With the buzz generated from our 2022 laser TV showdown, Scott Wilkinson, the host of Tech Talk on AVS Forum wanted to get the inside scoop from Brian Gluck of ProjectorScreen.com and Rob Sabin of Projector Central. We wanted to share that live podcast with you.
If you're interested in any of these ultra short throw projectors, don't hesitate to give us a call.
Watch the episode here:
Scott Wilkinson: (00:23)
Hey there, Scott Wilkinson here, the home theater geek. Welcome to AVS Forum Tech Talk as always. I'm joined by my technical director and that home theater dude, Chris Mata. Hey Chris.
Chris Mata: (00:38)
Hey guys. How's It going?
Scott Wilkinson: (00:38)
It's going good. Thanks. as always for being there behind the camera and doing all the switching and all the technical stuff that makes this show possible. Pleasure to be here. Scott, always happy to have you here. Thanks so much. This week, we're gonna be talking about the laser TV showdown that happened last month. My guests are Brian Gluck owner and president of ProjectorScreen.com. Hey Brian.
Brian Gluck: (01:08)
Hey Scott.
Scott Wilkinson: (00:23)
So nice to have you here. Thank you very much. Next up is Rob Sabin, editor in chief of ProjectorCentral.com. Rob, nice to see you again.
Rob Sabin: (01:18)
Good To see you. Thanks.
Scott Wilkinson: (01:19)
Yeah. And finally, we have Chris Majestic, a YouTube tech influencer who was involved in the, in the showdown. Chris, thanks so much for being here.
Chris Majestic: (01:31)
Thanks for having me
Scott Wilkinson: (01:31)
Really, really happy to have y'all here. so we're gonna be we're. This is a live stream, at least as we speak, and there are places to put comments in where you're watching and I will be following the comments and, if you have any questions for our guests, please feel free to post them and I'll pass along. Those that are relevant to the issue at hand. So we're talking about something called the laser TV showdown, which was held on August 4th, 2022 in the demo room of ProjectorScreen.com in a town called Pompton Lakes, New Jersey. Now these displays, I more commonly call them ultra short throw projectors, because they project an image onto a screen, but many people talk about them as laser TVs. Brian, why use that term?
Brian Gluck: (02:35)
Oh, that was actually a term that was coined by Hisense, who was one of the pioneers in this particular product segment. And it's kind of become ubiquitous like Kleenex or Bandaid or things along those lines. And for this particular event, you know, we decided, in conjunction with Projector Central to use the term laser TV, because we were demonstrating this in a very well lit environment, more emulative of a typical living room than of a dedicated theater.
Scott Wilkinson: (03:02)
Hmm. Rob, do you agree? Yeah. Do you, is that the term you use as well?
Rob Sabin: (03:07)
Yeah. You know, I'll, I'll add to that there's a little, little more history here in the sense that , you know, this, this category, this product category has only just begun to sort of emerge now. And, I think the industry has been looking for the right terminology for it. Something that would be well understood by the consumers they're targeting, which really is the television consumer. I mean, they're trying to communicate and, and to Brian's point, it was a term that was first used by Hisense, but it's actually believe it or not, an accepted, industry terminology in Asia right now, my understanding is that in, in Japan, they actually have laser TV and then they have laser cinema, which is sort of a different grade of this type of product But, the way we all seem to be gravitating as an industry is toward this laser TV term.
Scott Wilkinson: (04:00)
Chris, I guess, do you have a lot of experience looking at these products you must by now? Oh yeah.
Chris Mata: (04:10)
Yeah. Mean, oh,
Scott Wilkinson: (04:11)
What's Chris. I'm sorry. I meant Chris, are you talking to me? Apologies. My apologies. I was talking to Chris Majestic. Should I call you? Should I find Majestic?
Chris Majestic: (04:20)
Majestic's fine.
Scott Wilkinson: (04:21)
Okay. I'm gonna, I'm gonna stick with that then just so that we don't get confused. ha ha. You started to look at these products now, haven't you?
Chris Majestic: (04:28)
I have for a few years now and I'm kind of guilty of regularly using the term laser TV and some of the people in my comment section on YouTube absolutely hate it. Really I'm glad you wonder. I, they just hate it. They're like shut up. It's not a laser TV, it's a projector. And I'm like “ultra short throw”. And when you're doing a video and you're talking about these products and you have to say ultra short throw laser projector, 25 times in a video, it's way easier to say laser TV. So I regularly use that term. So if people wanna know why that is, it's just literally easier to say, but I did notice that Hisense uses it more frequently than others. even though I have seen a few other brands that have started using it more frequently too.
Scott Wilkinson: (05:09)
Hmm. Now our friend, my friend in the chat room beat master, has an interesting comment. TV implies there's a tuner, built in tuner in there. so do these, do these ultra short throw projectors have tuners built in
Rob Sabin: (05:25)
Interesting. Some of them, some of them do. Yeah. Some of them do. And in fact, the ones that for certainly the Hisense products, up until recently always included that RF antenna input because technically in the United States, anyway, you couldn't really call something the TV, if it didn't have that tuner. So our commenter is correct that there's a history there, but, that seems to be getting relaxed now,
Scott Wilkinson: (05:49)
I guess I've always thought that one definition of a TV was having a tuner and having speakers actually, right. Having some sort of sound, whereas a monitor or a projector wouldn't have either of those necessarily, but these TVs, these laser TVs, Brian also have sound systems for the most part, right?
Brian Gluck: (06:13)
They do. So they all have some sort of integrated audio, some significantly better than others. And one of the challenges that we ran into at this event is that we didn't have time to be able to have our panel of judges weighing on the audio. And that was something that actually Rob came back for a couple days, secluded in one of our screening rooms here and did a very rigorous evaluation of each of those. Right. And just not to toot Rob's horn too much, but you know, he may be the editor in chief of projector central, but he's got a pedigree in all sorts of high end audio visual as well. Right. Yeah. Coming from sound and vision magazine. So, you know, he was very well qualified and suited to be able to do this evaluation independent of the panel, just for the virtue of a lack of time.
Scott Wilkinson: (07:01)
Right. And Rob, we're gonna get into that a little later in this show, we're gonna find out what you found out about in that particular evaluation, but for the moment let's stick with the video or the visuals, shall I say? so there were six judges, I believe, Majestic, you were one of them. Yep. And, oh, but first before we get into that , I should say that there was also a calibrator Brian, right. Somebody who actually came in and calibrated all of these projectors, which you lined up side by side, we're gonna see pictures of that in a minute. And so who was the calibrator?
Brian Gluck: (07:38)
He's actually a very prolific contributor on AVS Forum, named Dave Harper. He's an ISF certified ISF certified calibrator, true passionate about projection type of guy. I've never personally met anyone with the level of enthusiasm and knowledge that he has around this product segment. And he began working for us earlier this year, doing reviews and calibrations and, and other types of things. So, we had him on hand to calibrate all of these different projectors in multiple different picture modes. and he really grinded through it and he did a phenomenal job.
Rob Sabin: (08:15)
Yeah. If I can add to that as well. I just wanna say Dave did an unbelievable job. I mean, it was Herculean. What he had to do. 14 projectors, every one of them, at least two modes calibrated. And he just sort of, he slogged his way through it. You know, one of the benefits of doing this at projector screen was that we had the facility well in advance and he was able to kind of just go through it and tick it off. So, you know, my hat goes off to Dave because he did just an awesome job of optimizing these projectors. Right,
Scott Wilkinson: (08:47)
Right. It's a, it's a, it's a tough job. Somebody's gotta do it in my reviewing days. I must admit when calibration was almost a meditation for me. I mean yeah. Got to be a struggle sometimes, but when you, when you dial it in and you see those numbers come in where they're supposed to be, it's just like a, ah, you know,
Rob Sabin: (09:08)
It's very satisfying
Scott Wilkinson: (09:10)
Indeed. Now, Rob you, I think Brian told me offline that you had actually gone in and done a little tweaking after the calibration.
Rob Sabin: (09:18)
Yeah. We did a little bit of tuning here and there where it made sense to do it. because at the end of the day, you wanna get you, you know, you just wanna get these projectors looking as good as they can. And, you know, it's interesting a lot of my experience with this, or at least running this event, you know, I have to give my put pats off to Value Electronics and what Robert Zahn has done through the years. I've participated in a number of his shootouts through the years. And there's always a process afterwards where, you know, you kind of just try to get in there and do the, the final little bit that has to be done. And that's sort of the normal calibration process really, you know,
Scott Wilkinson: (09:55)
It is. You're right.
Rob Sabin: (09:55)
And then you look at it and sometimes you look at it and you go, how'd we get there, you know, and you start doing what you gotta do. But, the one place where I did do a by eye calibration was specifically with the daytime bright room viewing modes. That was one where actually we didn't do a formal calibration. you really can't do a formal calibration in, right? So, I had a process that I could explain to basically calibrate those projectors by eye selecting in essence, the brightest mode that we could, and then tuning it from there to more or less get close to our reference projector, which was the JVC that we had in the, the opposite room in terms of just, just in terms of color, color, tone, color, balance, white balance, and, you know, to some degree, of course contrast and, and, and, contrast and brightness.
Scott Wilkinson: (10:54)
So let's talk about that for a minute. You, you calibrated, or you evaluated these projectors in three different, shall we say environments modes, it was a bright room, lots of light on, in the room. And as you say, difficult to impossible to truly calibrate under those conditions and that's for standard dynamic range and then standard dynamic range, dark room where you turn the lights off, I guess, and that's kind of more of a, a semi reference environment. where you were able to calibrate. Right?
Rob Sabin: (11:27)
Right. Exactly. So the two dark room modes were really intended to be home theater modes. You know, if someone wants to really turn out the lights and watch a movie, you know, we have a basic idea of what a projected image is supposed to look like in a dark room. That's what we've all been trained to calibrate for. and ultimately that really is our best frame of reference. so the two dark room modes were the calibrated modes where we, Dave worked pretty hard to try to get, color balance white balance to an essentially a D 65 or, you know, for the techies in the room. a 6,500, Kelvin, white balance, which is a neutral gray that all of the productions are made to. and then from there, you know, just trying to get the colors accurate, and, and in tune. And then of course also there's, there's the gem and, and, and the contrast aspect of that , and trying to get things to look right without bringing out shadow detail without burying black, which is typically what we try to do in a dark crew. Right. Right. So that was both for HDR and for SDR.
