WEBVTT

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This is what happens when you run your mouth on the internet. I thought I was a

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cool guy. I was like, "Hey, this is a crazy curved ultrawide Alienware

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monitor. If anyone has one of these, I'll pay 10 grand for it so I can unbox

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it." I was 100% certain nobody had one.

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Alienware told me nobody had one. Well,

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as it turns out, Alienware was just

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rebranding a monitor from a littleknown company

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called Aendo called the CRVD43.

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This, my friends, is the world's first,

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as far as we can tell, curved desktop monitor and the world's first ultrawide

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desktop monitor. and it wasn't Alienware. So, I did get a bit of a

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discount, but I still ended up paying $6,000

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for this thing. So, it better be reallying

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cool. Welcome to Holy,

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the heaviest monitor that I have yet encountered.

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The genesis of all of this was a Reddit post that was brought up in our weekly

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writers meeting. It just it looks so cool. I was like, "Holy crap, that is

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such an amazing piece of computing history. Like, I need it." We reached

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out to everyone we could think of to get our hands on one of these puppies, but

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all of them were dead ends. In a few cases, they did actually have the

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display, but less of a dead end and more of a dead display. So then it ended up

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getting thrown in. Oh my god, it's heavy. Oh, it ended up getting thrown in

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as a topic for the WAN Show where I kind of jokingly

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kind of seriously put out a $10,000

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bounty. And when I did that, I will buy it from you for $10,000 if it works so

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that I can make a video about it. I was not expecting to actually pay

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$10,000. I expected to get nothing other

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than the same pictures we had already seen of non- workinging units. And yet,

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lo and behold, 10 days later, we got an

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email with a link to a video of a new

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inbox monitor. Like, look carefully at this. This is actual official packaging

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for this thing. We verified the monitor did in fact work and the deal was made.

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I'm sure that guy was not expecting to get $6,000 for this ancient technology.

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I mean, look at this thing. Even when it's off, the screen's not even black.

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There were three variants of this. The Alienware one from CES 2008 where no

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price was given. There was an NEC variant that was shown at the 2009 Mac

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World event where a hefty $8,000 price

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tag was given. Then there's ours, the Astendo Technologies CRVD 43in curved

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display. And when this was first sold for a very brief period in 2009 at its

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cheapest, it was a uh modest $6,500,

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which is kind of crazy because that's actually very close to what we ended up

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paying for. Now, at every event where the display was shown, it made

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headlines. Anyone who saw it, I mean, look at this 2008 was wowed by both the

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curved nature of the display and how wide it is. Like sitting about 2 ft from

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it gives you a a natural 90° field of

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view. That's actually very comparable to

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high-end curved ultrawide displays today. This thing was literally a decade

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ahead of its time, which isn't to say that everything about it holds up

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particularly well today. Let's start getting it hooked up and talk through

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some of the specs. So, in terms of connectivity, DisplayPort, ladies and

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gentlemen, didn't exist yet. So, we're going to go ahead and Oh, it's fine.

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There's your power input right there, ladies and gentlemen. Got that dual link

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DVI input, HDMI port. I would actually be surprised if it runs full res on what

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what HDMI version would this have even been? 1.3. Oh, baby. USB 2 hub, though,

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ladies and gentlemen. It's a great value at $6,000. The stand looks like cast

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aluminum, I guess. 25 lbs without the stand. Well, the stand definitely adds

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more weight cuz it's pretty heavy. Wait,

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this is single link DVI to HDMI. Why would it come with such a weird stupid

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cable? Can I just have like a regular dual link DVI cable? How about HDMI? Oh,

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right. We're running like a 2080 or something here. Obviously, it doesn't

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have DVI on it, right? Who bought this thing and then never opened it? Oh my

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god. Do you hear those fans? It's as loud as a computer.

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Whoa. Giant cooling fan right here. Uh, based

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on the position, I would say it must be near the power supply cuz the power goes

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in right under there. And then check this shizz out. Look at these giant heat

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sinks here. It's funny. I didn't think about it, but that totally makes sense

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that this would have to have beefy cooling in it because the way that they

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built it is unlike anything that I've seen before. So, it's got a 2880x

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900 resolution. And how they achieved that and the curvature of the display is

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that it's actually instead of being just one display, four DLP LED lit screens in

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portrait mode just lined up. So pretty

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much it's kind of full of projectors.

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What's cool about being DLP though is

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that we might actually get a pretty decent gaming experience out of this

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thing because it boasts a point. 02

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millisecond response time. That's right. We're going to game on it. This is a

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classic in terms of uh interface down here. Hey, it works. Wow, that is really

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washed out. System error 1508 contact tech support. What are the odds?

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Extendo's tech support still around. Uh, some of the other specs, uh, lttore.com,

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by the way, include 200 nit peak brightness. Ouch. 10,000 to1 contrast

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ratio. Sure, that looks like a bad sign.

