- There's three different places in the house
where we're gonna have a TV or a projector,
family room upstairs,
the VR gaming space here
and the theater room.
And if we wanna have the capability to play Xbox games
in all of those locations,
I'm gonna need three Xboxes.
Multiply that problem
by every other potential gaming system,
you got your Nintendo switch,
you got your gaming PC,
and all of a sudden you've got a huge problem
with respect to cost, complexity
and even just power consumption.
Fortunately, as much of a champagne problem
as that might be,
the solution is not that champagne
and is one that might actually be applicable to you as well.
- It might be a $6,000 receiver,
but the feature that we're gonna use
is present on a lot of them.
Even the one that I bought for like 100 bucks
has two zones.
What we're gonna do is use those receiver zones
to split this Xbox into both displays.
So you can play Xbox here,
Xbox there, PC there, PC there, Nintendo switch everywhere.
And what's really mind blowing
is that on this particular unit,
we can actually take two different inputs like the gaming PC
and the Xbox, and then route them to two separate outputs
at the same time.
- You could even mirror them.
You can switch which one has which.
It's pretty exciting.
- Just like our sponsor.
- Jackery.
Their Explorer 1500 power station
provides a huge 1500 watt hour capacity.
It charges up to seven devices simultaneously
and it takes only four hours to recharge from zero to hero.
I mean, 80%.
Get 10% off with code linustechtips at the link below.
(upbeat music playing)
- Naturally, the first thing we need to talk about
in this video is Jake's beautiful diagram
of how we expect all of this to work.
- We did this together, thank you very much.
So if it doesn't work, you're sharing blame.
- Basically, we've got our receiver.
We've got our Xbox going into the receiver.
Then we run the eARC from the screen one,
which is the projector to the receiver
and the regular HDMI output to the VR room TV.
- This should give us 4k 120 to the receiver
and then can be split or switched between these two zones.
- Four mirrored.
- And then you get eARC back to the sound bar
and the receiver has its own speaker
so we don't have to worry about that.
- Obviously in the theater room.
Then the PC, okay.
Even though this receiver is like top of the line,
it only has a single 4k 120 Hertz input.
Now we have a solution to that in the long term,
which is just a secondary HDMI input selector,
but we don't have that today.
So to test, we're gonna run the PC
directly into a 4K 120 input
on both the projector and the TV.
- Then we use eARC to get the audio back.
That's the idea.
We don't know if it's gonna work.
- Representing the VR room TV,
we're gonna have this LGC1 48 inch.
And then representing the theater room projector,
we're gonna have the theater room projector.
Epson, whatever it is, 12,000.
- The models here are actually kind of important.
We need both displays to have eARC.
I actually picked a monitor as one of the displays first
and then it was like, "Oh."
"That's not gonna work."
We also need our display to have eARC on a port
that we're not gonna use,
because remember, it's just for the sound bar.
So we need like three HDMI 2.1 ports.
- Just for these two inputs
and then naturally Sonos and their infinite wisdom
doesn't have a single additional HDMI input.
- Oh, Jesus. Look at the TV.
Oh my God.
You're not even on the ground. Oh, my God.
Oh my God.
- Thank you.
You might say you jumping into fix that
makes you an arc reactor.
Sound bar goes into HDMI input two.
eARC, which allows the sound from...
Yes, the sound from the other 4K 120 inputs
to be passed through to this sound bar.
- Is this hurting your brain yet?
- Yes.
- It's hurting my brain. - Okay.
- You should use monitor two.
Because we're not using the zones yet.
- We're not.
- If this plan works, we don't even need to use the zones.
It's confusing, right?
Monitor one and monitor two. Those are both zone one.
- What? - I've determined this.
- Because it said it had three zones...
- It does have three zones.
The third zone is audio only.
- I see.
- Remember the PC doesn't even plug into this thing.
So this will allow us to mirror the outputs basically
on zone one.
- Now we take our Xbox series, whatever it's called
and that goes into 8K in.
That's our only HDMI 2.1 input on this whole damn thing.
- $5,000 Receiver.
And you know, the best part?
They released new low end receivers
that have three inputs.
- In the time since I bought this.
- Yeah.
Actually it was like a week after you bought it.
Where are you going? I need the power.
- I'm plugging this into a computer.
- You're a computer.
Now, we're not done yet because this graphics card now,
needs to go to both of our displays separately
from the receiver.
- Okay, so we have one on either right now,
but we also want to be able to have it on both, right?
- Mm. Yeah.
- So switch the TV To HDMI 3.
- Which is the Xbox.
