Bang & Olufsen has been known to occasionally lower the price floor on its line of A/V gear. Continuing in that direction, the company just unveiled its Beolab 14 surround sound speakers, an entry-level offering starting at $3,995 for a 4.1 setup. The rig centers around a petite cylindrical tower that houses a 280-watt amp for its eight-inch down-firing bass driver and connections for up to five individually powered (140 watts) and equalized 2.5-inch satellite speakers. The circular drivers can be wall-mounted or set on stands, and those aluminum enclosures act as heat sinks (in addition to looking dapper). While B&0 anticipates that the soundbars on its existing TVs will act as a center channel, a 5.1 setup will be available for $4,395 if you need an independent middle speaker instead. The Beolab 14 will come in black or white when it launches in June and additional grille clothes will be an extra $99 per set, should you want to change the colors. You can find more details in the press release after the break while you start saving up.
Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD
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"The [story behind the history of Home] was about making an experience that flows through friends and people. We saw three ways that we could do this. One, we could go and build an operating system. Second, we could dig into Android deeply in order to see how we can we fundamentally change / fork Android to make it different. Or, we could build an app to make it different." Those were the words just spoken by Cory Ondrejka -- the director of mobile engineering in Facebook -- here at D: Dive Into Mobile in NYC. This, in fact, confirms that Facebook not only gave thought to actually crafting its own operating system in order to usher Facebook Home into the world, but moved forward with prototypes.
Host Kara Swisher asked the duo how far along things actually got, to which Ondrejka replied: "The OS path was the least fleshed-out of the paths. Mark [Zuckerberg] talked on launch day that he wanted to build something for everyone. It's hard to get to the type of scale that's necessary for us [when building an OS]. We wanted Home in front of hundreds of millions of people -- even a successful OS would only give that experience to a few of them."
The two continued to talk about Facebook's internal shift into mobile. At this point, the company has broken down most every wall between desktop and mobile, and Home is the first major product to ship under this new scenario. "You can see the engines throttling up," Schroepfer said, speaking of how fast updates will soon be coming to iOS, Android and beyond. In fact, he confirmed that the first major update to Home was coming "during the second week of May," while international users will start to get Home access on select Android phones today. And, while Facebookers have been testing Home on tablets, it wants to truly nail the experience on phones first before pushing it elsewhere.
Filed under: Cellphones, Software, Mobile, Facebook
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