Photo courtesy of Bang & Olufsen
Let’s start 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 price of a typical 40-inch LCD at your local big-box. Ten. Times.
On the other hand, this is Bang & Olufsen we’re talking about, a company that unabashedly charges whatever the hell it wants for its bling-be-everything audio gear. The BeoPlay V1 marks the first HDTV effort from B&O’s new Play brand, which obviously isn’t synonymous with “affordable.” But surely there’s something about this panel that justifies such an exorbitant price tag?
Killer 3-D? Check. Ultra-slim design? Check. Netflix and other apps? Check. The best remote ever engineered? Check.
That completes the list of features the BeoPlay V1 doesn’t have. Excited yet?
This TV does exactly two things right, though arguably they’re the two most important things: picture and sound. Everything else feels like either a mistake or an oversight.
Measuring just over two inches thick and housed entirely in metal, the V1 looks industrial — and feels that way when you go to heft its 57 pounds. Conceived by Danish furniture designer Anders Hermansen, that metal casing lends itself to an impressive four stand/mount options.
The first, the basic stand, consists of two metal brackets that slide into tubes spanning the top and bottom of the TV. Curiously, though, there’s less “standing” here than leaning, as the brackets position the screen at an upward angle of about 10 degrees. Translation: It’s meant to sit on the floor or a very low table. Of course, that precludes kicking back on the couch with your feet up; you won’t be able to see the screen.
B&O offers a more traditional stand, one with legs that raise the TV closer to eye level and point it straight ahead, as well as wall and ceiling mounts. All three attach via the same versatile mounting tubes; all four evoke Ikea-grade design: cold, metallic, and not very attractive. The basic stand costs $100; the three others run $350 each.
The V1′s other major design amenity is its recessed rear ports channel, which keeps cables hidden behind a removable plastic panel and routes them out one side or the other. There’s even room in that channel to accommodate an Apple TV, a nifty Borg-like assimilation of the little box. B&O provides a whopping five HDMI inputs, but that’s it on the traditional connectivity front. If you have composite- or component-video devices, you’re out of luck.
There’s also an RCA-style (coax) digital audio input, but clearly you’re meant to use the TV’s three RJ-45 Power Link connectors, which are designed expressly for B&O audio gear. Irksome, yes, but the real problem here is accessibility: Because every port occupies that recessed rear channel and faces down, it’s a major hassle to connect anything.
Another major hassle: B&O’s remote. Long, narrow, heavy, and built to confuse, this metal baton mixes buttons like TV and DTV with V.MEM, TEXT, and A.MEM.
How bad is the remote? So bad I actually thought I had a defective one. Turns out the four-way D-pad — a staple on pretty much every remote in the history of cordless clickers — is not how you have navigate the V1′s onscreen menus. Instead, you use the tiny, nearly imperceptible joystick embedded in the center.
Oh, and surely there’s an “Off” button here somewhere? No, people who spend $4,000 on a TV are far too sophisticated for such a pedestrian control. Instead B&O provides a “Standby” button, one that’s not labeled as such, but rather represented by a red dot — the same red dot used to indicate “Record” on pretty much every other remote you’ve seen or used in your lifetime.
In case you still care at this point, the V1 delivers quite possibly the most perfectly balanced image I’ve seen on a 40-inch HDTV, and certainly the best sound.
Razor-sharp images and exceptionally accurate colors greeted me right out of the box, and the LCD’s adaptive-contrast feature did a masterful job tweaking the LED backlighting based on ambient lighting.
And speaking of masterful, the V1′s front-facing speaker bar can really fill a small to medium room with sound. Not the tinny, muted ear vomit you get from most HDTVs, but deep, full audio.
It’s too bad all this A/V acumen goes to waste on a TV that’s just a disaster in every other respect. The BeoPlay V1 lacks basic features found in every other modern TV. It’s a pain in the ass to control. And it’s priced for rich suckers who just don’t know any better. Thankfully, you do.
WIRED Exactly the kind of spectacular picture and sound you’d expect from B&O. Multiple stand/mount options based on your choice of hardware. Décor-friendly thanks to swappable color speaker grilles.
TIRED Just the worst user experience from any TV ever, and an insultingly high price tag to boot. Needlessly complicated remote. No apps, no 3-D, no tuner. Wi-Fi adapter is external, and useless for anything except DLNA. Virtually impossible to access rear ports without laying the TV flat and getting on the ground.