What's going with Roland?

All of a sudden, out of the blue, they are coming out with this keyboard..

Is it an arranger version of Fantom? That would be great, cause fantom has brilliant sequencer and awesome sounds.

Whats up with number 5? Any thoughts on that? Maybe it'll be out in 2005??? (I hope not)

I love and hate Roland! They had G-1000, their arrangers have awesome sounds and feaures, but I hate them for the lack of support of their products. Looks VA stuff is completely abandoned and forgotten. not good at all.

Maybe it'll be different with these Dis Cover series (?)

Damn, I need more info on that badly.

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New Yorker

We investigated this several weeks ago. It doesn't seem to be an arranger, as it has no auto-accompany section.
DonM

I just got off the phone with a friend at Roland USA.
The only information Roland has is the model name Discover 5 and that it would not be shown here until the Winter NAMM show in 2003.
From the two of us looking at the European Website showing a picture and giving a description and specifications, we are pretty certain this will not be an arranger keyboard. Because of the popularity of Arranger keyboards in europe, Roland surely would have added information regarding styles and style parameters in the discription. It seems, that everything in this product is geared for the Singer/Player and playing along with SMF files that can be manipulated in real time. One of the features my friend noted was the ability to evaluate a song that might not have a vocal harmony track and create a chord track some way from evaluating the tracks within the song. A good feature for sure for singers.
I would hope this would be an arranger product, but from all indications it is not.
George Kaye
Kaye's Music Scene
Reseda, California