Beosound Theatre first week impressions

[lundmark]

This will be a long post, so TL;DR: I like the Theatre. Buy one if you can afford it. 

I’ve spent a week with my new Beosound Theatre now and I have some impressions to share. Lots have been said about how good it sounds (and I agree it sounds pretty good), so I’m going to focus more on living with it daily.

I’m not rich (certainly not now), so for me this was a significant purchase that came with significant expectations. It’s replacing a Beovision 11 that broke recently.

What I like

This is by no means an exhaustive list—this soundbar has lots of great attributes. Just a few things I want to point out.

I don’t think I would have splurged for the Theatre if this was yet another all-in-one TV that would force me to live with an aging TV because my sound system was held hostage by it. I really like that it’s separate from the relatively disposable OLED panel, while still offering typical B&O integration with it. Great concept.

As you can see, I went for the motorized wall mount after much debate. It works better for my room because it takes up less space and can swivel more towards the couch, but while I originally felt that the additional bottom cover plate was a bit ugly and missed the beautiful floor stand of my Beovision 11, I now actually prefer the look of the wall mount. The bottom plate complements the wings nicely to surround the soundbar with metal, and not having the foot gives a cleaner look. Overall very happy with both how it looks and operates.

I also debated for a long time whether to go with fabric or oak. Fabric would have been the smarter choice, because it’s 5x cheaper and both softer and more durable for kids to run into, but I ultimately went with the wooden slats because it makes it look like a piece of art. At this price point, who cares how much it costs.

The build quality and looks of this thing are striking, as you’d expect from B&O, and people pause to look at it even when it’s off. Overall it is probably the nicest object I own, which is juxtaposed with one of the ugliest: the PS5.

Installation was a breeze. I had it professionally installed because they insisted, but I was with them and have since adjusted many different things on my own to make it even more perfect. You can no doubt install this yourself as long as you pay attention and have someone to help you lift the monitor, although B&O support would tell you otherwise (repeatedly and harshly!). If you’re reasonably dexterous, you can do this, and if you’re a perfectionist, you probably should. The instructions are great and detailed to the point of hilarity. Don’t let people scare you off.

For all the discouragement you’ll get from B&O’s support for wanting to tinker yourself with installation however, the complete opposite is true for other parts of the Theatre experience: there’s an official Home Assistant integration to get it and the BeoRemote into your smart home, and it’s great. It’s a tinkerers ultimate dream and setting my BeoRemote One up to control my Hue lights and IKEA blinds was a breeze. I’ve even mapped a button to pause my dishwasher when it gets noisy during a movie. Controlling lights with the remote is something I’ve wanted to do for decades ever since I saw a Beo4 control lighting in the 90s, but it previously required bespoke hardware and professional installation, none of which appealed to me. Now it just works with market leading open-source software out of the box and B&O itself is behind the development. This was totally unexpected and I respect them so much for doing this. Truly great to see.

The sound is really good. Again there are many other articles you can read on this, but just know that I agree. It doesn’t hold a candle to my old Beolab 9s when it comes to sheer power (of course), but with kids and no friends, my audio requirements have changed since I bought the 9s a decade ago to host parties. The Theatre is definitely enough to fill my 40m2 room with music. The new Listening Positions feature, combining the previously separate Stand and Speakers features, is a stroke of genius and makes using this thing so much simpler. It makes so much sense having them combined, because if your ears have moved your eyes probably have too. Less configuration in day to day use.

I also discovered that the input latency of the Theatre is very minimal—I was able to hook up my Sonos Port and stream to it and other Sonos speakers in the house in sync. This was impossible with my previous Beovision because the latency was simply too high. Nice to see. I’m not sure if I’ll keep the Sonos or go all in on AirPlay, but it’s great to have the option.

There are much more things I like with the Theatre, but I’ve rambled long enough. Let’s get on to the areas of improvement.

What I don’t like so much

There are plenty of things about this product that annoys me too, so here come my nit-picks, many of which could be fixed in software.

