WEBVTT

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The insane 115in TV that we smuggled out

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of China and into my theater room is

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fully set up. And I've been watching movies. I've been playing games. I've

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been just basking in its 5,000 nits of

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peak brightness. But I've also been working. [music] No one has ever seen

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this thing outside of China, and there is absolutely nothing quite like it on

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the market. The Labs team was understandably skeptical. If your

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marketing leads with big, surely that

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means it comes with some trade-offs that you're not talking about. But the

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results are in. And there is no denying that the X11G Max's otherworldly size

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gives it some superpowers, even if it also gives it some [music] peculiar

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drawbacks that we do have to acknowledge. I can't tell you guys how

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excited I was to do this video because it's not very often these days that I

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get to review a product that I have never experienced before and that has no

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competition and okay wait Lionus I can

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practically hear you guys saying surely you have watched TV and of course it has

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competition and you guys are right okay

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sitting closer is competition a projector is competition and Samsung's

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the wall is obviously ly competition, but all of those things are also not

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competition. Compared to a projector, for instance, the difference in contrast

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and brightness and color volume is almost literally night [music] and day.

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I mean, I have a light controlled room, but here's the thing. I don't need it

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anymore at all. And compared to sitting closer, guys, nothing I have ever

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experienced matches the sheer immersiveness of a screen this size. cuz

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it's not just the size relative to your field of view, the light it throws out

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into a room when there's a a full screen flash or explosion goes off. I mean,

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even my wife Ivonne, who watches almost exclusively in portrait mode on her

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phone, was like, "Wo, that's crazy." And

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the sitting close strat, well, that might work for you, but it'll never work

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for your friends who are in the second row. As for the wall, well, I mean,

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guys, this is a really expensive product, but the wall is 20 times the

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price. 20 times. That's kind of like

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saying this competes with this. But I'm

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getting ahead of myself. Let's take a tour. The mounting system, honestly, is

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kind of scary. You get two floppy discsized metal plates that attach with

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a single bolt each to the back of the TV. Then you just hang the whole thing

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on another set of plates that screw into the wall. I would say the only highlight

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of the install experience was finally getting my Valencia theater seating

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back. These guys sent these chairs ages ago, but I don't think I've ever

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appreciated them more than after I was stuck with that inflatable couch from

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the AllWish home theater video for 2 months. The spec we were most skeptical

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of the first time around was the claimed [music] 20,000 plus dimming zones. I

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mean, it just sounded preposterous when you consider that that's an order of

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magnitude greater than heavy hitters like Apple's liquid retina XDR display.

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But by displaying a thin white line across the screen, we were able to

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painstakingly count the dimming zones. And as they illuminated, sure enough,

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180 rows by 190 columns for a grand total of 20,520,

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which I guess explains the plus in the spec. Now, even at the size, just to put

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that number in context, guys, each of those dimming zones is just about a half

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an inch by a half inch, which is pretty

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normal on a monitor. But guys, I'm not sitting arms length from this thing. I'm

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sitting way back from it. And from that kind of distance, the dimming zones

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disappear, and the effect is fantastic.

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It's still not an OLED, but from the

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right spot. More on that later. Brandon from the lab described its contrast as

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OLED like, which is truly high praise,

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and I can totally see what he means. The black levels are really low. So, the

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letter boxing glow is far less noticeable than the LCDs of yestery year

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and my laser projector. [music] And while you're still going to see a glow

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around white text on a black background, that is largely just from the veiling

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glare in the human eye. And guys, everything I just said, that's with the

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local dimming set to high, which is

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where I'm keeping it surprisingly for two reasons. One, this screen does not

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look nearly as good with the local dimming turned off. Look at this side by

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side. Do you see all of that? That is not smoke or a fog machine. That is just

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poor uniformity, which is one of VA

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technologies greatest weaknesses. an Achilles heel that is exacerbated by

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this screen's bigness. It's a huge

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yikes. Or at least it would be if fixing

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it wasn't this easy. Reason number [music] two, once this thing is dialed

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in, everything looks incredible on it. Even SDR content pops off of the screen

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in a way that I've just never experienced before. We reached 850 nits

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of brightness in a full screen window

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with local dimming off. For context, guys, even aside from the gimmick of it

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being huge, [music] ratings has only tested two TVs ever

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that can [music] do that. And then got real. We turned local dimming to high

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and measured anywhere from 850 to 5,000

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nits in SDR. With deep blacks and

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specular highlights that shine at that brightness, combined with the excellent

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upscaling in NVIDIA's Shield, which I have connected to this thing, you can

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watch older 1080p non-HDR Blu-rays. And

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I mean, even our camera guys, Andy, did you think that was HDR?