Scott Wilkinson: (12:29)
Right. Good. Okay. So once it was all calibrated up and everything was ready to go, there were six judges who came in, Majestic. You were one of them, who, who were your fellow judges?
Chris Majestic: (12:46)
Um, I'd have to look at their names. All right. I don't know, off the top of my head, you know.
Scott Wilkinson: (12:53)
Oh, I'm sorry. Put you on the spot on that one. My, my apologies. you were, you were there looking at the TV at the, at these laser TVs, not at the judges. I get it.
Rob Sabin: (13:01)
Yeah. And, and, and to Chris's credit he got in there, you know, most of the guys did not know each other before they got there. Oh,
Scott Wilkinson: (13:09)
Really?
Rob Sabin: (13:09)
Yeah. So we had a team, we had a team of judges who I was, I was really, just thrilled to see how well everybody worked together. You guys were awesome, Chris, you know, everybody kind of got in there and people were walking around and pointing things out to one another. And, it was a very collegial atmosphere. And
Scott Wilkinson: (13:28)
I love that about our industry, you know? Yeah. I mean, we are, we're often competitors, you know, we work for different publications or whatever, but when we come together at a trade show or an event like this, we're, we're often very collegial. I, that's a name, a term I like to use myself. And I really love that about our industry. So thanks for pointing that out.
Chris Majestic: (13:47)
I do have a Lister if you
Scott Wilkinson: (13:49)
Oh, good. See, I wanted to get you involved here in this discussion. So tell us who, who,
Chris Majestic: (13:55)
You gotta love, how fast, Brian's website brought it up so I can pull up this it came right up. Okay, good. So was myself, Mark Henninger, who's
Scott Wilkinson: (14:09)
Managing editor of Home Theater Review, right? Right
Rob Sabin: (14:11)
Now the editor Sound and Vision actually, as of, as of days ago.
Scott Wilkinson: (14:17)
Yes. No kidding. Really? I hadn't heard that. Yeah. Editor in chief of Sound And Vision. Wow. Okay.
Scott Wilkinson: (14:24)
Former editor of AVS Forum as well. And my, my, assistant editor when I was the editor of AVS Forum. So he's been around a while.
Chris Majestic: (14:36)
yeah. Chris, is it Eberly? Chris Eberle yep. yeah, him, Ralph Potts, Al Griffin from Tech Radar. Ralph Potts is from AVS Forum, I guess. You guys know him.
Scott Wilkinson: (14:48)
Yeah. He does all the, Blu Ray and ultra HD Blu Ray reviews for AVS Forum.
Chris Majestic: (14:54)
Gotcha. Yeah. Al Griffin from Tech Radar and Sammy Prescott Jr. who's a contributor on ProjectorCentral.com. Yeah. And like, just these guys were fantastic. Like, it was awesome to meet all the other judges. They were highly knowledgeable. I like to regularly say more knowledgeable than myself, just because I don't consider myself to be an industry professional like these guys are, but, it was fantastic being in the same room with them to see their process and how they see, we see a lot of the same things and, just to be able to witness this and experience it together with them. And they were really nice and just the awesome group of guys. So I was definitely thrilled to work with them.
Scott Wilkinson: (15:34)
Oh yeah. And,
Brian Gluck: (15:35)
And Majestic don't sell yourself short. Right. Chris knows his stuff and is possibly one of the most familiar people with this product type out of the entire panel of judges as well.
Rob Sabin: (15:45)
Absolutely. Chris was on our, on our radar list for judges because we knew he had very deep experience in the UST category, but probably more quite honestly than, you know, any other review other than places like at projector central, where we just do it all the time, but, right,
Scott Wilkinson: (16:00)
Right.
Chris Majestic: (16:01)
I appreciate that guys. Oh
Scott Wilkinson: (16:02)
Yeah. Hey, we have a, we have a picture actually, of, of all the judges I wanted to just show everybody, that's graphic, number one, Chris, where there's some nice photos by the way, Brian, on your site, this is one of 'em. If we can pull it up there it is. So that gives you a sense of what the environment looked like. couple tables, bunch of, bunch of guys sitting around, I think that's Rob's shoulder there as you're you, are you probably given some sort of, uh,
Rob Sabin: (16:32)
Thought? Yeah, I think we were, I think we were just briefing the guys as we were getting started, you know.
Scott Wilkinson: (16:36)
So a very, very stellar group of people who, who really know what they're looking at and looking for, and in the back, you can see how the projectors were set up right next to each other. and, I thought it looked, I thought it looked like a really good setup.
Rob Sabin: (16:58)
Yeah.
Scott Wilkinson: (16:59)
Um, now they all used the same screen, Brian, right?
Brian Gluck: (17:05)
Yes. So that was the screen that was provided to us by Spectra Projection. They were also the sponsor of the UST showcase that we did with AVS Forum, this past March as well. So they provided us with eight, identical 100 inch 0.5 gain ambient light rejecting screens for ultra short throw projection.
Scott Wilkinson: (17:26)
Right. That's a mouthful, but it's all very important because ultra short throw projectors shoot their light up at a steep angle and that's gotta get reflected straight out toward the audience, which requires some pretty special optics.
Brian Gluck: (17:42)
Absolutely. So, you know, these are these types of screens, the lenticular particular screens, there's, there's a, a couple different types of ambient light rejecting screens, specifically for ultra short throw. You have these lenticular screens and then you'll have a frenal screen. The lenticular screens have a much wider viewing angle, lack of hotspots, lack, harsh, lack of harsh ceiling reflections. And they also enhance black levels. They'll bring down the white floor as well, but they'll also bring down the black. These are the screens most commonly used in well lit environments when paired with an ultra short throw and the Spectra Projection, don't distort the pixel geometry. You're able to actually resolve a 4K pixel grid. And that's one of the reasons why they were an ideal sponsor to help us with the UST showdown or the UST showcase. And more importantly, the laser TV showdown.
Scott Wilkinson: (18:32)
Interesting how you switched terminology from one event to the other UST, to laser TV. But anyway, Rob, you mentioned that you also had a, what you might call a reference projector, right? Tell us about that.
Rob Sabin: (18:52)
Yeah. So, you know, one of the things that we were thinking about, was, well, you know, these projectors and having reviewed a bunch of them, myself, having gone through this with, some of our, our own, reviewers, I know that they can be all over the place. we've got a lot of different products coming from different manufacturers, some of whom have greater respect for what we would consider to be the, the industry standard, you know, production value. And, I figured, you know, I think we're gonna need something to be able to look at to kind of get the judges grounded so that they would know if something is more or less accurate in terms of color tone in terms of white balance. so we asked JVC to step in, and give us a high end laser projector.
Rob Sabin: (19:41)
Now this was not a UST, this is one of the, one of the premium laser, you know, standard throw projectors that you can get these days. and they gave us an NZ8, which is their, their sort of middle of the line laser projector. And it worked out really, really well. We had to put it in of course, in a separate room because you can't have a tremendous amount of light spilling on that screen, but, we had it in an attached room where you could look through the Archway and as the guys, you know, in terms of where this was, you saw the picture of the guys looking at me at the desk, right. Would've, would've been, to my right or, you know, their left as they're, they're looking at me you could see straight through, into this room and look at a a hundred inch image of this JVC on a 1.3 gain Stewart screen. And, it was great to have it there. I have to say, you know, we were all able to kind of look back at it and go, okay, that yellow looks, you know, more or less correct. Right. that's the way it should be. so it's very, very helpful to have. It is just a way to stay grounded,
Scott Wilkinson: (20:47)
A way to stay grounded. I think that's a good way to put it. It's not like the value electronic shootout, where they have a broadcast monitor sitting there in, and amongst the contenders of the shootout and everything basically, you were trying to see how close those images on the contenders came to that monitor. That's not exactly what you were doing here, right?
Rob Sabin: (21:14)
Well, in, in a way, it wasn't in a way, it wasn't the one thing you have to keep in mind is that , you know, a standard throw, dark room projector is designed for a very different thing than one of these UST laser TVs is you're talking about, and it's, again, you know, it's a little different when you're talking about a flat panel display, let's say you're, you know, you might be trying to hit a particular brightness with a flat panel display and, the colors and everything else is gonna are gonna be, essentially equal. But we're talking about projectors that in many cases are twice as bright. For example, as that JVC projector, or at least most of the premium up until now, anyway, most of the premium projectors, they might be less than 2,000 lumens or 2,200 versus up to 4,000 lumens for one of these USTs you get that much brightness.
Rob Sabin: (22:08)
You're not gonna get the same contrast. There's gonna be other aspects of the image quality that are gonna be different. But the one thing you can try to do anyway, is kind of see where the color accuracy is. That's, that's some, one place where you can get a good sense of it. matching the two things up. So it couldn't have been used really, or wouldn't have been appropriate to use it as an exact reference the way you would with a professional monitor in something like the Value shootout had. Right. But still gave us a relatively good frame.
Scott Wilkinson: (22:38)
Right. Majestic, did you spend much time, or did you go back and look at that projector a bunch as you were doing the evaluations? Did the JVC, I mean...
Chris Majestic: (22:50)
Um, I did, it was definitely, as Rob mentioned, good to have it there because you, when you're seeing so many of these projectors all together, you might look at one and think that what you're looking at is an accurate image. and it may look good, but when you look and you have the JVC there, which, you know, has been calibrated and you can see how much better it looks in certain situations. Yeah. Especially things like contrast black levels, color accuracy, it really does put it into perspective for you to see like, okay, even though this looks good, it doesn't look nearly as good as that JVC, but it also puts it into perspective in a way that it doesn't really take away too much from the fact that it doesn't look as good as the JVC considering you're trying to balance things like brightness.
Chris Majestic: (23:35)
So if you want it to be, you know, in a certain situation, like you mentioned, or like Rob mentioned with it being in a bright room, you may want the projector may be more important for it to be bright than for it to be accurate. So in that case, you may be using in a light, bright room, even though we're using, seeing all these projectors at like 2200, 3000 lumens, 3,500 lumens, we obviously had the JVC in a dark room. Had you put that JVC in a bright room, it would look worse than one of these. Yeah,
Scott Wilkinson: (24:02)
You're right,
Chris Majestic: (24:02)
Absolutely. Right. It definitely was helpful to have it there, especially when we're doing the darkroom test, the HDR test and those things, which obviously we did later on down the line when we turned the lights off, but it was absolutely necessary for that to be there. That was the most helpful thing there actually.