1. The app is pretty buggy and limited in some areas. You can’t rename HDMI sources, because that feature is simply broken, and until the recent beta you couldn’t edit a Listening Position extensively either. You had to re-create them if you wanted to change the stand position or include or unassign a speaker. Some flows can’t be exited once started without quitting the app, and sound modes can’t be deleted (the button simply does not work). It’s good that they’re working on it and I have reported a bunch of issues to hopefully get fixed, but it’s not nearly in a good state enough to be shipped with this kind of premium product. Too buggy and limited.
2. The initial set up and calibration works great when it works, but a few times I’ve been unable to calibrate because it would fail repeatedly without telling me why. It started working after I power cycled the Theatre. Not the end of the world, but not exactly reassuring either.
3. There does not seem to be a way to configure the List menu of the remote. No way of reordering, rename, add or remove menu items to optimize it for your use-case. This would be useful to get rid of stuff you don’t need, especially in the Light and Control menus (which I use with Home Assistant); these have pre-populated items with very specific names that you can map to automations, but without being able to rename them most of them make no sense for my setup. It’s a minor gripe but a weird omission, given how configurable the BeoRemote is when used with a legacy product.
4. The Stand list sub-menu contains only one single item: manual control. Why did you make me go into a sub-menu?
5. The motorized wall mount does a weird hump against the wall when closing. It’s like it’s trying to get as close to it as possible until it’s really, really sure that it has, then it lets go and releases some tension. It looks ugly and sounds weird, but thankfully can be mitigated by holding it back slightly when calibrating so that it closes a wee bit earlier than it would have otherwise. After that it closed smoothly and silently. The motor is also a bit noisy compared to older B&O gear. Not as sophisticated.
6. The wooden slats of the aforementioned oak cover are really brittle and easy to snap off. Two had already broken on the demo unit I borrowed, and while I could fix them with glue and received a few spares to use in the future, it’s clearly a design flaw that they’re mounted using flimsy, teeny-weeny wooden pegs. Too easy to break.

That’s enough complaining from me. Many of these issues could be improved with software (and I hope they will), and you might think I’m nit-picky, but for a product at this price point and with such a polished exterior, I think calling them out is fair and find the fact that they went out in this state a bit worrying.

Overall though, living with this thing is really fun and easy, even for my spouse who couldn’t care less about AV equipment. Quirky app aside, once you set it up to your liking you won’t need to use it very much if you also get the BeoRemote One (you should). It looks the part, sounds the part and is a lot easier to use than any other AV system this capable. It’s a great soundbar and new direction for B&O that I’m really happy with.

Please tell me why I’m wrong, why I’m right, what quirks I’ve missed and what you think of the Theatre!

[NQVHNWI]

lundmark wrote:

There does not seem to be a way to configure the List menu of the remote. No way of reordering, rename, add or remove menu items to optimize it for your use-case. This would be useful to get rid of stuff you don’t need, especially in the Light and Control menus (which I use with Home Assistant); these have pre-populated items with very specific names that you can map to automations, but without being able to rename them most of them make no sense for my setup. It’s a minor gripe but a weird omission, given how configurable the BeoRemote is when used with a legacy product.

It is relatively easy to customise the list menus – but there are two main problems:- 1) its done in different parts of the App and 2) rename something too many times, the BR1 locks up and cannot be changed. Only a full Theatre reset can put this right.

[Gaea]

3. Go to the Theatre’s settings, 3 dots in top right corner. —> product settings —> beoremote —> beoremote one.
Now you drag items. Above the line is visible, and below the line is not visible.

Tick and hold the 3 lines/hamburger and drag it.

You can have 10 items above the line, they are visible in the remote.

You can change the order too.

Good luck!

[lundmark]

Gaea wrote:

3. Go to the Theatre’s settings, 3 dots in top right corner. —> product settings —> beoremote —> beoremote one. Now you drag items. Above the line is visible, and below the line is not visible. Tick and hold the 3 lines/hamburger and drag it. You can have 10 items above the line, they are visible in the remote. You can change the order too. Good luck!

Unfortunately those are only sources for the TV and Music buttons. Nothing in there to configure the List menu.

[lundmark]

Mr10Percent wrote:

lundmark wrote:

There does not seem to be a way to configure the List menu of the remote. No way of reordering, rename, add or remove menu items to optimize it for your use-case. This would be useful to get rid of stuff you don’t need, especially in the Light and Control menus (which I use with Home Assistant); these have pre-populated items with very specific names that you can map to automations, but without being able to rename them most of them make no sense for my setup. It’s a minor gripe but a weird omission, given how configurable the BeoRemote is when used with a legacy product.

It is relatively easy to customise the list menus – but there are two main problems:- 1) its done in different parts of the App and 2) rename something too many times, the BR1 locks up and cannot be changed. Only a full Theatre reset can put this right.

Ugh, have you reported that bug?

I haven’t found a way to edit the list menu at all with the Theatre. Where do you do it?

