soundproof wrote:

I'll add a little something to the above.

B&O made playing records thoroughly enjoyable, an aesthetic pleasure and a functional joy.
They provided customers with reel-to-reel playback, and made the best cassette decks available, pioneering technology that ended up in other high-end players. They were among the first to provide cd-players, and built the best television sets around, becoming famous for their colour sets.

At no time during that process did they forget their main mission - to integrate all of this brilliantly, for end user convenience.

Which makes me wonder why they seem determined to make digital harddisk stored playback a pain ... 

I would love to have the genius behind this product in how today's B&O products integrate with digital content.

A professional or serious musician could connect a microphone to the system, adjust the LP playback to fit the pitch of his instrument, record himself playing along for practice purposes, and then listen to the result ... all with perfect ease, because B&O catered to such needs.

 

Looking at the beautiful 6000 system prototype is wonderful - one of my biggest disappointments was finding out that it was just a mock up!

It's not my thinking, it's observed reality. Before the recession you'd be dead on. I'd be first in line beating the drum for premium mass market products for $15k-$50k systems, but these days those systems don't move like they used to and definately not enough to support a dealer. I'm sure parts of the EU market are different, but we can see sales numbers anywhere in the world and the sales mix relies on large custom sales more than ever. Back 5-7 years ago a dealer could avoid larger custom systems and the complexity they invite and just push 1-2 room solutions all day long with some 2 channel systems thrown in for good measure. Not today. Stores that rely on retail business and small systems are folding. 

As I said, as the market thaws I'm sure you'll see more entry level and mid-market offerings fleshed out, but right now many mid-market aspirational customers are holding off on purchases like this, new cars, kitchen renovations, etc. until the market exhibits some long term stability. As that happens, I hope that our product mix keeps pace and we're able to offer some great entry and mid-level systems. 

PhilLondon wrote:

Apple list partner brands for AirPlay.

http://www.apple.com/itunes/airplay/

No B&O there...

Interesting point on this page... Airplay includes support for meta data for devices that supports it, and also allows the control of the volume of the distant device from the sending device...

p.

Yes, I saw that list yesterday: Denon, iHome (had to look them up !), JBL, Marantz, B&W ........

My question is (and I know that no one will have the answer) is

? did Apple approach B&O and B&O not take up the opportunity to be part of the launch

? did Apple not even think to approach B&O

To be honest I am not sure which answer would make me sadder

TripEnglish wrote:

when I sell a $500,000 system 

Seriously, how big is the market for a $500,000 system? No company could afford to sustain a market like that.

jldmelb wrote:

TripEnglish wrote:

when I sell a $500,000 system 

 

Seriously, how big is the market for a $500,000 system? No company could afford to sustain a market like that.

Um... big.

I know many on this forum are tired of my annual pleas for B&O to "embrace Apple".  I realize that I sound like a broken record (no pun intended), but to those of us that love both B&O and Apple, the union of these companies (even if only in a very ancillary way) simply makes so much sense.  Many of us have long felt that B&O would reap great rewards if, as Soundproof suggested, they left the software to Apple and concentrated on making good TVs and speakers that, at the very least, offered the option to play well with Apple.

I can remember some of us predicting Apple's ascendancy on the old Beoworld site, and being told that B&O didn't need Apple, B&O wanted to design their own software and make it more Windows-based to appeal to a larger market, B&O didn't need to lower their standards to facilitate playing compressed audio, etc., etc.  We were gently teased for our loony loyalty toward Apple and the idea that Apple and Apple products would become as ubiquitous as they now have was usually discounted by our fellow Beoworlders.

I don't pretend to speak for all the Beoworld Apple loyalists, but for some of us it's been incredibly frustrating watching B&O ineptly navigate this veritable sea-change in media acquisition and consumption.  This AirPlay stuff is just one example of lost opportunity on B&O's part.  For a more personal example, I wouldn't buy the Beosound 5 because it doesn't play well with my Apple stuff.  If, however, B&O made it easy to connect their speakers in a seamless and elegant way with an iTunes driven computer or Apple TV (i.e. sans an audio head unit), I would be purchasing more ALT speakers.  As it stands now, though, I'm being cautious about B&O purchases and I suspect that others are, too.  That isn't good for B&O, particularly not in this economy.

Mark D

P.S.  Just so y'all don't think me a total B&O traitor that has completely forsaken the brand, I'm about to purchase a BV7-55".  Its PUC will drive a new Apple TV.

soundproof wrote:

Yesterday, Apple removed the CD from its iTunes logo, declaring that container for content to be passé.

I think keeping/including it still involves some license fees...

Just like the iPhone 4 antenna issue - the antenna configurations that work have been patented by other manufacturers, and Apple doesn't want to pay (and didn't think some counter-patent court issue could've solved this).

More to the topic, I think I just saw LG introduce a cooler-freezer with an iPod dock. That should put Smeg out of business 😎

I don't think this is an Apple/B&O discussion - or it shouldn't be.

It's a question of whether today's most used formats for moving digital content to consumers can be easily accessed through B&O equipment or not. Apple are not alone in offering digital content through the internet.

At some point B&O chose to not be in the vanguard in providing easy integration to new formats, and it has nothing to do with B&O electing to hang back relative to new technologies, because they have been trying their own hand with HDR, BeoMedia, etc.
If the reason is that B&O don't want their customers to have access to any other formats than those provided by B&O, then I fear it's a flawed strategy. Look at Spotify relative to what Apple is offering, for instance - a completely independent effort that Apple couldn't have predicted, and which I would claim is superior to Apple's. And there will be other offerings that are superior to Spotify's. (And we do have Pandora and other streaming services, of course, doing it their way.)

Naxosradio has 70 channels of streamed content from their vast music cavern, complemented by offerings from a lot of other providers.
USD 20/year. hlink

Imagine a BeoSound 5 that asked you whether you wanted to add Naxosradio to your available streams, together with Spotify - and/or Airplay.

Or what if the integration of the Naxos Music Library was offered through your High-Def television screens and music system. Wouldn't that be nice? Having access to thousands upon thousands of recordings, liner notes, professional annotations, the scores - easily accessed through period, composer, performer, etc? With recordings not only from Naxos but from  BIS, Chandos, Hänssler, Hungaroton, Marco Polo, Ondine.

What is the difference between Airport Express & Airplay? If it suffers the same sound delay between the main product & linkrooms fed by an Airport Express base for instance, I won't use it, that's one reason why I'm not having any Airport Express base at the moment..If the sound delay issue has been solved, then it could become an interesting solution.

Going back to B&O's digital approach, I don't understand why they don't leave the hardware to other companies, and simply fit all their BeoSounds & BeoVisions with USB or Ethernet inputs(or wi-fi receivers), so that each product accesses a local USB device, or distant network drive, for audio file playback on BeoSounds & video file playback on BeoVisions...is it so complicated? The rest of the world manufacturers are offering this today..🙁

the first AirPlay speaker:

http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/03/ihome-teases-first-airplay-compatible-portable-speaker-dock/

I hope the B&O dock will have this too. Otherwise, it would have negative impacts on other B&O products: a dock which costs multiple times more and lacks this important feature, will substantiate the argument of overpriced audio and video equipment.