In the wake of the Gerald Kaufman MP attempted expense claim of £9k for a Beovision there was a suggestion in the Daily Telegraph that B&O was not really for people who  knew anything about TVs (withthe implication that it was more for those with more money than sense!) Putting aside the comparison between new prices and second hand (when B&O can be exceptional value) what are the views of others on the value that their B&O equipment represents?  I for one remember buying my first 1200/1203 radio amp and turntable and having one or two others make disparaging comparisions with their then newly acquired Japanese made Hi Fi separates. I remember at the time though that whilst the figures published on amplifier distortion etc seemed to favour some hi-fi separates, my B&O equipment actually sounded and looked far superior (and still does!)

Vikinguk

If I was being fair, I'd say somewhere between the two extremes. Although we on here would like to think we're in the connoisseur camp, there a hell of a lot of people - and those with money - who won't or don't buy B&O. I don't think I'd buy a BV7-40 (which I own), now, new, for the current UK RRP of just under £10K. The BS5 will be £4K after June the 1st, so you'd have to be real 'connoisseur' to justify that price.

However, sadly there is a big base of current B&O users who other users would regard as ignorant. These fall in to the tech-illiterate group, with high dispoable income, who tend to walk in to the store and simply ask the dealer to setup and manage the installation. Mind you, these people also have better things to do with their life, so whether they are really 'ignorant' or not is another matter. If they're making money and are successful, who really cares if they are 'ignorant' or not of their tech equipment.

I think this group of people will diminish from now and over time. The people who have made easy money from property (ie. most of the 40 and 50 year olds in Bath, it seems) over the last 15 years, won't be able to do the same thing so easily, going forward. Therefore people will be a little more wise with their money and the traditional B&O customerbase will have to shift with the products.

Yes I could have spent far far less and achieved just as much, but I'm generally pleased with my B&O equipment and I *am* tech literate. Speakers perform above expectations, equipment such as the BC2, BS4 and so on are impressive and I'm generally happy with the BV7 I bought a few years ago. I'm also happy paying to upgrade every 2-3 years.

The only problem or negative thought is the poor sw and sw support that I've received over the last couple of years and, more worrying, that my dealer doesn't want to do sw updates under warranty. I can understand cost-cutting, but when you own a £10K TV, you'd expect at least three or four sw updates over the lifespan of the TV. A top-notch B&O engineer can perform a sw upgrade in around 30 minutes.

I don't think its for either. Its simply for people who appreciate the unique design style of B&O, the build quality and sound quality. People buy what they like, they like what they see, they buy it. Sure B&O is expensive but you can't buy a quality product that 20yrs down the line people still find very desirable at a cheap price.

I think a lot of non-B&O owners don't know or appreciate the extensive process B&O goes through to produce one product and that they are able to keep the product in their sales catalogue for years, eg. Beosound 9000 Which other company can claim the same.

BTW, here's the quote from the Daily Telegraph:

"Sir Gerald, however, was clearly in the market for something more refined. His television was made by Bang & Olufsen, the Danish audiovisual company that produces gadgetry to swoon over. Ten minutes down the Kings Road from Peter Jones, Bang & Olufsen has a serene outpost catering to ladies who lunch and backbenchers who binge.

Its top seller, favoured by Sir Gerald, is the Beovision, which can automatically sense when you open a curtain and adjust the screen brightness accordingly. A remote control? No need. Just wave your hand in front of the machine and the DVD tray will slide open. But is it worth £8,865?

Sean Hannam, online editor of the television trade bible ERT, said: "It's bought by people who don't really understand televisions, but who are very keen on style. It's a terribly Eighties, flash-your-cash brand – beloved of Alan Partridge."

Taken from the Daily Telegraph website, link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/5348669/MPs-expenses-Hi-tech-high-price-and-on-the-House.html

I'm assuming Sean Hannam (see http://www.ertonline.co.uk/) is rather annoyed that his electronic retailers can't stock B&O kit in their web users' stores. 'Terribly Eighties' is hilarious.

Sean Hannam ought to be shot!!

I've emailed him :)

His email address is easy to find on that website, although I'm not going to present it here, for privacy reasons.

moxxey:

I've emailed him :)

His email address is easy to find on that website, although I'm not going to present it here, for privacy reasons.

Best I don't e-mail him then.....death threats are rarely well received lol!!!!

Well - reading into the comments and thinking about them, you can (i suppose) get a basic take on what they are saying.  The 80's were a time for 'making a statement' and being bold. This, effectively, is what B&O is - being bold and making a design statement.