[Severed_hand_of_skywalker]

There already is a long thread on this topic here so prob best to merge.

https://forum.beoworld.org/forums/topic/new-product-launch-beosound-theatre

[lundmark]

Severed_hand_of_skywalker wrote:

There already is a long thread on this topic here so prob best to merge.

 

I don’t think everything related to one product needs to go in the same thread. This is just my initial review. Hopefully it is helpful or informative to someone!

[NQVHNWI]

I think we help those who need help – wherever it may be required

[NQVHNWI]

Ok,

… >> product settings >> source startup >> select source behaviour and toggle “include in list”

then

… >> product settings >> remote >> select remote >> remote list, slide sources up and down in order of preference.

to slide, long press and hold in the middle of the grey bar until it moves, slide in to position

 

 

[NQVHNWI]

It’s not a bug……it’s a feature

[lundmark]

Mr10Percent wrote:

Ok,

… >> product settings >> source startup >> select source behaviour and toggle “include in list”

then

… >> product settings >> remote >> select remote >> remote list, slide sources up and down in order of preference.

to slide, long press and hold in the middle of the grey bar until it moves, slide in to position

No, that’s not the List menu. Those are sources. I’m talking about the List menu where you find stuff like stand position, speaker setups and most importantly light and device control. No way to customise those as far as I can tell.

[NQVHNWI]

cant help with stand or light control. No experience from my side.

Speaker setups.

… >> Product Setting >> Connected Speakers >> WISA and or Powerlink

Then Listening position, Roomsense and microphones

Main Menu, Listening Position >> three bars >> Create New > Start From scratch >> Create >> Follow onscreen instructions.

 

 

when you select a source, pressing LIST (not TV LIST – which is what I thought you meant originally), those buttons are not editable but flag-up depending on source. So if you have like I do, 5 Listening positions:- video, Centre Only, BL90 wide, Narrow, Omni), those will come under “speaker>” and selectable in alphabetical order.

I would have thought (but cannot test) that Stand positions comes up on the main page of the App below listening position? Changing stand position is then programmed like “Listening Position”.

I think that’s as far as I can take this enquiry due to my setup limitations but will help further if I can?

[Millemissen]

lundmark wrote:

Severed_hand_of_skywalker wrote:

There already is a long thread on this topic here so prob best to merge.

I don’t think everything related to one product needs to go in the same thread. This is just my initial review. Hopefully it is helpful or informative to someone!

It was great to have the initial report on a new Theatre…..thank you for that.
However, I tend to agree with Severed hand……, that the following discussion would have a better place in the long ongoing Theatre thread.
This is where these things belong in order to be easily searched for.
Also there is great danger that small threads will ‘die’ after a while – smaller threads seem to disappear in the myriad of posts here.
It is much more likely that the long Theatre thread will continue and this way can be kept at the top of the list of the postings for longer.

Have fun further on with your Theatre – I am pretty sure that bugs will be corrected and new functions will come.
But I am also sure that they/B&O will not be able to honour every wish we might have (user cases are rather diverse).

MM

[lundmark]

Mr10Percent wrote:

cant help with stand or light control. No experience from my side.

Speaker setups.

… >> Product Setting >> Connected Speakers >> WISA and or Powerlink

Then Listening position, Roomsense and microphones

Main Menu, Listening Position >> three bars >> Create New > Start From scratch >> Create >> Follow onscreen instructions.

when you select a source, pressing LIST (not TV LIST – which is what I thought you meant originally), those buttons are not editable but flag-up depending on source. So if you have like I do, 5 Listening positions:- video, Centre Only, BL90 wide, Narrow, Omni), those will come under “speaker>” and selectable in alphabetical order.

I would have thought (but cannot test) that Stand positions comes up on the main page of the App below listening position? Changing stand position is then programmed like “Listening Position”.

I think that’s as far as I can take this enquiry due to my setup limitations but will help further if I can?

I got the listening positions set up and I get that they’re auto populated into the List menu, which is great. It’s specifically the Light and Control menus that can’t be changed and also not the order or names of menu items.

Again not a big deal, but when used in IR mode you could customise absolutely everything, including renaming, reordering and removing items. Some of that would be nice to have for the new Bluetooth + Theatre setup too.

