I now have our Beo 5 set up for full control of the Apple TV through the puc. The hard buttons control the normal Apple Remote functions. The Touch Screen of the Beo 5 has the following functions on it  play, pause, stop, rewind,  fast forward, previous, next track, skip back, and skip forward.

I notice a lot of you have already picked holes in this case for the BM5, and agree with many of you that some of the arguments are incorrect.

On-Board Storage. Yes you can stream with ATV, but 99.9% of the time you play music from the onboard 40GB or 160GB drive. Drop-outs, Noooop. They don't happen as the music comes direct from disk. Even if you choose to stream music from a secondary library then you may only experience this if you wireless network is not up to the job. Since BM5 is based on Embedded Windows XP, I think everyone recognises the inherent experience is never going to be 100%. I've seen numerous screenshots of the dreaded start menu on the display. 

Sound Quality. Last time I saw it, I'm sure I saw a low cost VIA motherboard bought off the shelf. Whereas looking inside an ATV, I saw what one electronics engineer from a rather big chip manufacturer explained to me was a custom designed motherboard with outstanding product integration, unprecedented attention to detail and board design in his expert opinion.

Music Discovery - Anyone wish to argue with the scale of content available on iTunes and an algorithm that analyses the tastes of 100's MILLIONs of customers that makes suggestions accordingly? I want to learn about new bands, not to help me select songs within my own collection that I might potentially like. I know what I have, I want to be introduced to what I don't know.

Interface. I'm not going to argue this one as its subjective. I do agree that Steve can do better here and I'm sure that when he does we can upgrade free to ATV4 that will improve things further still - one thing that is very unlikely to occur on a sizeable scale with a BM5, since it has an embedded OS and not one on a hard disk like a normal computer.

I cannot disagree more on the claims made, some of which are grossly unfair. The BM5 wins on overall product quality of manufacture, aesthetic design and subjectively on the experience of ownership. When you spend a lot of money, I would expect a product to create a pleasurable sense of ownership. But it is just a Skinned Windows XP Embedded system running WMP with an industry standard motherboard, surrounded with B&O's expertise in design and manufacture.

Whilst the ATV has its weaknesses, IMOP it provides the best integrated music lifestyle experience as it connects to our content in the most seamless fashion. An improved graphics adapter for true 1080p output, improved search interface and upgraded 96Khz DACs would make for the complete deal - none of which the BM5 offers either.

Razlaw:

Thanks for all of the input. I have had Apple TV connected and functioning with the Beo 4 for many months. All music is stored in lossless. My questions were more related to sound quality as I think it is superb but others seem to reccommend an external DAC and I was trying to figure in what situations is an external DAC beneficial.  I stream music wirelessly from iMac to Apple TV as well as being able to access iTunes directly from the iMac via Masterlink. Both methods sound wonderful to me and I could not understand how or why an external DAC would improve it. From what you are saying I was correct. No need for an external DAC with our system. 

You are correct.   No benefit to be had from equipment inbetween or having a BM5 - almost identical results. The Beosystem 3 handles the sound processing. The ATV is sending the data over a high bandwidth interconnect direct to the sound processor.

mawheele:

Music Discovery - Anyone wish to argue with the scale of content available on iTunes and an algorithm that analyses the tastes of 100's MILLIONs of customers that makes suggestions accordingly? I want to learn about new bands, not to help me select songs within my own collection that I might potentially like. I know what I have, I want to be introduced to what I don't know.

An excellent point ... I get that from iTunes plus the something like MOTS from genius mixes etc ... and one reason I scrobble my iTunes listening to Last.FM and then look at the playlists of my "neighbours"

Razlaw:

Regarding Beo 4 control (and my soon to arrive Beo 5) I have the Apple remote in the PUC. However I did not like the way it handled on/off. I assigned another device to the Apple TV in the PUC.

wich one do you use?

mr_anders_son:

Razlaw:

Regarding Beo 4 control (and my soon to arrive Beo 5) I have the Apple remote in the PUC. However I did not like the way it handled on/off. I assigned another device to the Apple TV in the PUC.

