The 100in 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 Hz. It's got support
for HDR. It's got crazy thin bezels, and
only sits about this far off the freaking 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 going
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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.
I have the instructions. Do you want to use them?
Um, no. I kind of want to 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 now, 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, 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 bull. And we haven't reached the point in the video where
we've shot the intro yet. So, I kind of still think there's a real solid chance
that this is bull. 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 freaking 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 like a jig for lining it up. 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. Ah, you don't want to 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 like a
crazy short throw one. So, the speakers actually point at you. Uh, got your
network, got dual HDMI. Uh, one of them is ARC. It doesn't specify if it's ERC.
I would kind of hope so in a modern product, but 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 know
TVs used to have inputs at the front. Okay. RCA is on the front.
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. An honest question, why would anyone turn focus to anything
other than the maximum amount of focus?
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 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 lot of cooling in this thing. Kind of makes sense. You got a
4,000 lu laser freaking projector. Okay, so we need to measure that this
thing needs to be 17 in from the front. 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 business. Extruded aluminum here, boys. Look at
that shaft. I thought you said it was propaganda.
Look at that lens. To 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 going to need. I love how they assume that anyone nerdy
enough to buy this product is going to have a friend to help them set it up. You say that like we're friends.
Well, I pay you to hang out with me. It's a friendship of sorts.
Did you read the instructions at all or you just yell? No, I'm just going for it, dog. I mean,
it's pretty straightforward. Basically, you just got the frames. You put the L
brackets in between them. What if there was some other we had to do before then?
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. Yeah,
but it says streaming media player. I think this is like the Android TV
dongle. It comes with two remotes. No.
Come on, Epson. What? They both have YouTube, Netflix,
and Google Play buttons. But the remote that like 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. It's Oh, no. It's
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, you know, how do you use it if it's not like 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 of 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? Yeah.
Watch the color of the screen. Wo.
Wo. What? What?
Can you see it? Yeah. Okay. What color is the screen?
Whitish. Off gray. Wow. Black. That's
crazy. 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 sort of off-axis incidental light
bouncing back to the viewer. This is like channeled basically. Like 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's 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 got to take the frame off again and stretch it.
Basically, what happened is uh I think we don't have enough tension from the
bottom here. Oh, okay. That did not make it better. This is a lot of work for it to not be
good. I really hope it's good, too. I mean, if it's good, it has the potential to be
like mindblowing because it's like a hundred inches for what? Four and a half
grand and super bright. Supposedly. Supposedly.
Look how good my gloves fit.
Oh. Oh, real mature Jake. Blur.
Just blur all of him. It's all offensive. Holy crap. That really does
look a lot better. Wow.
Oh, sorry. Paint job. 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 it doesn't look like you could convince me
it's not a projector, too. It's also pretty bright in here. Oh, yeah. That's true. We've got like
studio lights firing at it right now. I mean, if you had like 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 kind of look like they would be for stretching the screen, which would have been really useful.
Oops. I'm starting to realize how much I probably should have read the manual.
Is it working? Maybe. Oh,
wow. That alignment. You nailed it. I just yoloed it. I removed the box and
I just wentoop tilt the the focus and bada ba boom. Here we are. So, we're It
is plain HDR10, but there's like a an
adjustment slider and it defaults to eight and we set it to five.
Uhhuh. Which is a little bit brighter. It's a lot better
than any other projector, anything else I've seen for a projector.
And look at it. Looks pretty damn crisp. Like, we were a little concerned that
right on the fringe edges, it's not quite as sharp. Mhm.
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. We do still have a light on though.
Yeah. 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.
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. 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 like
a pre- really good local dimming TV.
Like, 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.
All right, now shut it all off. Shut everything off. Kill the lights.
Okay, here we go. This is the experience. This is pretty freaking awesome. so
freaking good. When you consider how much a, you know,
100 in TV costs. This has compromises. It's 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
in OLED cost? 30 grand. Maybe not quite. I want to
play with that setting. Wo, 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, it is basically plugandplay.
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 when they have some remember that stupid trash can
shaped projector, right, that was just like sitting on a coffee table, right?
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, nobody. 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. See, if it's not HDR content, I'm not too worried about the black levels.
Yeah, it looks really good, man. That is pretty freaking impressive.
But the viewing angles are great. Yeah, that looks awesome. Like 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. Uh yeah, I
noticed it doesn't look as good. Oh, there's no 120 Hz. Even if you go
down to 1920 x Well, I don't think it's might be pixel
shift. When we're at the desktop and we're looking at text, it's a lot easier to
tell that Yeah, it's a projector. It's not that sharp. Like, it's not crisp
like an OLED. I don't want to do this, dude. You're going to get wrecked. You
know what? Laty not bad. Oh, wait. There's grenades in this game.
How do you throw a grenade? Middle click, I think. Oh, yeah. There it goes.
When using the projector speakers, they suck. Oh, yeah. They're bad. They're real bad,
boys. All I know is this thing looks great. Latency is pretty good. It's
still 60 Hz, so yeah. Yeah, it's not OLED like, but the like pixel response
times good. There's no blur, which I guess makes sense. It is a laser
projector. You know what? I like it. I like it 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 or $45,000. 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, it's pretty easy to set up. I mean, if
you follow the instructions, please and follow Yeah, please use the instructions. It's
really not It looks really good. I still don't think it's a TV replacement.
No, no, not at all. At least not an OLED TV replacement. Big
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which we're going to have linked down below. If you guys enjoyed this video
and you're looking for, I don't know, maybe like another projector setup video.
Yeah, check out our last lounge setup. It's a little outdated now, but uh it's
pretty cool. It's got like a motorized screen and stuff. It was more of like an
always on style setup.