I Transformed my Parents Living Room - ft World’s Biggest TV (Hisense)

[00:02] everything in this house happens. This is the lounging area. It's the cinema sometimes eat. It's the board game room. It's the mobile office. Exactly. So, I

[00:14] transform this space using [music] both nextgen tech, but also just smart thinking. The very first thing that pops into my mind here is light. Literally, step one of trying to make any TV look good is to control the light. I mean,

[00:27] just look at this TV right now. Like all I can see is reflection. And that's partly these curtains. Like they're not the most efficient way to block out light. Plus they're just so droopy. They take up so much space and they have this

[00:40] you to them? >> Not very now. Not after what you've >> Okay. So I'm thinking we swap these out for something a lot simpler, but also something that's a lot more flush to the wall. But honestly, the biggest crime in

[00:54] means if you're sitting on this couch and you're looking at the screen, you're getting direct 100% glare from here. So, a set of blinds mounted just above that arch that come down. I want these curtains to be completely automatic. I

[01:08] automatic. [music] But because they're two different things, they're going to we're going to need to buy a smart home system to bring them all together. So, we can go for a mini Echo Show [music] 5, Echo Show 8, Echo Show 10, or we just

[01:22] like an Echo Dot. >> Dot [music] is better than a blob. >> They're all blobs. The TV itself is I mean, it's solid. It's an 85 in Samsung LED screen, but it's from 2015. If we really want to make this feel like a

[01:37] top-end cinema, then this has got to be bigger. It's got to be smarter. No one should be navigating interfaces like this in 2025 with a remote that honestly feels like it has a 30% hit rate when you press things. That plus it's

[01:50] probably about time I got rid of these Switch controllers. That one's my fault. you came in and saw these? >> Uh, I thought that's different. Nothing comfortable with it now, to be honest.

[02:04] >> Okay, I think that says it all. But when you're buying a TV, there are a lot of tricks out there. There's QLED, there's QED, [music] and they're all basically designed to sound like they're OLED, but they're not OLED. There are only really

[02:17] two gold [music] standard TV technologies you can feasibly buy. OLED is one of them. And in OLED, every single pixel emits its own light. So, bright right next [music] to other pixels that are completely off without

[02:30] that light bleeding into those off pixels, which is what gives this tech it's known for. The other option though is RGB miniLEDD where [music] instead of each pixel lighting itself, you've got an unlit panel of pixels with an LED

[02:43] backlight [music] sitting behind it. That gives you more space to make that light and therefore the screen brighter than OLED. And while usually the lights [music] everything, so you don't get that really high contrast. With RGB

[02:56] miniLEDD, that light is actually made up of thousands of tiny [music] red, green, and blue LEDs, which still lets you have that control in very small zones like OLED. Also, this tech is easier to make in massive sizes. [music] So, I found

[03:08] literally the largest TV in the world from Highense. And this is [music] RGB mini LED and it is also now on its way. Okay, so that and then [music] an Apple TV 4K box just because that is the slickest TV user interface you can get

[03:21] right now. What if we got a media wall to go around the TV? >> Could either go completely clean like that where the whole point of the media >> I think that makes the TV look even bigger.

[03:34] Okay, sofas. These things are on their last legs. Some of them actually don't >> How did that actually happen? >> Think on it.

[03:50] video. trying to find sofas and seating that I thought were minimal and clean, that mom also thought fit into the Victorian aesthetic of the home and had also support to be able to get up from them easily was a challenge that took us

[04:05] three entire months to overcome. >> Oh, nice. Not really. [laughter] >> But then finally from a company called Natuzi, we found that perfect balance. We're not done though cuz I've got some beef with these chandeliers. They're

[04:19] quite distracting. They introduce a lot of glare and they are like directly in TV. Sorry, Mom. >> Room for improvement. >> If you go into a proper cinema, you'll notice that all the lighting is indirect

[04:31] because it stays out of your ey line. There's just so much action happening in of attention away from the screen when you're trying to focus on it. >> Lucas is now just watching TV all the time. [laughter]

[04:46] >> Like, dislike, love. I like the fact that again it's diffused lighting is >> It's also very nice. >> You like the idea hypothetically of a >> I [music] think that could look quite good.

