Yesterday I got my BeoLab 2000 connected to my BeoVision 8 and Beosystem 6500.
B&O has gotten quite a bit of stick from us lately, so I thought I'd share a really positive experience. The BeoLab 2000 is connected with ML, through a splitter, to the BeoVision 8. These are then connected through a converter box (1611) to the Beomaster.
I'm now controlling DTV (and the channels of the Set-Top-Box), CD, Phono, Radio, and A.MEM2 in the kitchen, with my Beo4. A.MEM2 is what I use for music sent to the Beomaster with an Airport Express.
I've been told that B&O engineers call it DisasterLink because it's such a challenge to ensure that the protocol can control old and new B&O, but I'm very, very grateful that they have gone to the bother. It's actually quite incredible to be able to control a Beosystem from the 80s, a BeoLab 2000 from the 90s and a BeoVision 8 from 2007 with the same commands and the same remote, and to have it all work so seamlessly.
And then there are the small details: the fact that I can listen to the television news in the kitchen, without the BV8's screen coming on in the study; the fact that I can split sources; that I can program functions with the timers.
In fact, the only thing missing for me to go all B&O is a two-way remote. I wish that I could either get the iPod Touch functionality into a B&O remote, or the B&O remote functionality into my iPod Touch. The iRed/irTrans guys I believe are rewriting their code now that Apple released the developers' kit for the iPhone/iPod Touch - and that would be one way to go.
But then B&O could also take that same developers' kit and create their own software giving people full B&O control of their hardware, while exploiting the possibilities of iTunes/Apple/Music servers (hint-hint). People who see my iPod Touch when it's lying on the BV8's handy shelf think it's a new remote from B&O, since that's what I use it for. (And if I could only also control the hardware!)
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This got me thinking. What are the little details that keep you from being completely satisfied with your B&O experience?
For me it's three things:
1. The two-way control described above.
2. Having both optical and coax s/pdif IN on the audiomasters and televisions.
3. The ability to configure the speaker set-up without a centre channel, creating a phantom centre using the front Left/Right speakers.
If they offered that, I would have bought a B&O surround processor/audiomaster, instead of the non-B&O workaround I'm using now.
Three little things. What are your three little things?