What hope for B&O?

Costco are currently selling a Sharp 50” 4K TV with built it Harman  Kardon sound system for £299.98. The design is probably not the most cutting edge, and the sound system may be no better than the B&O Play range, but how could B&O ever compete again in this particular television  market?

Graham

 

I guess there are costumers for a Sharp tv - as well as there are costumers for a tv from B&O.

Why would you think that they are competitors?

MM

Millemissen:

I guess there are costumers for a Sharp tv - as well as there are costumers for a tv from B&O.

Why would you think that they are competitors?

MM

They are obvious competitors in the eyes of many customers, particularly with the mixing up of the Harman Kardon and B&O brand ownership in the automobile field.

Graham

So be it - that’s the way things are.

The bigger question is, will there be (enough) costumers, who wants to pay for what B&O can offer?

I guess there still are.....but I have no crystal ball, just my optimism!

MM

They are more or less leaving the TV (BV) market - I think we should all know and understand that now.

They'll still be in the TV market in a broader sense - as and when they release a sound bar, and later a centre channel / *** Bs5 etc....

But yes, I think they understand that an environment of cheaper big screens, which can drop in to wider ecosystems (AP2, CC etc), makes the BV's of old a harder sell, even if updated to modern specs.

 

 

While that's undoubtedly a very stunningly low price, and will appeal to many, the Sharp TVs are a long way from being the be all and end all of video performance. So, people wanting higher performance will still buy higher up the tree, but how high? I don't think, personally, it's easy to reconcile paying 5 times as much for an OLED panel from LG with a few Beovision goodies tacked on. And panel tech changes so quickly still, hard  to keep up for a niche company like B&O.

Back in the day Beovisions made more sense, because in addition to the integration with B&O gear they offered improved picture quality over the donor panels they were based on. The B&O video dudes did good work, when I bought my first plasma the Beovisions offered a fair amount of an improvement over the Panasonic panel they were based on. Fast forward to today, and things are different and if anything the price delta appears even bigger.

But no doubt B&O has a challenging future.

Having bought one of these Sharp TVs because I thought it was such good value, I am going back to a Beovision - the BV8 it was supposed to replace offers a much better picture in terms of colour balance, detail and overall watchability. The HK sound system on the Sharp is absolute rubbish and requires a sound bar - which still doesn't produce anywhere near the quality of the BV8. The UHD picture on the sharp and the other enhancements all need to be turned off before you get a good picture and 4K gives a worst picture than leaving it on 1080 which then gives approaching an ok picture. quite often on dark scenes there is a lot of noise which I never got on the 8. I guess you don't know what your missing till it's gone!

On the upside the Sharp will make a great replacement monitor for my Flight Simulator as the Projector is on its way out.

vikinger:

Costco are currently selling a Sharp 50” 4K TV with built it Harman Kardon sound system for £299.98. The design is probably not the most cutting edge, and the sound system may be no better than the B&O Play range, but how could B&O ever compete again in this particular television market?

Graham

My horrible work laptop (A PC, HP 830 g5) has B&O speakers built in, at least a BANG & OLUFSEN logo on them and they sound absolutely horrible. Probably the worst pc speakers I’ve ever heard. I figure the speakers on that TV is the same.

B&O never competed with Costco.

Mrs S and i deserted B&O for our last TV when we felt that the extra £5000 for an Avant 55" over the Samsung we bought wasn't really justified.

Three years on, we've been content but not exactly overjoyed with the Samsung's picture and performance, and have a feeling of inevitability that a 65" Beovision Eclipse is somewhere in our future...

AdamS:

Three years on, we've been content but not exactly overjoyed with the Samsung's picture and performance, and have a feeling of inevitability that a 65" Beovision Eclipse is somewhere in our future...

Don't leave it too long if the Eclipse is being EOL'ed.

I hear that B&O have done an about turn and Eclipse is no longer EOL... 😀

SHEFFIELD:

I hear that B&O have done an about turn and Eclipse is no longer EOL... 😀

I hope that’s the case. I think it’s the best sounding television I’ve ever heard

Getting back to the original post, this really is very much the issue. Our TV died recently and the wife was fixed on a £450 Panasonic TV from Costco with a 5 year warranty. The picture was the worst I’ve ever seen in my life, absolutely terrible, fluorescent pixels crawling like ants and the sound was even worse rather like listening to a smart phone from a distance sounding tinny, anaemic and muffled. To all my objections her simple answer was “It’s good enough for me and the kids, you hardly watch the TV...you’ll get used to it...”. This TV now sits in our family room and serves CBeebies, BBC news, and my wife’s passion for the usual menu of cooking/dancing competition programmes. There are more and more people like my wife and less like me. If the big players like Sony and Panasonic struggle to make money off TVs, our little B&O really has its work cut out.

What can you say.....without being impolite 🤔

Did she at least pay for the g**d d*mn thing herself?

 

MM

She did pay for it herself - like most married couples from....our joint bank account

But last i knew they dont make there tvs Hatachi or someone else makes them

Maybe I’m just lucky, but with my wife if it’s something we care for, that wins over apathy. That way if we feel strongly for something, we get it. If just anything will do, we pick whatever is available and affordable.