$150 Walmart TV FAIL!
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2019-05-06
·
3,031 words · ~15 min read
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so james and i haven't really reached a consensus on why exactly it is we are
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doing this video do you mind grabbing an end oh wow i don't need it it's really
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not very heavy but thank you anyway um
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he figures it's because uh well we keep doing all these cheap
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display videos yeah and then we were doing these walmart videos yeah so why
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not just make a sandwich of those two you know
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what sure let's go with that so this is the
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on 43 inch led hdtv
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class full class and we are going to find out if how much does this thing
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cost i think 168 bucks some people have got it for 125 on clearance we're gonna
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find out if the 43 inch 125 dollar tv is
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worth 125 dollars if it even makes it to
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you alive we're just shaking your head and this video is brought to you by
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description
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i think we should actually assess the shipping and packaging of this it has a
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huge gen it's possible possibly it's possible that tyler drop kicked this but
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i don't think so i don't think he did and the reason i'm doing a concern is
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because inside there's really not a lot of extra packaging so not only is this a
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cheaper a hard type foam
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but this is cheaper among the hard type foam packing
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materials that i've encountered did you see the way that piece just came apart
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okay can we do a video together with you not throwing
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absolutely no subject of the video no it's in my contract
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there's nothing in front there's nothing in front
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small correction just after mine and james's uh styrofoam
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fight to the death we actually found that there is a little bit more protection on the panel side there's
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this piece of cardboard it weighs like nothing the spec sheet says 18.5 pounds
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but it feels lighter doesn't it just because it's so big it's like there's
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nothing in it so there's our ir receiver
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on a little pcb there
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there's our stereo speakers that i have oh very high expectations for
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i will say that cheap tvs have come a long way in terms of their i o or at
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least i don't know this one has so it's got an audio pass-through so if you have
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HDMI audio coming in from your cable box or your console or whatever you can pass
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that through to your standalone speakers
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optical um in or out
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unclear at this time and then you've got actually component in as well as
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composite and then you've also got uh three actually three hdmis count them
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three HDMI ports including one with audio return channel so that's neat okay
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what is this thing that some kind of old people connector and of
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course there's one usb port which i mean it's nice to have especially since this
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is not a smart tv so if you want to have any smart tv features you're gonna have
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to get like a fire tv stick or roku whatever they call theirs yeah so at
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least you can power something with it even if you don't want to just load
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videos onto a usb thumb drive and plug them into your tv like my parents did
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until actually i'm pretty sure they still do that it's got a base amount and you
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could probably just double sided tape it to the wall for how much it weighs i'm
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kidding don't do that but like holy crap and that's even with a metal backing
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like this isn't even a plastic backing like the panel itself must just weigh
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nothing and it's not like it has an external power brick or anything either
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wait where's the stand
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there you go that is not very impressive like i sincerely hope this thing is
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decent but this is one of the sort of issues that i take with low-cost
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electronics is that because they have a very limited lifespan both in terms of
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how long they're gonna just continue to work and in terms of their features and
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no real resale value they tend to generate a lot of waste it feels like
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compared to higher end stuff it depends on who buys these things if you look at
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their page it looks like who they're targeting are the type of the people who
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actually are still using a crt
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do you guys see what just happened there on the description page it says is your
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tv 20 years old and blurry you're lying so i think this is like for grandpa when
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he finally makes the switch because his giant crt is like just actually kicked
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the bucket after 25 years
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team lift team lift hold on hold on anything you can do with one hand
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no did you hear that
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i think we're okay i don't think anything cracked but yeah
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you gotta have something to push against
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oh man this is great uh integrated button layout they like
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they have this on here as though that's some kind of desirable feature but
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instead of can i power it on is it plugged in instead of a joystick configuration it's
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this like orbiting configuration
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that just kind of feels like nothing to the back of your hand and obviously
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you're not gonna like you're not gonna leave this stupid sticker here
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so you just have to kind of like guess this isn't even the good p like the good
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peeling peel this is just like tape yeah it just feels like a like packing tape
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oh like it's just my joy is so robbed
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oh bottom one's not too bad
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this is like lady in the oh i mean at least it does have an included
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remote control oh i wasn't going to show you that until later because i wanted
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you to struggle with the buttons on the back people in the house put your hands in
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the eggs you don't care then we don't care
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we've got picture modes oh it comes in
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eco by default that's interesting i wonder if that's
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part of their like good power efficiency ratings that they just like dim the
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freaking backlight out of the box kind of makes sense because a lot of the reviews on walmart's product page say
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how you absolutely must change it to dynamic picture mode
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video or graphic uh that could be like an image return
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retention thing oh you know what it might be is uh
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like like a limited versus full range mode maybe this will become more clear
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once we have a signal going through and you can actually see how it changes so
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what sound mode are we supposed to choose movie
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movie sound and dynamic picture is what everyone says makes it mint i think
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all right if mint is like a flavor you detest it's mint
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voice guidance voice vitamins
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please keep this on speed standard fast
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how do you like it
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i feel like we're disabling hal get it to sing daisy
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it sounds so sad
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okay all right all right all right all right i'm done i'm done
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oh let me help you with that thank you HDMI
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2 r HDMI
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2 car one girl
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p 60 hd
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so this was the uh hold on a second
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and yeah the fact that you got signal okay please
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don't interrupt me on the fact that we got a signal is
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actually pretty nice because there's a lot of people in the reviews saying how they
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either connected to the computer and it didn't work or they connected to a dongle and it didn't work or all these
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different things so so far i've connected this to an amazon fire stick and a computer and it's
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worked so bless up
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so graphic is how you get rid of over scan