- Beautiful. - Oh Shut up.
- Was it really that easy?
Okay, what's cool about this,
you could have people gaming in the theater room
and people are playing board games out here
and just peripherally paying attention to who's winning
or whatever.
Or you could be playing a local multiplayer game,
like a split screen game or whatever.
And you could have each of the teams
sitting in a separate zone
so that they can talk to each other,
like kind of have private comms between the two rooms.
- Wait, hold on.
- What?
- What about audio though?
Because we have audio there.
- Oh.
- That's theater room.
- But not here.
No, I don't hear anything.
Oh, zone wait zone.
- We're not using zones. - Cause they're both zone one.
- Yes.
- Why don't we just use two zones then?
- Because then it's not 4K 120.
It would just be 4K 60.
There's only one 4K 120 input
but if we could select that input on that output.
- Yeah.
That's what I thought Crutchfield's site says.
- Okay. Well let's try that then.
- Okay. - So we need to...
- Switch to the other zone, like I said.
I pulled the TV out of the monitor two for zone one
and I put it into 4K zone two,
which is under HDMI out 8K.
- Okay. So zone two says it's on the game source right now.
I can see all the sources here. So if we can view zone two.
- Oh. What?
- Game.
- Okay. So we want AUX two.
- Where's AUX two?
- It's not there.
- What if we...
Let's look at the main zone.
What options do we have for main zone?
Whoa. A lot more.
- Wait.
- It just doesn't even let you select the source.
- You can't use AUX two...
- Cause it's 4K 120, bro.
I have a workaround,
big but, it wouldn't be 4K 120 on both.
- Ah. Really?
- But.
- But?
- You can do 1080 each 120.
- Oh that's not bad.
- So I'm thinking the Xbox would be on that.
- Okay. I put it back in the other way then.
- This is just a theory to it.
I don't actually know if this will work.
- The best part of all this
is that even if we solve this problem,
we have more problems to overcome today.
- What I did notice is you can see game DVD cable SAT
on both of them.
- Yeah.
- So I figure if we plug the Xbox into one of those,
then we can just pick and choose.
- Okay. - Xbox into game.
- Well then the PC doesn't have to have separate things
out to each thing.
It could just use the 8K...
- The whoty, whaty when?
- Oh wait no no no.
- The PC. - Nothing, nothing.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because we can't do it, it's in the second zone.
- Well, let's do PC into the TV
because then it can eARC the sound back to there
and then PC into the 8K input.
so then we have sound to from the receiver,
otherwise we're not gonna have sound from the receiver.
So if we take the PC,
plug it into the 8K input.
So PC is AUX-2 now and the Xbox is GAME.
So we'll do game for zone-2.
- Okay.
- And then main zone,
let's do GAME as well.
Let's see if we can get, okay, cool.
It's on both, right?
Do we have audio?
- Well, the ARC's working.
- And we have audio here?
- Yeah.
- Okay.
- Well that's progress.
- So we have audio on both now.
- And video on both. And if we go into the Xbox menu.
- What? Your TV doesn't support 120 Hertz.
What? Yes it does.
- Jake told me not to power cycle everything.
So I power cycled everything anyway.
There it is.
- Okay, but will it stay? Is the question.
- Smart call. Yeah.
- Does the projector even support this resolution though?
- 1080 P 120.? I bet it does.
- I mean, if it does 4K 120,
why would it not do 1080 120?
- I mean, I've seen dumber things.
In fact, I don't even see it having a signal right now.
Maybe the projector doesn't like it, then.
Epson y'all got some explaining to do.
If it could do 4K 120,
then you guys need to enable 1080 P 120, okay?
- Well hold on.
This might just be like, receiver being stupid.
- Yvonne's gonna kill me if this whole setup is just like,
super complicated and stupid.
- [Brandon] That's kind of what it is looking like.
- 4K 60 Xbox. We could do that.
- If 4K 60 is fine,
then we just need to figure out the PC.
- Okay.
- Yeah. So we got both.
Let's check the PC now, man.
- Now the idea is not necessarily
that you would wanna mirror the displays all the time.
So before we check the PC,
should we see how easy it is to say,
"Oh actually I want the Xbox out here
or actually, I want it in the theater room."
Now I go to zone one, which is my projector
and I can say, "Okay, I don't wanna see that anymore."
I could go back to zone two.
I go back to the game input and...
- Sweet.
Okay, so that's not that bad.
- That's actually not bad.
Once we just got it built into a couple of harmony remotes
or whatever, those new kick started ones,
we'll have to try it, I guess.
- All right, what if we try to switch
to the PC now though?
