It would seem to me that the future developments in the delivery of music and video will see far more use of digital storage. On that basis, what do you think will be the key feature in a B&O system?

I voted option 1, because I think that the best possible quality has always been and should stay the idiom of B&O. 

I voted for 2-way communication, as for me this is becoming the top priority in B&O systems.

Having BeoPort/BeoPlayer, it is a real challenge to find the right track or station if you're not in front of your PC, and I can imagine that it is soon going to be the same nightmare for DTV stations once you get thousands of them to choose from.

This was B&O's exclusivity 20 years ago, as was the display on the loudspeakers, and they gave up this exlusivity..now, as for the wheel, once (if) they go back to it, people will say they copied Loewe or Apple!

However, I wish there had been another possible choice in the poll: integration.

It drives me crazy to see that DVD2/HDR2/BeoMedia could have been one single product, for the sake of simplicity & convergence of technology. A single audio & video platform with add-on modules would be the way to go, I think.

Integration, no doubt about it. I couldn't live with multiple remotes and not having link features.

The best sound and picture (or else why bother) - I would take integration as a given in any future audiovisual system - even from the bulk manufacturers.

The best possible sound and picture is the basis for a good audio / visual product. So that gets my vote. But it's all kind of useless without a good user interface. B&O will probably provide this user interface and make sure integration with existing systems is no problem.

I think that in order to survive B&O must focus on the best possible sound and picture reproduction, conveniently accessed and controlled throughout the home. In other words, a combination of several of the points. But I voted for sound and picture quality, as without a lead there B&O will become irrelevant given the many other choices that exist and/or are emerging in high-end A/V.

In audio, B&O must pursue the inroads created by the acoustic lens technology and adaptive bass control -- combining these with advanced, personalised digital signal processing to deliver outstanding music and movie experiences.

In video, B&O must continue to strive for top-of-the-range picture quality and integration, easily controlled. B&O should also aim at becoming operating system agnostic, i.e. that the company should drop its preference for Windows which is becoming increasingly irrelevant as a media centre solution.

And someone in Struer has to accept that dropping two-way was a big no-no and no two ways about it ...  

Being B&O, I would expect all the options listed in this poll to be taken into close consideration, althought the first in the list strikes me as the most important one.

As already mentioned, the best audio and vision brands cannot be the best unless the sound and picture quality really is the best and are up to date with the latest technology.

I realise that the choices are limited - it was designed to stimulate debate - and you have not disappointed!

Sound & Video quality. B&O have been doing the whole 'simple' thing for years. My BeoSystem 6500 is streets ahead of any other system out there (excluding other B&O), and this is what sets it apart.

The only area B&O have ever been criticised (with the exception of a few little niggling things) is the performance of their sound systems. Sure their TVs have always been streets ahead of anything else on the market, plus the video market is IMO far less competitive (although others may disagree). The problem with the audio market is that it's far more competitive, and there are some truly amazing systems out there (as far as performance goes). B&O have often lagged behind when it comes to performance, although this is increasingly not the case. BeoLab 5s, 9s and possibly even the 3s have shown this not to be the case, and are slowly changing B&O's image among audiophiles. If they can keep this up, then I reckon they could open themselves up to a whole new market - the 'audiophile' market.

Still, that's just my opinion, it may well be entirely wrong or entirely right.

For me though, it's the performance...

I voted 1 also, but for me the question is where will be getting our content. For me, i think the BlueRay HDDVD battle is a waste because i would expect that in the not too distant future we will be downloading our hidef content directly from either the studio or from a "blockbuster" kind of store.

Movies will be available to buy or rent. If you buy, the file would be DRM free and you'd be able to burn to a disc for archiving and if you rent the file would have DRM and would be locked to the device you downloaded it too and would expire after a week.

I think the same will happen for CD's. Just look at the thread earlier about Deuche Gramaphone. I tunes now have itunes+ DRM free and Amazon and WalMart also have large library's that are DRM free.

I think BeoSound 5 is a step in the right direction for B&O. I don't expect that CD & DVD will die off anytime soon but the growth of downloads will be huge in coming years. So we will all have to have a CD Player, a DVD player & some kind of MP3 device to make finding our thousands of songs convenient.

Just my $0.02.

jazz
 

*double post*

One of the things about B&O is that there isn't just one key feature- it's the sound, design, usability, and integration all together that make it so nice. 

I asked my wife today about our system and what she liked about it. (System is BC9300 & BL8000's in living room, BL3500s in master bath and kitchen, and CX-50's in family room with (Sony) TV (controlled by Beo4 with Lintronic) and phones Beocom 1 and 2400). She liked the fact the speakers were not big boxes, were very unobtrusive and sleek. Also the beolink system is key; it's how we use the system most of the time. 

 I would like to see future system have beolink wireless built in. Let's move up from active speakers to active speakers that get the SPDIF data sent wirelessly from the main unit and all the digital-to-analog conversion is done in the speakers. The 5's are the closest to this way (but not wireless), but are too expensive right now and I'm not in love with the way they look.