WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.640 Just about everything is more expensive these days. 00:00:03.640 --> 00:00:07.080 Except TVs. What's the deal with that? 00:00:07.080 --> 00:00:10.120 Modern TVs are bigger, look better, 00:00:10.120 --> 00:00:14.000 and are more capable than ever before, just like me. 00:00:14.000 --> 00:00:17.000 Inside, everyone is a full-blown computer, 00:00:17.000 --> 00:00:20.520 complete with its own app store. They even have games and stuff. 00:00:20.520 --> 00:00:22.840 So how are they cheaper than ever? 00:00:23.760 --> 00:00:30.160 Well, let me tell you. Because TV companies don't sell TVs anymore. 00:00:30.160 --> 00:00:33.800 What do I mean by that? Story time. 00:00:33.800 --> 00:00:39.080 Before being acquired by Walmart for $2.3 billion in late 2024, 00:00:39.080 --> 00:00:43.920 TV manufacturer, Vizio, posted some very interesting quarterly results. 00:00:43.920 --> 00:00:47.560 See, Vizio lost money selling TVs, 00:00:47.560 --> 00:00:52.400 and yet they were able to make $109 million in profits. 00:00:52.400 --> 00:00:57.320 How? Well, it was all thanks to their platform-plus 00:00:57.320 --> 00:01:00.800 advertising platform. And if you need any more evidence 00:01:00.800 --> 00:01:04.880 that televisions are now ad-o-visions, look at this. 00:01:04.880 --> 00:01:08.960 Vizio makes not one mention here of electronics manufacturing. 00:01:08.960 --> 00:01:13.000 Then to really drive the point home, Walmart's press release announcing the deal 00:01:13.000 --> 00:01:18.880 boasts about how this new acquisition will enhance our advertising capabilities. 00:01:18.880 --> 00:01:25.600 And it's not just Vizio. TCL, Samsung, LG, name a major TV brand, 00:01:25.600 --> 00:01:32.160 and they have found that the real way to make money is to take your data and serve you targeted advertisements 00:01:32.160 --> 00:01:38.120 via their smart operating systems, though. I think we can all agree that the word smart 00:01:38.120 --> 00:01:41.440 doesn't really describe the current state of Tizen OS. 00:01:41.440 --> 00:01:44.520 And that's why in spite of all the recent enhancements, 00:01:44.520 --> 00:01:49.960 consumers now find themselves yearning for the days when turning on their TV just brought them 00:01:49.960 --> 00:01:54.880 directly to the content, instead of to an ad-infested home screen. 00:01:56.400 --> 00:01:59.560 Seriously, it's the whole thing! 00:01:59.560 --> 00:02:02.240 This is also Disney Plus, so is this. 00:02:04.080 --> 00:02:11.000 It had 80% ads. So what options are there for folks who just want to display? 00:02:11.000 --> 00:02:14.840 As it turns out, not many outside of commercial displays 00:02:14.840 --> 00:02:17.880 that, as you'd expect, cost a lot more. 00:02:17.880 --> 00:02:23.080 But there is one. After some digging, we found that there is still a company 00:02:23.080 --> 00:02:27.800 proudly making, untainted, pure display-only TVs. 00:02:27.800 --> 00:02:34.320 Adam, bring it in! It's Scepter, the budget monitor guys. 00:02:35.680 --> 00:02:41.760 But this ain't no monitor guys. It's a 75-inch TV that they promised delivers resolution 00:02:41.760 --> 00:02:46.880 at its finest. And we're gonna see what you get and what it's like to use 00:02:46.880 --> 00:02:50.240 right after we use this segue to our sponsor. 00:02:58.960 --> 00:03:04.160 Right under the gate, this is exceeding my expectations. I did not think that some random Scepter TV 00:03:04.160 --> 00:03:08.520 would have HDR support. Did you notice that it also has 4K support? 