Scott Wilkinson: (24:17)
Cool. Now another thing that I was very impressed with was how the entire system, all the projectors and all the source devices and all that stuff were connected together and flowed as a unit, Brian, let's take a look at graphic two. Maybe you can, help us understand exactly how that worked
Brian Gluck: (24:44)
Well, so I will do my best now, Rob was really the driver of all of this.
Scott Wilkinson: (24:50)
Oh, well then maybe Rob should talk
Brian Gluck: (24:51)
About one, control it short
Scott Wilkinson: (24:52)
<laugh>
Rob Sabin: (24:53)
Sure, sure. I'll jump in and do that. so basically, you know, this diagram sort of shows all the gear that was involved. One of the things that I should point out is, is, you know, one of the benefits of working with Brian on this project was that he had done this UST showcase earlier in the year and had run into the kinds of distribution issues that we now knew we had to avoid. And, the equipment that we selected for it and the help that we got in particular from AV ProEdge, in terms of their donation of gear for this was essential in being able to pull this off. What you have in this diagram is first of all, you have our various sources that we had connected up. and we were able to essentially switch to any of these things.
Rob Sabin: (25:39)
At any given time we had a Kaleidescape player and an Oppo disc player. We had a Murideo Six G4k generator. I had my Roku, ultra media player there. And then, quite critically, we had this Direct TV, what they call their stream device media player, which allowed us to actually play live TV, essentially streamed, but live TV channels, which is what you tend to think of when you think of a laser TV. So, we took all that. We put it into an eight by eight matrix switch. Now in particular, the critical part about that piece of equipment was that it is a, it's a full 18 gigabit per second bandwidth, so that we didn't have any trouble with truncation or, or any kind of compression. And, you know, we didn't need an eight by eight switch.
Rob Sabin: (26:27)
We could have used an eight by one switch, and that's kind of how we used it. Eight by eight implies that you can go to any of eight different outputs, but we just took 'em all. We used this switch to go between those five sources. We took one output from that , put it into a gen, put it into an amplifier, basically a splitter, an HDMI splitter that allowed us to go off with our JVC reference projector. And then the last thing was, to send it through a big distribution, a, which was also a very, very critical piece of equipment to go to each of the eight projectors. The thing that's beautiful about these AV Pro products, in particular that DA18 distribution app, which is the last part before it gets the projectors, is you've got something called EDID control.
Rob Sabin: (27:11)
So, you know, HDMI has a handshake process. And if all of the sources don't like it, if it thinks that it has multiple different types of products and can't all accept the highest quality signal, right. We, we were able with that , those devices to essentially copy the EDIDs that we needed to make sure that the system as a whole and the sources as a whole, everybody knew, they all knew that it was okay to send their highest quality signal in particular, the Kaleidescape would've shut itself down and only given us SDR if we hadn't had that.
Scott Wilkinson: (27:46)
I have to tell you, I've been dealing with EDID, which is an extended display ID, something like that.
Rob Sabin: (27:55)
Identification
Scott Wilkinson: (27:56)
Yep. Identification. Right? In my current temporary situation, I've been trying to take a couple different devices and switch them into my TV, not using an AV Pro Edge. I wish I had one. I'm gonna have to contact them, see if I can get one. but I'm having all kinds of heated issues and I have to unplug and REPL, it's just a pain in the butt. So,
Brian Gluck: (28:23)
And Scott, I just wanna mention one thing. Yeah, the type of EDID issues were some of the challenges that we really experienced at the showcase in March. And that was really what was keeping me up at night for this particular event was to ensure that we were able to distribute HDR signals to nine displays at the same time, without those types of EDID conflicts. So, you know, one, we had the gear from AV Pro Edge, which was insanely valuable, but then we had the brain power of both Rob Sabin and Dave Harper that were able to make everything work. And, you know, when we did our first couple tests, you know, prior to the event and everything was working, you know, it was a massive relief and, you know, shoulders started to raise again with the weight of that potentially failing coming off of them.
Scott Wilkinson: (29:07)
Right. Good. Excellent. I want to mention that , popcorn in the chat room is saying, I wanna take a minute to thank everyone in here for all your hard work and dedication, empowering the end user to make educated decisions. And I think that's super important. Brian, I think you and Rob, and Chris and all the, all the judges, really did a great service as I think the Value Electronics TV shootout is for TVs you have done for laser TVs or UST projectors. And, I think that's great.
Brian Gluck: (29:40)
Sure. And I wanna make a point to that , you know, and I respect the value electronics event greatly, right? There's, it's, it's a fantastic event, but one of the things that we did that I think was we intentionally did different is the goal of ours was not necessarily to crown a king out of a small pool of top performers. You know, we took on this mammoth task of having a very tremendous amount of projectors on at the same time,
Scott Wilkinson: (30:06)
A lot more, more than Value does
Brian Gluck: (30:08)
A substantial amount more than anyone else that I've ever seen tried to pull this off. And part of the reason was, is that, you know, projector central being, you know, the authoritative editorial publication on the subject matter, you know, and us as a very prominent boutique reseller of this product segment is really trying to raise awareness. And that's similar to what was going on with the UST showcase that we did with AVS Forum. And instead of just picking the three most expensive items and crowning a king out of those, we wanted to introduce some lesser known items and have a very wide playing field, as many as we thought we could technically accomplish without running into significant distribution things. Right. So, you know, there were a couple brands in there that many people never heard of before. Right. And that did surprisingly well. Right. So, you know, I feel that , one, yes, we did want people to understand how they compare against each other, but the goal of this, at least from my perspective, was to not name the best, but was to educate people to the point of popcorn about all of the different options and how they compare with each other.
Scott Wilkinson: (31:16)
Right. Excellent. Excellent. So let's see. there was another question in here. oh, here it is. HDFury products are also great for EDID control. So that's another, I haven't used those myself.
Chris Majestic: (31:34)
I'm familiar with those. I actually have a couple of their matrix switchers and they are fantastic. Yeah. They work really well for that.
Scott Wilkinson: (31:40)
Oh, okay. Good. Well, that's good for me personally, to know, cuz I need, I don't need a matrix switcher, but I need something that 'll, that 'll take care of EDID without having to, you know, plug and unplug cables. That to me is just like, so inelegant.
Chris Majestic: (31:54)
Yeah. They do a good job if you can actually get to it right over IP address over your web browser and configure it and everything. It's pretty, pretty cool.
Scott Wilkinson: (32:02)
Cool. okay. So, I wanted to talk up just for a moment about the judging criteria. What were the elements that you were looking at and, and judging, and we've got a picture, here of the single and I will tell you this, it was the, the thing was done in two stages, one with single laser UST, projectors, and one with triple laser UST projectors, and, Brian, I think that was good to separate those out.
Brian Gluck: (32:35)
Well, I would agree, you know, so one, we had an issue of the number of units that we could distribute to at the same time. Right. But there, these projectors are really in two different classes, right? You have the single laser units, that are aside from the Epson LS500 that are all using the color wheel. And then you have the triple laser, which is using, you know, for the most part, true RGB lasers, although the LG does use two blue lasers and a green phosphor to accomplish it. And with the triple lasers, you have a much wider color gamut, but you also have a generally more premium product with the premium price tag associated with it.
Scott Wilkinson: (33:07)
Right, right. so here you can see in this, in this graphic, the three different environments that you were doing SDR day mode, bright room SDR, dark room and HDR, dark room. And, you can see some of the criteria, the stuff you were looking at. And, so, any one of you want to jump in and, and tell us a little bit about some of these criteria and how, how important they are.
Rob Sabin: (33:37)
Sure. I can, I can speak to that. So, you know, obviously it's, it's a lot of the same stuff as you go from, from, each mode to one mode to another mode, but, a lot of, some of it is different. So for example, for the living room, TV stuff, you know, you're primarily interested in color accuracy and skin tone. That's always gonna be a top priority, right. So that carries through to all of them, you know, focus and geometry. We didn't see the need to look at that in more than one of the modes, but you're, you're looking there just to see if, you know, especially with UST projectors, you know, the, the, short, throw can create geometric distortion and start to bend images this serious, particularly at, particularly at the top and, and focus as well will tend to get lost as you get to the top right corner. So we wanted to look at that , motion rendition is another one of those things that generally you don't necessarily have to look at more than once or twice. I think we looked at it in 24 P but in particular for the, in particular for the bright room modes, that was all about, you know, kind of 60 Hertz, you know, 1080 eye content
Scott Wilkinson: (34:52)
Live TV kind of stuff.
Rob Sabin: (34:53)
Yeah. So we looked so that's a little different than checking it for film. so it's, it's, it's basically that variety of stuff, and as you moved into some of the other modes, 24p motion, obviously contrast is always important, but it becomes particularly important for darkroom home theater, you know, and, and I'm, I'm looking at this with the rest of you guys now rather than from memory. Oh yeah. And of course, black level and shadow detail, which is always gonna be critical, whether you're looking at 4k content, 4k HDR or SDR content. Right. Right. so, and we had different types of material, you know, to try to bring out, you know, what, what, what each of these, criteria
Scott Wilkinson: (35:34)
Right. Do, and, and we'll see in the next picture that , the triple laser really was the same scorecard just with different contenders.
Rob Sabin: (35:44)
Yeah. a couple of different things here to point out where the triple lasers were concerned. We didn't do a specific color gamut test for the single laser projectors. The triple laser projectors are really all intended to, most of them anyway, are intended to exceed 100% DCI-P3 color gamut. So in this case, we wanted to make sure we put some content up that would challenge, challenge the projectors to actually reproduce above and beyond what we'd call a Rec.709 standard definition, gamut. so you had that there. We also did 4,000. I guess we did 4,000 at mapping for both the singles and the doubles. but I think that was, I guess the, really the key difference there, was, was just adding the color gamut. Right. We also looked at laser speckle, which we ended up not really putting on.