The thing that irks me a little is when people comment on B&O without having the first clue about what the brand is about, where it's come from - and more importantly the manufacturing 'economies of scale' it has to contend with.  Whilst i worry about the retail prices coming up, people should realise that making avantgarde products in such small numbers really costs a fortune to do.  I'm certainly not defending the prices - i'm just highlighting the point that such attention to detail and materials costs money.

The thing that disappoints me is the lack of attention to detail in the components and software, but i think that in time the software issue will be fixed when each component can connect to the internet and be auto-updated by B&O.  For now though, it's the old way!  Giving the BV7 one single DVI socket at launch was unforgivable for what was their life-saving product, and who on earth designed the BeoSound 3200 thinking it would be a fantastic and easy way to navigate through 396 albums using a display that shows no more than eight or nine characters?

After all said and done though, i love B&O and everything about the brand and its history.  It's an odd addiction, that i will say..

Lee

I have never classed myself as a connoisseur of anything - however the few store purchases I've made (albeit a very long time ago) I made because I had to have it. They caused (at the time) real financial hardship for a year or so afterward.

This puts me at the rock bottom rung of B&O purchasers, however I do feel protective of the brand and I do feel upset at the "it's the brand to have" purchasers - I honestly feel that you need to love it to want and own it and it does seem to me that it has moved in recent years to the "I can so I will" type purchasers. I bought my BS5000 twenty-odd years ago and would genuinely cry if it broke - I wonder how many owners of more modern "wonder-systems" would do the same!

I think that the quotations brought up by moxxey just illustrate what sometimes happens to a sloppy journalist, like the one writing for DT, when he/she pretends – lazily, indeed - to have ‘searched’ for ‘facts’ to support an article’s point(s)…

I don’t think B&O was meant to be attacked here, just very sloppily exploited by a journalist who most probably thought it clever to call his buddy Sean who ‘knows everything’ about TVs… That said, I believe that even Sean’s words were taken out of a broader context of his opinion given…

Fabulously well put Lee - I agree with every word.

More than once I've been asked "Why does a B&O DVD player cost so much, when I can buy one with more sockets/features/blue LED's for £14 from ASDA?"

Most people "just don't get it", and they're far better off spending a few quid on a produced-by-the-million piece of cheap soul-less plastic, and leaving B&O for us who do.

i was in john lewis a few years ago and asked why they didn't sell bno tv's . i thought maybe they'd say they were over priced or all flash and no guts , but NO , they actually told me ( all 3 salesmen on the floor at the time ) that bno made the best tv's you could buy and that john lewis would love to sell them but bno didn't do pricematch deals and wouldn't supply them

so if it's good enough for john lewis who are famous for their tv department , who cares what some jurno thinks ?

B&O create functional sculptures that produce sound and images.

Most B&O "objets d'art" complement the surroundings they are placed in, and then deliver aural and visual pleasure, often in ways that show B&O aren't afraid of challenging conventions. Active monitors are now being embraced by audiophiles, but B&O has been there for well over a decade. Trouble is, B&O themselves have been astonishingly bad at explaining the advantages of their decisions when it comes to playback, which is why there is so much confusion and ignorance when it comes to what B&O do well.
And then there's the lamentable fact that B&O have been very late to embrace the new opportunities in digital playback.

This span between ignorant or connoisseur can only be adequately fixed by B&O itself. When the company focuses on the furniture aspect of their products, and keeps flitting from BeoSound 6 to BeoLab 5 in their advertising, without pushing a strong and coherent message, then people settle the dial towards ignorant.

There's a very simple way for B&O to cure this. The company has failed if prospective customers say: "I wish I could afford B&O."

The company has succeeded when prospective customers say: "I wish I could afford the sound and image of B&O."

They dropped the ball on the latter, and need to work on it. There are some products in the line-up that justify the second statement, while a lot of what the company does and makes, justifies the first.

B&O are great at initiating thought provoking discussions such as those taking place on BeoWorld, the media and in the audiophile world. Their innovative and creative products match those same innovative and creative responses (and further questioning) to the human psyche. Brilliant.

Simon. 

To be honest Simon, that happens on any forum. Ever been to a Man U forum (or any football forum)? Life causes people to have very different viewpoints and observations and forums enable these people to discuss. Nothing specific about B&O, it's just forums generally.

I moderate our companies IT forums and the different viewpoints on there are incredible.

I would prefer to think that someone who appreciates a Breguet for its complication needn't be placed opposite someone who enjoys a swatch for its simplicity. You can be a connoisseur of different aspects of the same object. 

rayfenwick:

Fabulously well put Lee - I agree with every word.