00:03:08.520 --> 00:03:12.600 It is true 4K resolution, true 4K input, ultra HD upscaling. 00:03:13.520 --> 00:03:18.880 It's also a 4K UHD series. Okay, so it doesn't have a lot going for it. 00:03:18.880 --> 00:03:22.240 But that's exactly what's going for it. Exactly! 00:03:22.240 --> 00:03:27.360 I wouldn't mind if it gave me a little more detail. We talk in HDR 10, there'll be vision, 00:03:27.360 --> 00:03:30.800 but hey, audio return channel. Well, wait, there's more. 00:03:30.800 --> 00:03:34.240 It also says here that it supports 4K. 00:03:34.240 --> 00:03:38.880 All right, all right, we get the bit. We get three HDMI ports. 00:03:38.880 --> 00:03:43.600 We get a USB port, HDMI 2.0 and HDCP 2.2, 00:03:43.600 --> 00:03:48.000 and a one-year limited warranty. Wait, Adam, we haven't showed the people the best part. 00:03:48.040 --> 00:03:50.280 Turn it around. It won an award. 00:03:52.840 --> 00:03:57.480 The Cinema Award. The Scepter Cinema. Absolute Scepter Cinema. 00:03:57.480 --> 00:04:04.880 In all seriousness though, how much did we pay for this thing? About $800, which for 75 inches is a pretty good price. 00:04:04.920 --> 00:04:08.000 Yeah, memes aside, I'm genuinely excited to see it. 00:04:08.000 --> 00:04:13.720 Good packaging, all things considered. They probably can't afford the RMAs. 00:04:13.720 --> 00:04:19.320 Still, that's one of the first things you see companies cheap out on, but they've got an extremely rigid screen protector on here. 00:04:19.320 --> 00:04:22.840 There's almost like some nice soft styrofoam for the screen as well. 00:04:22.840 --> 00:04:29.040 Though, some hard foam for structural integrity. Yeah, this is not great, but probably adequate. 00:04:29.040 --> 00:04:34.240 That is, that is one of the remotes. That's an old school remote. 00:04:34.240 --> 00:04:39.800 I like this picture of the batteries. Yeah, this is the most Timu brand remote I've ever seen. 00:04:41.000 --> 00:04:43.920 Along with the most Timu screwdriver. 00:04:44.920 --> 00:04:47.920 Can I interest you in a bagged TV? 00:04:47.920 --> 00:04:51.680 Oh, you know, I would love that. 00:04:51.680 --> 00:04:56.040 I don't know if I trust it though. Two persons required to prevent injury. 00:04:56.040 --> 00:04:59.560 Lift this display with both hands. I don't know if I've ever seen a bag 00:04:59.560 --> 00:05:03.000 with lift handles for a TV before. Me neither. 00:05:03.000 --> 00:05:04.600 Let's see if it's actually good. 00:05:06.000 --> 00:05:11.200 Whoa. It's stretching a little. Yeah. It feels a little scary. 00:05:11.200 --> 00:05:14.820 But it did the trick. It's a heavy TV. 00:05:16.460 --> 00:05:17.700 Where's the stand? 00:05:21.340 --> 00:05:23.180 It must be in the top foam in there. 00:05:26.460 --> 00:05:29.740 That's the stand. Oh, those are dinky. 00:05:29.740 --> 00:05:34.140 The whole lift bag concept might have been more useful if it actually lifted it somewhere 00:05:34.140 --> 00:05:37.420 where we could put the feet on it. It's just, yeah. 00:05:37.420 --> 00:05:40.820 That's fine, I got an idea. Yeah. 00:05:40.820 --> 00:05:44.380 It's nice because unlike all of the stupid skinny OLEDs, 00:05:44.380 --> 00:05:49.500 there's structural integrity to this panel. That's one way of saying that it's really thick. 00:05:49.500 --> 00:05:55.900 Yeah. Really, you're gonna use that when we have so much better screwdrivers on LTT Store.com. 00:05:55.900 --> 00:06:00.020 I want the true scepter experience, okay? Oh, this does suck though. 