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That was crazy. Absolutely crazy. And that's before we

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even turn on HDR content. This monster supports both Dolby Vision and HDR10

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Plus, which is really nice because at this kind of price, why not both? What

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is the big TV manufacturer's excuse? And when you're in HDR, it reaches levels

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where you actually get close to like squinting when there's a big enough

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explosion. And and guys, I don't mean that in a bad like, oh, so unpleasant

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way. I mean that like I'm in the room. I'm here with the characters like, "Oh,

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whoa." I mean it like that. It's not

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just beyond anything I've ever experienced at home. It is beyond what

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you can experience in a movie theater with a projector. I mean, that's the

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first thing Andrew said. It's like, "Wow, I would never go to the theater

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again." And it's not just a onetrick pony. Because this TV uses quantum dots.

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The color performance is as great as we've come to expect, too. It's

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downright awesome in HDR. And SDR is

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good. Even though it does have imperfect gamma tracking, leading to tones and

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shades being a bit brighter than they probably should be across the board. And

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that's something that's exacerbated by turning local dimming on. We would still

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recommend keeping it on because of the dirty screen effect I talked about before, but if you're optimizing for

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color accuracy and SDR, you may want to set it to low. All of which is to say

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this thing is no longer a business expense. Aside from the logistical

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challenges of taking it back to the office and storing it, I completely

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forgot that it was 5 in smaller than the projector screen that I had before the

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second I turned it on. And I just don't think there's any going back, which

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doesn't mean that it doesn't have drawbacks. Both this specific TV and the

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whole concept of TVs this large. This one was never made for the North

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American market and it's quite Chinese.

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You can, of course, set the language to English, which thankfully applies to the

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decently deep settings menu, and I'm running it with my NVIDIA Shield anyway.

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But before it will work at all, even turn on, the TV requires a Chinese phone

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number to register it. And that native dashboard forever remains Chinese. But

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there is a setting to boot into your last used input. And even if I do find

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myself on the native dashboard, I can usually navigate it with my Shield

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remote via HDMI CEC, so I never have to use the remote that came with the TV.

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And speaking of the remote that came with the TV, I honestly didn't spend

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much time with it. Kind of like the included speakers. Like guys, if you're spending this kind of money, what are

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you doing using the factory remote and speakers? But it's fine. It's tactile,

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even if it's sort of uninspiringly plastic and lacks backlighting.

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definitely feels like a quality mismatch compared to the display it controls.

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Speaking of controls, gaming, it's kind

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of great. Assuming you have a supported source, it does 144 hertz variable

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refresh rate at 4K with a very competitive game mode that we measured

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at just [music] 5.2 milliseconds. So, between the screen that's big enough to

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give every split screen player their own 55-in TV and the amazing performance of

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this panel, I got to say, I just love gaming on this thing. But the issue is

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the [music] pixel response times. At first boot, you're looking at 21

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milliseconds, which noticeably affected my aim in first person shooters. And

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even once it's warmed up, which reduces the viscosity of the liquid, which is

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crazy, it's still in the 15 millisecond range. To be clear, guys, if I wasn't

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spoiled by OLED and laser projection, I probably wouldn't mind. And you can play

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anything at a non-professional level, especially anything with a controller

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that's not a pixel perfect platformer. But if gaming is your number one

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priority, you would be far better off picking up one of these and then 300 or

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so of our excellent high performance LT store deskpads. ltstore.com.

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Another drawback of this guy, as I alluded to before, is the viewing

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angles. That's something that VA panels are already known to struggle with,

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where being offaxis can make the picture appear noticeably less uniform. Look

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closely at how this orange glow and the contrast from the buildings gets duller

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toward the edges of the screen. Making matters worse, the halos around local

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dimming zones also become more prominent, which if you remember is a

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really important feature of this TV to keep on. Now, usually with a regulariz

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TV, you're only going to be that far off axis if you're the last born child and

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everyone else gets the alpha couch. But with this thing, you can be front and

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center and still be offaxis to the edges of the screen because you're just so

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close. The good news is that in practice, anywhere beyond 2 m away is

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outside of the danger zone. And even when I was closer, I was so busy being

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immersed in my content that I didn't really notice. Anyway, TCL actually did

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try to improve this situation by adding a viewing angle improving layer in the

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display stack. But unfortunately, the reason that we know this is because it

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introduces a rainbow artifact when it is directly lit, like from the pots that I

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have in the room here. It's only visible in some scenes. And I mean, I intend to

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keep the lights off during movie time anyway, but if you were to install this

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in your living room that has floor toseeiling Windows, it could get

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annoying. Also annoying is that TCL has

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bakedin dynamic tone mapping that you cannot turn off in HDR10 mode. This can

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be a benefit. JVC's projectors, for example, stand out from the rest for

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their excellent implementation of exactly this feature, but they're using

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it as a crutch to compensate for projectors limited peak luminance. This

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TV doesn't need that. It's so color

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accurate and so bright that it can produce a color volume that is really

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similar to the 4,000nit reference monitors that are used to master the

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content in the first place. To explain this a bit further, basic HDR10 signals

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only provide metadata that gives you the highest and lowest brightness values

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across an entire film. So on a scene by

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scene basis, [music] you might be leaving a lot of the performance of that display on the

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table. Dynamic [music] tone mapping does this frame by frame.

