January 28, 2008

Super High End Music Streaming System from Bowers and Wilkins

We came across this article over at engadget talking about the new Liberty Wireless Speaker System from Bowers & Wilkins. This is one of those streaming products that you come across as you scour the web for information and your jaw drops that there is actually a market out there for stuff like this. There is an entire section of the media streaming market that is for the uber rich. Devices costing well in excess of twenty thousand dollars. These systems involve massive servers, well panels and the ability to stream movies and music into all the rooms of the house. These are the ultimate in home media streaming and only the rich can afford to have them installed.

The Liberty System from Bowers & Wilkins is a pure audio system with a 5 speaker setup that will deliver beautiful sound in your listening room. It seems you can also add a few extra speakers for other rooms and this unit can also pipe the music there as well. Details are still pretty light, but it seems that it communicates over RF instead of over WiFi which is a strange choice considering the price. If this is going to stream music to many rooms you shouldn't need to be in view of the base unit in order to change the song.

They also tout the ability to use dynamic channel selection to constantly switch frequencies to avoid certain channels that are clogged with noise. The price point for this is going to be between 15 and 18 thousand dollars. From the info we have obtained this seems severely overpriced. Now maybe the speakers alone are worth the money, we don't know yet, but the technology they are pushing isn't anything ground breaking and nothing worth the price they are asking. We would really need to see why we would buy this and not the $1000 Sonos instead.

Sometimes we just like to show everyone the strange and extravagant side of the media streaming world. Products for people with money burning a hole in their pocket.