00:06:00.020 --> 00:06:03.340 Do we have a screw, do you have a screwdriver? Yeah, I do. I can hold it, yeah. 00:06:03.340 --> 00:06:07.220 Okay, give me a sec. Hopefully the TV is better than the screwdriver. 00:06:07.220 --> 00:06:10.780 On the subject of things that are better, we've got a great look at the IO while we're up here 00:06:10.780 --> 00:06:14.580 and this kind of rocks. You got your three HDMIs, 00:06:14.580 --> 00:06:19.620 all that do 4K 60 Hertz, one with arc. You got your coax, USB. 00:06:19.620 --> 00:06:24.580 And then unlike many modern TVs, we've actually got component in, composite, 00:06:24.580 --> 00:06:28.020 as well as optical audio and a headphone jack. 00:06:28.020 --> 00:06:31.780 Pretty much everything you need. What, it's a good, you got the headphone jack. 00:06:31.780 --> 00:06:36.100 You know, my grandpa uses it for his assisted audio headphones. 00:06:36.100 --> 00:06:41.020 And note the absence of an Ethernet port. But again, that's a feature, not a bug. 00:06:41.020 --> 00:06:45.460 What are you doing? Well, everything else about this thing has been pretty good so far, 00:06:45.460 --> 00:06:49.260 but I noticed that the power cord appears to be hardwired. 00:06:49.260 --> 00:06:53.500 And so I was seeing if maybe behind this little cover, there's a better situation, there's not. 00:06:53.500 --> 00:06:56.780 What's nice is this is giving me a look at the internals. 00:06:56.780 --> 00:07:01.620 If you had any hopes that it was so thick because it had full array local dimming, for instance, 00:07:01.620 --> 00:07:07.020 you can put those to rest. You know what I wasn't worried, it's all Phillips. 00:07:07.020 --> 00:07:11.660 I mean, yeah, that's unrelated, but good. No, but it seems like you could just take apart 00:07:11.660 --> 00:07:14.820 this TV yourself if you want. And put full array local dimming on it yourself. 00:07:14.820 --> 00:07:20.420 Oh dude. No. No, you don't want to upgrade the Scepter TV? 00:07:20.420 --> 00:07:25.580 Okay, all right. Worlds, listen, write in the comments if you want to see the world's best dumb TV mod. 00:07:25.580 --> 00:07:30.540 We got the energy guide on here, but also it's for the N75. 00:07:30.540 --> 00:07:32.940 Oh. But I thought that this was the U75. 00:07:33.780 --> 00:07:37.300 Here we go. One, two, three. Hoop. 00:07:37.300 --> 00:07:41.180 Oh, you went the other way. Oh, I thought I said this. 00:07:41.180 --> 00:07:44.700 I'm sorry. Oh, okay, we're ready. I see, I see, I see, I see, I see. 00:07:44.700 --> 00:07:47.900 We're ready, we're ready, we're ready. Okay. 00:07:47.900 --> 00:07:52.220 When you've been working together as long as me and Adam, you still have no idea what each other are talking about, 00:07:52.220 --> 00:07:55.740 but it's funny. Oh wow, there's so many peels. 00:07:58.300 --> 00:08:02.000 I'm just failing. Hey. 00:08:02.000 --> 00:08:06.000 You don't mind my warning? Wow. 00:08:06.000 --> 00:08:11.560 It's big and reflective, wow. It's very reflective, but quite flat. 00:08:13.320 --> 00:08:17.440 Yeah, you get some, you get some like, some wiggles there. Yeah, a little bit at the top. 00:08:19.760 --> 00:08:23.400 Me and every, every time I kill you. Huge moment. 00:08:24.800 --> 00:08:28.200 Sorry, I just looked at the remote just now. How could they? 00:08:28.200 --> 00:08:31.360 How could they? F Adele? We love Adele. 00:08:31.360 --> 00:08:34.640 She is a generational talent. Why would they put that on the remote? 00:08:34.640 --> 00:08:38.000 It says F Adele. They need that. No, love Adele. 00:08:38.000 --> 00:08:40.080 Did you have to wear a white shirt today? 