Rob Sabin: (36:34)
We ultimately didn't put it in the final scorecard. I don't, I'm not sure if everybody listening is familiar with laser speckle, but it is a particular type of artifact that happens when the laser interacts with the surface of the screen, and the texture of the screen, and starts to reflect in odd areas. And you can, you can kind of get this sort of, sort of glaze if you will. That sort of sits on top of the picture. It's particularly noticeable with red or magenta content, for example. and, I know with RGB lasers, there tends to be a greater tendency toward it. so we also did look at some stuff, but we didn't feel like we could really make a good judgment based upon what we, you know, what, we had up to really look at it.
Scott Wilkinson: (37:23)
Yeah. All right. So once you had established these criteria, then you gave the judges their scorecards, and let, 'em let 'em look at a bunch of material. And we've got a few pictures from the process itself, graphics five through nine we'll show those as we're talking here. Rob, you had mentioned some of the material that you used for diff for, for evaluating some of these different things.
Rob Sabin: (37:55)
Sure. Yeah. Well, you know, depending upon what it was, we just used different stuff. you know, for purpose of, for example, you're seeing right now the bright room viewing, obviously and by the way, I should just point out, you know, we're talking about, it's a little hard to see, but you can see in the background there that there's an overhead light. we had, I don't know, was there was, were there maybe eight or 10 of those things across this space? It was an enormously bright room, much brighter, frankly, than any typical living room would be. I mean, it was very much indicative of more of a work environment. You can see how bright those projectors are. I mean, you know, they're, they're functioning very well as televisions in this. we used some cooking shows and, and sports stuff and to check color, for example, on those things we used, we had a CNBC, up for a while so that we could look at the scrolls and see how it was handling, the movement of, of, of the, you know, of the scrolls.
Rob Sabin: (39:00)
Um, so there was a little, little bit of that when we got to the dark room stuff, we were looking more at, at movie content, basically.
Scott Wilkinson: (39:09)
Chris, there was a picture of you, diligently looking at things. Most of these pictures are in the bright room because that's where you can take a picture.
Chris Majestic: (39:22)
exactly. , can't see us any other way.
Scott Wilkinson: (39:24)
Yeah. Right, exactly. So, what was your impression as you were, as you were going through this, were there big differences between the models or were they pretty close?
Chris Majestic: (39:35)
Um, I was actually impressed with how close some of them were during the day, testing or the bright room testing. just considering, especially some of the single lasers, because they're generally, single lasers are not usually as accurate while being as bright, if that makes any sense. as some of the triple laser projectors are. but they were all fairly close. Now I will say you do see some major discrepancies between the projectors, with the single lasers versus the triple lasers. The triple lasers were all very similar, in color accuracy, brightness, overall where we kind of, you, it was a little easier to score when we were doing the single lasers. especially with me being familiar with some of 'em. You know, what to expect a little bit.
Chris Majestic: (40:19)
But it was very interesting to see them side by side, because as I was mentioning earlier, when you're seeing the projector by itself, you think it looks okay until you see it next to sitting directly next to another projector, it looks significantly better. So it was really interesting to see all of these side by side. And then when we finally switched over to the triple laser, seeing them in the daytime, you got to see really how well they were able to produce an image on that screen, it being li particular and having that really bright room as Rob mentioned with it being super bright. I mean, it was, we had a ton of light in that room. And you can see in the pictures that , although not gonna be the inkiest blacks of all time. Yeah. It still does a really good job of reproducing the image, with the, with the lights on or off, I was really impressed with the screen, as well as the projectors.
Chris Majestic: (41:08)
Um, and when we got to those triple lasers, when it came down to things like HDR and some of the dark viewing, that's where it was a little more difficult to score. And we ended up spending a lot of time kind of like, go back, let me see that again. Wait, you know, trying to see some differences between these projectors. And you know, we got to see some things that were a significant difference or discrepancy between them, but it was kind, it got towards the end. It got really difficult to kind of score just cause they were like, they all look good. I'm like, I don't know. It's, you know, it's hard and they don't look as good as the JVC, but they almost all, if it makes any sense, it was almost like where they looked bad. They almost all looked equally bad, if that makes any sense.
Chris Majestic: (41:47)
So it was, it was, it was kind of challenging to do, especially with some of the other things, that we were talking about, like things like laser speckle, that wasn't something that I was expecting to judge, but when we like pulled up certain content, you could really see, that it was there now it's not the type of thing that was really gonna make a drastic difference on your viewing experience. I've seen it on projectors, like certain Samsung projectors or Hisense or whatever, you'll notice it, but it's not really like a huge deal. Honestly, the only time I've seen anything that looks similar to it, the best way to describe it is like a glittery effect. And the only other time I'm really familiar with seeing that is when you use a high gain screen with the short throw projector.
Chris Majestic: (42:25)
So I don't know how familiar you guys are with like regular short throw ends in like maybe five, seven feet away. Right. it gives this weird artifact effect where it's like a glittery effect on the screen. That's the closest thing I've ever seen to laser speckle. And considering it is a phenomenon that kind of works with the projector being so close to the screen. It may kind of be a similar thing that may be causing that same issue, but it was like, it was a really, really, I keep saying this, but it was a fantastic experience seeing them side by side and getting into the results. When you start to notice, like, what is this projector I've never heard of? And why is it better than this other projector that cost three times the price? And it's kinda what, and it got to a point where even some of the judges and I've seen it, cuz we were all thinking the same way.
Chris Majestic: (43:10)
Like we started like double guessing, like, wait a minute. Is this, is this calibrated properly? Cuz there's no way that this random Chinese projector that nobody's ever heard of is doing better. And then we look into settings and we're like, wait, it really is like calibrated. I guess I'm wrong. It really does look better somehow. Wow. Cause I've even had people on my video, I did a YouTube video, kind of given a recap of the showdown. And I had people in a comment section like, oh, this must have been sponsored by this company and blah blah. And I'm like, no, it was not, it was unbiased. We went through the settings ourselves to make sure we weren't crazy. And it really was impressive to see what some of these things can do. Especially considering you may not have heard from some of these brands right
Scott Wilkinson: (43:51)
Now, this actually brings up a question, Majestic, that I wanted to ask you. Do you think you knew which projector you were looking at in each case, right?
Chris Majestic: (44:02)
Yes.
Scott Wilkinson: (44:02)
Do you think it would've been valuable or even possible todo a blind test, to hide which projector was which
Chris Majestic: (44:14)
I mention actually mentioned that when we went to dinner that night talking about the like recap and everything, it would've been helpful to like, I think that would've been helpful to not know which one you were looking at, but considering the nature of how it's an ultra short throw and the fact that you have to set it up and you have to get, it would be difficult to hide what it is cuz it's literally right there in front of you and you can look down and probably tell aside from that , another thing from those of us who are familiar with some of these brands, you can tell the menu system you'll know exactly what somebody pops it up, which one? Yeah.
Rob Sabin: (44:46)
Yes, absolutely.
Chris Majestic: (44:46)
Yeah. So yeah, it's almost impossible to do that unless it was super controlled in a way that would make it, you know, impossible for us to see the menus and that kind of thing. But I do think overall, yes, it would've been helpful because I can tell you right now that the Formovie or one of the other ones, nobody would've ever known that that was what it was. You would've thought that it was probably like an LG or a Hisense or something, some higher end, you know, projector and it wasn't so right. it was, it was interesting. I do think that would've added a nice element to it, but it would've been probably too difficult to do.
Scott Wilkinson: (45:18)
Right. okay. So let's take a look at the contenders now. you guys started with the single lasers I believe, right?
Chris Majestic: (45:28)
Yes. Yes.
Scott Wilkinson: (45:30)
Okay. So let's take a look. Here are the single laser, laser TVs, the contenders I put, put together this little diagram, they're all single chip DLP except for the Epson. And unfortunately we, this is not the, the updated one that has the updated prices, Brian, that you sent me. And I apologize for that. but basically we're all, we're roughly in the 2,500 to $3,500 range, right?
Brian Gluck: (46:07)
Correct.
Scott Wilkinson: (46:08)
Roughly, and we have a BenQ V7050i we have a Hisense, ViewSonic, XGIMI. Is that how you say that?
Brian Gluck: (46:18)
Yes,
Scott Wilkinson: (46:18)
It is one of the Chinese brands, the Epson of course, Samsung, LG and Optoma. and all of these are well known brands except possibly the XGIMI Aura. and of course we had the JVC in the other room and that's $16,000 and a completely different animal. So you Rob, you were right in saying you can't really compare it directly, but it's good to use kind of as a reference. And so finally here are the results of the judging of these and, Brian, why don't you take us, through a little bit of, of what you found here?
Brian Gluck: (47:02)
Well, as far as the judging goes, yeah. Well, so, you know, in the single laser, I have, I had familiarity with a lot of these units already, so sure. Even though I was not a participant in the judging, nor did I have anything to do with the selection of the criteria, the instructions given to the judges. And I wasn't even in the midst of it all while it was all going down, but I had some preconceived notions of where I thought certain things would lie. and when it came to the single lasers, you know, it was, you know, I had an inclination that the BenQ was going to do the best and I thought a Hisense was gonna be right up there. And they did end up taking the top two billings there. However, I was not aware of what the criteria was going to be.
Brian Gluck: (47:41)
Right. So my preconceived notions were just based off of an overall experience with the items. And I didn't take it at that granular level, you know, that Rob had put together for the ballots and the judges to scrutinize on those independent types of criteria. so if we'd like to go back to the scorecard, I can certainly walk through any of those types of items. I don't necessarily remember the order in which all happened. So the BenQ not too surprisingly did very well. And as well as the Hisense L5G, now I'm just gonna respond to one of the public comments here that some of these items may come bundled with the screen. The Hisense L5G is the only unit here that does come bundled with the screen. However, we did not use the screen that it is bundled with, because we wanted to use the identical screen for all of the projectors in the competition.
Scott Wilkinson: (48:28)
Couldn't agree more. That was the exact right thing to do.
Chris Majestic: (48:31)
Sure. Now the ViewSonic X2000B-4K was new to me. I had never seen this unit before and it was really popular with the judges as me being a fly on the wall. I kept hearing the ViewSonic’s name coming up a lot. Now one thing I do wanna mention about this competition too, both the ViewSonic and the XGIMI are using, the ALPD 3.0 light engine that's made by Appotronics that's also well, and the, the winner of the competition, the Formovie Theater is using their latest iteration, the ALPD 4.0. So there is something definitely to be said for the quality that the ALPD light engine is putting out there because you know how well the units utilizing it did rank in this competition.
