there is no doubt that this is not what we hitchhikers want from meridian or believe that it is a direction they should be going...
James, where do you get that from? It sounded fairly sensible to me when Bob indicated how many 1st hand M customers there were in this world and that, given how good their products can be, they think that they could and should be branching out into other areas where they can set new standards for others to aspire to.
As you state above, if this injects some good cash flow into other areas that you might prefer to see...then surely it is the right way to go.
Chris, Ian's just beat me to it. You won't need extra speakers for the type of target placement this has. And, it's bar far the cheapest option to get some really quite surprising sounds out of something of such size.
Bob did also indicate a few more things this year may emerge. As long as it includes a HDD streaming toy (preferably wired for some folk

) the we'll all be happy with the new direction.
But then maybe not for some I expect.