00:08:41.160 --> 00:08:44.320 I can see you so. Whatever, beige boy, okay. 00:08:44.320 --> 00:08:47.760 Hey, at least we both have matching tubes from LTTstore.com. 00:08:47.760 --> 00:08:52.640 We did not coordinate this today. It just happened. I got so confused for a second. 00:08:52.640 --> 00:08:55.720 Yeah. Cause I was like, oh, hold on. 00:08:55.720 --> 00:08:59.840 How do I get to select the right input? So I'm on my shield instead of. 00:08:59.840 --> 00:09:00.680 It just went. 00:09:03.040 --> 00:09:04.640 Actually, it was crazy. Turn it off again. 00:09:09.440 --> 00:09:13.200 Content. That was so quick. That is the fastest I've gone from, 00:09:13.200 --> 00:09:16.880 I'd like to watch content to watching content in years. 00:09:16.880 --> 00:09:20.920 Yeah, it's like, you don't really realize it. You've gotten so used to like the delay 00:09:20.920 --> 00:09:25.160 of waiting for your TV to boot. Okay, so what is in the menu? 00:09:26.320 --> 00:09:29.360 Okay, picture. Picture settings. 00:09:30.720 --> 00:09:34.360 Okay, that's pretty basic. What is mild picture mode? 00:09:37.080 --> 00:09:41.400 I don't know. What I like about it though, is you can see what it's changing. 00:09:41.400 --> 00:09:46.560 Yeah, this is actually a great interface. It's like, what does game mean? 00:09:46.560 --> 00:09:49.840 It means we crank the brightness and the sharpness a little bit 00:09:49.840 --> 00:09:53.840 and we crank the backlight and the contrast is up compared to user. 00:09:53.840 --> 00:09:58.400 And it's crazy cause the smart TVs could have setting menus like this. There's no reason that they don't have settings like this. 00:09:58.400 --> 00:10:01.480 They choose not to. They choose to have you configure everything 00:10:01.480 --> 00:10:04.920 and then you change inputs and you have to configure it all again. 00:10:04.920 --> 00:10:08.840 And so when we're not looking at our content, 00:10:08.840 --> 00:10:11.920 we just get nothing. You get eye piercing blue. 00:10:11.920 --> 00:10:15.280 CEC control on, let's go. 00:10:15.280 --> 00:10:19.960 This is probably the simplest CEC interface 00:10:19.960 --> 00:10:24.560 that I have ever seen. And I'm comparing to devices that in some cases cost 10 times as much. 00:10:24.560 --> 00:10:28.520 I blew a bunch of money on that stupid AV receiver for my home theater 00:10:28.520 --> 00:10:31.720 and it has caused me nothing but grief with CEC. 00:10:31.720 --> 00:10:34.720 That was it. 00:10:34.720 --> 00:10:39.760 Now, I never need to touch the Temu remote again because theoretically hit the power on the shield. 00:10:43.720 --> 00:10:47.080 Oh. Oh, wait. No, no, no. 00:10:47.080 --> 00:10:50.240 Turn the shield back on because the shield has its own CEC settings. 00:10:51.280 --> 00:10:55.280 There we go. There we go. Got to reboot. So that was the problem. 00:10:55.280 --> 00:10:58.720 Coming back to our CEC issue, we didn't have it enabled on the shield, 00:10:58.720 --> 00:11:03.280 which to me means that from now on, we really shouldn't need this again. 00:11:03.280 --> 00:11:06.680 Now the thing about it, usually I avoid doing any sleep features on a TV 00:11:06.680 --> 00:11:10.480 because of how annoying the power on cycle is and how long it takes and how confusing it gets. 00:11:10.480 --> 00:11:14.560 This thing is actually just gonna work. Well, maybe. Okay, I've got it configured now. 00:11:14.560 --> 00:11:20.200 Big moment. Power's off and we power on the shield. 00:11:20.200 --> 00:11:23.780 TV's on already. You can see it. Oh my gosh. That's awesome. 