- Yes.
- Main zone... - On the projector?
- Yes, main zone, which is theater room.
I wish you could rename those
when then they weren't hard coded on the remote, but,
okay, cool.
- Okay.
- Now for audio...
- Wait. Yeah, hold on.
- Hold on a sec...
Oh God. Oh, I stepped on the remote.
Okay.
There's our in-game audio.
Now hit me with this.
- Man, Crab Rave was such a masterpiece.
- This is awesome.
- Okay. Hold on.
- But what if we want the PC in both locations?
Then all we gotta do is go like this,
HDMI-1.
- Which will be done by the harmony.
- Now I need to know if this also is crab rave.
- No, because... - What? But we paused it.
- It's not because the PC, oh God Windows...
- No, no. There's an application.
- There's an app for this - Oh yeah. Voice meter.
- Yes.
- You can output to two different things.
- Yes. - Okay.
We gotta set our windows output to voice meter input.
- Yes.
- And then we have hardware out that's Denon.
- And second one should be the LGTV.
- LGTV.
- Oh (bleep) I turned it all the way to max.
- Yeah.
Holy (bleep) it works.
- But we are not done for today.
Just because we can take our different inputs
and send them to whatever outputs we want.
Doesn't mean that this is how we want that to go down.
So the projector needs to move to the theater room,
the TV needs to stay here and the Xbox
needs to go somewhere in between.
- Dude, if this falls, thing's done for,
you know that right?
- Not if it falls that way.
- Oh, it's actually like...
- See.
These are cool.
These are the solution to having our source devices
be they Xboxes or gaming PC, switches,
whatever else the case may be,
and then are displays in completely different locations.
So both of the cables I'm holding are active HDMI cables
from Phantom cables.
These can come in a couple of different varieties.
Copper active cables.
So these are directional.
You gotta plug the specified side into your source
and the specified side into your display.
And then they're gonna have pretty thick copper conductors
because they actually are boosting the signal effectively
to make it all the way to the other side.
Then you've got your optical cables.
These can either have an auxiliary power input
like this Vivify one or they cannot,
but they actually convert from copper zeros and ones
to light zeros and ones and can often go much farther,
you can do a hundred foot.
- You can do a hundred meters.
- You can do a hundred meters, yeah.
This 25 footer is gonna be pretty tight.
- Oh, do not pull.
- No, no, I'm not gonna pull.
- I'm just gonna go here for safety.
- Yeah if you just wanna go there and hold it,
then I can pull on it and make sure...
- I'm gonna move the projector over.
Wait, hold on.
Is this speaker wire long enough?
Here, can you plug?
- Well, we have more anyway. It doesn't...
- Plug that in for me. Will you?
- Yeah. Sure.
- [Brandon] Oh.
- Sorry, Brandon.
I'm gonna keep walking.
- I'm a little tangled!
- No, no, wait. - Stop? Okay.
- Yeah, stop.
- Oh God, the PC.
- Yeah?
- Where are we gonna put that?
- Here.
Everything just goes here.
This is the projector output.
And then this one needs to go to the TV.
Cool feature, and this has become more and more common
on receivers since the Chromecast came out,
we've got a USB port back here
but it's not for firmware updates or anything like that.
It's just a little five volt power source. Boop.
So if we have something like a powered optical HDMI cable,
boop.
We can power it like that.
Okay. HDMI out, here.
- Into the game.
- Yeah. - Input.
- This is all it takes. And now I got game.
This boy goes here for the 4K 120 input, there.
- We just need another long one to go from the PC to the TV.
- I don't think this is going to reach Jake.
- Brother, we'll just move the TV.
- I'm running outta cable boys.
So this is input one?
- Whatever you want.
- Oh, I'm so thirsty. I forgot my water bottle.
If only I had thought to shop on lttstore.com,
I would have a water bottle
and there are so many different colors available.
- Editor like Photoshop or...
- Yeah, I was gonna say, thanks editor
for all your hard work,
putting all these different colors in.
- Can you put this water bottle in my hand?
- What? No.
- I bet you, you can't (bleep).
- Why you gotta be like that.
Put that outta here.
He's wasting your time which is wasting my money
because he thinks it's funny.
- I have no idea what's going on.
- I need the remotes.
- I'm just gonna take your word for it.
- I'm turning on the projector.
- It's just working. - Oh wow.
You see I'm a drift God bro.
You ever played a projector
on a black screen like that before?
- Man, once we actually have light control in here,
this is gonna be amazing.
- And not a black wall?
- Great. - Okay, So...
- Let's check the TV.