Scott Wilkinson: (49:16)
David Harper in the chat room is saying, my biggest shop was that the AWOL Vision LTV-3500 didn't finish one or two,
Brian Gluck: (49:24)
that would be a triple laser unit and
Scott Wilkinson: (49:26)
Oh, oh, that's a triple laser.
Chris Majestic: (49:28)
Yup, but to get to that point, you know, this goes back to something that Majestic said is, you know, we have experienced all of these in their own little bubble. And the AWOL was something that we also did in its own little bubble. And we still think it's a phenomenal unit. Right. however, my inclination may be that because it, had comparable contrast ratio of, you know, around 1100 to one that many of the non-ALPD units had that the units with the stronger contrast, such as the Formovie and the LG, you know, that may have aided the perception of quality in some of the other criteria that the judges saw as well.
Scott Wilkinson: (50:07)
Well, certainly contrast and, and black level or among my most important criteria. Uh you're right. The LTV, the AWOL, is a triple laser, which we're gonna get to in a minute here. Sure. BeatMaster asks "Sony didn't make the cut?" Well, I would guess that that's because the Sony ultra short throw is way outside the price range of these other ones. Right. You were kinda looking at the more affordable consumer products.
Chris Majestic: (50:31)
Well, price wasn't the factor, but so many didn't make the cut because they don't make the projector any longer.
Scott Wilkinson: (50:36)
Oh, well there's that too
Chris Majestic: (50:37)
So, you know, there was no reason to really include it from,
Scott Wilkinson: (50:40)
okay. Well, that brings up an interesting point about price. All of these are, you know, in a range that's similar. and yet you, you, Brian mentioned to me offline that you, that price was not to be considered when making the judgements that you, that one made.
Chris Majestic: (51:05)
Well, that's correct. And I'm, I'm actually gonna defer this one back to Rob. This was a distinction I kind of wanna make while this was a ProjectorScreen.com and Projector Central, you know, collaborative event. My role. And my company's role in this was really primarily as a facilitator, right? We have the projectors, we have the facility, we have a calibrator, we have manpower to put all of this stuff together, but when it came ultimately down to the judging criteria and the, and the rules and, and all that stuff, that was all driven by Projector Central as independent editorial entity. And one of the things that, yeah, well,
Scott Wilkinson: (51:42)
Which I applaud.
Brian Gluck: (51:42)
And I appreciate that. And it was really important for us as we were discussing, creating this event to, to keep it as an editorial, independent thing with these third party judges with no influence for myself as a merchant of these particular products, but along those same lines too, you know, we also did not have any sponsorship from any of the participating brands.
Brian Gluck: (52:06)
Right. Very good. So while we did have people, we did have companies that sponsored us such as AV Pro Edge by providing us the gear JVC for lending us, the projector, Spectra Projection for giving us the screens. I don't wanna forget anyone else as I go through the list, but you know, all of our contributing brands helped make this happen, but despite the interest by the projector brands wanting to help make it happen too, you know, we drew a line because we didn't want any, perception of influence by myself as a, as a reseller or by the manufacturers as sponsors. So this was entirely self-funded by Projector Central as well as ourselves.
Scott Wilkinson: (52:45)
Very good. So, Rob, tell me, let's talk about the, the, the pricing that you guys stayed within a $2,500 to $3,500 price range. Was that conscious or was that because that's all there's available?
Rob Sabin: (52:59)
No, quite honestly. And, and, you know, if you get into the tri laser projectors. You'll see, they go up to $6,500. Right. So, really it came down to what's available. One of the reasons we had 14 projectors in this is because it seemed like the right time to do a real, a real survey of the category, to really, really get a broad look at all of the players that had thrown stuff in, into the ring. And, it just worked out that , you know, it was a wide range of, of different prices. In some cases I'd say in most cases, the most expensive projectors did well. I think the Formovie was the one real surprise because it turned out to be a very affordable projector that also performed like the more expensive products. But, yeah, we didn't want the guys, we just wanted the guys looking at the picture, you know, and, and, and, and judging it on picture quality.
Scott Wilkinson: (53:53)
Yeah. Chris Majestic, thank you for joining in the chatroom there. Dave, had said something about, you know, the BenQ looks great, but the HDMI EDID handshake issues. made you wanna throw it across?
Chris Majestic: (54:10)
Oh my God, it was so bad. I, and that , that's one of my favorite projectors, especially being a single laser projector. And what's funny is, this is not something you would know from the scorecards, but we actually had planned on putting the BenQ just for the sake of it, just for fun up against some of the trial laser projectors to see how it held up. And as much as we wanted it to do that and go through with it and see how it held up against them. It fought us every step of the way with the EDID issues. I mean, we just constantly ran into issues. And what a major issue we ran into was that even when it did work every time all of the projectors did a handshake, it would re-sync and then stop the video from all of 'em and res synced the video back that BenQ took so long to sync that it would take like 15 seconds and then it would just, we were finally ready to look at wherever we were looking at, and then it would re-sync again and cause all the projectors to cut off. It was a nightmare. I love the projector. So it's not taken anything away from the BenQ, but those EDID issues were, oh my God, it was bad.
Rob Sabin: (55:10)
yeah, it's very, very, very slow sync for that projector. And it ended up holding up the whole works because basically, you know, the sources are waiting, the sources waiting until it sees that everything is talking to it properly. Right. So, yeah, it's an issue with that one.
Scott Wilkinson: (55:27)
Yep. Yep. Rob, I wanna, just, before we go to the triple lasers, I wanna just ask you about the scoring. If you look at the score, the scores, the final results, you ended up taking the highest scoring projector in each category and just assigning that a number 10, right. And then I guess, adjusting the other scores accordingly. Why did you do that ?
Rob Sabin: (55:52)
Yeah. You know, it's a great question. And it was not, it was not something that we sort of did lightly. It was something that came out of our discussion as we looked at the results. So one of the things that we noticed when we started to look at all the scorecards is that , you know, the guys were basically across the board, we had six judges, everybody's coming at this with their own perspective and experience. And, everybody, as it turns out, or, or at least a number of people were judging from a very different place. So for example, you had some people that were scoring up in the eights and nines, and you had some people that were scoring in the sixes and sevens. So what we realized afterwards is that , and you can call this a, you know, a failure of, of, of the administration in, in properly, charging the jury, you know, if you want.
Rob Sabin: (56:46)
But what we came to understand was that we did not really have, or give the judges a proper point of reference. You know, I go back to that Value TV shootout again, where there's a, there's a $30,000, you know, reference monitor sitting there. Right. And every flat panel really in the best case looks as good as that monitor. Right. Correct. Right. So you can, you can, in that situation, I think you can probably safely say, okay, that's a 10, that reference is a 10 and we're gonna judge accordingly. In this case, we had guys, you know, had guys like, like Sammy Prescott, who is, you know, one of the great JVC calibrators out there who has, you know, does nothing but premium, high end projectors looking at it from one perspective, you got a guy like Chris here who has looked at a number of these USTs and has a different perspective on the category as a whole.
Rob Sabin: (57:39)
So what we realized was that the most important thing of course, was to have an appropriate ranking. We wanted to be able to say this one was the best one, and this one was right below it. We purposely, absolutely wanted us to use a scoring system. So that as opposed to just a straight ranking, because we wanted you to be able to see how close number two came to number one, right. so that was very important to us. But what we also realized, as we looked at the numbers was that you had this sort of average in the middle that was sort of pulling everything down and became, we didn't want that to be taken as a, as a comment on the category, per se. It was more important to actually just get the ranking. Now that said, there's really two conversations here. And, and what we haven't really talked about is where do these USTs fall in the grand scheme of projection, right? Assuming that a high end projector like a JVC in a dark room is the reference, where do these guys fall? I'd say that. And, I think Chris and the other judges probably would agree with me. We gotta, have ways to go before we get there. But again, they're, they're designed for a different thing. They really are. so it's, it's really two different animals, but,
Chris Majestic: (58:52)
and it's funny, you mentioned real quick to piggyback off of what you just said. Yeah. One thing that I thought about was how do you, what do you use for a reference for a TV, for daytime viewing? and I was thinking in the back of my head, I'm thinking like, well, literally one of the number one selling TVs in the world is like the TCL 4 series, right. Which is not in a high end TV by any stretch of the imagination, but it makes you wonder how something like that would hold up against a ton of these ultra short throws in a daytime environment. It's obviously something like black, level's gonna be better, that kind of thing. But how does it hold up, you know, with color accuracy, do you use an LG OLED? Like it's, it's so many different questions on ways that you can do some kind of a comparison, but it's so difficult because like I said, one of these projectors in a room by itself looks fantastic.
Chris Majestic: (59:39)
Even with bad color accuracy, you're like, this looks great. Because people, the average person thinks that every TV looks great in the daytime. Yeah. So it's kind of like, you, you, we have a, all of us who are used to seeing high end things or used to seeing properly calibrated TVs or projectors, but the average person that's buying these. And I was just something I was mentioning when I was there at the shootout. They don't care about any of this stuff. Most of them are gonna take it outta the box. They're gonna put it in standard mode, maybe even vivid mode, hopefully not. And they're, and they're just gonna put it up and say, people have come in the house. Wow. That looks great. That's a TV, you know, that's a projector or whatever. And we had to, I personally had to kind of take that and put it into perspective because the average person isn't gonna do this now that's a lot different than when you get somebody who's buying a JVC NZ8 or nine or whatever, and they're gonna have it properly calibrated, or they'll take the time to go on a website and look at, you know, Projector Central' s, calibration settings, and say, how do I make this look its best?
Chris Majestic: (01:00:36)
And I think there's two different audiences here. And that's something we kind of have to take into account with these
Scott Wilkinson: (01:00:42)
Yeah. It's an extremely good point. okay. Let's take a look at the triple laser contenders here real quick. And then we'll, we'll see the results of that. but first we have a, a list of the, triple lasers and, as someone mentioned, yes, the, the pricing differential range is quite a bit more from around three grand to $6,500. We have the Formovie Theater, which is the one that I never heard of before. And I don't think many, many have, and we're gonna talk about that in the middle. we have the, in a minute we have the LG there's. They have a triple laser Hisense. Samsung here's the AWOL Vision LTV 3,500, which was mentioned earlier, surprising that didn't come out first and the Vava, which has been around for, they've been around for a little while. and again, the reference, and let's take a look at the, since we're running out of time where let's take a look at the results real quick and amazing what I found amazing. And, and I'd like each of you to talk about this Formovie Theater, this, this brand that I had never heard of, and I don't know anybody who had came in first and it was even the least expensive one.
