- This is what happens when you run your mouth
on the internet, I thought I was a cool guy, I was like,
hey this is a crazy curved ultra wide Alienware monitor,
if anyone has one of these,
I'll pay 10 grand for it, so I can unbox it,
I was 100% certain nobody had one,
Alienware told me nobody had one,
well as it turns out, Alienware was just rebranding,
a monitor from a little known company,
called Ostendo called the CRVD 43,
this my friends is the world's first,
as far as we can tell curved desktop monitor
and the world's first ultra wide desktop monitor
and it wasn't Alienware,
so I did get a bit of a discount
but I still ended up paying 6,000 US dollars for this thing,
so it better be really fucking cool,
welcome to holy,
the heaviest monitor that I have yet encountered,
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The Genesis of all of this was a Reddit post,
that was brought up in our weekly writer's meeting,
it looks so cool, I was like,
holy crap that is such an amazing piece
of computing history, like I need it,
we reached out to everyone we could think of,
to get our hands on one of these puppies
but all of them were dead ends,
in a few cases they did actually have the display
but less of a dead end and more of a dead display,
so then it ended up getting thrown at oh my God it's heavy,
it ended up getting thrown in as a topic for the Wan show,
where I kind of jokingly kind of seriously,
put out a $10,000 bounty and when I did that,
I will buy it from you for 10,000 us dollars if it works,
so that I can make a video about it.
I was not expecting to actually pay $10,000,
I expected to get nothing other than the same pictures,
we had already seen of non-working units
and yet lo and behold,
10 days later,
we got an email with a link to a video
of a new inbox monitor, like look carefully at this,
this is actual official packaging for this thing,
we verify the monitor did in fact work
and the deal was made, I'm sure that guy
was not expecting to get $6,000 for this ancient technology,
I mean look at this thing, even when it's off,
the screen's not even black,
there were three variants of this,
the Alienware one from CES 2008, where no price was given,
there wasn't any C variant,
that was shown at the 2009 Mac world event,
where a hefty $8,000 price tag was given,
then there's ours the Ostendo Technologies,
CRVD, 43 inch curved display and when this was first sold
for a very brief period in 2009 at its cheapest,
it was a modest 6,500 US dollars,
which is kind of crazy because that's actually very close,
to what we ended up paying for it,
now at every event where the display was shown,
it made headlines, anyone who saw it,
I mean look at this 2008 was wowed
by both the curved nature of the display and how wide it is,
like sitting about two feet from it,
gives you a natural 90 degree field of view,
that's actually very comparable,
to high-end curved ultra wide displays today,
this thing was literally a decade ahead of its time,
which isn't to say that everything about it,
holds up particularly well today,
let's start getting it hooked up
and talk through some of the specs,
so in terms of connectivity,
display port, ladies and gentlemen, didn't exist yet,
so we're gonna go ahead and oh, it's fine,
there's your power input right there, ladies and gentlemen,
got that dual link DVI input, it's in my port,
I would actually be surprised if it runs full res on,
what HDMI version would this have even been?
1.3 oh baby,
USB to hub though ladies and gentlemen,
it's a great value at $6,000,
the stand looks like cast aluminum I guess,
25 pounds without the stand,
well the stand definitely on smaller weight,
'cause it's pretty heavy.
Wait, this is a single link DVI to HDMI,
why would it come with such a weird stupid cable?
Can I just have like a regular dual link DVI cable?
- [Nicholas] I brought the HDMI
- Oh right we're running like a 2080 or something here
and obviously it doesn't have DVI.
Who bought this thing and then never opened it?
Oh my God do you hear those fans?
It's as loud as a computer,
whoa, giant cooling fan right here,
based on the position,
I would say it must be near the power supply
'cause the power goes in right under there
and then check this shiz out,
look at these giant heat sinks here,
it's funny I didn't think about it
but that totally makes sense,
that this would have to have Beefy cooling in it
because the way that they built it
is unlike anything that I've seen before,
so it's got a 2880 by 900 resolution
and how they achieved that and the curvature of the display
is that it's actually instead of being just one display,
four DLP LED lit screens in portrait mode just lined up,
so pretty much it's kind of full of projectors,
what's cool about being DLP though is that we might actually
get a pretty decent gaming experience out of this thing
because it boasts a 0.02 millisecond response time,
that's right, we're gonna game on it,
this is a classic in terms of interface down here,
hey, it works, wow that is really washed out,
system error, 1508 contact tech support,
what are the odds Ostendo's Tech support still around,
some of the other specs, LTTstore.com by the way,
include 200 nit peak brightness ouch,
10,000 to one contrast ratio,
sure that looks like a bad sign, a 100% SRGB coverage
and 99% coverage of the Adobe RGB color space,
should I be worried about that?
