Stuff Magazine have posted a “hands-on” video of the BeoSound 5 on YouTube, showing how fluid and responsive the interface is:

After months of build-up, B&O have finally unveiled the BeoSound 5 and Beomaster 5 digital music system.

The visible part of the system is its controller, the BeoSound 5. This is consists of a control wheel and a 10.4″ LCD screen. Album covers and photos are shown on the screen, and tracks are selected with the control wheel. The system can also be remote controlled with a Beo 4 or Beo 5. The screen is supported at a seeminly impossible angle by its heavy base. Other mounting options are available including a floor stand and wall attachment.

BeoSound 5 connects to the BeoMaster 5, which stores digital music on its internal 500GB hard drive. This provides enough space for over 28,000 songs or 1000 losslessly-encoded CDs. It can also store photographs and access internet radio stations. The BeoMaster 5 has an ethernet interface, which allows it to connect to the owner’s home network. Music is placed on the BeoMaster 5 by a PC or Mac connected to the same network, running either BeoPlayer or an iTunes plug-in to encode and sync CDs. A DVI and USB lead connect the BeoMaster, which most owners will hide in an inconspicuous place, to the BeoSound 5. The BeoMaster has numerous other connections, including Master Link and Power Link.

BeoSound 5 introduces a feature not seen before in any B&O product: MOTS, which stands for “More Of The Same”. This analyses various aspects of the tracks stored on the BeoMaster, allowing it to automatically generate playlists containing similar music. The result is likely to be similar to iTunes’ Genius Playlists, but without the need to send details of the owner’s music collection to B&O.

Although B&O have announced the system today, it will not be available until April 2009. At this point, B&O dealers will offer customers a CD encoding service so that they can start listening to their music collection straight away.

Bang & Olufsen has launched a new website dedicated to its forthcoming music system, BeoSound 5. The product will be unveiled on Wednesday 12th November, but for now the site simply contains a countdown and an interactive section which allows visitors to make animated circular patterns. This is a reference to BeoSound 5’s control wheel, which will form a major part of its user interface.

We expect other items to appear on the site which emphasise other aspects of BeoSound 5’s design in the run-up to the unveiling. The site can be found at http://www.beosound5.com.

Bang & Olufsen have announced a new strategy for their future development and operations, which will affect everything from their product range to the shops in which they are sold and to how the company is run.

The company will focus on audio, video and in-car entertainment systems and will cease development mobile phones, MP3 players and standalone products such as DVD players and Hard Disc Recorders.

We expect that the recently-introduced Serenata will be withdrawn when there are not more stocks, as will the BeoSound 6 and BeoSound 2. This is a sensible reaction to company’s realisation that the mobile phone and MP3 player markets are so price-sensitive and have such short product lifecycles that it is impossible to offer products worthy of B&O’s name.

This also marks an end to the firm’s co-branding activities. The joint branding of the Serene and Serenata phones with Samsung always seemed like an unlikely combination, with little benefit to B&O. Samsung also co-branded phones with Prada, which makes one wonder whether B&O’s input was mainly technical or whether it was simply the addition of another high-value brand name to the Korean company’s range.

Domestic phones such as the BeoCom 2 and incredibly successful BeoCom 6000 are not mentioned in the statement, so we conclude that production and development this product line will continue.

The DVD 2 and HDR 2 are to be discontinued and will not be replaced. The company’s strength is in integrated products, so standalone items like this did not form part of the core range in any case. B&O will broaden their integration activities further, aiming to provide control items such as curtains and air conditioning from a single remote control. This is a logical expansion of the long-standing BeoLink system and the more recently introduced BeoLiving concept.

The company’s goal in new product development will be to create iconic products, such as the BeoSound 9000 and Beolab 8000, which are instantly recognised throughout the world as being produced by B&O. Their first chance to prove they can still do this will at the launch of the BeoSound 5, in a few weeks time.

There is a down-side to the plan, too. The company is aiming to save DKK 160 million, which involves 165 redundancies, not recruiting for 135 other positions and reducing spending on external services.

There will also be a restructuring of the sales organisation, and a drive to open more shops in growth markets. A new senior management team has also been announced.

The key points of the plan, which can be seen in full here are:

1. Focus on product development in order for Bang & Olufsen to concentrate on fewer product categories, i.e. primarily audio and video products.
2. Build one common digital technology platform as the future technological foundation for the Group’s products across its product portfolio.
3. Ensure more effective support for, and development of, Bang & Olufsen’s dealer network by creating one general global sales organisation.
4. Increase the number of shops in growth markets.
5. Adjust costs by DKK 160 million to achieve short-term profitability.
6. Appoint a new management team for the Group.

There is a further statement from B&O here.

BeoWorld has been the subject of a much-anticipated redesign and is due to be re-launched on 16th April. The statement from Beoworld gives some more details:

It is with great pleasure that I can announce the launch date for the new BeoWorld Website. After a huge amount of hard work and dedication from the sites Moderating team, and the skill of Van and the team at Firebrand we will finally be ready for launch on Monday 16th April. A time is yet to be set, but expect sometime mid-morning/lunchtime.

I would sincerely like to thank everyone for their patience in waiting for the new site, and I am sure all will agree it has been worth waiting for. We are currently fervently working through the new site editing, refining and perfecting as we go along.

Please remember though, that it is a completely new site and totally untested in the volume of traffic that we will be putting through it. Problems may occur, but be assured they will be rectified as soon as they happen, as we will have the programming team on standby should anything fundamental happen. We have beta-tested as much as we can, and although we will hopefully have ironed everything out – saying it will be faultless will curse us!

All that remains to say is “Welcome” when the new BeoWorld launches, and hopefully you will all join as Gold Members!”