[Hiort]

lundmark wrote:

For all the discouragement you’ll get from B&O’s support for wanting to tinker yourself with installation however, the complete opposite is true for other parts of the Theatre experience: there’s an official Home Assistant integration to get it and the BeoRemote into your smart home, and it’s great. It’s a tinkerers ultimate dream and setting my BeoRemote One up to control my Hue lights and IKEA blinds was a breeze. I’ve even mapped a button to pause my dishwasher when it gets noisy during a movie. Controlling lights with the remote is something I’ve wanted to do for decades ever since I saw a Beo4 control lighting in the 90s, but it previously required bespoke hardware and professional installation, none of which appealed to me. Now it just works with market leading open-source software out of the box and B&O itself is behind the development. This was totally unexpected and I respect them so much for doing this. Truly great to see.

Would like to understand more how home integration is a part of Theatre. Sound great. Could you share some more details on how that is achieved?

[NQVHNWI]

Millemissen wrote:

However, I tend to agree with Severed hand……, that the following discussion would have a better place in the long ongoing Theatre thread. This is where these things belong in order to be easily searched for. Also there is great danger that small threads will ‘die’ after a while – smaller threads seem to disappear in the myriad of posts here. It is much more likely that the long Theatre thread will continue and this way can be kept at the top of the list of the postings for longer.

As I indicated previously, newbies are coming on to site, have specific questions they want answered and don’t have the time, patience or knowledge to go through nearly a thousand posts. The Search on Beoworlds is not good and big threads are more of a problem in getting information out easily.

I don’t think having a condensed thread for the sake of the “old-hands of the forums” convenience and “cleanliness” is the way to go. Ergo, we also don’t keep to the same standard with other topics whether its a BG4002 or a BL5 or a Beosystem 5000 or whatever.

If I look at the posts in the general Forum over the last 4 days (there was a period of two days with virtually no posts), there are perhaps 30 – 50 posts overall? I think I account for 30-50% of them helping on the theatre the best I can. The forum is not very good traffic-wise (General Forum baseline) and I don’t think that is good for anyone and certainly not for Beoworld.

What may a good half-way house is we have a lot less of members dictating how the forum is managed from their perspective and allow the Moderators to combine threads as the traffic to that smaller thread diminishes?

But lets help people who need or request help. We cant close ourselves off.

I have no further comment to make on this sub-topic in this thread.

 

[lundmark]

Hiort wrote:

Would like to understand more how home integration is a part of Theatre. Sound great. Could you share some more details on how that is achieved?

Sure!

Bang & Olufsen has released its bangolufsen-hacs integration for Home Assistant, which is a brand new (and official!) integration that works with Mozart platform products, like the Theatre and Beolab 28s.

1. You need Home Assistant and HACS running to use it
2. Add the bangolufsen-hacs repo as a custom repo to HACS
3. Give your Theatre a static IP
4. Go to integrations and search for Bang & Olufsen to configure it
5. Now it’s set up and you can control the Theatre from Home Assistant

 

Then you can get started setting up the BeoRemote One to trigger things when you use the Light and Control menus.

1. In Home Assistant, go to Developer Tools, Events and start listening to the bangolufsen_event
2. Hit any of the numeric, color or arrow buttons on the BeoRemote to and you should see it pop up as an event with the key pressed as the payload (you can also enter the Lights and Device menus on the remote to get a list of named commands, like ‘Cinema’, to send, which will send a function name as payload instead)
3. Go to Automations and set up an automation with this event and payload as trigger for something, like turning on/off lights

All in all, very simple if you already have a Home Assistant instance up and running. If not then that is going to be the most challenging part of this process rather than the Theatre specific stuff, as Home Assistant can be a bit fiddly to get started with.

I’ve thought of making a short YouTube video of this in action, as there is very little content on this or the Theatre in general.

[henkedk]

NVM – reboot #48 helped and all events are visible now.

@lundmark

Mind sharing how you managed to properly get the event going for the BeoRemote?

When I listen to bangolufsen_event – I will only get entries when I use the control or light function. None of the color, numeric or up/down buttons show up – seems like either I’m doing something absolutely wrong, or the fact that I still got the Netflix/Amazon version messes something up.

[Hiort]

henkedk wrote:

NVM – reboot #48 helped and all events are visible now. @lundmark Mind sharing how you managed to properly get the event going for the BeoRemote? When I listen to bangolufsen_event – I will only get entries when I use the control or light function. None of the color, numeric or up/down buttons show up – seems like either I’m doing something absolutely wrong, or the fact that I still got the Netflix/Amazon version messes something up.

Not sure it adress your issues, but there is a video on the subject here:

[YannChris]

Hi,

Very interesting video, thank you Hiort.

If I welll understand, Home Assistant needs an always-on computer or NAS.

Is there a solution to add Home assistant in an Apple TV?

Kind regards,

Yann.

 

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