 

wich one do you use?

Samsung t-351 although I am sure many others could be used. I selected it as Apple TV seemed to learn the puc commands for it easier than one or two others I tried. Having the normal Apple remote functions on the Beo 5 hard buttons and then the other 9 specialized Apple TV commands on the Beo 5 screen works brilliantly. I added the other 9 functions by having the Apple TV learn the commands for the numbers 1-9 and then the dealer used the number commands but added the word to describe the Apple TV functions.

mawheele:

I notice a lot of you have already picked holes in this case for the BM5, and agree with many of you that some of the arguments are incorrect.

On-Board Storage. Yes you can stream with ATV, but 99.9% of the time you play music from the onboard 40GB or 160GB drive. Drop-outs, Noooop. They don't happen as the music comes direct from disk. Even if you choose to stream music from a secondary library then you may only experience this if you wireless network is not up to the job. Since BM5 is based on Embedded Windows XP, I think everyone recognises the inherent experience is never going to be 100%. I've seen numerous screenshots of the dreaded start menu on the display.

A. 160GB is not nearly enough for many music collections. Especially those for whom a BeoSound 5 is even considered as they're likely greater music enthusiasts than the average customer, so inevitably some music will have to stream. From where? My laptop? What if my wife wants to listen to music and my laptop is at work? Sorry honey. And this is assuming there is NO video content on it! Video content eats through storage far quicker than music and AppleTV gives primacy to video. This means that with a few dozen movies and a few seasons of a TV show (not an unreasonable assumption) some or all of the music will always have to stream.

B. It's not always an issue of the WiFi network being "up to the job" so much as where the music is being streamed from. If the music is on NAS, as is more and more common, and has to be streamed, even the best WiFi setup may not be able to support so much transportation without dropouts. Additionally, the scenario above where the music is managed from an iTunes account on one laptop that may not be available means my music is not readily available.

 

Sound Quality. Last time I saw it, I'm sure I saw a low cost VIA motherboard bought off the shelf. Whereas looking inside an ATV, I saw what one electronics engineer from a rather big chip manufacturer explained to me was a custom designed motherboard with outstanding product integration, unprecedented attention to detail and board design in his expert opinion.

You could boil water on the AppleTV. The amount of heat it puts off precludes it from being considered outstanding in any positive way. Your engineer was a putz.

 

Music Discovery - Anyone wish to argue with the scale of content available on iTunes and an algorithm that analyses the tastes of 100's MILLIONs of customers that makes suggestions accordingly? I want to learn about new bands, not to help me select songs within my own collection that I might potentially like. I know what I have, I want to be introduced to what I don't know.

The two serve very different purposes. One is a discovery tool primarily to propose purchases and one is to find "deep cuts" and connections within an existing collection that may have gone unnoticed. Since the majority of BeoSound 5's content is managed from an iTunes program, Genius can still work to help you buy more music from the iTunes store. It's also a pain to make Genius playlists on the fly. My BeoSound 5 makes this discovery simple and automatic.

 

Interface. I'm not going to argue this one as its subjective. I do agree that Steve can do better here and I'm sure that when he does we can upgrade free to ATV4 that will improve things further still - one thing that is very unlikely to occur on a sizeable scale with a BM5, since it has an embedded OS and not one on a hard disk like a normal computer.

Even my hero Steve admits that the AppleTV has not received the focus of the major products and remains a hobby. While some aspects are subjective, any hack web designer can tell you that interface is far more objective than you might realize. Certain things work across diverse populations and some don't. Apple TV is set up like a data-base with far too many entries and exits. Navigation is either too slow or too fast and remote actions feel unresponsive. Edward Tufte calls interfaces like this "stacked in time" rather than "adjacent in space." Essentially, the thing that makes the iPhone so incredible makes the AppleTV terrible. 

