera.  

I'm also hoping that B&O at the price of 5000e don't make an already outdated product. The norm is pretty much 1TB now, and when this is launched in march 09? The industry norm will most likely be closer to 1,5TB.

Lossless format, will it give a file size per song roughly the same size as on the CD? So an album would be ~ 700mb? On a 500Gb disc we would "only" get about 700 CDs... 

Or maybe the disc will be easy to access physically and "easily" uppgraded to a bigger one. This would pretty much be essential since a hard drive gives up pretty easily. 

WMA Lossless is around 50% less than the original size.

Here is a sentence that will soon appear in the Beosound5 web site:

"BeoSound 5 is a two-component solution, consisting of the master unit BeoSound 5 and the socket unit BeoMaster 5. The socket unit includes all circuitry, memory and Internet connections in a storage space capacity of 500 GB. This is enough space for up to 28,000 songs in lossless WMA format."

I would agree that 500 GB is "Small" for a system that does audio and video, but the Beomaster 5 is not for Video.

p.