More than once I've been asked "Why does a B&O DVD player cost so much, when I can buy one with more sockets/features/blue LED's for £14 from ASDA?"

Most people "just don't get it", and they're far better off spending a few quid on a produced-by-the-million piece of cheap soul-less plastic, and leaving B&O for us who do.

Would you include the DVD1 in that category?

Mine has the advantage that I can control it via my Beo4 and it blends in with my TV & stand, but I think I would really struggle to convince most people that those exclusive 'features' justified the price especially so given its performance and reliability. I don't think such people can be condemed for 'not getting it'.

Why buy a Rolls Royce/Ferrari etc. You can have a Kia or a Tata or whatever they are called instead. They do exactly the same job in getting you from a to b. I like B&O because of the small details and the beautiful looks. If the asda dvd player and stereo looked like the B&O equipment and cost £20 I would buy it instead. For me its not elitist it just that I approve of good design and lie to reward innovitive thinking by purchasing that type of product.

As a tax payer, I have paid for part of said MP's beovision so I might pop round and demand to watch Eastenders on it with him.

kokomo:

Would you include the DVD1 in that category?

Mine has the advantage that I can control it via my Beo4 and it blends in with my TV & stand, but I think I would really struggle to convince most people that those exclusive 'features' justified the price especially so given its performance and reliability. I don't think such people can be condemed for 'not getting it'.

The DVD1 is a prime example of a hard-to-defend B&O product in my opinion:

Yes, it's quite pretty, and it matches well with other B&O kit, but the build quality is frankly embarrassing - the disc tray is woefully thin and flimsy plastic that belongs on a sub £30 machine.   I bought a Toshiba unit from Tesco 6 months ago for £24, and it has a much sturdier tray, not to mention more connections, reads more media, and comes with a remote control.

Sure, the DVD1 may well eclipse it in some things (I've not ran any comparison tests), but even something as simple as the tactile experience of the tray will leave many people wondering why on earth it is supposed to be "better"....

Some people (ranging from technically clueless to professionals in A/V) regard B&O in the same light that I regard Armani Jeans:  They're the same as any other pair of jeans, but you pay 400% more because they have "Armani" written on them.

Some people, my brother for example, express it like this:

Q: "Why is a B&O TV 1000% the price of a same-size/better features/same (or better!) PQ TV from the company that supplies B&O with the guts for their TV's?"

A: "Because it has a little B&O logo on the front, dummy"

Ok, maybe it is only partly true, but there isn't much that is apparent to refute this.

Recently, we've had Beoworld members - fans of B&O who pay for membership of this site - say "Buy a Samsung or Panasonic instead"; and if WE'RE saying it....

Just wave your hand in front of the machine and the DVD tray will slide open. But is it worth £8,865?

Sean Hannam, online editor of the television trade bible ERT, said: "It's bought by people who don't really understand televisions, but who are very keen on style. It's a terribly Eighties, flash-your-cash brand – beloved of Alan Partridge."

Which DVD tray opens when you wave your hand in front of the machine - perhaps I am ignorant.

BV7

Really?  You can wave your hand in front of the dvd player and it opens?  I thought you had to press a button on the underside of the screen?  Which model have you got/which country?    

No, you can't wave your hand in front of the DVD player. You're right. This was just sloppy journalism. As I said, I emailed that Sam from ERN and he replied. Decent reply, too. Just a pity he didn't ask for more help to build his opinion, before he offered it to the Telegraph!

 A colleague of mine had a 1980's Aston Martin. On close examination it was clear that it had door handles from a Morris Marina, lights from a Vauxhall......... etc etc. The reality is that if you want to be different you have to pay a high price, even for a product containing many components identical with mass produced equipment. Another analogy would be designer radiators: you can get a high output mass produced radiator for, say £30, whereas if you want a stainless steel designer rad with the same output you may have to pay £250 to £600. Mass production brings down costs by an order of magnitude. B&O probably had the right policy in focussing on a market where customers appreciate design and want to be different. However, there are no excuses for not offering the very best technical specifications with every product.

Vikinguk

I'm puzzled that "is it worth it?" threads still pop up. 

That's like asking, "Is this woman beautiful" or "How should beef be prepared" and expecting a consensus to develop.

I'm more a fan of "why is it worth it (or not worth it) to you?"

We all get to give essentially the same replies, but without feeling like we need to definitively win The Argument. I've always liked reading threads like that, but these tend to either bore or irritate me!