- The 100-inch gaming experience behind me looks like it's running on a TV, and it's got a lot in common with a TV. It's running at 4K 60 hertz, it's got support for HDR, it's got crazy-thin bezels, and only sits about this
far off the freakin' wall. But it's not a TV. Okay. So what is it then? If it was a projector, surely the fact that I'm standing right
here in front of it would mean that there'd be
a shadow behind me, right? Not so much. The magic is
in this box right here. This is an ultra-short-throw projector with a bespoke ambient
light-rejecting screen that makes it so it achieves
nearly TV levels of brightness and there's almost no way to
get in the way of the image. Well, unless you stand right here. But how the heck does that work? And how am I gonna tell
you guys about our sponsor? - Ridge Wallet has redefined the wallet with its compact frame
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and free worldwide shipping at the link in the video description. (upbeat music) Now, I figured out that
this wasn't a TV real fast because TVs don't come in
boxes like this or like this, and they definitely
don't come with not one, but two sets of white gloves. Dr. Tech is in the building. Apparently there are very
specific instructions- - [Jake] Okay, so I have the instructions. Do you want to use them? - No, I kinda wanna just learn as we go. - Epson calls this a laser projection TV, which sounds like two different things, and sort of is two different things, but they've meshed them into one. And what's really cool about this setup is it's not you buy a projector, you figure out the screen yourself, or you buy a screen and you
figure out the projector. It is two pieces that you buy, and they come together as a kit, and they're specifically
tailored to be used together. Designed for each other,
engineered for each other, to provide supposedly an experience that is better or the same
as a TV, with a projector. - Here's the thing: when
we started this video, I thought their claims were
almost definitely (beep), and we haven't reached
the point in the video where we've shot the intro yet, so I kinda still think
there's a real solid chance that this is (beep). No projector, regardless of how many thousands of lumens it has, is able to match the experience
of a TV in a lit room. - Except this projector comes with an ambient light-rejecting screen specifically tailored for it. Have I said that enough times yet? - Oh, sweet! This thing has Android TV. - Oh, wow. That's-
- That's freakin' awesome. - One of the key things
you need to keep in mind when you're setting this up is because they're paired together, it's very important that
you get the geometry exact, and that's why this
cardboard thing exists. It's actually a jig for lining it up. (parts clatter) - Oh god. I find it very hard to believe that this isn't Epson propaganda. Wow, look at it go. Laser aperture. Got some science. Got 3D. Got that technology. (grunts) You don't wanna
run it with the plastic on. That's a tech tip. Oh, this is cool! You know how projectors
always have speakers on them, and it's the stupidest thing ever because the projector is behind you where you wouldn't want speakers? This projector goes in front of you because it's a crazy short-throw one, so the speakers actually point at you. Got your network. Got dual
HDMI, one of them is ARC. It doesn't specify if it's eARC. I would kind of hope
so on a modern product. USB, audio out, serial for control. Oh yeah, '90s kids will get this. You got your front inputs. Right? Oh. Right, I forgot. Jake's really young-
- Hey, our CRT TV- - TVs used to have inputs
at the front, okay? - RCAs on the front? Mmm.
- Yeah, that's right. You got the composite on
the front, got another USB, and then controls, focus, and
that looks like an intake fan. Honest question: why
would anyone turn focus to anything other than the
maximum amount of focus? (Jake laughs) This is unlike anything
we have ever covered. I mean, even just look
at the aesthetics of it. What is up with this blue,
orange, and black grill? Like, what house is
this supposed to match? I love everything about it,
from its retro front inputs, to its speakers on a projector that are pointed in the right direction, to whatever this panel on the side is that looks like it comes off. It's got a filtered intake! Wow, there's a lotta
cooling in this thing. Kinda makes sense. You got a 4,000-lumen
laser frickin' projector. - [Jake] Okay, so we need to measure that this thing needs to be
17 inches from the front. - [Linus] Okay, I mean, you
could probably find furniture that's this wide for no apparent reason to put in your living room. This is some serious serious business extruded aluminum here, boys. Look at that shaft! - [Jake] I thought you
said it was propaganda. (laughs) Look at that lens! "To you help you identify
drill hole locations for the wall brackets, Epson
has created a guide image that you can project onto the wall." - Oh, wow. That's handy. - It's a good thing we
built a computer for that. - I found the baggie
of tensioning springs, as well as what appears
to be the wall brackets that Jake is gonna need. I love how they assume that anyone nerdy enough to buy this product is gonna have a friend
to help them set it up. - [Jake] You say that like we're friends. - Well, I pay you to hang out with me. (Jake laughs)
That's a friendship of sorts. - [Jake] Did you read
the instructions at all, or are you just YOLOing it?
