on today's episode of you asked TVs versus projectors projectors versus TVs some stuff about
projectors some stuff that is projector adjacent and one thing that has absolutely nothing to do
with projectors and yet still somehow [Music] does welcome back everyone I'm Caleb Denison
and this is you asked the show where I answer questions you asked in hopes that I can help
you and others who have similar Tech questions if you've got a question for me please send it
to you digitaltrends.com and let's see if your question gets picked to be answered on the show
today my friends if it's not obvious already we're going to do a projector heavy special we haven't
talked a ton about projectors on this channel in the past save a few reviews and some chats about
what is and isn't a laser TV but that changes in 2024 and honestly I think there is no better
time to do this given some some of the massive TV screen sizes we're seeing these days along with
falling prices on those massive screen sizes along those lines let's start with a question
from well I'm going to say it came from SCA bags which is a madeup name I find hilarious and the
reason I'm making up the writer's name is that I cannot for the life of me find the actual email
question probably because it didn't come as an email and it's not in the US inbox like it needs
to be but it's the perfect kick off question and it went a little something like this with
all these huge screens we saw announced at CES do you think projectors are on the way out a related
question came from Sayeed who said hey Caleb I was wondering about the new XGIMI projectors how
come you don't also include projector reviews the TV reviews are great but I wonder if I and others
should consider a projector for screens that are 100 plus Ines and yet another viewer left
a comment on one of our CES coverage videos asking if there were any projectors at CES s
and if so why they weren't seeing coverage from anyone around those now I included all of those
questions because they all tie into this one big answer first off I don't think projectors
are on their way out it's true that you can get a 98 in TCL S5 TV for $2,000 right now which is
just absolutely insane seriously folks if you're looking for a totally decent big screen TV check
that deal out because I can hardly believe it's real and I bring that up as evidence of
the truth that it's never been less expensive to get a large screen TV I remember back in the day
that anything above 85 Ines was only available from sharp and those TVs cost a small mint now
getting a 98 incher is easy but projectors still have a place because breaking that 100 in barrier
with a TV is still cost prohibitive that 110in hisense ux that was just announced as well as the
115in TCL qm 89 will no doubt be expensive I'm thinking somewhere between $5 to $20,000 maybe
so for cost reasons alone getting a projector set up remains a more economical choice for anything
over 100 in which is why we're going to be doing more projector coverage and reviews here on this
channel Ultra short throw projector prices are coming down and there are a bunch of good options
on the market I think the fact that large screen TVs are more affordable now are making folks more
comfortable with bigger and bigger screens and so projectors may become a more popular product
category by extension but what are big Brands thinking high sense sells both massive TV screens
and Laser TVs so I asked hisense president David gold about that at CES and here's what he told me
and we see it as complimentary right we see it as there are consumers who want that real cinematic
experience and get a little bit of that Silver Screen uh uh you know experience that they would
have in a movie theater a TV is a little bit of a different experience so we want to have a product
and a solution for that type of consumer who wants that uh as well as the versatility that we're now
starting to offer in uh laser as well you'll see a rollable screens you see the portability
of laser so a lot of applications that we can go with with the laser TV technology that'll go
just beyond more affordable large sizes um uh and on the other hand you know we have these types of
products like our hunt 110 and you know the gaming experience the watching sports in these types of
screens it's a different type of experience so we really see it as complimentary and it's basically
at a you know giving the consumer that ability to choose their own adventure in terms of what they
want at home so there you go clearly high sense feels the market for projectors is still pretty
strong as well now as for why we didn't see more projector coverage coming out of CES I can only
speak for our Channel and say that we were so busy with TVs which is kind of my bread and butter that
there simply wasn't time to cover projectors it's not that I didn't want to I just couldn't but yeah
I mean you got BenQ Epson hisense LG Samsung awol XGIMI jiai for movie there are a ton of options
now and we just can't gloss over those any longer and so we won't expect more projector coverage on
this channel and soon like I mean really soon next up is Taylor ulrich who writes would you
recommend a projector or a TV we're revamping our conference room in our new office that was
previously equipped with an old projector setup we'd be looking at an 85in TV if not a projector
it's a bright room due to a wall of Windows we use Google meet video conferencing often along
with other smart functions like screencasting YouTube Etc budget is $1,500 to $3,000 thanks
much from the team at KC highlights so Taylor I'd go with a large screen TV and you don't
have to stick to just 85 in as I just mentioned there are great deals on 98 in TVs right now from
TCL and Samsung I'll add that with a Google TV especially built-in chomecast make screen
sharing easy there may be a built-in support for Google meet even you'll never have to worry
about whether the image is bright enough and the speakers built into the TV eliminate the need to
have powered speakers connected to a projector so if you can mount a large screen TV in that space