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100% sRGB coverage and 99% coverage of

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the Adobe RGB color space. Uh, should I be worried about that? So, let's try the

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power cycle trick here. Wow, it has like

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a boot down sequence almost. You can like hear the power supply.

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Yes. Oh, wow. It actually looks a lot better, too, now that it's warmed up.

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That's crazy. You can still absolutely

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see the seams between the projectors. Like, it's Hello. So, right there, right

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there, right there, and right there,

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there's your four. Are they LED back lit? Yep. That would

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have been like crazy town technology at

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the time. That's insane. Check it out from this angle. Like, see how stark

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those lines are between the the projectors. To be clear, it's not great,

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but it's not that bad. Actually, let's

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give it a little calibrate.

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Calibrate. Wow. Look at this. It's got a menu and everything. I would have given

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basically anything for this 10 years ago. So, you're actually aligning the

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two different projectors. Holy crap.

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So, it can move them. It can move them.

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You got to be kidding me. It's definitely blurriier towards the

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outside, but that's pretty typical of a projection style display. Okay. So, how

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do you make white smooth? Okay, then.

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Oh, I see. So, it's adjusting the

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brightness at the at the meeting point where they overlap. Oh, that's a little

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better, actually. I just darkened it a bit more. Uh, information. Yes, please

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tell me more information. 2880 by 900 60

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Hz native sync type digital. Yeah. Okay.

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In terms of responsiveness here,

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yeah, for a 60 Hz display, it's not bad.

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Like it feels it feels fine. Now, there

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was a lot of confusion at the time because the thickness, the girth of this

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display led people to believe that it was a CRT. but it wasn't. And quite

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frankly, that's a bit of an unfortunate thing. If it was a CRT, it would

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definitely be even heavier than it is actually by a considerable margin. But

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it would also have better image clarity and better brightness. It kind of buzzes

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different sounds depending on how much of the display is actually active.

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That's so weird. Everything about this thing is so

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weird. What even is this aspect ratio? 32x10 in

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game. The lines are really not that

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noticeable, especially from that twoft sweet spot. Like it's really tuned. Like

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if I'm in here, I can make it out. And if I'm out here, I can make it out. But

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like right here, holy crap. Like

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it feels really responsive.

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Like holy crap. My mind would have been

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absolutely blown to try something like

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this. No wonder it made headlines at every show that they demoed the thing.

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Interestingly, I'm not getting any noticeable rainbow effect. And normally,

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I find it quite noticeable on DLP displays. I don't know if that just has

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to do with the small size of it or my proximity to it or or what the deal is

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there. Aendo specialty was LEDs back

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then. Interesting.

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I mean, the advertised contrast ratio is

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obviously complete bull. Um, to put it

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as charitably as I possibly can, but

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pretty much everything else about it is really impressive. So, when I whip the

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camera, like when I pan the camera like this, you see a little bit of display

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tearing. But for not having VSSync enabled,

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that's normal. What's shocking to me, so here, if we turn VSYNC on,

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what's shocking to me is that in between

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the displays, I don't notice anything like I don't

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notice like a kind of a compression expansion kind of artifact or or

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anything like that. It just it really does feel like one big display. There's

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things that they lied about for sure, but there's also things they got really,

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really right. Gaming aside, from like a

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creative standpoint, something like this would have been absolutely

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game-changing. With that said, I think you'd still need another display for

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certain types of work. Like, I mean, if I was doing anything that I expected to

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be color accurate on here, get real. It might have that gamut

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coverage or whatever, but I mean with the amount of, you know, fringing for

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example on borders and with how much

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variation there is with a single color across the entire width of the display.

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Like here, you can see how the start menu is like kind of pink over on this

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side and then it's more like dark here.

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There's no way that you'd be doing any kind of like color accurate work. But

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from just a a sheer screen real estate

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standpoint, we're looking at a very modern amount of screen real estate for,

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you know, timelines and uh you know, media bins and graphics and all that

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kind of stuff. Like this again would have been absolutely

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mindblowing to 10 years ago me. In

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conclusion, as a 10year ago tech demo, absolutely

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freaking unreal, I don't know that I would have spent this kind of money on

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it, just because there are some serious quality of life problems with it with

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respect to, you know, the changes in the zones, particularly the the maximum

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brightness is really not great. Contrast isn't great. But as a 10 years ago tech

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demo, unfreaking real. Uh, I'm still not stoked that I

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paid six grand for it, but hey, maybe we'll do a live stream. You want to see

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a tear down live stream tearown? Let us know in the comments below. Let's get

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let's squeeze two videos out of this thing. Let's make make up some some

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ground there. Um, make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss that. If

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you guys are looking for another video to watch right now, maybe check out uh

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oh, this one on the light field hollow display. That's like, you know,

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tomorrow's technology today instead of today's technology