- I'm just going for it, dawg. I mean, it's pretty straightforward. Basically you just got the frames. You put the L brackets in between them. - [Jake] But what if there
was some other (beep) you needed to do before that? - Well, then I haven't done it, clearly. Hold on a second.
- Oh yeah! - What are these puppies for? Sorry. - Thought for a second that
this was a wireless HDMI thing. - [Linus] Yeah. - [Jake] But it says
"streaming media player." I think this is like
the Android TV dongle. - [Linus] It comes with two remotes? - No! - Come on, Epson! - [Jake] What? They both have YouTube, Netflix,
and Google Play buttons. But the remote that came
in the general packaging, like separate from that, has more smart functionality
and a Google button. - Wow, this is not like
screens I've seen before. Oh, no. Wow. Oh, no, it's gray, it's gray. Okay. Just about blew my mind the
first time I heard about dark projector screens to
get better black levels. I was like, what? Well, how
do you use it if it's not... How do you get white if it's not white? But apparently you can project
white onto gray or something. Now I just have to put in a thousand of these little spring things that are all barrel-o-monkeys
attached to each other. Yep, I did it wrong. You're supposed to do the corners first, then center the long sides,
then center the short sides. Holy, holy crap, David. Are you ready to have
your mind freaking blown? - [David] Yeah! - [Linus] Watch the color of the screen. - [David] Whoa! - [Linus] Whoa! - What?
- What! Can you see it?
- Yeah! - [Linus] What color is the screen? - [Jake] Whitish? Off-gray? Wow, black. That's crazy.
(Linus laughs) - So cool! Now, I have experienced an ambient light-rejecting screen before, but not like this. Normally, the way that they're designed is to minimize off-axis incidental light bouncing back to the viewer. This is channeled, basically. Looking at it like this it's just like, black, white, black, white, black, white. I redid all the springs to
get it aligned well enough that I can actually
stick through the screws for the black frame, and we realized that it's
still not perfectly aligned because there's these
adjustment screw thread holes for how far it sits off the wall, and we can't get at one of them without kind of bending the
screen back a little bit. It is real finicky to get the
whole thing aligned perfectly. Oh god. That corner and that corner
are both rippled as hell. Yeah, we gotta take the frame
off again and stretch it. Basically what happened is I think we don't have enough
tension from the bottom here. Oh! Okay, that did not make it better. - [Jake] This is a lotta
work for it to not be good. - [Linus] I really hope it's good too. I mean, if it's good, it has the potential to be mind-blowing, 'cause it's like 100 inches for
what, four and a half grand? - And super bright. Supposedly. - Supposedly. - Look at how good my gloves fit. - [Linus] Oh. Oh, real mature, Jake. - Blur Jake out of it.
- Just blur all of him. It's all offensive. Holy crap. That really
does look a lot better. - Wow!
(Linus gasps) - [Linus] Oh. Sorry, paint job! - [Jake] Oh no! - It looks a lot better than I expected. To be clear, this is not the brightest TV by any stretch of the imagination, but you could convince me
it's not a projector, too. - [Jake] It's also pretty bright in here. - Oh yeah, that's true. We've got studio lights
firing at it right now. - [Jake] I mean, if you
had a regular projector, it wouldn't look this good. - I was cleaning up some of the packaging and I came across these two little tools. I don't know exactly what they're for, but they kinda look like they would be for stretching the screen, which would've been really useful. Oops.
- I'm starting to realize how much I probably
should've read the manual. - Is it working?
- Maybe. - [Linus] Ho-ho-ho! (Jake groans) Wow, that alignment. You nailed it. - [Jake] I just YOLO'd it. I removed the box and I just
went whoop-whoop-whoop, tilt, did focus, and bada-bing,
bada-boom, here we are. So it is playing HDR 10. But there's an adjustment
slider and it defaults to eight, and we set it to five, which
is a little bit brighter. - It's a lot better-
- Than any other projector. - [Linus] Anything else
I've seen, for a projector. - And look, it looks pretty damn crisp. We were a little concerned
that right on the fringe edges it's not quite as sharp.
