Hi All

I have just been kindly loaned for a week a beo 5 remote by my dealer who is a little dismayed that i still have a beo 4 with my present set up!

I've had a little play, admittedly it is not configured properly yet as i was in a hurry and the consultant didn't have a lot of time to set it all up.

It appears to be set up into a couple of areas: Vision and Sound (though sound appears to be accessed presently via 'scene'...I presume that can be changed).

Foxtel Satellite has a number of logos/ icons which looks nice...

Presently I just have regular foxtel satellite, but will upgrade shortly to IQ2 (a HD version in Australia with ability to record programmes).

My present set up in the living room is beovision 8-40, beolab 9's, beoport, mac mini, beocentre 2.

In a link room I have a beocentre 6-26 which is connected to the master downstairs (audio and video)- though mainly we use just as a second pair of speakers to play NMUSIC or NRADIO in the link room.

My beo 4 remote has been more than adequate to manage what we presently have.

I'm presently a little underwhelmed by the beo 5 remote.... will it come into its own when I get an upgrade of foxtel satellite and perhaps when I add a third link room (a pair of speakers in a bedroom)??? I need to make a decision this week as whether to buy it or send it back... Clearly i dont know how to use it properly yet and that is probably part of issue. I know my way around the beo 4 and its been fine...

Any advice? My dealer is passionate about the beo 5..I want to understand the passion, but haven't thus far...

Kind Regards

David

David,

Personally, I would highly recommend the Beo5. I use it to control a mixed product setup - BS3200/BL6000's for audio and sound from TV, Pioneer plasma for vision and LG DVD player (hidden away and using a Lintronic box for IR control).

Obvious benefit for me is that I only require a single remote to control everything, i.e. the Beo5 acts as a universal remote for all products. But the Beo4 would do the same anyway in a complete B&O, set-up such as yours.

As you know, it's fully programmable, including the graphics/logos for station ID's, which not only makes channel selection easy (as I’m sure you’ve discovered) it means I can easily adapt to changes in broadcasts - eg. addition of new ABC 24 News channel means I just download the new logo from the ABC website and add a new button in the Beo5 config tool. For you, this would mean changing over to Foxtel IQ2 should not present an issue.

A very handy feature that I use is to control the CD Memory on the BS3200 by creating buttons that send out IR signals for the numbered storage positions in the memory, but on the screen these are album names – makes navigating the memory much easier. Whilst you don’t have this requirement, you might be able to adapt the Beo5 in a similar way to N.MUSIC & N.RADIO – though screen page numbers are limited.

The other big benefit of the Beo5 is the ability to create macros. Here you can let your imagination run wild, but again, it comes back to the idea of adapting the Beo5 to your set-up and the way you use it.

I admit that you do need to live with it for a week or two before it feels comfortable, and before you have your configuration adapted correctly to your set-up. I suspect this may be why you're feeling a little underwhelmed with it right now. The arrangement of buttons can be changed and you don’t need to access items through the ‘scenes’ option. Perhaps some tweaking by your dealer to accommodate your set-up a little better might help you make up your mind. Good luck.

Cheers,

Matthew

Serious questions.

How do you live in your property with just one remote?

Do you carry it with you wherever you go in the property?

What happens if you get into bed to listen to some NMUSIC or NRADIO and realise that you have left the remote downstairs?

I have Beo4/Beolink1000 scattered all over the house. I am never more than 2 or 3 metres from a remote. I am sure that I would rather have 3 or 4 Beo4's for the cost of a Beo5 even if I liked it aesthetically.

The Beo5 is the only B&O item that if I had my time again I would not have bought.

If you are happy with the way the Beo4 works I would stick with it. Whilst it may not have the programming ability of the Beo5 it requires relatively fewer button presses (in most cases) to get the function that you want.

I have 5 zones loaded but to be honest I only use the living room zone.

I have had a half-arsed go at programming the Beo5 but it all got too hard and I did not want to lose what is loaded already. If I still have it in a years time I will be taking it on my trip to the UK for Keith to program.

Peter

>I love it - it is trickier to use than the 4, but it has a massive wow factor from visitors. If you get the time you can create your own images / icons - i.e.  I have my daughter's picture setup as one of the zones - not technically essential agreed but quite sweet!!

How did you add pictures????? That sounds like fun!!!

You can import jpg files for use as station idents or zone idents. The software walks you through all this - use the help screen.

I got rid of mine. Too old to learn new tricks and like some others, I have Beo4s and Beolink 1000s around the house. I only ever used the Beo5 in one room and found it took more button presses to get what I wanted than the Beo4. It is very clever though - however it does not have the same wow factor as a Beolink 7000.

Hi all,

I have both the Beo4 and Beo5. To be honest, the Beo5 is not used for a few reasons, hope someone has some ideas.

1.) Very limited number of TV channels/icons possible. Mine currently has the limit of about 50 while I have around 135 TV channels;

2.) Very limited battery capacity, in less than 8 hours the battery is flat;

3.) Compaired to the Beo4, very cumbersome in using it, you cant use it blindly like the Beo4;

4.) Beside the AST configuration, there's not much of functionality that I can't already do with the Beo4;

Yes, I agree that it has a wow factor, but past looking at it the wow goes quickly away when using it.

tk

I created a bitmap from a photo using microsoft paint with the size attributes of 100 width by 75 height in pixels and saved it in the logo location of the installation.  I'm assuming you have the configuration tool, you can then select the logo.  I created a few fun logos for the TV, for my camera and Virgin media mainly by searching Google images.

Hopefully the attached picture may help – it shows paint and the logo location on my pc.