Brian Gluck: (01:02:06)
Well, I'll be glad to talk about that , please. so the Formovie Theater is a really interesting product and it had a predecessor under the Chinese branding brand name, Fengmi. The item was the Fengmi T1. And that was one of the most talked about projectors on AVS Forum. so much to the point where almost any other threat or conversation about USTs, someone would chime in about the T1. And I would affectionately refer to this group of people as the T1 brigade. Hope you're listening. Hi guys. I love you. Right. But it was because of the adamant passion that these guys had for this product and how great it was. It actually got me to order one and check it out. Right? So I have to say the first Fengmi, T1 I got was DOA. It didn't work.
Brian Gluck: (01:02:54)
And I'm like, oh, great. Just another, you know, no name, product here that I didn't have high expectations for. And then I received a working one after, you know, several weeks. and I was like, you know what, there's, there's something to this. Right? However, when the Formovie Theater came about that was greatly enhanced and it had an actual CMS or a color management system. And that's what took that projector to the next level, actually allowing you to calibrate it as opposed to just going from office mode to nighttime mode to whatever else.
Scott Wilkinson: (01:03:23)
Oh, the T1 didn't have Calibration.
Brian Gluck: (01:03:25)
It did not have a CMS. So it's really a Testament to the AVS Forum community, right? Raising awareness, getting it exposed to the eyes of a projector central to the eyes of a retailer, such as myself were both Rob. And I absolutely thought it had a place in this competition. Right. Because there is a lot of discourse about it and it was not from the traditional big four brand names that , you know, everyone would've expected to just be in this competition. And it's, you know, I did not necessarily think it was gonna win. I knew it was gonna place very well based off of my own experience with all of the items. but I think it really surprised all of the judges and, you know, Chris can obviously talk a lot more about that than myself, but, yeah, the Formovie Theater it's a hot projector right now.
Scott Wilkinson: (01:04:16)
That's amazing. Chris, what was your, what was your feeling about
Chris Majestic: (01:04:18)
It? I'll be a hundred percent honest when I first saw it and we started marking the scorecard, I was calling BS. I'm like, there's no way this thing is this much better than all the rest of these, but it really was. We really scrutinized it and we didn't wanna believe it, but it was, it just did and all, and you can look at the detailed scorecard, like, and you can kind of see all the places where it scored really high. one that was kind of on the heels of it in certain situations was the AWOL, which is another brand I had never heard of. and, but when we got to certain things, like you'll notice the low color gamut score on the, AWOL where all of us in the room, it was kind of a running joke at some point where we were like, wow, the color on the, AWOL is AWOL, but it was, you know, it was situation, a lot of situations where it looked good.
Chris Majestic: (01:05:04)
So it was kind of like it was difficult to score. but like the out, my personal expectation was that the LG and the Hisense PX1-Pro were gonna be number one and two, I did not expect this Formovie to even be anywhere near, like at the top, at the top. But every time I scored it on the sheet, it was better than the other three. I was expecting, even maybe, the Samsung to take the second or third spot or something like that , but it really was impressive. And I don't, I want everybody to know that was not thrown in there for some marketing or whatever. No, it really performed. And like I said, it was, this was a very unbiased test and none of the judges believed it.
Chris Majestic: (01:05:46)
We were just like, there's no way, but we all, as you can see scored it highly. And that's one of the reasons why I think it would've been helpful if it was blind, because the score might've been even higher. Because we might've been biased. Like, you know what, eh, I might not mark it that high. I've never heard of this thing, you know, but right. We couldn't, we couldn't deny it. and you know, it was, it was interesting to see, because some of the more expensive projectors just I'm like there's no, I can't really recommend somebody to spend triple almost or double the amount for something that's just a little bit better in certain categories. Something like the Samsung LSP9T or the LG HU915QB, which is a brand new projector, very expensive.
Chris Majestic: (01:06:27)
Um, not coming with a screen, as you know, as Brian mentioned, that's stuff that people have to take into account and it's like, well, if I can get this Formovie Theater, if I can get past the name, maybe I'll be, I could be happy with this thing and buy a screen to save the money that I would've spent on the projector itself and get a nice screen, you know, or something along those lines or another, or a sound system to go with it or whatever. But these are things you have to consider. I do have to say I was not the only thing that didn't surprise me at all was the Vava Chroma because I had issues with it myself, but I didn't expect for it to perform as low as it did in the testing. I will say that but it was it, I was really just, there was no way I could have predicted these scores at all.
Rob Sabin: (01:07:08)
Yeah. I can add a little bit of perspective on the Formovie too, because people keep saying, people keep saying, oh, you know, this thing came outta nowhere. Well, well, not exactly, really. I mean, Brian was talking about the fact that it was based on essentially the same platform as the Fengmi T1, which was released earlier, I guess, it was late last year. Right. Maybe, but only in China. But here's the thing that product is, you know, Formovie is a joint venture between, I believe Showme that Chinese companies Show Me and maybe Brian, you can correct me if I'm wrong on that. Yeah. And, and Appotronics is actually a partner Appotronics makes the lasers.
Scott Wilkinson: (01:07:51)
Makes the light engine right?
Rob Sabin: (01:07:52)
They make the light engine, they make the laser, the ALPD light engines, which is really what all these DLPs have been relying on to get their images out. So in this particular case you have, a, a projector that's being very aggressively priced by someone who presumably is able to source the light engines in a very aggressive way. Yeah. And, keep in mind that it is the most advanced version. We're not seeing that 4.0 light engine. I don't believe laser engine in any of the other projects. Ah,
Scott Wilkinson: (01:08:23)
They're they're all 3.0,
Rob Sabin: (01:08:24)
Am I wrong Brian? Is that...
Chris Majestic: (01:08:27)
So Appotronics is a partner with Fengmi slash for me, Rob is correct, but they are also a partner in Chowme, which is a separate company. And they used to be partners. They maybe still are, in Wemax, which was supposed to be the Appotronics brand in the United States. But from what I understand, they're no longer affiliated because of really poor performance. And they're now being run by a gadget company. And, I don't wanna misstate anything and, and cause some disruption, but so Formovie has now taken over as the USA leg of Appotronics. Now I believe the Vava Chroma is also using the ALPD 4.0 light engine. So what it was really interesting, you know, and to Chris Majestic’s comment that he was really surprised it did so bad if the hardware was there. The problem with the Vava Chroma is the software. So it is absolutely possible that with some updates and whatever else, they may be able to do software or firmware wise that projector may crawl its way back towards the top of the list in some future events. But it is just not there as much.
Chris Majestic: (01:09:34)
So really quickly piggyback off of what you just said. that is something that I noticed even myself, there's a couple of YouTubers that I keep in contact with. one of which, actually still has the Vava Chroma cuz we got an early production sample of it. We both did. I ended up sending my copy back, but he actually got to see that with each iteration of the firmware updates, he got to see it improve better and better and better every time. And did it that ,
Scott Wilkinson: (01:09:58)
Did it improve?
Chris Majestic: (01:09:59)
It absolutely did. It absolutely did. We started like early on, I saw really, really heavy reds. and I mentioned I have a video on it that I posted on YouTube, where I was giving an honest opinion. All of my projective reviews are completely honest and I was like, what is going on here?
Chris Majestic: (01:10:14)
I don't understand why it looks like this. And I just kind of was like trying to help them to get it together. And I'm a part of the Facebook group where they were doing some of the crowd funding and there really was a lot of work that went into improving it. But I do think that it being a new technology and not a lot of other projectors using it ALPD 4.0, there was some growing pains with that , but it is nice to see that they can fix a lot of things with just some over there updates
Brian Gluck: (01:10:37)
Now also to talk about the Vava Chroma. Right. Because I feel like we haven't mentioned it much. That was the number one Indiegogo campaign of all time, from what I understand. Yeah. They did 4 million, I think in like the first 24 hours or something ludicrous like that. So, you know, Vava did a really good job of building the height machine and their original projector was one of the first economical laser USTs and it was tremendously popular. Right? And when they came out with the Chroma, like the demand and the excitement around that was astronomical. It's huge. Now that being said to Chris's point, they've done a lot of updates yet. It still found itself at the bottom of the pack. Right. And we had everything updated as current as possible. That was able to be pushed out to us.
Scott Wilkinson: (01:11:24)
I'm Absolutely sure that's true. Yeah.
Chris Majestic: (01:11:26)
Yeah. They still have a ways to go, everyone who bought one, all, you know, million people out there, however many you got it, you know, be patient. I have an expectation that you will, you know, get satisfaction at some point soon. Vava's not a small company, you know, and they got prepaid for all of this. So they obviously have a war chest to be able to invest in making this
Scott Wilkinson: (01:11:45)
Right. Let me ask Majestic a quick question, from Matt Buckmaster, who said, who wondered if all these single chip DLPs suffer from the rainbow effect?
Chris Majestic: (01:12:00)
So we saw rainbows from pretty much every single, single laser projector. What was funny though, was the clip that Rob used for rainbows. Oh my God. Like it was, I've never seen rainbows. All of us were like, OK, OK. Turn it off, turn it off. I can't do like, it was, it was really drastic. it was dramatic, but it
Scott Wilkinson: (01:12:22)
Was Rob, Rob, what clip was that ?
Rob Sabin: (01:12:25)
What it was, but I thought written down. Was it the casino? Royal opener? No. Was I,
Chris Majestic: (01:12:30)
No, it was, I think it was just verbal lines. Oh, it like vertical lines on
Rob Sabin: (01:12:35)
Yes, it was me. It was the Meridio. I went to the Meridio generator and we had both vertical and horizontal lines basically moving across the screen.
Scott Wilkinson: (01:12:44)
Oh man. They had a super torture tests
Chris Majestic: (01:12:47)
He had everyone in the room about to vomit.
