Elephant, you bring up  some very good points:

-B&O used to pretty much have the market when it came to exceptionally high style & user friendly AND well made audio products. Apple and the digital music file changed that drastically.

-Not only have the fortunes of B&O and other companies changed, but our personal finances as well.  Even though the economy has made great strides to recovery, the 'lean & efficient' model is here to stay. 

This has left us a little bitter as consumers, and probably changes our mood a little on the whole.  We watch our money a little more, spend a little less, or we expect more for our money, usually reluctantly.  In better times we'd certainly be less critical of certain products.  I'm sure even those of us who weren't hit directly with an ecomic crisis have adopted such a mindset.  We do more with less, and expect more for less.  It's smart, but it sucks...

:)

Mike

Thanks Mike :) 

Thanks Trip :)

For the record, I think the decline in Beoworld started when Wedthread was moved to separate server and forum ... sure hope it comes back in 2011 ... and yes, I know they are only a link away but it is one link too many because I am such a lazy slob 😂

Yes, people have a certain tendencies to criticise unreleased products based on partial rumoured specs... but...

You can't really say that B&O hasn't changed, they have changed dramatically under the previous CEO. He has decided to dramatically increase prices and move into the "super rich" market. "Super riches" are probably too busy to spend time on this forum, and that left us mere mortals feeling priced out and frustrated by a brand we used to be able to afford.

In the meantime the word has changed and while the CD/Radio/Tape/Analog TV used to be enough for decades, B&O has not seen the multiplication of digital/dematerialised sources coming. Under Torben and until recently, a number of products have been released incomplete or with software issues. And I think it was perfectly right to criticise them (BV8 released without a DVB-T tuner!!!, Beosound 5 that can't really be used from a distance).

That said, I have a lot of hope in the new CEO as I have the impression he really understands B&O's values AND today's technology challenges. Beovision 10 and Beosound 8 will be successes. I can't wait for Beonet, Beosound Encore and the Beo6 combo. Hopefully this should bring B&O into this century, but with B&O traditional specificities: easy of use, 2 way, multi-room.

Trip, as you are criticising people's attitude on the forum, I would like to say that I value your input in the forum, especially as you are one of the only dealer to speak openly, and who does not hesitate too much to spill the beans. Your posts are very interesting, however, you can also be very aggressive and condescending, and if you want to this forum to be a better place, there is a thing or two you can do on your side ;-)

Agressive? Absolutely. 

Condescending? Not really. 

I'm a successful purveyor of luxury goods. I didn't accomplish that by conflating fantasy and reality. If someone feels condescended to because they can't afford a television, a guy on an internet forum is the least of their worries. If I can't afford something, I don't take it personally. I don't assume the company was established 90 years ago so that one day it could do me the injustice of pricing me out of its services. 

If people spent as much time working on improving their financial fortunes as they do griping about how expensive B&O products are they'd be standing at my desk shaking stacks of $100 bills out of a top hat while their man-servant points to the products they want. 

I find the mix of "rose tinted glasses wearers" v "the end of B&O is nigh" about right. 50/50 would make for a very interesting forum IMO.

I enjoy this forum and many of the contributors including Trip and many in this thread.

Some entertaining contributors seem to have left the forum or have drastically reduced their input..........  Elephant is not the only contributor who has spotted that the isolation of the Wednesday non-B&O thread on a different server  has had the apparent effect of reducing contributions to that thread and also apparently reducing the participation of former 'Wedthreders' in the General forum.

Some people seem only to contribute because they have a problem, and disappear once it is resolved. Too many fail to tell us about the actual resolution!

Sometimes threads get hi-jacked by people with a grudge or by dealers who are not at all open about their participation in the B&O new or used sales business (Trip being one of several notable exceptions). Regulars get to know who is who, but one of my very first contributions was about on-line dealers........ little did I know about the territory I was stepping into on Beoworld!

B&O will survive if it produces good design with robust technology. I hope the company is thinking beyond China and overseas production........... anyone relying soley on cheap production in China is in for a rude awakening in the next ten years. Look at what is going on right now with currencies and exchange rates and chinese labour costs.

When I look back at the anti B&O attitudes of the 1970's when I bought my first equipment it's easy to conclude that some things never change. B&O subsequently went through a bad period of Japanese built production. Some people will never be satisfied about the quality of their equipment. Look at the debates about CD lossless quality etc etc.......... . Many compressed file formats now  produce a music quality superior to what a vinyl pressing could produce, the big difference now seems to be in the way the original material is recorded. Is it logical to spend a fortune exposing the poor quality in an original recording?

Hopefully Beoworld will survive and there will be a healthy continuing debate........ maybe once everything is back on the same server in February. (Posts on this main forum do tend to 'hang' when posting rather spoiling the ease of using the forum.)

Graham

TripEnglish wrote:

Agressive? Absolutely. 

Condescending? Not really. 

I'm a successful purveyor of luxury goods. I didn't accomplish that by conflating fantasy and reality. If someone feels condescended to because they can't afford a television, a guy on an internet forum is the least of their worries. If I can't afford something, I don't take it personally.

Oh Trip, you talk yourself down. From the above, I detect more 'qualities' - modesty and self-deprication. Truly amirable.

Most forums become slightly negative! Because people feel safe to criticise when they are hidden behind a computer screen, I for one love the brand and hope that it stays strong. Performance wise they have more competition than ever before but styling and lifestyle they are unrivalled!

I agree Trip we need to be more positive, Thanks for standing up!

The new products may not be to our taste but the fact is they need to sell more products to survive.

There is my opinion!

Cheers Nick 

I think we should ALWAYS agree with you Trip. You make such profound statements. What could anyone else offer.