out of curiosity will the N900 be able to support hardware buttons or is this a total lack of hardware support for it? saying that doesnt the n900 supplied headset have a button?

As far as I understood, you cannot have both TV-out and the control-signals (play/pause/forward/..) on a standard headphone cable. On the N900, they chose to have TV-out instead of the controls. (Which I think is OK, because it allows me to have everything: Control the device via bluetooth headsets and have TV out.)

The bh-905s are flawed.. they crash / lock up when switching from call to music to silent..

The buttons stop responding and no audio is heard.. you have to press three buttons to wake them up..

Nokia's only response is "the bh-905 aren't compatible with the n900" which is great.. since they STILL use them in n900 adverts and STILL list them as compatible on the Nokia website..

Can't use them via bluetooth.. they crash (about 3 crashes a day for me now.. but I try and use them a lot)

Can't use them via a cable because the buttons aren't supported..

f'usless

(further investigation suggests its a linux bluetooth issue that upsets the head phones.. android users report the same problems using the BH-905s.. this means Nokia probably won't even look into solving the problem in the Linux BT stack.. and there doesn't appear to be a way to upgrade the firmware on the head phones)

a truly useless combination.. and I'm bitter about it, the two things were massively expensive.

Why the N900 didn't have support for more cabled remote controls on headset, I have no idea..

I read somewhere on this site that the phone does not support it. Most phones that have this capability come with the headset and remote. I think Nokia made a decision to leave it out as they had to rush to market and didn't have much money.

Strange, isn't it? i use the BH-905 with my N900 all the time and only had problems with the original N900-firmware. Works beautifully now with bluetooth.

I use a clone headset by Blue Ant which is almost exactly like the bh-905s, as well as a set of over-ear bluetooth headset made by Motorola (don't have them with me). Both support stereo and mono/talk over bluetooth, switch automatically as needed, and the buttons all work fine. They don't have a wire-connection available though, it's bluetooth only.

As for audio streaming, I've never had it "burp" or "scrunch" audio on the N900, though I have had it happen when connected to my PC via a cheep bluetooth dongle. It sounds like hardware wise you won't get much more in the way of button use, as per design. Small price to pay for TV-out?

i use a jabra bt3030 and it works great, for anyone getting random bt disconnecting you will find that turning wifi off will rectify the problem

My Plantronics Backbeat 903 BT headset works flawlesly.

U cannot have either on standard cable Nokia is using special jack. i.e. N79, N95, N96 and more phones have TV-out and audio control capability in one package. Not sure if they´ve really gave n900 different 3,5mm jack or it is lack of sw support in maemo. But as far as ive read here, it is lack of hw support. But im still hoping. IMHO Nokia doesnt have this on priority list for FW updates.