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what so no it doesn't have to do with like uh
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limited versus full range black levels it's how you do like just
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scan like pixel one-to-one pixel mapping instead of having it over scanned
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it's been a while since i've looked at a 1080p display
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from this close it ain't great it's not a great experience i remember there was
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this guy that i used to go to lan parties with back when i had a life i
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mean sort of i went to land parties and i don't even think his was 1080p and he
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was like yeah it's great i'm like yo it's like measurably like like with a
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like with a measuring tape like not great
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display adapter properties are these gonna come up that's weird i've never seen this fail
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to come out is that because it
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you have no properties is that Windows you're homeless
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they don't call it Windows for nothing here have all the Windows Windows 10. at
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least they're allowing you to close them in whatever order you want all right so
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i guess probably like what we want to watch some content on it like
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really we're gonna watch mkbhd instead of our own channel you know what fine he's not
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gonna copyright strike us so i guess this was your agenda here you
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pulled up mkbhd because you figured well we want something with known good audio
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and we can't always trust ourselves so we can properly evaluate the speakers
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fine i can take it you clicked on this he sounds like ass
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no offense yeah like no offense dude
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the imac pro 10 grand for that machine the imac pro starts that somehow it
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really does sound like it's coming from like
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under the table or something i was watching infinity war yesterday on netflix and it was basically like
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everybody was in the bottom of a barrel but like like it somehow doesn't sound like it's
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coming from here it somehow sounds like it's coming from lower
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let's watch a trailer this is a great hold on this is a great freeze frame of
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him that's exactly my thoughts on this tv
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come on action i rewatched this recently it was still good i liked it
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did you put the on movie mode now let me check let me check
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okay it's this no no it's working
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just like glitched out you're gonna go to the menu that's what you're doing
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this might actually be worse like i can barely like make out the
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dialogue even though this is like a trailer and typically the dialogue is
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so i did some uh i ran calman and i can i can i do a subjective
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evaluation sure did you see those they looked like weird artifacts in my
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eyes oh do you see that is that a compression
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issue with the playback or is that the tv that is not handling
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darks very well you can actually see the same thing in my mouth i actually need
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to grab a laptop
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no that's not present on the laptop
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what do you think of just the colors overall i mean
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they're not right but they don't stand out to me as
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particularly terrible there's not a lot of depth um there's some oversaturation
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going on in the default profile here at the very least it's less noticeable in
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this kind of a dark scene but here you can really see that's not a very
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natural look for me
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oh wow that is really overdone sorry people suggest this mode yes
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that doesn't even look like wood why don't you pull up the results here
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okay and this isn't dynamic or standard this one's dynamic the standard didn't
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fare too much better so to be clear guys
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a delta e of less than two is considered
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color accurate with less than five being
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fine for consumer grade this is anywhere
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from an average it's an average of 12.6
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and a maximum of 23. so we have dots here that are so far off their boxes
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it's hard to tell what box that it went with color space 97 of srgb is that right
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yeah that's actually not terrible
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should we play some games check out the input lag all right
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well if we had any doubt that the scalar in it is a steaming pile of hot garbage
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um resalmon it's a pokemon
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so we selected a fast-paced game to evaluate the tv's input lag because i
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could actually see this making a ton of sense for like
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just like a side room like a like a den or something where you just play video
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games and it doesn't need to be the most cinematic or kids like a rec room for
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the console gaming exactly exactly now that's weird is this like an open over
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sharpening artifact or is this because of the low res
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like these look at the edges of these strands they look like a cheap stereo 3d
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effect or something because of how sharpened they are now i
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had another idea you know how i was saying that it was hard for me to tell
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if the issue was uh to do with just the low resolution i haven't looked at a
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1080p display from this close-up in a long time
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so we can figure out if it's sharpness or if it's low res by just adjusting it
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and it was definitely
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that's right
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wow that looks so much better
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and the crazy thing too is like yeah text here too
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same thing now i can make out the low contrast more easily now oh that was
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probably the eye no no it's still kind of there let's see
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how it's still there you know what though honestly it's not that hard to tell it's not bad
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like there's no game mode but and it's not amazing
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but considering this is a 60 hertz display
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this is very very usable for sure
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so really what it's competing with then is the scepter model that was uh how
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much 230 bucks so 50 bucks more and how big 50 inches 50 inches now with scepter
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we actually had pretty good luck with those guys when we did the cheapest 4k
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monitor on amazon that was a scepter but we got a peach we got a good one and
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from the reviews on amazon they're pretty hit or miss there's lots
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of lemons so what would you do do you buy this one turn the sharpness
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off and enjoy the the dynamic theater
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quality sound oh yeah you have to factor in an extra 70 bucks for an entry level
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sound bar just so you can hear dialogue if you're watching the evening news so
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at that point i think i would just spend the money get a little higher or if if
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you want to cheap out just get something used so we want to hear from you guys in
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the comments below they both had kind of bad speakers and kind of bad color this
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one had worse color but do you take the scepter
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4k but smaller display that we featured last time or do you take the on
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1080p 43 inch one or do you just go used
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or do you step up a little bit in the product stack do you want us to take a
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look at that scepter 50 inch in the future let us know we will be reading them
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because i think we are far from done with cheap displays
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can it run at uh 120 hertz like can you overclock it did we try
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no i didn't try
16:00
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16:49
the stuff we featured at the link in the video description james and i are sort
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of not really in agreement
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about whether you should or shouldn't or whether this has any application whatsoever but i think what we all agree
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on is that we should probably have a styrene fight to the death
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grenade
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no i know
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the joke's on him though because i knew that i wasn't going to be cleaning this