[04:58] >> In terms of speakers, everything here is Sonos. And so I'm kind of in two minds about whether we just refresh what's here. This is early second generation products. Like the speakers here are from 2011 or we completely revamp it and

[05:11] go down like the hi-fi route. So right now there is one Sonos Play 3, two Sonos Play 3s. Where is that even firing? And then hidden inside of here, which I features of this living room, is one of the oldest sound bars and then a Sonos

[05:23] cable management? >> It wasn't my doing. Actually, people have come along and uh put more kit in there because there's nowhere else to >> Wait, are you talking about me? I'm not behind this. I don't want to do this

[05:36] >> It needs that magic touch of yours. >> It needs a flame. That's what it needs. Do you know what? I'm looking at it right now and I actually really do value songs. The new generation of them sound really good. They all wirelessly pair

[05:50] with each other and because they're active speakers, you don't need to mess around with an amp. They just need a power source. Right, we need to talk. >> Why is there a mirror here? >> Brings light into the house.

[06:02] looked at themselves in this mirror? >> Only when I'm cleaning it, >> Yeah. >> I actually think I have a better place those if you want. >> Yes, please. Where?

[06:17] >> Should we hold a competition for someone else? >> This table is packed to the brim with board games on the inside, but the lid time this was opened? >> I think you opened it about October time

[06:32] >> It's very nice table that never gets used because of the impracticality of it. What if as part of the media wall, there's actually shelves built in. >> So, if we're going to swap that, we have to swap all the side tables to match as

[06:45] coffee table somewhere here that you can leave your drinks. The massage chair absolutely destroyed it. >> This is the love he's showing you. >> Thank you, Milo. This is my old computer, which is plugged into nothing

[06:58] right now. Problem that so many people have in this room. No one can find a mounted like a little charging station people can just snap their phones it's the fastest charging you can do right now.

[07:10] but Yeah. >> Well, fantastic. I love it. >> The other thing I [music] wanted to do was get some smart lighting just to give it a bit of magic. If we worked with the

[07:23] actually get them to bake those lights into it in a way that like feels like too cool for me to imagine. They have these floor lamps that look like this. room. >> Diffused lighting, very warm lighting.

[07:37] at night. >> This is all the more reason to get If we're going to do that, [music] we might as well also just get Go smart bulbs for all the different bulbs. So, the bulbs in the chandeliers, the bulbs

[07:51] that might be here. >> I've never designed a room in in an hour. >> Yeah, mom. An hour. That's all this took. After months of pre-prep, the time had finally come to execute. I want to

[08:05] moment where we reveal the finished space to them. So, we scheduled everything to happen within the span of a week while we fenced the room off to pretty much everything that was there. I had to say a very painful [music]

[08:19] of good memories with those. But then, on the bright side, nothing made me happier than never having to see these remnants of a sofa again. And then it [music] satisfying to see this media wall come together. And also, I thought

[08:33] wall come together. And also, I thought I knew how big a 116in TV was. Turns out I didn't. Okay, we've just done the finishing touches. And by that, I mean management. My parents are coming home very soon, so let me quickly show you

[08:46] what we got. I've been wanting to do that for so long. I'm so excited for them to see this. [music] Okay, so the curtains, they that back. I actually love them compared to the [music] droopy frumpy things we

[08:59] donate to extended family. But what we've done is fitted them on a motorized rail from a smart home company called SI which means all I have to do is give them a little tug and [music] when I finish they register that as their

[09:12] command to close. And what I absolutely love about this is when the two sides of the room. So instead of being distracted by the thousands of intricate patterns and shapes and covings and bits of window, you can just pretend that the

[09:25] entire thing doesn't exist, which brings your attention into [music] the room. again is just a little pull the other way. I got two 25 Wireless Belcon

[09:37] chargers. I was really keen on ones that can fold, so you can use the magnets if you've got an iPhone or a Google Pixel phone these days and then you can lay magnets. The other [music] thing was just finding chargers that are fast

[09:49] to leave your phone stuck somewhere for 30 minutes only to come back and see you have 5% extra battery because of it. That's surprisingly common with wireless chargers, [music] especially ones where your phone isn't directly snapping into

[10:01] charge 50% in [music] 30 minutes. Oh, and then classicage. sticky tabs underneath because I know where they look good and I don't trust [music] is an Auro frame. Mom and dad both love sticking up photos of us. But

