General Forum

Re: Beomedia 1, Beoport and Beoplayer features I would love to have!

GSHaigh — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 11:11:30 GMT

or better interaction with Beo5 which I think was promised.

Greg

Re: Beomedia 1, Beoport and Beoplayer features I would love to have!

Beonut — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 04:32:33 GMT

I would like to see 2 way communication of tracks, albums and playlist data from beomedia to a handheld device ideally a revised beo5 which supported 2 way comms. So that Music could be selected without use of the tv screen or amazing feats of memory.

Cheers

Peter

Re: Beomedia 1, Beoport and Beoplayer features I would love to have!

Chrisreunion — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 20:54:20 GMT

The features I'd love to have on BeoPlayer based software would be:

- in NMUSIC, the CD covers seem to be updated whenever you open NMUSIC, which takes times & slows down the process: why not only updating the newly added albums?Besides, most of them already have a cover in Windows Media Player, but I feel B&O uses different covers: why? It takes more time & memory, and the resolution of the B&O picture is often inferior;

- the thumbnails cache space setting should be automatic, many people may have bugs because of that without knowing the bug comes from the unsufficient memory. When scanning the audio files, BeoPlayer knows surely the number of files!

- PC CD should be able to playback WMA or MP3 CDs..it still can't do it in 2007.. nor can it playback DVDs;

- NRADIO, which is what I use most, is sometimes frustrating to use: the GENRE setting sometimes is completely wrong (e.g a classical music station identified as "government"!);

- the max. "minimum quality" is 96 kbps, while I listen to nothing below 128 kbps, especially on B&O material you expect a better sound

- there are thousands of radio stations, I think only the ones with a high quality should be selected; I have Shoutcast on another product, and by choosing 128 Kbps as minimum quality, you already get more than 17,000 stations!!

- when a station is not available, there should be a feature to skip to the next available station, instead of doing nothing & making you rush to the PC to know what's going on: B&O CD players do that when a track is scratched, it is just a software feature that shouldn't be too difficult to add in Struer;

- on Shoutcast you can see the name of the track & artist playing, so the info is available: why can't we have something like this on BeoPlayer? The "info" section is very "static"..

- there is a PHOTO source, when will we have a VIDEO source? You officially can't play your video files on BeoPlayer, you have to put them in your "My Photos" folder, and mixing those files can sometimes cause bugs.

- BeoPlayer based products should all be compatible with the new software version : now BeoPlayer can rip in lossless, but none of the players can! Except Serenata..;

- the ability to have a full BeoPlayer screen instead of always going left & right with the arrows: this is fun once or twice, but creating playlists & navigating becomes frustrating when you have to move the cursor to the far left & right sides all the time;

- I do not use Vista or BeoMedia, but please B&O, move faster! Officially your softwares are not Vista compatible yet!!! And BeoMedia still has no SCART socket for all older BeoVisions that have to be happy with a S-VHS signal, and HDMI is not yet implemented either..so you need 3 cables to connect to your TV: Masterlink, video signal, and audio signal...I thought B&O meant simplicity..

- and bring out a 2-way remote or display-fitted BeoLink speakers to see what we do & where we go when we're in link rooms! 20 years ago it was possible on your products....

Re: Beomedia 1, Beoport and Beoplayer features I would love to have!

SWISS_2 — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 20:10:40 GMT

Sounds like quite a system you have. You must also have quite a music collection.

1. Laptop: Aside from the fact that I would rather carry around a small Beo 4 or Beo 5 remote, rather than a laptop: Why could your laptop not control the system in your house using a wireless connection ? The addition of a something like a Linksys Wireless G would allow you to use your laptop wherever you would like.

2. If you utilize Adobe, or Hypersnap you can scale down the photos to e-mail size or 800 x 600. And augment the photos too. Once you save that change, you can pull it up on B&O Photo, view it,.and send it as you like. Personally, I don't care much for programs that do this automatically, as you can greatly lose resolution and colour, but I do see your point regarding e-mail attachments. The Adobe photo starter album is a free download.

3. I'm using Beoplayer 4.65, and Media Centre 11. Yes, you can tweak the recording with MCE 11 easier than Beoplayer. I download or rip a CD onto MCE11, then update the Beoplayer info. This allows 3 sources of playback: The BS 3200, Media Centre, and Windows Media Player.

But, the majority of the time I'm listening to the music, not looking for or at the album cover to select. Why keep a Plasma or LCD screen on, when the remote does the job ?

Re: Beomedia 1, Beoport and Beoplayer features I would love to have!

Beophile — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 17:57:16 GMT

SWISS 2,

Thank you for your comments. However, regarding your first comment, like you I am able to select the n. music, cd, dvd, tv, n.radio or radio in each linked room using Beo4. It is the use of "my memory of where certain artists or tracks are" that I have a problem with. Sometimes I'm OK with just using the Beo4, but more often than not I end up wishing I could open up my laptop and select the song I want Beomedia to play. When I had 10 albums it worked fine in the link rooms using the Beo4. However, now that I have hundreds of albums loaded up its hard to switch to the album I want. My memory is good...just not that good. Mind you this is not a problem in my main room where the TV acts as a display...just in my link rooms. Further this is something B&O could add if they chose to do so.

