Beovision 1 saved!

Following my previous post about the threat of the BV1 in our living room, I am happy to report that the BV1 has found a new and so far even better placement that before.

The BV1 now lives in our "lounge" area and now acts as a lounge room speaker and our prefered TV/game room experience center.

Photos will follow soon

BV1 under threat

(download)

I'm in a dilemma. The BV1 is the perfect "entertainment hub" for 90% of the TV watching, all the audio listening, and some of the news reading (Text TV).

Dilemma: we pulled out the big plasma flatscreen the other day to watch a movie. This TV lives otherwise tucked away in a corner together with the xbox. The movie was great and the visual experience is so much better for that type of content.

So, I've started modelling a "TV wall" to the room where the plasma TV can be build in and, as the photos may show, be covered by a painting when not in use. Also the flatscreen will be able to go out on an angle to allow better viewing in from the side (where the sofas are).

The dilemma is that we will loose the living room sound, the design of the BV1 and the remote controls (beo4 and beo1). This is a big dilemma.

Kinect and Beovison 1

Got the kinect for our xbox at christmas, 6 months ago. At launch it needed a lot of space, but the xbox keeps getting updates and yesterday my kids accidently stumbled on a demo version of "Zumba" that I dowloaded a while back. Now that the Xbox is connected to the Beovision 1 and I was very curious to see if the full motion type game worked on such a small tradional monior as the BV1. It was a blast, and the space it needs is really tightened up - easily fit into a regular TV living room setting.

I also shot a few video clips to capture the action of these types of games.

From a design point of view there are a few fairly obvious observations:

Form: ultimately the kinnect should be integrated in the form of the TV.
Function: The NUI (natural user interface) gesturing works great.
The NUI games is a whole new category. Most kids age 4-6 likes the Wii - I think because of the props (wheels, rackets, guns). They are not confortable with most of the NUI navigation.

Beovision 1 continues to shine. We actually have our "old" flatscreen right next to it (can't find a space for it) and it remains turned off. Point here is not that flatscreens suck (they don't). Beovision 1 shines because it 1. fits the corner, 2. looks good, 3. has great sound, 4. is easy to operate.