Did we ever actually turn the PC on?
- That's a good question. We should probably check that.
- Computer didn't post.
I think it might just be confused about
not having a keyboard and mouse and stuff though.
- Ah. (bleep).
- You (bleep) it up?
- I did.
- I (bleep) it. (Jake laughing)
- Okay, well let's check the projector while you fixed that.
- I just finished giving you guys a tech tip
about how these active cables are directional.
See I have the display end plugged into the PC.
What I want is the,
source end.
- While he fixes that let's check the projector.
Hey, it works.
Look at that.
I don't have a keyboard and mouse to mess with it.
- But it works. - Hold on. I can help.
- Left more, left a little bit more.
Oh the tiniest bit left.
Okay. Click.
I don't know why it's not working.
Oh, there's like an Edge prompt.
Okay. Oh, how did you do that?
- Escape.
- Right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right.
Up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up.
Click.
It's working.
(Jake mumbles)
Am I doing it right?
- All right.
- Okay. Let's go check the TV.
- This is fantastic.
As expected,
we're able to use the receiver's multiple inputs
and outputs.
And this is actually feature you might be able to find
on a receiver for a couple of hundred bucks on Craigslist.
Even if it doesn't support the latest standards.
- Or one you already have.
- And we're able to take whichever input we want
and send it to whichever destination we want.
The only hiccup we ran into is that
we can only have one of our sources be 4K 120 Hertz
until better receivers come out and...
- And you buy another one for $6,000.
- Jake gets a great deal on a formerly $6,000 receiver.
I'm onto you.
But we still have one more problem to solve.
While moving HDMI over long distances is no problem.
We could have that Xbox in the basement
and a TV up on the fricking second story.
- We could have a TV on the space station
if we had a long enough fiber.
- He's not wrong.
What we can't move around easily
is the wireless Xbox controller signal.
And this is kind of ironic
because Microsoft actually makes a USB dongle
that allows you to connect four Xbox controllers to it
that you could extend with an optical USB cable
to wherever you want.
But the issue is that dongle is only PC compatible.
So the last thing we need to test
is can we actually reach the Xbox
in the mechanical room from both the VR gaming space
and from the theater room?
- You feel that?
- What do I feel? Oh.
I think it might actually be working.
- Your TV has to restart itself?
Oh my...
To update the term...
(Jake hits himself in the head)
Oh wow. Look at that.
- Do you wanna throw it in a split screen gaming mode
and I'll head over to the other room?
This game doesn't have a split screen.
- Go to the other one then.
Then the Forza seven whatever had it.
Now this is approximately where it would end up.
And this is pretty far from the Xbox
through at least two walls.
A BMW M1? Okay, sure, Screw it.
- Jake, it doesn't matter what car we're driving.
We're just trying to find out if the controllers
are gonna work properly.
- It matters to me.
- He's taking on the inside.
- Ah, you pushed me off the track you ass.
Oh, this thing drives like (bleep).
- See you later.
- Oh, you suck.
- Any perceptible lag?
- Well, I mean it's an Xbox, so yeah, but...
- Well, right. But I mean, other than that.
- Yeah, it seems fine.
- It seems fine to me too.
- Compared to playing on a racing wheel on a computer,
this is like, this is dog (bleep).
- Well, okay. That's not the point.
The point is it works.
- The point is it works. Yes.
- For bonus points,
do you wanna try this upstairs in the family room?
- Do we not have a long enough cable?
- I think we can go straight to the family room.
I think it's right there.
- What time is it? - We'll just go right there.
- Oh, it's 5:30,
which is time to tell you about our sponsor.
(Jake laughs)
- FreshBooks.
When building a business you're passionate about,
it's easy to feel like there aren't enough hours in the day.
And if you're doing all the invoicing and accounting
on your own, you're probably spending time on work
you don't love.
Fresh books is built for business owners like you.
It's the all in one accounting software
that saves entrepreneurs and freelancers
up to 11 hours a week.
That's 11 hours you can spend nailing a client pitch,
serving your customers or honing your craft.
From building, sending and following up on invoices
to tracking and managing expenses,
to processing online payments.
FreshBooks, automates and simplifies
all the tough and annoying parts
of running your own business.
It's also super easy to get up and running
and the award-winning FreshBooks support team
is always available to answer questions.
Try FreshBooks for free for 30 days,
no credit card required.
Go to freshbooks.com/linus and get more time back
to build the business you love.
- If you guys enjoyed this video, go check out...
- The projector one.
- That was fun. - Yeah.
- That projector is...
- That was a blast. - It's a black wall.
- It's so cool.