A different class of TV
“The 100-inch screen rejects ambient light quite well, designed to reflect light from the angles required to fill the screen and deliver it to viewers in front.”
Clearly there’s a problem with big TVs — transportation. How do you even get a 100-inch TV into your home? The more common solution for a picture of such a size has long been to have a projector. But a projector isn’t a TV. It doesn’t have speakers (at least, any worth mentioning) or a TV tuner or many of the other usability features of a TV. And it invariably has problems with ambient light which leaves it being a solution for evening use only.
Which brings us to the Hisense 100RXL 100-inch Laser TV. It has all the facilities of a fully-equipped Ultra-HD TV, but these are built into an ultra short-throw projector. Furthermore it comes with its own 100-inch screen which has been designed to help deal with some of the problems with front projectors — ambient light in particular.
Equipment
First a clarification that just as the Laser TV is half-TV, half projector, this is a half-review, half a lesser ‘hands-on’. Hisense was reluctant to send us a unit to review in our usual test rooms, so they brought us to the unit, leaving us overnight with it in a lovely house which had been the venue of the launch event. So while we didn’t get the extended time we usually enjoy to tease out any half-hidden issues, I did bring my own UltraHD Blu-ray player with various test discs and patterns, so I was able to give the unit a decent run-through. I will return to that.
But first, what exactly is the Hisense 100RXL TV? Well, although Hisense calls it a ‘TV’, it is, of course, an extremely short-throw front projector. The unit sits near the foot of the projection screen, its leading edge less than 20cm from the wall.