Regarding your second comment, I know lossless works...and that is what I am using for Beomedia. The issue is the Beosound 2 does not play lossless files....nor do I really want it to. Thus I have to (outside of beoplayer) convert the lossless file to a lossy wma and then transfer that to the beosound 2. Furhter, when I do that, Beoplayer then sees both the lossless and lossy versions of the same song. What I want is for Beoplayer to have an adjustable setting for the music files copied to my beosound 2. For exmaple, I want to store lossless music files in Beoplayer and when using Beoplayer to transfer music to my Beosound 2, I want a lossy version of the lossless music file to be copied to the Beosound 2. I think windows media player has this feature.

Regarding your comments on Images, what I was trying to say that I want the ability to select one or more photos and have email friendly versions of them copied to the clipboard so that I may insert them in emails. For example, if I am looking through my photo collection using Beoplayer, I would love to be able to select a couple of them, have Beoplayer automatically scale them down to a small image size, and then place them in the clipboard so that I may paste them into an email.

Thanks again for your comments

Re: Beomedia 1, Beoport and Beoplayer features I would love to have!

SWISS_2 — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 15:48:43 GMT

Beophile;

Regarding your suggestion points:

1. Using PC-2 and a Beo4 remote, I am able to select the n. music, cd, dvd, tv, n.radio or radio in each linked room. This is accomplished by using the playlist feature, and my memory of where certain artists or tracks are.

2. Again, I selected the lossless option ( suggested previously by another Beoworld member ) in the beoplayer configuration setup, and it works fine.

3. Agreed. HD picture quality is Day versus Night to analogue. I no longer utilize the TV option, anywhere in the house. I did this by switching to HDMI 18 G cable, with repeaters built into the cable. The HDMI runs alongside the M-L cable in the conduit run. The SAT TV, being the TV source is channel switched, using a UHF remote, with a 60 M antennae on the back of the box.. The digital sound continues ( SAT->HDMI->PLASMA ) through a BS 3200 and on throughout using the M-L system.

4. IMAGES: I use a 8 Meg camera, or download larger JPEGS into the computer. The photos are then scaled down as needed ( 3000 x 2000 to 800 x 600, etc ) and used as needed: E-Mail, album art, documents, etc.. The camera photos retain higher details this way. I load them into XP Media Centre, and copy them into the album art, or photo art as I wish. Copy the photo, then right click into paste album art. 1 album with 10 tracks could then have 10 different photos, rather than 10 of the same. Try that.

The video clip feature operates very well, and using a 4 G memory stick, some of the clips are quite long. All accessible from the Beo 4 in photos.

5. Vista: I'm an XP user, so I wish you well. I'm sure the Vista options you need are coming from B & O.

I hope this is of help.

Beomedia 1, Beoport and Beoplayer features I would love to have!

Beophile — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 14:36:31 GMT

The features I would love to see in a future Beomedia/Beoplayer/Beoport release include:

1) A mode in Beoplayer in which it can control a Beomedia on the same network. I have several link rooms in which I “use” BeoMedia. By “use” I mean I listen to music in my link room but run to my main system to select the music I want to listen to…..very annoying. Selecting the songs I want in a link room using only the Beo4 without having visual feedback is a futile endeavor. Thus, what I would like to have is the ability to use my laptop to control the Beomedia. Ideally this would be in addition to the control provided by the Beo4 in the link room. Also, this capability would not even have to be provided by Beoplayer….I would be just as happy if it was some sort of remote desktop type application for Beomedia. Further, it would be great if this capability wasn’t limited to use with just one PC….I have three in my house that I would like to use this for. I actually bought the Beomedia thinking it would do something like this….I was wrong…oh well…but it would be great if they added something like this in the future. At this point I would even contribute money to make this feature happen.

2) The ability in Beoplayer to create and associate a high quality music file (ex lossless) with a lower quality music file (128kbps) so that Beoplayer only presents one file but when I’m using my audio system it automatically uses the high quality version and when I’m transferring files to my Beosound 2 it uses the lower quality version. Instead of storing both versions it could store only the high quality version and create the low quality version on the fly when transferring. However, since this would take time and since storage is cheap I’d rather have it store both. Then again, it could be setup to operate in either manner with the manner of operation selectable by the user. Moreover, I would love to have this same capability for photos where the lower quality image is used for emails.

3) I would welcome the addition of new TV card options to Beoport….The current list is a bit dated and the listed devices are analog only devices. In the US, analog TV transmissions will be ending in about a year. There are a slew of low cost USB digital HD receivers I would love to use with Beoport. Better yet, I would love to use an ATI HD TV device that has HD cable support.

4) Album art in Beomedia (based on the recent version of Beoplayer I expect that this will actually be coming)

5) Support for 64-bit Vista

Does anyone have any insight or thoughts on the above? Do these products already have some of the capabilities and I just don’t know it? Thanks in advance for your input.