[10:17] if I'm being brutal, it was starting to look a little like a crime investigation board in the old room. So, this is basically a mini Samsung Frame TV. They can have all the photos they want, they get one frame. It's actually the best

[10:29] frame concept I've seen, though, cuz you can just add as many photos as you want to a Google Photos album, and anytime you update the album, it'll update the frame. So, I did what any good son would do, filled it with photos of me. And

[10:42] little ambient light [music] sensor to turn itself off when the room's dark. because just like we originally planned, we got mom's Echo Blob over here. And this has control over everything in the room. So if one evening my parents

[10:56] decided [music] they just want to sit down and lock in to some Downtown Abbey, then they [music] just have to say three words, Alexa, movie mode. >> And a whole bunch of things will happen. So the Sony rails up there, for example,

[11:10] they will start to close. We got a blind over here which is also sumpy. So well I guess I'll see you in the next shot. And because every single light in the room is a [music] smart light from GOI, those start to dim and animate like a fire. I

[11:24] knew I wanted to go with GOI here months ago because [music] you get really fine control with their lights and also their light strips are sick. They just got so so [music] you can't see the individual

[11:36] patchier ones we got at our house. So, I thought those were going to be my favorite, but then since I ordered them, Goi actually asked to sponsor this video and sent out two more things that I think might be even cooler. [music]

[11:48] has a bunch of different floor lamps, but this is one lamp that has three different lighting zones. So, the bottom can be a warm white. You can just set the middle to fireplacey colors for vibes, or I can set the upper section to

[12:01] project that fire onto the ceiling. Then, the second thing is the goi tree. All you do is scan them with your phone and each light uses the phone's tree, which is important because that makes it so easy now to just pop onto

[12:15] the app and select an effect you want. So, this one is ribbon or this one is animating seamlessly across the whole tree or I can just use the AI lighting bot and say Valentine's Day. Would you like me to apply it? Okay. Look at the

[12:31] tree. Look at the TV. So that effect is applying to every single bulb, strip, and lamp [music] in this room. And all of it in both of these rooms can then be turned off and on from one switch from the app. Link below for a very special

[12:43] deal on GOI stuff. >> Is that them? >> guys? Sorry, we're going to be 5 minutes. Oh my god. Okay, so there's a very obvious elephant in the room that we

[12:56] should probably address now. [music] The media wall. Now, this wall is a bit of an extra, but when I look at the whole room now, I think [music] it might be the single most transformational ingredient. So, it's

[13:08] cabinet that's only really taking up what would otherwise be dead space anyways, is holding every board game, or at least every one that we wanted to used to have in the corner. We've built a tiny little charging station in there

[13:21] for accessories and remotes. And we've got that while keeping three spare about cuz I feel like I'm going to come back and find more photo frames inside. The wall is partly for sound quality because all of this paneling is acoustic

[13:34] paneling. It's got a felt layer designed to lightly absorb [music] sound waves that would otherwise get reflected directly off this wall and muddy the the practical, it's also just the ambiance. Like the outer frame lets us

[13:47] sneak in an extra four of those GOI light strips. The fireplace is probably thinking it's a real fire, but it kind of feels like one with this vent at the And it's allowed us to get these slats

[14:00] the screen look like it's floating, which is particularly amusing given that it took four grown men to raise it about an inch when we were deciding where to incredibly, [music] it kind of is floating. We spent over

[14:13] $1,000 just on this ridiculous hydraulic mount from Future Automation just want to go back in later to upgrade bits. And then on this wall, just a TV, just a run-of-the-mill 116in Highense UXQ. Here's an iPhone 17

[14:31] Pro for reference. And apart from the very obvious, there's a couple of great for the room. One, because while we have worked very hard to reduce reflections, ultimately this is a living room with windows that is going to be

[14:44] used during the day, it is not a blacked out cinema. Thankfully, this is where Miniledd shines, literally. So, if you've been keeping you will know [music] the absolute brightest screens that money can buy are

[14:57] between 3 to 4,000 nits. [music] This like the sun goes up to 8,000 thanks to the RGB miniLEDD tech that Highense uses. And I was originally worried, oh, a screen that's large enough to live inside of, maybe the color accuracy will