- Mm-hmm. - But in something like this
you don't notice it at all, and it looks pretty good everywhere else. - Blacks are not that black, though. - [Jake] We do still
have a light on, though. We got lights up there and
those windows over there. This is not light-controlled. - I would say that even under
non-ideal lighting conditions, this is as good as
a-few-generations-ago TV. - Yeah.
- But in terms of HDR, I don't think the black
levels are deep enough to get that contrast that you need. At least not with ambient light. - [Jake] But look at that. When it's a scene that's pretty lit- - Yeah.
- It looks really good. - You could convince me that this is a pre-really-good-local dimming TV. It's pretty crisp! I can't believe how good it looks to me even from over here. As long as it's not lit right above it, it's pretty damn good. - [Jake] All right, now shut it all off. - Shut everything off?
- Kill the lights. - [Linus] Okay, here we
go. This is the experience. - [Jake] This is pretty frickin' awesome. - [Linus] It's pretty freakin' good. When you consider how
much a 100-inch TV costs, this has compromises. It takes a lot longer to set up, no, the blacks are not as black, and the HDR experience, it's not like a new, top-of-the-line OLED or anything like that. But what does an 88-inch OLED cost? - [Jake] 30 grand? Maybe not quite. I wanna
play with that setting. - [Linus] Whoa, that looks way better! As difficult as the setup is compared to just plonking a
TV onto your console, though, compared to other
projectors we've dealt with, this is basically plug-and-play. - Yeah, it's nice that they
actually put some thought into how somebody is going to set this up if they're doing it themselves. - I mean, that's something
that drives me so crazy, is every time I go on a
manufacturer's website... Remember that stupid trash
can-shaped projector, right? - [Jake] Mmm, yeah. - [Linus] That was just
sitting on a coffee table in all the promotional imagery. And I'm looking at it going, who the hell would have
that on their coffee table? Where do the HDMI cables
go from a coffee table? - It's wireless, bro.
- No, but... (stammers) It needs power, Jake! It needs power! Nobody has power in
the middle of the floor of their living room. Whereas this is actually something you could sensibly, reasonably deploy. That's the difference. If you want the screen size,
it is a legitimate option. - [Jake] See, if it's not HDR content, I'm not too worried
about the black levels. - [Linus] Yeah, it looks really good. Man, that is pretty freakin' impressive. - [Jake] But the viewing angles are great. - [Linus] Yeah. That looks awesome. With how bright that is,
you could easily convince me that that is a TV from here. That actually doesn't
even look that much worse. Game color mode? Yeah, I noticed it doesn't look as good. No, there's no 120 hertz, even if you go down to the 1920x1080. - [Jake] It might not be pixel shift. - When we're at the desktop
and we're looking at text, it's a lot easier to tell
that it's a projector. It's not that sharp. It's
not crisp, like an OLED. I don't wanna do this.
- You're gonna get wrecked. - Latency, not bad.
- Throw a nade. - [Linus] Oh, wait. There's
grenades in this game? How do you throw a grenade?
- Uh, middle-click, I think? - [Linus] Oh yeah, there it goes. - [Jake] The projector
speakers, they suck. - [Linus] Oh yeah, they're
bad! They're real bad, boys. All I know is this thing looks
great. Latency's pretty good. It's still 60 hertz, so
yeah, it's not OLED-like. But the pixel response time
is good, there's no blur. Which I guess makes sense,
it is a laser projector. You know what? I like it. I like enough to think this
is really amazing, cool tech and enjoy using it, but I
don't know if I like it enough to recommend spending
four grand, it's $4,500. - I don't know.
- I mean, I'd rather have this than almost any other
projector setup that I've seen. In terms of how practical it is to set up? - [Jake] It's pretty easy to set up. I mean, if you follow the instructions. Please follow the instructions. - [Linus] Yeah, please
use the instructions. It's really not that hard.
- It looks really good. I still don't think it's a TV replacement. - [Linus] No. No, no, no, no. - [Jake] At least not
an OLED TV replacement. - Big shout-out to Shells
for sponsoring today's video. Shells.com offers secure
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and try it out at Shells.com, which we're gonna have linked down below. If you guys enjoyed this
video and you're looking for, I don't know, maybe another
projector setup video... - The lounge?
- Yeah! Check out our last lounge setup. It's a little outdated
now, but it's pretty cool. It's got a motorized screen and stuff. This is more of an always-on-style setup.
All the short throw laser projectors are completely different tech than ours.
Check out this one by Microvision:
https://youtu.be/giOTUnoFQdM
I dont think MVIS has anything in this, but it does advance the market for the tech.