Gold membership should be very popular, as all Gold members are entered into a monthly draw, with some excellent prizes to be won.

Everyone at Beocentral wishes the BeoWorld team good luck and lots of success with their launch!

BeoLab 9 and BeoVision 9 will be launched in the UK on Saturday 10th March. Customers are being invited to bring their favourite CD or DVD to the showroom to see and hear what the new products are capable of.

It’s certainly worth going along to listen. BeoLab 9 fills the gap between BeoLab 5 and the rest of the loudspeaker range, in terms of both pricing and sound quality. The diminutive size of BeoLab 9 is the first surprise, it looks much smaller than the publicity photos lead you to expect. But just as B&O have said, they really do produce a sound you’d expect from much larger speakers.

In direct contrast, BeoVision 9 is mighty. It’s appreciably larger than the BeoVision 5 it replaces, and really demands a large room to accommodate it. For all its size, it has plenty to offer: an HD ready 50″ plasma screen, built-in hard disc recorder, digital surround sound processor, Acoustic Lens centre channel loudspeaker and an optional BeoMedia module.

As an incentive to come to the showroom, invited customers are being offered a free copy of ‘This is Different’, a CD which demonstrates the capabilities of B&O equipment. It contains a number of collaborations between Kipper, a renowned producer, and artists such as Sting, Judie Tzuke, Richard Marx, Curtis Stigers and Mike Lindup. We’ve been listening to it for a while, courtesy of our local friendly B&O shop, and it’s thoroughly recommended.

Although it looks suspiciously like a montage created in Photoshop, the picture below from B&O shows how the 26″ and 32″ variations of the BeoVision 8 will compare.

We’re sure that it’s the same set photographed from two angles, with the one at the rear enlarged by the appropriate amount. The ‘reflection’ in the larger screen also looks suspect, being at slightly the wrong angle to be a true reflection. There is also the fact that not all dimensions of the 32″ variant will scale proportionately from the smaller-screened original, so this should only be seen as an approximation of how it might look.

B&O have followed up their BeoVision 8 teaser by releasing technical details and more pictures of this new entry-level LCD TV. The screen size will be 26″ with a resolution of 1366×768 pixels and a contrast ratio of 1200:1. There is no glass contrast screen, but there is a low-reflection coating on the LCD itself. A 32″ model will be launched some time after the 26″ version.

The BeoVision 8’s cabinet emphasises the width of the 26″ wide-screen by framing only three sides of the LCD. The lower edge of the screen butts up against a protruding shelf which houses the loudspeaker system. It’s this shelf, fronted by a contrasting aluminium grille with a large ‘Bang & Olufsen’ script which gives the new set its distinctive appearance.

The loudspeaker system unconventional in more than appearance – it’s a new concept on a B&O TV, maybe even on any TV. Although it’s stereo it uses three speakers, two 50mm mid-range/tweeter units for the left and right channels and one central 100mm bass unit. The bass unit combines sound from the left and right channels, rather than being a true centre channel. The left and right drivers are housed in closed box chambers, while the centre channel’s chamber is of the bass-reflex type. A similar system is used to good effect by BeoSound 1, and should mean that the BeoVision 8’s sound performance should be very good for its size.

B&O’s picture optimisation system, VisionClear, is not mentioned by name in the specifications, but the set will adjust picture characteristics according to lighting conditions. The top right corner of the cabinet has a translucent window behind which the necessary sensors would be housed, as well as the IR sensor for the remote control.

There are numerous placement options: floor or desk standing, wall mounted or on a cabinet. The most harmonious of these is a new floor-standing cabinet with a profile which matches the BeoVision 8’s sloping front and integrates the protruding loudspeaker enclosure perfectly.

You can see B&O’s sneak preview here. B&O are also inviting comments in their forum, which will be responded to by staff involved in the project.

HDR 1 owners will be able to increase the capacity of their machines from 80GB to 250GB. Bang & Olufsen have announced the upgrade on their website with a short paragraph appeneded to the page describing the new HDR 2.

With the upgrade, the HDR 1’s capacity is increased from 20 hours to 59 hours, at the highest recording quality. The new capacity is identical to that of the HDR 2.

The upgrade provides no other extra functionality, so we expect that it is simply a replacement hard drive. A quick check of Dabs.com shows that 250GB hard drives retail between £45 and £50, but as the upgrade will be performed by an authorised B&O agent without invalidating the warranty, the hard drive itself will probably not be the largest component of the overall cost.

Bang & Olufsen have taken a step closer to launching their new hard disc video recorder, HDR 2. It was first shown in the 2006/07 catalogue, but details are now on the company’s website at www.bang-olufsen.com.

The specifications posted on the site don’t tell us anything new about the product, which is styled to match BeoSystem 3. Hard disc capacity is 250GB, allowing 59 hours of high quality or 126 hours of standard quality recordings. Output is via Scart or a 75Ω RF socket, so HD recording and playback are clearly not possible. An STB (set-top box) controller is included, which allows the HDR 2 to control an external satellite or digital receiver for unattended recording.

We expect that the HDR 2 will not be available in the USA when it is launched, as the specifications indicate that it is only capable of running on European voltages: 220-240V at 50Hz. HDR 2’s functionality will still be available in the USA, however, but only as part of BeoVision 9, which contains an integrated hard disc recorder.

There is no word yet on pricing, so we can only speculate. The HDR 2 will undoubtedly cost more than the short-lived HDR 1 it replaces. It offers greater capacity and appears to be made from better materials, and whilst not being capable of recording in HD, it does integrate into a BeoLink system, meaning that a reasonably compelling case can be made for its purchase. Our guess is a price of around £1300, but don’t be surprised if we’re a long way off on this one!