After 9 months of debating between the new Avant and the 11, I finally picked up a BV11-55. Thanks to those of you who provided opinions about this TV. It helped tremendously.
It replaces a 10-46 which has been moved to the bedroom (no more crappy Samsung audio, yeah!).
Unboxing the TV was easier than I thought, even though we had to be three to move it out to the styrofoam after I set up the easel stand and the brackets from STB.
My primary source is a Mac Mini running Plex, then a Sky Box, and occasionally some broadcast TV.
I was blown away the moment I turned it on (after a few hours spent in connections, doing “proper” cable management).
I was definitely expecting an improvement in picture, but not at this level.
My biggest disappointment with the 10 was the preset “film mode” which can not be disabled (I even tried several times to override it from the service menu, unsuccessfully). The TV is located in a bright living room, which was making watching content (especially from the Mac) almost impossible, especially during summer days where the amount of light in the evening is considerable.
With this TV, the Adaptive mode delivers, and I do not need to select the warmer “Movie” mode at night. The light sensor really works.
Smoothness is also something else. My content is mostly 24 or 25fps, and I can see a big difference between the 10 and the 11. To the point that sometimes I have to turn off Judder cancel, but I guess it’s just a matter of getting used to it.
The TV is hooked up to a pair of BL6002 which we had got with the BV10. I am not an audio expert, so while I’m aware those are not the best speakers out there, I really like their sound and design. I think the next purchase will be a subwoofer and a couple of BL18 (but I’m not too happy about getting two wireless receivers in order to move the 6002 and use them as surround speakers.. might see if I the 6002 have still some trade-in value).
Wows
- Finally plenty of settings
- Speaker groups
- Improved software - no more lagging in switching channels or relaying the “OK” button to Sky
- Surprisingly most of my content does not require transcoding, so I could get rid of the Mac Mini, but I favour Plex’s interface over the built-in Homemedia DLNA client
Soandso’s
- The Beoremote One really takes time to get used to at nighttime
- For some reason the software update of my UPC card gets stuck at 5% (but I can use another TV to update it)
The only trouble I had was with the Sky box, but was eventually fixed. Using the Beoremote resulted in erratic behaviour (only 1 keypress out of 5 was detected on average). After trying to replace the PUC cable, moving to a different socket, etc… it turns out that the Sky Box was stacked vertically next to an Airport Extreme base station. Somehow it interferes like crazy with IR signals, I was not aware of it.
Finally, I did not experience a troublesome amount of lag using my PS4 in Game mode.
So, while most or all the above is probably old news for many of you, I’m really happy about my purchase.
Now I only really need to figure out how to set up proper listening positions: center, left and right. I haven’t understood yet if I should compensate by lowering the dB of the near speaker or to raise the distant ones.
But I will be happy to experiment.
