Bang & Olufsen intros BeoSound 5 home theater system

High-end home theater gear and car audio designer Bang & Olufsen recently announced the launch of its BeoSound 5 digital music system meant to let users enjoy their digital music on their traditional home theater gear. The centerpiece of the BeoSound 5 system is a tabletop and wall-mountable remote controller that sports a 10.4-inch LCD screen with 1024x768 resolution with an aluminium scroll wheel as the control interface. The remote oversees the Internet-connected BeoMaster 5 main unit that features all off the audio and video connections and contains the 500GB hard disk drive.

Users can set the BeoMaster 5 to automatically create playlists via Bang & Olufsen's MOTS (More Of The Same) intelligent playlist software that creates playlists based on tracks' similarities in rhythm, key tonality and other parameters. The system supports AAC, ASF, WAV, WMA and WMA Lossless audio formats and Internet radio in WMA, MP3, ASX and M3U encoding. MPEG, MPE, MPG, AVI, WMV and VFW video formats are likewise supported, as are most popular digital image formats.

The main BeoMaster 5 unit also has a Master Link connection, a pair of Power Link inputs, an IR input, DVI-I and DVI-D ports, component video, S-video and composite video connections as well as three USB 2.0 connections, two of which can be used for adding external devices. An Ethernet port allows for network connections. The remote used an HDMI and DVI port to show menus and album covers, and controls the main unit via a USB 2.0 connection. The BeoMaster 5's operations are overseen by an embedded Windows XP operating system.

The speaker-less system will be made available in March of 2009, priced at the equivalent of about $5,377 in Europe. [via SlashGear]