Rob Sabin: (01:12:52)
It wasn't really a, it wasn't terribly a, a fair fight, but you know,
Chris Majestic: (01:12:56)
But outside of that , just with regular content, I personally I'm susceptible to rainbows if I want myself to be. and that's one of the downsides to the BenQ like of, of all the other ones. That's something I noticed instantly with that one. I don't think it takes, it's a point where it takes so much away from it that I could score it lower or anything like that. But it is something I notice with pretty much all of them. I could force myself to see it on literally every single one of them with the tri laser projectors with most of them not having a color wheel, it's less noticeable. And I honestly thought it wasn't even existent on some of them. But then when we did some of those same tests, that's when you can kind of see it. So if you are a person that is very sensitive to rainbows, try to stick to something like an LG, they do a really good job with less rainbows. Exactly. but those, some of the triple laser projectors do a way better job with that. But I learned during this shootout that if you want to see rainbows, oh, you can make yourself see some rainbows
Scott Wilkinson: (01:13:56)
okay. So the Formovie Theater, won the showdown
Brian Gluck: (01:14:04)
...for triple lasers
Scott Wilkinson: (01:14:06)
For a triple laser. Correct. And, the LG came in second, and so on. You can see these results by the way, on ProjectorScreen.com before we go. And we're, we're kind of running out of time here, but before we go, I wanna, I wanna ask Rob about his evaluation of the audio, because that wasn't something that was done during the main event here.
Rob Sabin: (01:14:27)
No. And, and, you know, had we had a two day event, maybe we would've done that. Of course you have to realize that in that type of situation, every projector has to be played individually. Yeah. as opposed to just throwing something up and happen,
Scott Wilkinson: (01:14:41)
Play em' all at the same time. Yeah. That'll work. Right.
Rob Sabin: (01:14:43)
So what I did, what I did over a period of two days in the aftermath of this was basically sit in a room at ProjectorScreen.com and, you know, basically pumped it full of audio reference, material and movie clips. And, every single one of these projectors basically got the same. And I, we have an article on Projector Central that describes in great detail what I, exactly what I watched and what I to, but the reality is, is that I took CD quality, reference music tracks off of title, and put 'em into projectors that were never, ever supposed to mess with that stuff.
Scott Wilkinson: (01:15:24)
Right. Right, right, right. Right.
Rob Sabin: (01:15:25)
And, and, and also of course the movie clips, and of course, if a, you know, if a product is designed to do music well and manage his music well, that's, you're gonna get the best home theater performance. That's just the way it works. And, as it turned out, you know, there was kind of a top tier projectors that were all in the first case, it was the Formovie which had this B&W sound system and it's Bowers and Wilkins
Scott Wilkinson: (01:15:48)
B&W sound system.
Rob Sabin: (01:15:49)
Yes. Another reason why this Formovie, I mean, listen, they, you know, they, they, they did it the right way. This is the one and only projector that B&W's been involved with. And, it's amazing. And I'll tell you what, Scott, it was an outstanding system really, really good from a music standpoint, just incredible clarity, great midrange clarity, great high end extension, beautiful open sound. It happened to be a Dolby Vision projector so that it had, excuse me, Dolby Atmos projector. So it had a really nice mode to spread the sound around. It had some side firing drivers. So, that to me was really the best one, but really right below it were several other projectors, including the ones that had been designed with Harman Kardon systems. Also just really powerful systems, solid bass given the size of these products. Nothing particularly deep, but nonetheless, very, very good dynamics. And again, excellent. Mid-range clarity and, and openness. So, well you,
Scott Wilkinson: (01:16:49)
You put, you categorize these into three tiers. What did those tiers represent?
Rob Sabin: (01:16:54)
so, and, and the reason I did that is cuz I, you know, I didn't wanna get into the splitting of, of hairs really, cuz you're talking about in that top category, for example, you're talking about any of those, you'd be happy to live with, you know, as a day to day system, minus the fact that they don't have have enough bas. Right. I put the tier two products, they were just a little bit less dynamic in some cases had less bass, maybe didn't image as well. but they were clearly a step down from those other products in tier one. The thing that people should pay attention to, if they look at that list is the tier three products. Because I hate to say this, but I wouldn't let my dog listen to it.
Rob Sabin: (01:17:36)
I mean, they were, they were really awful. we're talking about sound systems that were clearly an afterthought and you know, it's a shame when you have a product like the LG HU915QB, which costs $6,500 from a company like LG that really should know better. They make soundbars. But they absolutely, you know, screw that up. And and, and, and the rest of these, you know, you know, you can basically categorize them as underpowered, typically, poor cabinetry, you know, that couldn't handle, you know, playing loud. You know, just very unclear mud mid-range, which affects dialogue, you know?
Scott Wilkinson: (01:18:24)
Yeah, absolutely.
Rob Sabin: (01:18:25)
Some of them were passable for dialogue, you know, you could kind of watch the movie, but you weren't getting any bass and it sounded hollow and thin. so, yeah. and that's a shame and, and the one thing I pointed out in the testing too, is that I tried every one of these things to see if you could add a powered sub because the one failing that they all have is not enough, not enough bass. And as it turns out, there is one projector out of the 14 that we tested that you can hook up a powered sub to, that's the Optoma P2. And the difference is like night and day. So it is a tremendous lost opportunity among these manufacturers to not have some kind of a Subwoofer output on these projectors.
Brian Gluck: (01:19:05)
Now, Rob, I just wanna say don't, can't you hook up a subwoofer to multiples, but it was only the Optoma that allowed you to control the volume with the projector remote.
Rob Sabin: (01:19:15)
They all have audio, just to be clear about that. They all have audio outputs and you can take an audio output, even if it's an optical output, you can take it and put it into a subwoofer. I had an optical to analog converter on hand, just so that I could test that.
Scott Wilkinson: (01:19:27)
Just happen to?
Rob Sabin: (01:19:28)
And yes, I came prepared. Yes. Good. But the problem is that the Optoma is the only one that allows you to use the volume control to allow the subwoofer and the audio output to track with the volume control. Because if you have a line level output, that's a steady line level output, and you're feeding it into a subwoofer. You'll only have the correct balance at one volume whatever.
Chris Majestic: (01:19:53)
And just to put this into perspective, and because people in the audience may not know this, but one of the main reasons why we even care at all about audio with these laser projectors, laser TVs, whatever you want to call them is, and this is a problem I've had regularly. it is sitting right in the place where you would usually put a center channel speaker, right? So that's a major problem, especially in my living room where I've been living with a laser TV for about a year and a half where I had to reconfigure everything and ended up trying to buy a TV stand. I could put like a center channel under it and sit it inside of it, which limits you on when the size of a center channel you can run. And it's a big issue. So what would be ideal is if you either had a speaker inside of the projector itself that had high line level inputs or something like that , so you can use it as a center channel or as Rob mentioned, to be able to hook a subwoofer for up to it, to make it bearable for the people who are okay with having sound bars.
Chris Majestic: (01:20:51)
Right. Right. It technically in essence is like a soundbar built into the front of a projector. All it's missing is a Subwoofer. So that's a missed opportunity for these brands. Not to be able to just say, Hey, let me have a trackable analog output that I can hook up to a Subwoofer. So that is a big issue. Cuz I see a lot of people, they'll go out, they'll buy a laser TV and then they're like, great. I love it. Oh wait, where am I gonna put my center channel? Or they have to do a phantom center, which some people are big fans of, but either way.
Scott Wilkinson: (01:21:16)
It's something some people hate.
Chris Majestic: (01:21:17)
Yeah. Some people hate. Exactly. So it's just really something to consider if you're gonna go this route, if nothing else.
Brian Gluck: (01:21:22)
Yeah. And UST manufacturers, if you're listening to a piece of feedback we get from a lot of consumers, is that they're looking for a way to utilize the built in speaker, as a center channel. Right. So being able to utilize that and putting in your left and right. Or your surround sound in conjunction with that , obviously you may not have everything matched perfectly, but at the end of the day you have a much easier to install solution. And I've seen pictures of Chris's setup. Right. And I actually have the same speakers at home. I have a Definitive Technology CS-9060 center channel. It's bigger than the Formovie Theater right. So, you know, I may have to decide, should I want to go in that direction in, in one of my viewing areas that I may need to change my sound stage in order to accommodate the installation in the aesthetics that we're looking for.
Rob Sabin: (01:22:08)
And, and I would answer this too, that , you know, you talk about these things, being a soundbar, the, the top quality units, in that , in my survey, they were really good. I mean, we're talking about stuff that they can't image the way a discrete system can. Sure. But in terms of their high end clarity and the dynamics, they were really outstanding. And when you had a subwoofer for the dynamics really right. You're going,
Chris Majestic: (01:22:36)
It it's totally, my thing is, it's like the thing that blew me away with some of the higher end in your top tier for audio, and this is not, so this is an afterthought for a lot of people for a laser TV, but it was such a wide and dynamic sound stage. I was like, there's no way this is coming out of this thing. So it's funny how some of the brands take it to that next level where they want it to sound fantastic. And others are just like, eh, nobody cares about sound. I'm just gonna use the sound system. But I'm like, that's a missed opportunity because I was really blown away with how some of these things sound. I'm like, this is better than a mid-range sound bar. I don't know how I have no idea how they did it, but like, it was like this, I remember the Samsung LSP9T how wide the sound stage was from that.
Chris Majestic: (01:23:18)
It blew me away. Yeah. That was missing some other things. But like when it came to like the width of the south stage, because it's so small and compact, imagine you have a center channel speaker that makes it sound like you got three or four speakers in the room. It's pretty amazing to be able to do that. Yeah. A lot of sound bars that are 40 inches wide can't even do that. Yeah. Yeah. So it's some of the technology is definitely there, but I think they should do a little bit more emphasis on getting some better, better sound out of these or Some better options
Brian Gluck: (01:23:43)
I just wanna make one comment here too. So we have an item like the Hisense L5G or the Hisense PX1-Pro, which Rob would not even let his dogs suffer through. Listen. right. And one thing to take into consideration is with Hisense, you know, the, the, essentially the pioneer of this laser TV terminology and the largest player in China. And just to give a little more context, Formovie is the second largest. So jumping back to the whole thing about them coming out of nowhere, maybe in the United States, but not globally, but not in China. Yeah. But the PX1-Pro is not the Hisense. Won't call it a laser TV, they actually call it a laser cinema projector. Right, right. That has a lower lumen output than their L9G that has the fixed focus and the funnel and the bundle with the screen because they are intending for that unit to be placed in a more dedicated theater environment.