The BeoSound 5, on the other hand, places elements adjacent in space and navigating through lists is done with a wheel whose motion is directly linked to screen actions in speed and motion. I'd have to get in my car to feel more attached to a piece of machinery. 

 

I cannot disagree more on the claims made, some of which are grossly unfair. The BM5 wins on overall product quality of manufacture, aesthetic design and subjectively on the experience of ownership. When you spend a lot of money, I would expect a product to create a pleasurable sense of ownership. But it is just a Skinned Windows XP Embedded system running WMP with an industry standard motherboard, surrounded with B&O's expertise in design and manufacture.

Jabbing Windows XP, in this instance, doesn't get you nearly as far as your argument would require. As has already been discussed, the AppleTV's software is the poorest design of all of Apple's products. In addition, it's physical design is compromised my its inability to properly cool itself, its inability to add storage to its insufficient on-board capacity, and its inability to play standard types of video files including home movies. 

 

Whilst the ATV has its weaknesses, IMOP it provides the best integrated music lifestyle experience as it connects to our content in the most seamless fashion. An improved graphics adapter for true 1080p output, improved search interface and upgraded 96Khz DACs would make for the complete deal - none of which the BM5 offers either.

So that's clearly not the case. AppleTV is not the worst product out there by any means, but has too many limiting factors to be the primary music (or media) device for discriminating consumers. You're free to assemble a better argument, but with all the stated merits of this little box over 3 pages its value has yet to be established for anyone but the casual music listener. 

 

 

So that's clearly not the case. AppleTV is not the worst product out there by any means, but has too many limiting factors to be the primary music (or media) device for discriminating consumers. You're free to assemble a better argument, but with all the stated merits of this little box over 3 pages its value has yet to be established for anyone but the casual music listener.

Can't argue with the technical points you've made 'Trip', but you are omitting one thing - price, as I suspect that for you personally this is not an overiding issue in your choice of music delivery. But for many it is. Your phrase 'discriminating consumers' is, I suspect, a euphemism for 'well-off'.

Yes I know this a B&O product forum and therefore very much dealing with a premium, elite sector of the market, but I listen to music from my Apple TV (controlled from an iPod Touch) on a daily basis and, although I have other B&O products around my house, I find that it suits me very well. I consider myself a serious, rather than a 'casual' listener (whatever 'serious' means') and in the past have spent many thousands of pounds on so-called 'hi-fi' systems, but frankly now I haven't got the money, so what I have now works for me and it seems, many others.

Kokomo:

So that's clearly not the case. AppleTV is not the worst product out there by any means, but has too many limiting factors to be the primary music (or media) device for discriminating consumers. You're free to assemble a better argument, but with all the stated merits of this little box over 3 pages its value has yet to be established for anyone but the casual music listener.

Can't argue with the technical points you've made 'Trip', but you are omitting one thing - price, as I suspect that for you personally this is not an overiding issue in your choice of music delivery. But for many it is. Your phrase 'discriminating consumers' is, I suspect, a euphemism for 'well-off'.

Yes I know this a B&O product forum and therefore very much dealing with a premium, elite sector of the market, but I listen to music from my Apple TV (controlled from an iPod Touch) on a daily basis and, although I have other B&O products around my house, I find that it suits me very well. I consider myself a serious, rather than a 'casual' listener (whatever 'serious' means') and in the past have spent many thousands of pounds on so-called 'hi-fi' systems, but frankly now I haven't got the money, so what I have now works for me and it seems, many others.

 

By no means was I inferring well off! I'm genuinely sorry if that's how it came off. It's no secret that B&O is priced for the elite client, but what I really meant was the type of enthusiast who has accumulated a collection that requires more memory.

I'd say that the Tvix box or any device that will run Boxee or XMBC would be a step up over AppleTV. Some of the integration is lost, but a tremendous freedom is gained and most of these devices play any media and can have their internal storage modified to accommodate the most expansive collections.

