Hello everyone,

Had my new Beo5 at home for about a week now and thought I would share my experience. So far I am absolutely delighted with the product and it has exceeded my expectations, particularly with it's ease of use and control of 3rd party products.

Prior to purchase my goal was to have the Beo5 control my BS3200, a Pioneer PDP-C509A plasma TV and an LG DVD player. The BS3200 provides sound for the TV through A.AUX and a pair of BL6000's. I also have about 120 CD's stored on the hard drive of the BS3200, for which I wanted a better navigation solution than the Beo4 and remembering each album's position number within a colour folder.

I also wanted to attempt the programming of the Beo5 myself and to try to use my Lintronic box & software to generate the XML files for the TV and DVD player. Whilst the staff at B&O, David Jones here in Melbourne (place of purchase) were reluctant to touch anything with regard to 3rd party XML files, they were kind enough to allow me to purchase the Beo5 without the additional programming service and charge. But they were also keen to see how if/how I managed the programming process.

Using the Lintronic 238 I created an XML file for the Pioneer TV with the help of Michael from Lintronic. Key lesson learnt here was to ensure the timing of the IR signals were correclty captured and marked from the remote. I found it necessary to double check each IR command by performing a test of the signal to ensure the command worked properly. Incorrectly captured commands meant the raw signal command line in the XML file would not be written correctly.

I used Config Tool V2.2 to create my Beo5 configuration, which meant my Beo5 was running firmware v1.40a. The first download of the configuration to the Beo5 resulted in no response from the TV at all. Thanks to Keith Saunders for his help here in identifying that the carrier frequency defined in the TV's XML file was set at "38" - suitable for more recent versions of Beo5 firmware - where it should have been set at "38000". A quick manual edit of the TV's XML file and then a second download of the Beo5 configuration file resulted in the correct response from the TV.

The Beo5's ability to control the TV is excellent as is the integration I now have with using the BS3200 for sound via A.AUX. The signal strength of the Beo5 is superb. I had previously encountered some IR interference issues when using the Beo4 to control the volume of the plasma TV via A.AUX. I no longer have this problem. I've also got a couple of simple macros to power the TV and BS3200 on and off together - works very well.

For the BS3200's CDMEM navigation I've created pages of buttons with each album's name - you could use cover art but I didn't want to hit the Beo5's memory limit. So now it's simply a matter of selecting the colour folder, which brings up a sub-menu of several pages, with each album name being a button assigned the appropriate numbered storage place within the folder. I find this works extremely well and is a great way to search through music on the BS3200's hard drive.

It's worth noting that I'm using raw commands, rather than the correct codes, to control the TV. This works fine for me as I'm not using any of the TV's repeat commands - such as volume. I also attempted to assign CH+ and CH- to the up/down arrow keys on the ball. This resulted in serialisation errors and also unexpectedly altered the Volume Wheel commands. I elected to overcome this by placing the TV's CH+- commands on the Beo5 screen instead, which works suffieciently well for the time being.

I've also yet to program the DVD player. My perference is to make use of the hard keys on the ball for it's control. The DVD player also requires repeat commands for FFWD and REWD. Since I have no means of overcoming these issues yet myself my plan is to make use of Keith's programming service.

So to conclude, my experience with the Beo5 so far has been overwhelmingly positive. I'm very happy with how effectively it controls the TV (easily as well as the OEM remote for single push commands) and how it has helped me to seemlessly integrate the TV into the BS3200. I also love the way I can navigate the BS3200's hard drive visually on the Beo5's screen. My wife also loves this feature. Yes, there have been a couple of limitations I've come across, but I'm happy at this stage with how they've been overcome. The problem solving/programming process was also quite enjoyable. And yes, there is still more work to be done to have it do everything I require, but at this early stage I'm confident of the way forward.

Last but not least, I must also mention that without the info I've found from the posts on this forum, and without the help of Keith Saunders specifically, I would not have even considered a Beo5 purchase in the first place, nor would I have been able to get it up and running myself. So a big thank you to you all - I am very grateful. And hopefully my positive experience may help someone to either brush the dust off their Beo5 paper weight at home or even consider adding one to their B&O collection.

Cheers and thanks to you all once again,

Matthew