Badass Sony Projector & TV Technology. Seriously BA - CES 2015
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
1,650 words · ~8 min read
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Linus tech tips coverage of ces 2015 is brought to you by phantom glass visit
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store.phantom.glass for the best darn screen protectors out there as well as
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hyperx so this is something we talked about on the podcast we're here in the
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sony booth this is the vpl gtz1 and it looks like what's behind me
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is like a tv wall thing like super
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mega wide thing but actually this is
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what is driving it this is a 4k laser projector it sits seven inches from the
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wall and i'm probably kind of not supposed to do this but i'm like leaning
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over so you can see here yes i am proving it is sitting seven inches from
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the wall projecting a 147
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inch image one of the most impressive things about it is the fact that it uses
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a very non-traditional projector system so it's actually laser projection which
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does a couple of things it gives it better contrast better color vibrancy it
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also gives it better performance in very dirty environments and i mean dirty
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in the sense of there's a lot of different light sources all over the
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place here in the hall and even in this completely unideal environment it looks
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absolutely fantastic it supports four HDMI 2.0 inputs so yes pc gamers running
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gtx 980s you can hook your graphics card
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up to this you can game at 4k 60fps on a
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massive wall assuming you have the 55 000
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and the what was it five to six weeks or so that you need to wait to get sony to
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custom build one of these they are built to order in japan i don't think i've
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missed anything critical at this point other than the fact that the solution
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you see behind you is actually running two of them if i move to the side you
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can see there's two and the gentleman over there is actually holding a tablet
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that allows him to dynamically switch between different content sources all
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over the place so the application here is not just in extremely high-end homes
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but let's say you know an art gallery that wants to build a ginormous video
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wall and have a simple tablet interface system to show different things move
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them around and all like that very very cool stuff and another benefit
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of the laser projection system is that you won't see any diminishing in the
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brightness of it until 50 000 hours so
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to put that in perspective that's eight hours a day of watching tv or gaming for
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15 years when you compare that to a traditional projector bulb that's going
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to last maybe a handful of thousands of hours and is significantly dimmer even a
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couple thousand hours in this could be the last projector or tv you ever buy
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mind you if you got 55 grand to drop on a tv then yeah you could probably buy
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another one later anyway and you know give that to your grandkids or something
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now this is a fun demo i've never seen a tv this thing and probably most people
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haven't it's only 4.7 millimeters thick this is sony's new 900 series it's
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available in 55-inch 65-inch it's a 4k
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display it's an edge lit led backlit lcd
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and i mean really the claim to fame here is how phenomenally thin it is but not
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only that but how well it's it actually integrates into being used because super
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thin tvs have been done before but not always in a way that's particularly
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smart so first of all the way it mounts to the wall is pretty darn unique it
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actually comes with a system that goes into your stud and then the tv has kind
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of a bar that screws into the thicker part of the base it's only about half of
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the tv that's 4.7 millimeters thick i mean it just compromises that you have
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to make physics and and whatnot but you screw in this bar and then you actually
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just hook it onto the wall where it sits so close against the wall that it's only
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about how far is it looks like about two and a half centimeters yeah it's about
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two and a half centimeters away from the wall now of course when you do that you
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might have issues with cable management and sound so cable management they take
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care of with a little cable door so you got your standard four HDMI 2.0 inputs
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you got your lan because it is a smart tv happens to be running Android tv
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which is pretty freaking cool because i for one am totally sick of tv makers
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trying to make their own thing every time and not just going with something
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standard that actually has support so you can have you know chromecasty type
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functionality you can play Android games all that kind of cool stuff yeah that's
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built right into your tv and then the other thing is sound so instead of just
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firing sound down out of a speaker firing sound into the wall heaven forbid
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i mean rear mounted speakers are bad enough on a phone never mind you do that
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on your tv they've actually got like a flap baffle system that enables the
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speakers to kind of fire this way and then deflect the sound toward the viewer
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with that said if you're gonna get a tv this awesome i would definitely
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recommend going ahead and getting a nice sound system to go along with it
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now this is actually the same tv we were just looking at a second ago but the
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difference is that instead of having content playing on it they've got a very
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early build of their Android tv operating system running on this
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particular model now something that i actually had been
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asking about off-camera as we walked over here is okay well are you guys
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positioning Android tv as this like super high-end feature oh you have to
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buy the most expensive model to get it and the answer is no apparently 90 of
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sony's tvs for 2015 are going to feature
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an Android os on them and not in the same way that we've seen you know
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Android-powered tv devices done in the past with a low powered processor so the
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x1 processor that i mentioned does 4k upscaling before they're also saying is
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well it's just pretty darn good for running just about anything in fact for
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the kinds of things that you might want to do on a smart tv let's say launch a
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netflix movie stream they're claiming that they can go from zero to movie
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playing in under a minute whereas their competitors are looking at up to
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multiple minutes due to the speed of the process and this is something that's
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been a real frustration for me for a long time is it's all this functionality
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that it supposedly has but the hardware is too slow to take advantage of it
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anyway so there's 16 gigs of onboard storage i don't know if they're quoting
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how much memory how much RAM there is on board or anything like that they won't
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give me any details about the x1 other than that yeah it's like blazing fast is
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super awesome but uh one thing that i can do i got to like i stole the remote
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from the guy here is i can do a quick demo of how you would control an Android
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tvs if you guys don't already know you're super smart
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Linus tech tips
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yeah dog there we go so a bunch of my videos just like that super fast but
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you're not locked into using the remote you can actually use an Android or an
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iOS device to control it and i think that's pretty much it it's extremely
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exciting to see this kind of thing finally get standardized instead of
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being that horrible proprietary nonsense i mean Android is a popular operating
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system for a reason and the familiarity that you're already gonna have with a
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google search and google now like interface is going to help a lot with
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the learning curve that most people are just slamming into like a brick wall
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when it comes to trying to operate a smart tv so i think that's pretty much
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it for sony tvs here at ces 2015 i do
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want to do a call out for our sponsors so number one is phantom glass these
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phone and they're reasonably priced and available for a variety of devices you
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can check them out on store.phantom.glass and also a shout out for hyperx those
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guys are awesome they've got a bunch of great gaming content on their youtube channel youtube.com hyperx you guys can
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check out the links for both of those guys in the video description below also
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