Chris Majestic: (01:24:30)
Please talk about the 100L9G so people can leave me alone. cause that's all I'm getting on my video, please, while you're at it, Rob. I mean, Brian, please talk about it. Sure.
Brian Gluck: (01:24:40)
So, Hisense has a wider range of products. They probably have more skews in this category than anyone else. Yeah. And Hisense's philosophy about laser TV is that these are television. So their L9G is the triple laser big sibling of the PX1-Pro, but it comes with a focus set at the factory to either a 100 or a 120. And it comes bundled with the screen and it is brighter. It's 3000 lumen at peak versus I believe 2200 lumen of the PX1-Pro. So that's their laser TV. It's intended to go into the living room. And, you know, I've always had, I've, I've been an early adopter of Hisense products, you know, in, in our store. So I've been working with them for years and I've always been like, well guys, you know, the lack of variable focus, you know, I feel is a, is a detriment to the adoption of this particular product because yeah, you know, someone may want a 100 today, but if they're investing, you know, and their earlier iterations were $10,000, plus, you know, the L10E model, right?
Brian Gluck: (01:25:41)
Yeah. Someone's gonna make that $10,000 investment. They may have the 100 inch size right now, but they may know they wanna move at some point and they wanna be able to scale up, which is something that you've always been able to do with projectors. So they may feel pigeonholed into something and not have the, not be as future proof, I guess, for lack of a better term on where they could move it and scale with the size and the explanation I got from Hisense. And this comes from Asia, right? This is not necessarily the philosophy of the United States team. Hisense views this as a television. Yes. We're all talking about UST as a projector, but to them it's a television and you can't change the size of your television. So why should you change the size of your laser TV? So, and I understand why people are blowing up Chris's comments and asking about the L9G, right. They're very, very comparable. And while the L9G is brighter at peak brightness, when they're calibrated, it's very, very comparable to the PX1-Pro
Chris Majestic: (01:26:36)
Even minorly calibrated, like even a little bit. Yeah.
Scott Wilkinson: (01:26:38)
Yeah. Cause certainly calibration brings down the overall brightness yes. Of
Brian Gluck: (01:26:43)
Just, and especially, you know, and I know in our comments right here, you know, and I'm sure he's already starting to type this right now, is that your color source is also your light source. Right. So if, if something's coming out and it's really red or it's really blue, and you've gotta tame that by bringing down that color, you're also affecting the light output. So, you know, properly calibrating, some of these units absolutely had an effect on the overall peak brightness, you know, and some more significantly than others
Chris Majestic: (01:27:12)
And just to piggyback real quick, I'll keep it short, off of what you said about the L9G because I'm a big fan of the 100L9G. It's won a few awards on my channel. So that's why people are like, “Dude, I thought you said this was the best. And I didn't buy the best”. Well, like to just what Brian said is when, even a little bit, I mean, even minor calibration, they are very similar in brightness. And I just wanted to just mention that again, because that is why we just went with the PX1-Pro because it made more sense. And I do see somebody's comment talking about don't you have to pull it out closer to the center of your room and yes, that is true. But when you have a variable focus, you can change it to whatever size you want within the range. So that's a big deal. And that was my biggest issue with the 100L9G.
Scott Wilkinson: (01:27:56)
Right. Well, listen, we have had a really long, excellent discussion here about this event. Brian, do you expect this to become an annual event?
Brian Gluck: (01:28:06)
I would, Rob, I'm gonna put that ball in your court, right? So one thing I say, I would certainly love to do it again. I will say that it could not have been done without Rob, right? Rob and the Projector Central team, amazing, total professionals, very humbling to work with him, as well as working with the team of judges. I've never felt more insecure about my knowledge of Projection
Scott Wilkinson: (01:28:30)
<laugh>
Brian Gluck: (01:28:31)
Then with these guys and not necessarily during the competition, because I really tried to remove myself. I did pop in a little bit and check out what they were looking at, but, you know, it was the dinners afterwards. And, you know, Chris, I love hanging out with you, but Sammy Prescott, he's like on a whole other level, man, Sam, Sammy Prescott, like, so, and Chris Eberly, you know, Al Griffin, all of these guys, fantastic group of people. I'd love to do this again with Rob and Projector Central. Hopefully he feels that we were worthy partners of, of doing this again with, and, uh,
Rob Sabin: (01:29:04)
Yeah, yeah, we had, I'll tell you what, at first of all, it was a blast to pull it together. There was a lot of learning on this one, needless to say, but that we could take into next year. and certainly there'd be a couple of things that maybe we'd tune up and do differently, but, ultimately, you know, project, your screen turned out to be the perfect partner for this. It's something that we always wanted to do at projector central. you know, that's really what our brand is about is you know, getting to, getting to the bottom of what's the best. And ultimately with Brian, we had a partner who had a great facility, had access to the products, was willing, as he has pointed out, to step back and let us do an independent editorial of evaluation, and to his credit, you know,he stayed out of it. And we really, I think we learned a lot about the category as a whole. We made some great friends, I think, in the process, among our judges. And, yeah, we'd love to do it again. We'll have to see how that , you know, we get it figured out for next year.
Scott Wilkinson: (01:30:06)
Yeah. And Majestic, would you be a judge again?
Chris Majestic: (01:30:09)
I would, I would happily, I like, as I love these guys, Rob and Brian were fantastic. I just wanted to hang out with 'em and have a couple beers with 'em or something after. but I had to run home, but which I'm
Scott Wilkinson: (01:30:19)
Sure I'm sure that may very well have happened.
Chris Majestic: (01:30:21)
Yeah. Well, not as, not as, as I wanted to cause I had to rush home, but like it was, I almost wanna just come up there on a whim one weekend and just hang out with those guys. They were fantastic.
Rob Sabin: (01:30:31)
Yeah. It really was. We had a great night the night before though. So, you were part of that.
Chris Majestic: (01:30:35)
Yes.
Scott Wilkinson: (01:30:35)
Yeah. Excellent. Excellent. Well guys, thank you so much. This has been a wonderful discussion and I'm sure, very helpful to anyone who's in the market, for such a thing. If you want a really big screen TV, like in the a hundred inch range or so this is a much more cost effective way to do it than buying a hundred inch flat panel. I've always said. And, and now we know which ones might really be, you know, give you the most bang for the buck. So, Brian Gluck of ProjectorScreen.com. Thank you so much for being here.
Brian Gluck: (01:31:09)
Thank you very much, Scott. It was a pleasure.
Scott Wilkinson: (01:31:11)
And Rob Sabin from projector central.com. You're always welcome here. It's great to have you. Thank
Rob Sabin: (01:31:18)
You, Scott. It was really great to chat with you.
Scott Wilkinson: (01:31:20)
Yeah. And Chris Majestic of Majestech that's your YouTube channel.
Chris Majestic: (01:31:25)
Yes. Chris Majestic. Well, it used to be Majestech, so sometimes you'll see Chris Majestic, sometimes you'll see Majestics but I still use both. Okay. But it's been a pleasure. I really thank you for having me here. It's been fantastic. It was nice meeting you and I hope to be on another one of these live streams.
Scott Wilkinson: (01:31:39)
Oh, I'm sure you will. I have no doubt about that. You'll expect to hear from me again.
Chris Majestic: (01:31:44)
Awesome.
Scott Wilkinson: (01:31:45)
Before we go. I wanna bring back Chris Mata, because he is gonna be heading out to, Brian's place tomorrow. Isn't that right
Chris Mata: (01:31:56)
Tomorrow. Yeah. I'm going out there. We're gonna be doing a lot of the same things, things that we did that you guys already did before with the judges, as well as Rob, the, the competition that you guys set up, what I wanted to do and you guys nailed it on the head is just basically make it a completely blind type of decision. So these things are still calibrated from the showdown the shootout. So, what are you gonna do?
Scott Wilkinson: (01:32:16)
Put some cardboard around each one. So you can,
Chris Mata: (01:32:18)
We're gonna figure it out. Maybe just put a happy meal box in front of it or something.
Scott Wilkinson: (01:32:22)
<laugh>
Chris Mata: (01:32:24)
I wanna go with their biggest be like, Hey, I like that one. I like this one. And then, you know, call it the way it is. So yeah. It's gonna be pretty interesting. Um we're
Scott Wilkinson: (01:32:31)
So that's gonna be on your YouTube channel, That Home Theater Dude,
Chris Mata: (01:32:34)
Correct? Yes. So that's gonna be coming up very, very shortly. A lot of these guys, they want their content up ASAP. So I'm actually going out there on a personal trip afterwards, bringing the wife up there for her birthday and then flying out to Macintosh and then doing the Macintosh tour. So wrote a really cool trip coming up. Sounds
Brian Gluck: (01:32:52)
Great. Yeah. One thing I'd like to mention about keeping your eye on Chris's channel: Spectra Projection sent us a 150 inch lenticular screen. My knowledge is the only one in the country we built it last week. We're gonna set it up, you know, and Dr. Chris over there is gonna be able to debut it on his YouTube channel.
Scott Wilkinson: (01:33:10)
Oh man. So stay tuned for that.
Chris Mata: (01:33:12)
And then Brian's gonna send it over here and we're gonna,
Scott Wilkinson: (01:33:18)
Well, that sounds great.
Chris Mata: (01:33:19)
I Kid I could.
Scott Wilkinson: (01:33:20)
All right, well, it's, it's, it's gonna be great. And we'll, we'll be talking more about this and I look forward to having you all back on the show, at some future date,
Chris Mata: (01:33:29)
I guess the next one's from CEDIA, right?
Scott Wilkinson: (01:33:31)
Well no, the next one you're gonna be at CEDIA. The show's not gonna actually start yet. You're already gonna be in Dallas and
Chris Mata: (01:33:39)
I'll probably already be done
Scott Wilkinson: (01:33:41)
you might already be done. Yeah, but we're gonna do a show, in three weeks from now. And then the show after that is gonna be with some people who were at the show. And we're gonna talk about what everybody saw and heard at CEDIA. So, the next couple shows should be pretty interesting. Hope you'll join us. And, until then geek out.