So let's try the power cycle trick here,
wow it has like a boot down sequence,
you can like hear the power supply.
Yes, oh wow It actually looks a lot better too,
now that it's warmed up, that's crazy,
you can still absolutely see the seams
between the projectors like it's hello,
so right there, right there, right there and right there,
there's your four are they LED backlit?
- [Nicholas] Yeah.
- That would have been like crazy town technology
at the time, that's insane, check it out from this angle,
like see how stark those lines are between the projectors,
to be clear it's not great but it's not that bad actually,
let's give it a little calibri.
Wow look at this it's got a menu and everything,
I would have given basically anything for this 10 years ago,
so you're actually aligning the two different projectors,
holy crap, so it can move them, it can move them?
You gotta be kidding me,
It's definitely blurrier towards the outside
but that's pretty typical of a projection style display,
okay so how do you make white smooth?
Okay then, oh I see, so it's adjusting the brightness,
at the meeting point where they overlap,
oh, that's a little better actually,
it just darkened it a bit more,
information, yes please, tell me more information,
2880 by 960 Hertz native sync type digital, yeah okay,
in terms of responsiveness here,
yeah for a 60 Hertz display, it's not bad,
like it feels, it feels fine,
now there was a lot of confusion at the time
because the thickness, the girth of this display,
led people to believe that it was a CRT but it wasn't
and quite frankly, that's a bit of an unfortunate thing,
if it was a CRT,
it would definitely be even heavier than it is,
actually by a considerable margin
but it would also have better image clarity
and better brightness,
it kind of buzzes different sounds,
depending on how much of the display is actually active,
that's so weird,
everything about this thing is so weird,
what even is this aspect ratio 32 by 10 in game,
the lines are really not that noticeable,
especially from that two foot sweet spot,
like it's really tuned,
like if I'm in here, I can make it out
and if I'm out here, I can make it out but like right here,
holy crap like,
it feels really responsive,
like holy crap, my mind would have been absolutely blown,
to try something like this, no wonder it made headlines
at every show that they download the thing,
interestingly I'm not getting any noticeable rainbow effect
and normally I find it quite noticeable on DLP displays,
I don't know if that just has to do
with the small size of it or my proximity to it
or what the deal is there.
- [Nicholas] Ostendo's specialty was LEDs back then.
- Interesting.
I mean the advertised contrast ratio
is obviously complete bullshit,
to put it as charitably as I possibly can
but pretty much everything else about it
is really impressive, so when I whip the camera,
like when I pan the camera like this,
you see a little bit of display tearing
but for not having V sync enabled, that's normal,
what's shocking to me,
so here if we turn this sync on,
what's shocking to me is that in between the displays,
I don't notice anything,
like I don't notice like a kind of a compression expansion,
kind of artifact or anything like that,
it really does feel like one big display,
there's things that they lied about for sure
but there's also things they got really, really right,
gaming aside from like a creative standpoint,
something like this would have been absolutely game changing
with that said, I think you'd still need another display
for certain types of work,
like I mean, if I was doing anything,
that I expected to be color accurate on here,
get real, it might have that gamut coverage or whatever
but I mean with the amount of you know,
fringing for example on borders
and with how much variation there is with a single color,
across the entire width of the display like here,
you can see how the start menu
is like kind of pink over on this side
and then it's more like dark here, there's no way,
that you'd be doing any kind of like color accurate work
but from just a sheer screen real estate standpoint,
we're looking at a very modern amount of screen real estate
for you know, timelines and you know media bins
and graphics and all that kind of stuff like this,
again would have been absolutely mind blowing,
to 10 years ago me, in conclusion,
as a 10 year ago, tech demo, absolutely freaking unreal,
I don't know that I would have spent
this kind of money on it,
just because there are some serious quality
of life problems with it
with respect to, you know the changes in the zones,
particularly the maximum brightness is really not great,
contrast isn't great but as a 10 years ago tech demo,
unfreaking real,
I'm still not stoked that I paid $6,000 for it
but hey, maybe we'll do a live stream,
you wanna see a tear down, live stream tear down?
Let us know in the comments below,
let's squeeze two videos out of this thing,
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If you guys are looking for another video,
to watch right now, maybe check out,
oh, this one on the light field hollow display,
that's like, you know, tomorrow's technology today,
instead of today's technology yesterday.