 The 100-inch 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 hertz. 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 to tell you guys about our sponsor? Ridge Wallet has redefined the wallet with its Compatch frame and RFID blocking plates. Learn more and get 10% off yours and free worldwide shipping at the link in the video description. 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. Okay, so 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 and 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. Yes. 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 fricking 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. You got some science. Got 3D. Got that technology. 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. Got your network. Got dual HDMI. One of them is ARC. It doesn't specify if it's eARC. 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. Hey, RCRT TV. TVs used to have inputs at the front, okay? RCA is on the front. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I've got the composite on the front. Got another USB and then controls focus. And that looks like an intake fan. 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 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 lumen laser freaking projector. Okay. So we need to measure that this thing needs to be 17 inches 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. Oh, 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 and learn? 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 s*** you needed to do before that? Well, then I haven't done it clearly. Hold on a second. Oh, yeah. What are these puppies for? Sorry. I 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 great. It's great. 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. What's the color of the screen? Whoa. Whoa. What? Can you see it? Yeah. Okay. What color is the screen? White-ish 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. How about this? 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, 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 mind blowing 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. 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. 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 went whoop, whoop, whoop, tilt the focus and bada bing, bada boom. Here we are. So where it is plain HDR 10, but there's like an adjustment slider and it defaults to eight and we set it to five, which is a little bit brighter. It's a lot better than any other projector. Anything else I've seen for a projector. It looks pretty damn crisp. Like we were a little concerned that right on the fringe edges, it's not quite as sharp, 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 light. Okay, here we go. This is the experience. This is pretty freaking awesome. When you consider how much a 100 inch TV costs, this has compromises. It 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 inch OLED cost? 30 grand? Maybe not quite. I want to play with that setting. Whoa, 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's basically plug and play. 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? Yeah. That was just like sitting on a coffee table 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? Where do they go? Where do they go? Where do cables go from a coffee table? It's wireless, bro. Nobody 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. Yeah, I noticed it doesn't look as good. No, there's no 120 Hertz, even if you go down to 1920 by 20. Well, I don't think it's... It might be pixel shit. When we're at the desktop and we're looking at text, it's a lot easier to tell that it's a projector. It's not that sharp. Like it's not crisp like an OLED. I don't want to do this. You're going to get wrecked. You know what? latency? Not bad. Oh wait, there's grenades in this game? How do you throw a grenade? Middle click? 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 Hertz. So yeah, yeah, it's not OLED like, but the pixel response time is 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, just four and a half thousand dollars. 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 the instructions. It looks really good. I still don't think it's a TV replacement. No, no, no, no, no. At least not an OLED TV replacement. Big shout out to Shells for sponsoring today's video. Shells.com offers secure personal cloud computers that can be accessed from anywhere on almost any device. It was created by one of the founders of private internet access and runs in your web browser. So it works on your phone, tablet, computer, or even your new Xbox. You can open up a brand new high speed computer in under five minutes. And they've got options for both windows and various versions of Linux. Shells virtual desktops are always on so you can switch devices on the fly and their affordable pricing starts at just $4.95 a month with no hidden fees. So give your computer a break and try it out at shells.com, 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 it's pretty cool. It's got like a motorized screen and stuff. It was more of like an always on style setup.