 If Apple ever decides to take the AppleTV seriously I have no doubt it would be the best of breed in consumer grade home media servers, but they don't seem to have the best brains at work on it right now.

M4SPM:

It Doesn't stream but it could be the hand held two way remote it has Wifi

Found this discussion regarding Apple TV and what is inside one....

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2359127&tstart=0

It would seem that even an older second-hand or refurbished mac mini would be a much better value than the Apple TV.  Is there any downside to that?  Also, it seems that you would solve a lot of the limitations of the Apple TV that way. 

macjonny1:

It would seem that even an older second-hand or refurbished mac mini would be a much better value than the Apple TV.  Is there any downside to that?  Also, it seems that you would solve a lot of the limitations of the Apple TV that way. 

If you're a tad computer savvy then a Mini is the way to go.  Put Plex on it as well as Phillipe's Linkplayer and you're set.  Videos, music, photos, all right there on your computer.  But it takes a little work.  Just read the instructions and you'll be fine.

My mom couldn't do it, for example.  But she can use an AppleTV.

The Apple TV synchronises with your main Mac's iTunes and iPhoto.

The mac mini wouldn't, so you have to manage your media library manually.

p.

TripEnglish:

mawheele:

You could boil water on the AppleTV. The amount of heat it puts off precludes it from being considered outstanding in any positive way. Your engineer was a putz.

Since when did heat have anything to do with sound quality. Apple has one of the finest engineering teams of any electronics firm. I'm sure their very capable engineers would have performed a comprehensive thermal check on the product. Putting your finger on a chassis that becomes hot which ultimately has no impact on product performance does not suddenly reduce its quality. In fact, its outstanding that they have been able to put a PSU, Hard drive and system board into such a compact unit. If that is your basis for throwing insults then...

Jabbing Windows XP, in this instance, doesn't get you nearly as far as your argument would require. As has already been discussed, the AppleTV's software is the poorest design of all of Apple's products. In addition, it's physical design is compromised my its inability to properly cool itself, its inability to add storage to its insufficient on-board capacity, and its inability to play standard types of video files including home movies. 

Apple TV has Mac OSX under the hood.  The ATV cools itself just fine. Mine has been in a B&O cabinet for 2 years, next to an equally hot Sky HD Box and has been faultless.  

 

So that's clearly not the case. AppleTV is not the worst product out there by any means, but has too many limiting factors to be the primary music (or media) device for discriminating consumers. You're free to assemble a better argument, but with all the stated merits of this little box over 3 pages its value has yet to be established for anyone but the casual music listener. 

No point arguing. You divert the subject from technical facts and merits to subjective issues like how much heat a unit emits. Who cares? It works!

I buy based on technical, performance, integration and usability merits, and on the first two/three the BM5 would not meet my purchase criteria. Against the first 3, the ATV wins out against the BM5.

 

TripEnglish:

That's one of the reasons that the AppleTV is such a pitiful product. It's about the only thing I've ever encountered that's so difficult to use I've had to stop installing them. They simply require too much fuss & maintenance and don't pass muster with our clients.

Sorry have come into this discussion late in the day.

Trip makes a very compelling and well though out argument for the BS5/BM5.

In our experience of home demonstrations for clients, they prefer the usability and interface of the Apple TV any day of the week.

We have installed and supplied about a hundred ATVs or Mac Minis with a lot of BVIS 7s with very few problems and the customers love the combination of B&O/Apple. Sure the sound is not the best, but is acceptable.

As a dealership we have sold a handful of BeoSound 5s and apart from the build quality of the head unit which is superb and the sound card in the £250 PC(sorry BM5!!) our customers in the main are very dissappointed in the overall package/experience. MOTS has its place but in the year 2010 when customers want to listen to a specific piece of music from their very expensive music multi room system they should be able to pick that particular track whenever and wherever they want. Christ, if Sonos can do it why can't B&O?

