ARCHIVED FORUM -- March 2012 to February 2022READ ONLY FORUM
This is the second Archived Forum which was active between 1st March 2012 and 23rd February 2022
Hi Beoworlders,
I hope that this information may be useful to some of you, as I have been doing some tests on Beolab 28 speakers to see how they can best be used with a non-B&O TV or AV system. If anyone spots any errors here, please reply to correct me!
For use with a B&O TV or Beosystem, a shielded RJ45 Powerlink cable can be used to each speaker (please see my sponsor link at the foot of this page for more details of these cables).
There are also a number of solutions to use these speakers with a non-B&O TV or AV receiver:-
The first (wireless) option is to buy an Apple TV 4k 2nd gen (earlier versions won't work, it must be this version or newer) and plug this into the HDMI ARC socket on the TV. Now, any audio playing on the TV (eg. BluRay, internal TV tuner, etc) can be sent to the Apple TV. By assigning a room in the Apple Home app and placing the Apple TV and the B&O speakers in the same room within the app, you can stream the TV sound from the Apple TV to the speakers wirelessly via Airplay without any noticeable audio delay.
For best resilience, a wired connection to the speakers is recommended. This can be achieved via either B&O's Connection Hub (also called the S8 Hub) or the Core. An optical cable goes from the TV to either of these products and then RJ45 Powerlink cables are used to the speakers. Please note that the B&O Connection Hub "learns" the TV remote control commands, this product only works with IR remotes, not Bluetooth. Volume control from the B&O Core would be via the B&O app, or from a B&O remote.
If you want to use Beolab 28 as part of a non-B&O surround sound system, then I suggest looking for an AV receiver with RCA pre-out sockets fitted for all audio channels. I can then provide a trigger cable to activate the speakers via their Powerlink inputs directly from the AVR. Please feel free to get in touch via my sponsor link below for help and advice with cables for Beolab 28.
An alternative version of this trigger cable can also be used directly with the headphone socket of a non-B&O TV for setups where a simple wired connection is preferred, in this case the TV remote control will be used to adjust the speaker volume. In this case, there is no limitation on the type of remote used by the TV, this works for both Bluetooth and IR remotes.
Please note that I have not tried any third party products (eg. Almando) so I can't comment on these.
It is worth noting that a physical Ethernet cable to each speaker gives a much more reliable internet connection from your router than wi-fi, particularly when using two speakers paired together.
For reference, the 3.5mm minijack line input of these speakers has a significant delay (around 330 milliseconds) which puts the sound out of sync with the TV picture. Hence, this input cannot be used with any video source, eg. TV or AVR.
Please ask if you need help with cables for any of these speakers via my sponsor link below.
If I have made any errors or omissions, please reply to let me know!
Kind regards, Steve.
Steve.
www.soundsheavenly.com
Founder of Sounds Heavenly Cables and Brand Ambassador for Bang & Olufsen
Sounds Heavenly are proud to sponsor BeoWorld!
Please check out my YouTube channel at https://youtube.com/soundsheavenlycables
Steve at Sounds Heavenly: Please note that I have not tried any third party products (eg. Almando) so I can't comment on these. IKind regards, Steve.
IKind regards, Steve.
I haven’t tried the Hall Audio Streamer with the BL28 myself, but I see no reason why that should not work with those.
This streamer has a HDMI/ARC input port and a Powerlink/RJ45 (with trigger) output port.
It should work out of the box without any configuration, if you are not interested in the streaming features of the box (why should you, when you have the 28’s).
Just connect it and it will pass the sound from the (non-B&O) tv to the BL28’s. The volume can be controlled by the tv remote.
——
An interesting subject is the narrow/wide mode feature of the BL28’s - this witl have to be configured in the B&O app.
P.S. @Steve, you should get one ro try out
MM
There is a tv - and there is a BV
When using the Ethernet cable to connect to the speakers, do you require both speakers to be connected to your router ? Or is one good enough ?
Hi,
Both speakers should have an internet connection in order to function correctly. They should either both be wired (recommended) to the router, or they should both be wireless.
Another option is the Wisa Soundsend.
It connects via Arc/eArc on the TV and sends the sound wirelessly via wisa to the speakers.
It works fine in stereo when using PCM, but there seems to be a bug in the current software, when using Dolby Digital or Dolby Atmos, causing the wood-panels to open and close all the time. They should be working on a fix.