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In theory, doing a better job of consistently lighting the content. The

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problem is that the implementation gives the content a bit of a best buy effect

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as opposed to strictly conveying the artist's intent. [music]

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Now, obviously, I spent half of this video out the mouth about the picture

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quality of this thing, so it's not egregious. But come on, guys, at this

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price, why not give the purists the option of turning dynamic tone mapping

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[music] off? maybe at least in expert mode. The good thing is it does turn

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itself off when you're watching in Dolby Vision or in HDR10 plus which handle

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this scene by scene metadata on their own. My last big downer is that

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heartbreakingly just found it this morning. I have a

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dead pixel. I can't see it all the time,

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but I know it's there. And because TCL

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only warranties this TV inside of China when it's installed by an authorized

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solutions provider, there is absolutely nothing I can do about it. Obviously,

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this is a first world problem, but it illustrates the risks [music] and the

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challenges associated with niche products in general, and especially one

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like this. [music] Think about it. Even if I did have coverage, would I want to

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go through the rigomearroll of replacing this thing? TVs this size are going to

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need to fundamentally change before you're going to be able to pick one up

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at the local Best Buy and drive it home. It doesn't fit in a pickup truck and you

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need two maybe three strong people to

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maneuver it around corners and stairwells and get it mounted to the

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wall. [music] So unless future generations just roll up and then kind

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of wallpaper on, this is always going to be a premium hightouch product. Even a

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high-end projector setup with ceiling mounting and inwall wiring and attention

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screen and all the fixings can be done by one rogue enthusiast. It [music] will

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take more time, but it can be done. And

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that's a way to help you stretch your budget with this. No such luck. And

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speaking of the price, we should talk about that. It's $11,000.

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That is frankly [music] a stupid amount of money to spend on a TV, especially

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when you consider the way that TV sizes only go this way and TV prices only go

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this way. But is it a bad deal? To

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answer that, we got to do some comparisons. [music] In 2019, LG's 77in

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C9 OLED was $4500.

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By comparison, [music] their signature series 88 in Z9 was

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$30,000. That is almost six times more dollars

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per diagonal in a pretty hefty premium for their largest screen size.

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Meanwhile, in LCD land, an 85in Samsung

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Q80C is $2,000, while the 98 in one is

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$8,000. That's over three times more per

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inch. And there's a very real justification for this premium on topiz

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models. For one thing, all TVs are cut from a larger sheet of what's called

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mother glass. So, in order to justify

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producing one monster, like this one,

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TCL has to offset the opportunity cost of making many smaller TVs out of that

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glass instead. Furthermore, when you're chopping my glass into smaller panels,

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you can cut around any [music] defects or imperfections. That helps reduce

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waste, which helps reduce the price. With this thing, [music] you need one

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big completely flawless piece. [music]

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Anything else is garbage. Or if there is a flaw, you could ship it to the dumb

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guilo who can't do anything about it. I guess the other major comparison point

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is going to be projectors. You can get something really nice for half the price

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of this thing. The Epson LS12000, which I've been using, won Projector Central's

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Editor's Choice Award and costs $5,000.

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[music] But then you're on the hook for another grand or two for a screen, a

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bunch of money and time treating your room, and an experience that is just

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plain full of compromise. The contrast

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is always going to suck by comparison, you can never perfectly align a

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projector. Just get close enough that it doesn't bother you. And unless you blow

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a h 100red grand on a Christy or something with their [music] fiber optic

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extension thing, you can never get rid of the fan noise. This one completely

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silent. Doing the math on the TCL, then it comes in much higher than the Samsung

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98 inch at about $95 per diagonal inch.

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There's no denying it's really high. But considering that it is alone in this

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size class and that the price includes white glove delivery and installation in

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China, I don't think they're that off base. And like come on guys, if we're

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talking about dumb rich people, you know, like you're the kind of person who

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spends thousands of dollars on shoes or hats, this is kind of the bang for the

00:17:29.919 --> 00:17:37.280
buck option, right? And this is kind of a segue to our sponsor. Really is quite

00:17:35.360 --> 00:17:41.280
comical. I They're still on there because I actually need to bring it down

00:17:39.600 --> 00:17:46.080
to adjust some things about the mount. But see those [music] metal butt plug

00:17:43.280 --> 00:17:51.600
looking handles? Each person on one side grabs the two of them and that's how you

00:17:47.520 --> 00:17:51.600
move it. Weighs almost 400 lb.