Let's start fresh!
1. Fire David Lewis. I like him just fine, but good lord. He hates computers! That's like hiring a vegetarian as a butcher! We want MEAT!
2. Diversify video. I think anyone reading these boards can tell what a powder keg our video segment is. Kill the BeoVision 4. Panels are commodities. Stop trying to push a boulder up a hill. Make a BeoSystem 3 "lite" without a picture engine and automation for a single panel instead of dual viewing modes. These features are rarely used and could potentially halve the price. I think a $4k surround sound processor would tickle many of the BeoWorlders I usually spar with.
3. Kill BeoSounds. Drastic, but reflecting reality. The BeoSound 5 should have been a remote and not a stereo. There. I'm out of the closet. The BeoMaster 5 should be a media server. Music lives in your hands or on a screen. There's just no place for a stereo across the room any more. If the BeoSound 5 was a wireless controller that could move around the house and play to any room it was in, our stock would explode. Right now its a worrisome artifact from a strange time for a strange company. (that felt liberating)
4. Build a game changing media engine. Not a glorified NAS device, but a true game changer. This is how we'd become the Apple of AV. I look at it this way. Video is a cluster-____. Every service has a corresponding set top box with its own menu, remote, cords, etc. Now some services are stowing away on other STBs, like netflix creeping into blu-ray players. Now I can have the crispest video along with the worst video! All in the same box!!!
Let's build a platform instead of a product. I know that we've got something like this in the works, but it will fail unless it's comprehensive enough to do the job. We'll never build enough sockets on a device to support all the services, so build a dashboard (like the iPhone did for applications) where television, DVR, on-demand, Netflix, YouTube, etc. can plug in. Put a computer in the TV and then give it a menu to navigate services. No more boxes stuffed in a closet or hanging on a bracket. No bundles of cable. Just software and ease. Sounds crazy, but it makes total sense and last time I checked, wireless internet was pretty stable. Computers have worked this way since the GUI was invented. Icons on a desktop, not boxes attached with cords.
5. Wireless. Making ML wireless was never a good idea. It's still ML. Even if the connections were robust, it has all the same limitations on flexibility that ML did. Imagine turning on a product and seeing it register on your BeoSound 5 and then being able to welcome it into the ecosystem and operate it? Sounds like the bee's knees, right? (also sound a hell of a lot like Sonos) It may not make sense to turn on a TV in another room, but now that we do so much with home automation, it seems more relevant then ever that we control rooms we're not standing in.
There's loads more, but these, for me, are the big ones. This is the dream list. Doesn't mean I won't defend current products, but I certainly have my own bones to pick!