Producing shining aluminium bits is not everything. Struer grow up and move on! Not to have proper navigation of the music library via our TVs  is scandalous.

For the best in quality hardware/software Kaleidescape on the other hand is a different story..............

mawheele:

I notice a lot of you have already picked holes in this case for the BM5, and agree with many of you that some of the arguments are incorrect.

On-Board Storage. Yes you can stream with ATV, but 99.9% of the time you play music from the onboard 40GB or 160GB drive. Drop-outs, Noooop. They don't happen as the music comes direct from disk. Even if you choose to stream music from a secondary library then you may only experience this if you wireless network is not up to the job. Since BM5 is based on Embedded Windows XP, I think everyone recognises the inherent experience is never going to be 100%. I've seen numerous screenshots of the dreaded start menu on the display. 

Sound Quality. Last time I saw it, I'm sure I saw a low cost VIA motherboard bought off the shelf. Whereas looking inside an ATV, I saw what one electronics engineer from a rather big chip manufacturer explained to me was a custom designed motherboard with outstanding product integration, unprecedented attention to detail and board design in his expert opinion.

Music Discovery - Anyone wish to argue with the scale of content available on iTunes and an algorithm that analyses the tastes of 100's MILLIONs of customers that makes suggestions accordingly? I want to learn about new bands, not to help me select songs within my own collection that I might potentially like. I know what I have, I want to be introduced to what I don't know.

Interface. I'm not going to argue this one as its subjective. I do agree that Steve can do better here and I'm sure that when he does we can upgrade free to ATV4 that will improve things further still - one thing that is very unlikely to occur on a sizeable scale with a BM5, since it has an embedded OS and not one on a hard disk like a normal computer.

I cannot disagree more on the claims made, some of which are grossly unfair. The BM5 wins on overall product quality of manufacture, aesthetic design and subjectively on the experience of ownership. When you spend a lot of money, I would expect a product to create a pleasurable sense of ownership. But it is just a Skinned Windows XP Embedded system running WMP with an industry standard motherboard, surrounded with B&O's expertise in design and manufacture.

Whilst the ATV has its weaknesses, IMOP it provides the best integrated music lifestyle experience as it connects to our content in the most seamless fashion. An improved graphics adapter for true 1080p output, improved search interface and upgraded 96Khz DACs would make for the complete deal - none of which the BM5 offers either.

 

 

 

Struer are you listening! Read the above and give this gentleman a job in your digital media department! Give the BeoPlayer software developers the job of cleaning the .....................................................

Why should B&O listen. They seem to have decided that their's is as Trip says "an elite client." 

Too bad, at least here in America. That "elite client" snobishness is just that. Don't bother Trip unles you're prepared to give your architect/designer a budget north of $250k for the a/v system in your "managed" second home.

Those of us who have been loyal to the brand for decades, and who are enthusiastic are dismissed by the snobs as mere hobbyists. Well in my block my modest B&O collection may not be appreciated for what it is, but it sure as heck seems elite.

I would like to mention when I installed my first ATV...

I simply can't... Like a blender, it was plug and play. Flawless.

The only gripe anyone mentions... buy a DAC!

With regards to the delusions allusions to US elite clients... it is commonly referred to as: salesmanus affinitus aspiratus.

beo-ap:

Why should B&O listen. They seem to have decided that their's is as Trip says "an elite client." 

Too bad, at least here in America. That "elite client" snobishness is just that. Don't bother Trip unles you're prepared to give your architect/designer a budget north of $250k for the a/v system in your "managed" second home.

That is the case as it stands. Most dealers are dependant on recommendations from architects etc for big ticket sales to survive. B&O are pushing the masterlink gateway as the solution. The gateway however is only a means at the moment to connect an out of date system (ML) to ones that belong in the 21st century.