85 in or larger I'd say go for that I'm a big fan of TVs over projectors for business spaces
whenever that's possible especially in conference rooms let's take a break from projectors for a
moment and talk media cabinets specifically our media cabinets which I get asked about at least
five times a week in the comments one recent commenter liked that our media console could
support the Nakamichi Dragon because they got one and didn't want a wall Mount uh that Soundbar and
said they had trouble finding a media console that was so wide and wondered where we got ours
so for everyone wondering we always link to the gear that we have in this studio down in
the description but the media cabinets we use are made by BDI and the one you see most often is the
BDI elements here we also have the BDI octave in the studio and before that people went Gaga for
the now discontinued BDI Corridor so there there you go by the way I can't stress this enough this
BDI shout out is not sponsored I just happen to love their gear which I have to touch and
interact with every single day the build quality is Second To None the features are exactly what
I need especially for cable management they look awesome and because they are built to last they'll
probably outlive any of the gear that we put into them including Ultra short throw projectors also
the people at BDI are amazing which helps me make a super fan like I said not sponsor spored I just
love their stuff but also I'm just I'm honestly maybe just a little bit tired of getting asked
about these things all the time okay no I'm not I love that you guys love the furniture
in our videos makes me feel like I've got some kind of sense of style or something okay moving
along Carlos Shaw writes I was wondering if you have a solution for switching between two HDMI EC
signals going to my Sonos Arc Soundbar I have a Samsung 2022 frame TV and an X Jimmy Horizon Pro
4K projector that use the Soundbar for sound there are the two HDMI cables that I manually uh switch
and reconnect or disconnect from the back of the Sonos Arc Soundbar depending on which one I want
to use I've purchased about 10 HDMI switches from Amazon hoping that I can easily toggle uh
each signal but to my surprise when I insert an HDMI switch between the Samsung TV or projector
and the Soundbar I get no audio at all nothing am I missing something about how the signals
work I'm fairly tech-savvy but I can't seem to figure this one out help so Carlos I gave this
one a lot of thought and consideration I'd like to know which HDMI switches you use just to make
absolutely sure they weren't missing a key feature that you might need in your email you assured me
they supported the switches did they supported e but as we know eArc support does not guarantee
HDMI 2.1 support nor does it guarantee hdcp 2.3 support for that reason I'm curious what you tried
for instance did you try one of mono Price's Blackbird switches I'd be curious to know if
this 8K 60 switch here would work for you I've been using it here and it's worked well for me
in almost every scenario but there's a chance that even with a switch that supports all the
things you may still run into an issue and I think this may be at the core of your problem
anytime you switch from one source to another and this is true for everybody out there right
but for Carlos your Sonos sound soundbar needs to complete an HDMI handshake with the source
when this handshake happens the Soundbar learns about what the source is what it can do what kind
of signal it's going to send it includes all this information in the edid which stands for extended
display identification data included in that handshake is a recognition of hdcp which stands
for high bandwidth digital content production this is the feature that supposedly prevents
piracy of movies for a bit torrrent obviously it's working amazingly well anyway this handshake must
be completed successfully in order for everything to work and my concern is that when you use your
switcher to go back and forth between the TV and the projector as sources that handshake is not
getting triggered now ideally the switch you use would trigger this handshake it would force it
so that the Eid was communicated and if it did I think everything would be working fine from
experience I know that you may get the video to work but not the audio so my suggestion for
now is to try this when you make a switch from TV to projector or vice versa try turning the TV or
projector off and then back on see if that works if it doesn't try turning the Sonos Soundbar off
and then back on if one of those works then my suspicion that the handshake is not taking place
after the switch goes from one source to the other uh then we need to dig further into what a switch
needs to do to force this new handshake and what witches out there will do it for you if any I'll
talk to the folks at monoprice and maybe chat with my friend Jason DL at merido who I am sure
has a ton of experience with this sort of thing will get it figured out but try what I suggested
then get back to me and we'll do a followup on this in a future episode so that everyone else
can learn about what happened here's a question I enjoyed a lot coming from bcom 77 not exactly a
projector question but projector adjacent I guess you could say they wrote We all hear about TVs
these days having Cinema filmmaker modes that are supposed to best capture the Cinematic experience
and creators intent and most TV reviewers and enthusiasts say that OLED TVs are best for
capturing this but shouldn't LED Min LED TVs be best for this as due to their backlighting they
better mimic a cinema screen and its projector you don't get oled's perfect blacks and near infinite
contrast ratios in a movie theater no matter how good it's set up so therefore wouldn't that mean
that OLED TVs are not delivering the most accurate cinematic experience not implying that oleds are
inferior TVs as we all know that's not true it's just a thought I had and I'd be interested to see
what your thoughts on it are long question worth reading it out I think even though I know Chris
