Theft protection

6 replies
Quick question. Has B&O given up on theft protection? Pin code security was good to have and was part of beolab 5 and all the expensive TV sets in recent years up to beovision 14.

I noticed that my new beolab 50 lacks the feature and I wonder what the reason is they removed the feature. Does anyone know?

If you believe Willie's flame in last week's BeoTalk podcast, the customer support burden on the dealer was way too high for the protection afforded by the feature, thus the feature itself ended up being a nuisance for the customer rather than a benefit.  He mentioned former models which also weighed so much that the PIN feature was not the primary reason preventing them from being stolen!  

I think it does present the hot-goods "fence" a stumbling block, at least -- and given modern electronics where a CPU and NVRAM are de rigueur, there's no reason other than support hassles that it couldn't be implemented again, trivially.

Bl50’s can also be checked via serial nr and ip and all that, not to mention they’re too awkward and heavy to just “steal” 😎
I can imagine that it was a very annoying feature in some ways and also for me when ever the power would go out and I have to look for the pin codes.

It’s true we can check serial numbers but still. They do work.

I guess it’s hard to steal but it’s also very expensive speakers. I just hope that never will happen.

But some products are easier to carry away and they could benefit from it. Look at apples solution for example that more or less render products completely useless without being removed from find my Mac first. And can also be tracked that way.
Agreed. Apple went through many technological iterations on device security. The consequence of hard-won customer service experience. Note that Apple has largely landed on the use of Apple ID credentials + TFA to secure most things. B&O need not re-invent that wheel.

My B&O Icons:

BeoCenter-9500.png BeoCenter-9500.png
Beosound-Shape.png Beosound-Shape.png
Beosound-9000.png Beosound-9000.png
Beoremote-One.png Beoremote-One.png
Beoplay-H9i.png Beoplay-H9i.png
Beoplay-A8.png Beoplay-A8.png

Oh hell no.

I had to go through gyrations to fake-register 2FA to a landline phone without attaching my real persona to, e.g. Homepods (no Siri or home control active, just AirPlay).  Never again.  

If B&O forces implementation of that, no more firmware updates for me, and no more sales of new items for them.  Always voluntary, even if opting out is well-hidden (like avoiding a Google account when setting up the BeoSound 1).

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