For the past 5 years I have heard there are some great things coming from Struer with regards to digital media, still waiting....................

The MCL/ML systems in their day were THE standard for a multiroom audio system, however Struer has spent too long focusing on  fancy aluminium etc etc while the rest of the universe was embracing the digital world.

Good materials and great sound quality, yes for an elite brand like B&O is a prerequisite, but these days good software with a great user interface is also a must. To be honest B&O are still light years behind with their software and I fear if they don't catch up soon they will unfortunately die.

PhilLondon:

The Apple TV synchronises with your main Mac's iTunes and iPhoto.

The mac mini wouldn't, so you have to manage your media library manually.

p.

It's a Mac Mini.  Just put everything on it and you're set.

dilznik:

PhilLondon:

The Apple TV synchronises with your main Mac's iTunes and iPhoto.

The mac mini wouldn't, so you have to manage your media library manually.

p.

It's a Mac Mini.  Just put everything on it and you're set.

No longer a problem - iTunes 9.0.x will sync libraries on different computers automatically - just like an ATV. You need to switch on the feature in Preferences and point your Mac Mini at the library you wish to sync with. I'd also do the same of the other computer as well so that they mutually sync; like purchases you might make etc. Works better than you'd expect - its almost instantaneous.

Hope that helps.

beo-ap:

Why should B&O listen. They seem to have decided that their's is as Trip says "an elite client." 

Too bad, at least here in America. That "elite client" snobishness is just that. Don't bother Trip unles you're prepared to give your architect/designer a budget north of $250k for the a/v system in your "managed" second home.

Those of us who have been loyal to the brand for decades, and who are enthusiastic are dismissed by the snobs as mere hobbyists. Well in my block my modest B&O collection may not be appreciated for what it is, but it sure as heck seems elite.

Nonsense. I'm perfectly willing to take on projects for as little as $100k.  

Beo-ap would have you believe that I'm treating 5-figure clients like Dickensian ragamuffins! 

Look, as I've said before: I sell what I've got! I've adapted my sales model to the product portfolio and have had great results. The dealers who are trying to sell a $15k tv at retail have not had such great results. The product mix we have may baffle the "good-ol'-days" customer, but it's highly competitive in the integrated high-end world.

If Struer started to put out $4,500 TVs, $2,500 full audio systems, iPod docks, and a variety of headphones, I'd staff up for retail and push it all the way. So please understand I'm not arguing for the fundamental "rightness" or "wrongness" of marketing directly to top tier custom clients, I'm just saying that with our current portfolio we not only fit well there, but are almost unbeatably competitive against Crestron based systems which, if you take the time to research, are ghastly in their expense and complication.

That's where my points about the BeoSound 5 come in, for the client that it's built for it is superior. The paradigm really hasn't changed since the BeoSound 9000. Arguments could always be made that it was overpriced for what it did and that you could get a disc changer for a few hundred bucks that sounded better. The truth or falseness was almost immaterial because at the end of the day it's the BeoSound 9000! It's an icon and its sought after by discriminating clients and has been for 15 years. The BeoSound 5 attracts the same sort of client. 

It's almost misleading for me to argue directly against the AppleTV or any other media device, because there will never be an A/B decision made between these two. If a client is considering a BeoSound 5, there's practically a 0% chance that the alternative is a boxed media server. It may be another exotic audio system by another brand, but it's not an AppleTV. In fact, most of the BeoSound 5s I've sold also have AppleTVs in the house used for movie rentals. So it's not an A/B decision.

Too bad you can't use a a BS5 as the front end for a Mini or an AppleTV.

TripEnglish:

The truth or falseness was almost immaterial because at the end of the day it's the BeoSound 9000! It's an icon and its sought after by discriminating clients and has been for 15 years. The BeoSound 5 attracts the same sort of client.

Iconic perhaps from a design standpoint... my problem is the ease of use (set up) and the lack of features... for your money. I just don't see it as the "new" BS9000.