00:11:23.780 --> 00:11:28.980 You might not like the NVIDIA shield. There's other TV boxes. 00:11:28.980 --> 00:11:35.300 Plug it into your computer. But that's the beauty of this, is that you can use whatever thing you want on it 00:11:35.300 --> 00:11:39.760 and it doesn't get in your way. I never need to look at this ever again. 00:11:40.700 --> 00:11:45.260 This is the one remote I need. So convenient. Kind of wish I hadn't thrown it at the floor. 00:11:45.260 --> 00:11:48.620 Like the batteries all came out and everything. And it's like underneath the shelf now. 00:11:48.620 --> 00:11:53.660 Okay, but we really need to fire up some content and see if this thing is even worth having. 00:11:53.660 --> 00:11:59.100 Also, I wanted to know if HDR was working because realistically, this is not 00:11:59.100 --> 00:12:03.060 full array local dimming backlight. So it's gonna be kind of hard to tell. 00:12:03.060 --> 00:12:07.280 It's as simple as pressing the info button. Oh my gosh. 00:12:07.280 --> 00:12:12.180 How does every TV not have that? Right there. Just tell me what mode you're operating in. 00:12:12.180 --> 00:12:16.220 Right there. 24 Hertz. That's amazing. That's exactly what it's supposed to be 00:12:16.220 --> 00:12:20.740 for this content right now. Oh yeah, you wanna hear it? 00:12:20.740 --> 00:12:24.580 Oh yeah. The volume is the Scepter logo. 00:12:24.580 --> 00:12:27.780 That's pretty cute. Speakers are bad. 00:12:27.780 --> 00:12:30.780 Hold on, hold on. You don't know that yet. We haven't heard Crab Rave yet. 00:12:30.780 --> 00:12:35.460 I know, I know, I know. That didn't happen, that didn't happen. Okay, here we go. 408 million views, 8 million of them are ours. 00:12:35.460 --> 00:12:40.460 There's supposed to be a... 00:12:44.140 --> 00:12:48.620 Okay, the speakers are bad. In their defense, that's true of most TVs. 00:12:48.620 --> 00:12:53.820 Yeah. And in their defense, the TVs that that's not true of 00:12:53.820 --> 00:12:57.460 are so expensive that you should probably be getting off-board speakers anyway. 00:12:57.460 --> 00:13:01.060 Yep. But image quality. Let's fire up some content. 00:13:01.060 --> 00:13:05.980 And a perfect piece of content to evaluate it would obviously be the most perfect piece of content 00:13:05.980 --> 00:13:09.100 of all time. The Ozymandias episode of Breaking Bad. 00:13:11.300 --> 00:13:14.820 It is very dim. It is not a bright display by any means. 00:13:14.820 --> 00:13:19.740 No, no it's not. However, in fairness, we have a big light over top of it. 00:13:19.740 --> 00:13:23.340 Yep. And it's also not bad. 00:13:23.340 --> 00:13:26.460 I mean, this is a dim scene. Let's go to a not dim scene. 00:13:26.460 --> 00:13:31.540 Does that look like a matte painted behind them? It's still definitely doing a bit of weird sharpening 00:13:31.540 --> 00:13:36.580 that is kind of mucking with the film grain. Oh yeah, I think if we just completely lose any sharpening 00:13:36.580 --> 00:13:39.940 that this TV is attempting to do, we end up with a way more natural image. 00:13:39.940 --> 00:13:44.300 Those clouds are incredibly blue. It's a pretty solid blue tint to the display in general. 00:13:44.300 --> 00:13:47.420 There's like loss of details on the colors of like Skyler's shirt here. 00:13:47.420 --> 00:13:50.820 Yeah. But like it gets the job done. 00:13:50.820 --> 00:13:54.580 I think there's a little bit too much magenta and house skin tone there out in the desert. 00:13:54.580 --> 00:13:58.620 But these are the kinds of things that only display dorks. 