Let's beginning with the obvious. Unless your name is Kardashian, Trump, or Zuckerberg, you're not going to pay $4,000 for a 40-inch HDTV. Bling be damned, that's literally 10 times the cost of a conventional 40-inch LCD at your local big-box. Ten. Times.
On the other hand, this is Bang Olufsen we're conversing about, a firm that unabashedly charges whatever the ruin it wants for its bling-be-everything audio gear. The BeoPlay V1 outlines the initial HDTV bid from BO's new Play brand, that clearly isn't synonymous with "affordable." But certainly there's something about this row that justifies such an unreasonable cost tag?
Killer 3-D? Check. Ultra-slim design? Check. Netflix and other apps? Check. The most appropriate remote ever engineered? Check.
That completes the list of features the BeoPlay V1 doesn't have. Excited yet?
This TV does precisely two things right, even though arguably they're the two most critical things: photo and sound. Everything else feels similar to possibly a inapplicable designation or an oversight.
Measuring only over two inches thick and housed wholly in metal, the V1 looks industrial - and feels that way when you go to heft its 57 pounds. Conceived by Danish seat planner Anders Hermansen , that steel surrounding lends itself to an splendid 4 stand/mount options.
The first, the simple stand, consists of two steel brackets that slip in to tubes travelling the tip and bottom of the TV. Curiously, though, there's reduction "standing" here than leaning, as the brackets location the shade at an ceiling point of view of about 10 degrees. Translation: It's meant to lay on the building or a really low table. Of course, that precludes kicking back on the cot with your feet up; you won't be able to see the screen.
BO offers a more normal stand, a with legs that elevate the TV closer to eye turn and point it true ahead, together with wall and ceiling mounts. All 3 affix around the same versatile ascent tubes; all 4 elicit Ikea-grade design: cold, metallic, and not really attractive. The simple mount expenses $100; the 3 others run $350 each.
The V1′s other leading pattern pleasantness is its recessed back ports channel, that keeps cables dark at the back a separable cosmetic row and routes them out a side or the other. There's even room in that duct to accustom an Apple TV, a nifty Borg-like acclimatization of the small box. BO provides a whopping 5 HDMI inputs, but that's it on the normal connectivity front. If you have composite- or component-video devices, you're out of luck.
There's moreover an RCA-style (coax) digital audio input, but clearly you're meant to use the TV's 3 RJ-45 Power Link connectors, that are written specifically for BO audio gear. Irksome, yes, but the actual complaint here is accessibility: Because every dock occupies that recessed back duct and faces down, it's a leading con to link up anything.
Another leading hassle: BO's remote. Long, narrow, heavy, and built to confuse, this steel rod mixes buttons similar to TV and DTV with V.MEM, TEXT, and A.MEM.
How bad is the remote? So bad we actually considered we had a poor one. Turns out the four-way D-pad - a staple on flattering ample every remote in the story of cordless clickers - is not how you have navigate the V1′s onscreen menus. Instead, you use the tiny, scarcely inaudible joystick embedded in the center.
Oh, and certainly there's an "Off" symbol here somewhere? No, people who outlay $4,000 on a TV are far too complex for such a walking control. Instead BO provides a "Standby" button, a that's not labeled as such, but rsther than represented by a red dot - the same red dot used to show "Record" on flattering ample every other remote you've seen or used in your lifetime.
In box you still caring at this point, the V1 delivers truly possibly the most immaculately offset image I've seen on a 40-inch HDTV, and certainly the most appropriate sound.
Razor-sharp images and unusually precise colors greeted me correct out of the box, and the LCD's adaptive-contrast underline did a skilled work tweaking the LED backlighting formed on ambient lighting.
And vocalization of masterful, the V1′s front-facing orator club can really expand a small to intermediate room with sound. Not the tinny, pale ear puke you obtain from most HDTVs, but deep, full audio.
It's too bad all this A/V shrewdness goes to waste products on a TV that's only a catastrophe in every other respect. The BeoPlay V1 lacks simple features found in every other modern TV. It's a suffering in the donkey to control. And it's labelled for abounding suckers who only are unaware any better. Thankfully, you do.
WIRED Exactly the type of fantastic photo and sound you'd expect from BO. Multiple stand/mount options formed on your selection of hardware. Dcor-friendly interjection to swappable color orator grilles.
TIRED Just the worst user experience from any TV ever, and an insultingly high cost label to boot. Needlessly complicated remote. No apps, no 3-D, no tuner. Wi-Fi adapter is external, and invalid for anything solely DLNA. Virtually unfit to access back ports without laying the TV prosaic and getting on the ground.
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