is tearing his hair out right now sorry about that Chris interesting thought I guess I'll
start by sharing my thoughts on this by pointing out that there is a lot that's different between
what happens in a cinema and what's happening on a TV at home the trick with projectors and screens
is that black levels or the bases for contrast comes from an absence of any light other than
that which the projector is supplying Now movie theaters are rarely pitch black right you've got
those red exit signs that create light right and then there's the safety light so people can see
where they're walking there are a few different light sources in a movie theater so you never have
a complete absence of light still theaters do a pretty decent job of mitigating how much of the
light in those theaters impacts the screen as a result you do get a pretty decent black level in a
theater you're right though they aren't perfect black like an OLED but I bet those Hollywood
directors sure wish they were but I also know a lot of Hollywood directors that will talk about
how they don't need more than 200 nits to light a scene properly so let's not get into that in a TV
the filmmaker or Cinema mode is meant to get the color temperature right meant to get the motion
Cadence correct I.E no motion motion smoothing and solid 24 frame per second reproduction and
they're supposed to get the luminance right in other words the average Picture level is meant to
coordinate well in a darkened room while LCD TVs may have black levels that more accurately mirror
the experience that you have in a cinema they also bring other issues to the table that don't
exist in the cinema like blooming and Halo it's one thing for the blacks to not be totally black
but it's another for it to be splotchy around the light Source only in a cinema if the black
levels are splotchy it's not tied to the content it's tied to the ambient light does that make
sense there isn't a straight line of comparison between the way an LED backlit LCD TV behaves
and the experience that you get from a projector and a screen in a cinema I think the reason that
we like OLED so much is that black is black yes but there's no Halo or blooming involved there's
one other differentiating factor that we haven't talked about though and that leads us nicely into
our next question which comes from fabrice and because their email is pretty long I'm going to
have to paraphrase here and it's still long fabr writes I live in China and I'm looking to upgrade
my home theater setup for now I have a xiaomi first gen 4K laser Ultra short throw projector
on an ALR screen linked to our morance sr7013 with an Nvidia Shield Pro a computer a Nas and a PS4
and a Sony 4K Reader F goes on to mention that he wants to upgrade his screen or display in his
setup and mentions that he got a chance to check out the TCL X 955 and high sense ux8 both of which
are models specific to his region he then goes on to mention that he wasn't stoked about the motion
blur and lack of definition on those TVs compared to what he's used to with his projector he likes
the brightness contrast and color of the TVs but wants better motion Clarity and he's wondering if
his money might be better spent on a projector or on a TV given the most motion Clarity issues
he's wondering maybe the TVs just weren't set up properly when he saw them so fabr the only
way to deal with motion blur on an LCD TV even with refresh rates of 120 HZ or 240 HZ is to use
motion smoothing processing the signal you get from your sources is likely 24 or 30 FPS most of
the time 60 FPS at best unless you're gaming and you can get legit 120 FPS content or higher that
means that the TV needs to create fake frames to take advantage of its higher refresh rate
sometimes they're good at doing that and sometimes they aren't but there's an inherent limitation to
LCD based TVs that you aren't stuck with in your laser projector and it's why your 60 HZ laser
projector looks smoother guys it's the Liquid Crystal Part the LC and LCD or for some projectors
it could be lcos liquid Crystal on silicone your projector is a DLP type projector yes it uses a
laser light source but the chip that controls and deploys that light is a DLP chip which stands for
Digital Light projection and it has a much much faster response time than Liquid Crystal does so
the advantage your projector has is the DLP chip which can only work in projection systems if you
had an LCD 3 LCD or lcos projector you would notice that the motion looks very similar to
an LCD TV because they use the same fundamental Liquid Crystal technology to shut the light on and
off the Liquid Crystal is just slower and more sluggish than DLP that is at the heart of what
you're noticing and frankly DLP and its smoother motion is another reason why folks might prefer
a projector for a large screen solution over a TV if that TV is going to be LCD based as opposed to
say a massive OLED or micro LED TV where those emissive displays are just just lightning fast
and frankly just can't be matched by anything else on today's market so I would say that if you don't
mind the look of motion smoothing you could go with one of those TVs and be happy but if you
like a more cinematic look and want to steer clear of that soap opera effect entirely then you may be
better off buying a newer brighter laser projector that uses a DLP chip because it will give you the
motion Clarity that you're already used to along with higher contrast and brighter colors and while
you're at it I'd suggest looking at a projector that uses more than one laser light too for the
brightest color potential there are plenty of them out there right in the budget that you're looking
at hope that helps folks that's another episode of you asked in the can I hope you enjoyed this
projector special if you did will you let me know down in the comments tell me if you want
more of this kind of thing I can't wait to see you there and while you're down there smash the
like button consider subscribing if you don't already we do these episodes once a week I'll
see you on the next one and until then here's two other videos I think you might like [Music]