00:13:58.620 --> 00:14:03.500 People who review technology for a living are likely to notice or especially care about. 00:14:03.500 --> 00:14:07.740 Speaking of people who review technology for a living, Labs tested this display. 00:14:07.740 --> 00:14:11.580 Oh, did they? Yes. How'd that go? 00:14:11.580 --> 00:14:15.340 Not great. When it comes to the lab results, it's pretty not good. 00:14:15.340 --> 00:14:19.260 The TV, not super bright, peak brightness of around 361 nits. 00:14:19.260 --> 00:14:23.500 In SDR, Delta Ease, not so bad. In HDR, they are literally off the chart. 00:14:23.500 --> 00:14:27.700 You cannot see how bad the bars go on every single color. 00:14:27.700 --> 00:14:31.820 It is not even close. In terms of coverage, it also doesn't do very good, 00:14:31.820 --> 00:14:36.700 but it does what is promised on the manufacturer website. So they didn't lie. 00:14:36.700 --> 00:14:40.940 Cool. That's pretty much all. Did they do any motion performance? Motion performance, let me see. 00:14:40.940 --> 00:14:46.860 And it's awful. And that's input leg. And that's even ignoring the fact that the pixel transition 00:14:46.860 --> 00:14:51.620 response time is also horrible, which normally I can't tell 00:14:51.620 --> 00:14:56.860 in just regular content. It's the kind of thing that normally I'd need to play games to notice. 00:14:56.860 --> 00:15:00.460 But I don't even need them. Yeah, you can see it a lot when you're using interfaces. 00:15:00.460 --> 00:15:03.700 Also, the other thing is that even at $800, 00:15:03.700 --> 00:15:06.780 there's not a lot of TVs that are 75 inches at that price 00:15:06.780 --> 00:15:10.540 unless you're buying stuff that's deeply discounted. It's kind of a no-man's land. 00:15:10.540 --> 00:15:14.300 And I was blown away that they even made a 75-inch TV. But it's nice. 00:15:14.300 --> 00:15:18.020 You get to avoid all of the ad tracking. You get to avoid stuff like automatic content recognition 00:15:18.020 --> 00:15:21.140 where they take a scan of what's on your screen and compare it to a database. 00:15:21.140 --> 00:15:24.700 All that weird stuff. It's literally not sophisticated enough to do that. 00:15:24.700 --> 00:15:30.780 And it won't slow down, right? Like, think about how sluggish older smart TVs are now, 00:15:30.780 --> 00:15:33.900 because they care so little about the user experience 00:15:33.900 --> 00:15:37.060 for an operating system, because they kind of want you to upgrade. 00:15:37.060 --> 00:15:42.820 It's worth noting that this model specifically is kind of on its way out, but they have a new 75-inch model 00:15:42.820 --> 00:15:48.900 that is coming in. We'll have that link down below. Yeah. So in conclusion, it's a pretty bad TV. 00:15:48.900 --> 00:15:53.780 But they're also not charging a lot of money for it. And it comes with benefits that I think 00:15:53.780 --> 00:15:59.300 could be well worth the trade-offs for people who value privacy and simplicity. 00:15:59.300 --> 00:16:02.540 Like, watch this. I don't want to watch this TV anymore. 00:16:02.540 --> 00:16:06.460 I press one button, it's off. And watch this. 00:16:06.460 --> 00:16:12.140 You don't want to watch this YouTube video anymore. I press one button and segue to our sponsor. 00:16:12.140 --> 00:16:17.060 Thanks for watching this video. If you enjoyed this one, how about you check out the dumbest TV I've seen in a minute. 00:16:17.060 --> 00:16:20.860 It's the absolutely massive AWOL Cobb like LED wall. 00:16:20.860 --> 00:16:23.300 It's so big, it's dumb.