Gadgets and gizmos

Bang & Olufsen have long been manufacturing some of the most jaw droppingly incredible home cinema and audio systems available. The Beosystem 3, aside from using some equally jaw droppingly ridiculous terminology, represents one of the latest and greatest systems they offer. It is a “stage manager” for your home and because it’s designed to be modular you can keep adding new equipment when you’ve got the cash to splash.

It includes a “picture engine” that allows you to control both a projector and flat screen TV. The “Home Cinema Control Module” intelligently determines which screen you are watching and then tracks you down to deliver perfect surround sound through as many as 12 speakers. With 5.1, 6.1 and 7.1 surround sound support that’s some serious surround sound.

Bearing in mind you’re looking at a price tag that only falls slightly short of £5,000 and you don’t actually get a TV or projector screen the BeoSystem 3 stage manager isn’t for the faint hearted. It’s also fairly unlikely that many of us will have opportunity to take advantage of the dual display management feature, but it does give serious bragging rights despite looking like a futuristic radiator. It is infinitely more affordable than the $6m home theatre system we looked at a couple of days ago.