[15:12] be a bit off, which is not. All it's done is just ruined all the TVs for me. And also, this isn't actually completely smooth. There is a microscopic etching on the surface, which means instead of a flat panel that would be reflecting the

[15:25] majority of the light back at you, this is doing a lot of scattering. Normal people would call this anti-reflective. And the other thing is because we now have a screen that's half the size of the Times Square billboard that my

[15:37] parents will inevitably use to watch my 240p quality baby videos on, you need upscaling, which the massively improved chip and AI engine inside [music] of here is handling rather well, I might add. Plus, it's got a 165 Hz refresh

[15:50] a professional Counterstrike [music] 2 player. And then connected to that is an Apple TV 4K. They've been apparently just about to launch a new one for like the last 3 months. But there comes a

[16:02] they're going to announce it the week post this video. But even this, compared to that sticky old Samsung TV remote, is going to be such an upgrade to how slick it feels to [music] navigate Netflix and Disney Plus. They've never even had

[16:15] being able [music] to say K-pop Demon Hunters, for example, and seeing the results come up, I think it's going to blow their mind. And another little orange touch, this room became legendary for its ability to just make TV remotes

[16:28] disappear into thin air. So I got a case for the Apple TV remote from Elago. And it allows you to put an [music] Air Tag inside of it, which means So we shove that under there. And I'm standing here. Then this is going to very literally

[16:41] lead me to the [music] exact spot where the remote is. It's so parent friendly. I've implemented a second layer of security. This is something I've done magnets [music] on the back of the remote and two magnets where I want that

[16:55] remote to belong. And it creates a natural magnetic [music] resting space for it. If they actually lose the thing now, I'm taking away their one permitted photo [music] frame. We got two of these mini drinks tables and I just love them.

[17:07] coffee table. But the key thing with all of this stuff is making sure [music] that it preserves the sight lines to the TV. Everything is low and out the way, which is also why we got this much slimmer chandelier and then tucked it so

[17:20] close to the ceiling. It's all about the immersion of the video, but also the audio. So, speaker-wise, I put each of the small Sonos speakers in the corners, and they are specifically targeted at where my parents will sit, just to make

[17:32] scaring them in surround sound. But I love this. I love [music] when companies you can route the cables through the stands so you don't have them dangling. The subwoofer is down here cuz bass notes [music] are not super directional

[17:46] out of the way. But those are all supplemental. The primary sound source underneath the screen. It's very loud. But the coolest thing for me about this is as part of this set, you also get these headphones. So let's say mom and

[18:00] dad are watching TV one evening. This happens a lot. Mom falls asleep, dad down the button on the side of these headphones for [music] like 5 seconds and that transfers the audio source to the headphones so that he can just carry

[18:14] on. I've never seen this concept executed as smoothly as it is here. You Combination of all the different things we've done means that this is the first time I've ever watching a TV in this room with absolutely zero visible

[18:27] reflections on it. We've actually done it. These are incredible, too. And every single one of these is also its own electric recliner. Come to think of it, this might not help the sleeping problem. It's a little bit surreal cuz

[18:40] I've kind of built up an association in my mind of these sofas being consistently one big sit away from collapsing. feels liberating to not have that everpresent threat. And then these two individual chairs rotate, [music]

[18:52] which I think is so important because it means you can have conversation mode, but then when you're done with conversation, TV mode. Okay, time has come. Think we're ready.

[19:05] >> I just want you to really clearly visualize what the room used to look >> A lot of tables. Yep. >> Oh, no. Not a Game Boy, Dad. The switch. >> Three, [music] two, one. Take them off.

[19:21] [screaming] >> Oh my god. >> Oh, holy moly. >> Oh, that is totally totally different. >> The TV. >> That's the biggest single panel TV in

[19:37] >> Wow. This room has never looked this clean before. [laughter] >> Just that one. But it's a smart photo >> We've got to watch more TV now. >> There's buttons towards the front. Nope.

[19:50] Mom's Okay. This is different levels of technical proficiency. Alexa, daytime [music] mode. >> No way. Don't have to get up from the sofa now. That's it. Thank you so much, Aron. Honestly, it's just most beautiful

[20:05] >> It looks amazing. >> Good job. Amazing job. Looks amazing.