Yes, happy to see these get developed and tested with arcade boards! I would like to see it in action with one! If we can save arcades and get an authentic look from flats it will be worth it.
I remember the days when everyone and their mom wanted the Frameister RGB but everyone also thought $700 was crazy expensive. We got cheaper options and now it feels like we've come full circle. Back to near $1,000 prices.
LMFAO...I didn't even think of that! Excellent point. And look, it IS expensive. And it's totally okay if people think it's out of their budget. I only get annoyed at the people who come here accusing Mike of "ripping people off" because he decided to make a high end product, as well as entry-level. ...and I'm totally stealing your "expensive cellphone" comparison :)
Only difference is that typically you don't pay in full for phones. The cost is dispersed throughout 2 years on your cellphone bill and people don't usually realize that or find it easier to deal with. Yes, you could put the cost of the rt4k on a credit card and say what's the difference but the cost of the phone via billing on your cell bill isn't charged interest either and will 100% be paid off eventually make the same payments for 2 years. You also typically have the option to trade it in and upgrade after half (1 year) of it is paid for. Not disagreeing with the point, it's just not a complete end to end comparison and I have a rt4k now (thankfully) and is sooooo worth it. I've been dying for this solution as I have an ossc and just, didn't feel like it was enough for how I wanted to use my unmodded consoles and was fearing that I basically was going to need to mod a lot of my consoles to get anything worthwhile when trying to capture or just play on my c9.
This is what I've been waiting for. With old hardware reaching increasingly absurd costs, this device with its CRT masks is the final piece of the puzzle I needed for my retro gaming renaissance to be complete. What a time to be alive.
Idk what your budget is, but I’m sure eBay will be full of RT5Xs when this comes out. My guess is they’ll go for between $200-225 since it’s $325 for a new one
I work with Radio Frequency Coax a lot for the purpose of editing, Is there a way to plug the 8 pronged RF cable of death into this? I want my NES grey box to look EXTRA crispy. (not a joke, I like the look)
There's a bunch of boxes that convert RF to Composite, ranging from a VCR to boxes from Extron and Sony. I actually planned on showing that in this video, just for fun, but ran out of time.
I'm excited for this on so many levels. Not just video game stuff, but I work with a tonne of digital preservation and AV preservation groups who will go nuts for this.
Congrats to Mike for another spectacular offering that sets the bar yet again ! BFI is incredibly interesting. BlurBusters are doing God’s work ! Thanks to Mike & Mark. Question: When in FrameLock mode, on 480p HDMI input …. What is the lowest input lag possible, to the hundredth of a millisecond, when minimal anti-aliasing/jaggie-smoothing algorithms are enabled, during the trip upward from 480p/60 up to 4k/60 ?
I've had my eyes on the 5X for a while, but hearing about the 4K option changes the game for me. I still play on my WiiU and PS3 often enough to keep them plugged in, so having a scaler with HDMI input as well is awesome! Really looking forward to a full release.
LOL, if you saw all the trolls coming at me for talking about expensive stuff, you'd wonder why I didn't go ever harder at "it's expensive and that's okay."
this is awesome, the "$1000 buget" is making me nervous tho. I just want to play classic games with my kids in the best possible way visually. If it keeps them away from fornite and other money predatory games. Then i guess i'll have to bite the bullet.
I'm glad people can now experience retro games closer to what they are designed to look like. For a long time people said it wasn't possible, its been almost 20 years since lcd's got popular so its surprising it took this long. I remember when people said 3 frames of lag wasn't a big deal.
Thats why i play 16bit and older predominantly on my phone vs my rig etc, snes and genesis are my favorite retro era that i grew up with. Cant stand the lag on games like mario, Fzero and star fox.
I dislike the "designed to look like" thing. Because it's up for debate whether those games were meant to look crystal clear, as all the testing would have been done on a CRT.
@@awii.neocitiesDevelopers 100% designed the games around what they look like on a consumer crt. I don’t really understand the argument that they weren’t
@@Mishkobt I assume the argument is that the developers may have had access to LCD screens when creating their game, but I still don't understand either.
I just got the 5x pro a few weeks ago to upgrade my 2x I had and was really impressed with the improvement in quality and functionality. Mike Chi makes some awesome devices! I was a little bummed out that my OLED doesn't support the 1440p output mode though, but the 1080p is still awesome. I love the scanlines and CRT filters in the 5x and can't wait to see what the 4k can do.
Very good job diplomatically addressing the supposed 4K scaler competitor (Morph) in the beginning. They did say there would be footage of it in action weeks ago but didn't deliver. It's obviously still vaporware, but feels like they rushed to announce it and a lower price just to take some wind out of the Tink4K's sails.
I genuinely think it's real and will be great. I'm just taking the piss a bit at how volatile they've been, while still not showing any footage at all.
love everything about this. just my 2 cents here. I used to play OG xbox games and alot of them were 30p back in the day. (eg halo1) but with my new xbox all these "remastered" games are 60p and just don't "feel" the same. Do ya think the RetroTINK 4k could add a frame rate decimator to convert my new xbox back to 30p?
It seems to me that when you get an LCD with 8k resolution, the emulated phosophor stripes will be the same size as the stripes on the macro of the D32 mask.
THE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION: Is it possible to have 4k output resolution... while at the same time, have enough horizontal smearing to blend retro dither patterns? The tink 5x only gives you enough horizontal smearing to actually blend those patterns, at 720p output.
For me the 5x pro is enough. All my other consoles I care about have hdmi and I prefer to play them natively. Still it's impressive what mike can do. My nes through ps2 era consoles have never looked better.
RT4K is my Christmas gift to myself. 1 for my bedroom MiSTer and 1 for my retro gaming room setup. And maybe 1 more for the theater room if the film projector BFI simulation is as good as it sounds.
I want one of these for my PS2, PS1, Dreamcast, Wii and N64. My older 2D consoles I prefer to play on my Sony Trinitron TV. I can't wait to test this out with my Gem upgraded PS2 with some Xenosaga.
Similar interest because i bought all the Analogue systems so i connect those to my modern TV and have basically retired the original 2D consoles for rare uses. Doing that allowed me to put some of my PS2, PS1, Wii, Saturn and N64 under my CRT TV but i will like to be able to use them on my modern TV so i need devices like this for that.
I would love to see footage of PS3 and Xbox 360 running through the Tink 4k. Also it would be great to see the Tink 5x pro compared with the Tink 4K. I currently have a 5x pro and I'm really curious how different the 4K will look.
I'm definitley looking forward to this. As much as I would want the price to be as low as pssoible its still a way better option than converting all my retro consoles with HDMI mods which is also expensive & time consuming. Let alone not knowing what the hell i'm doing lol
As I recall, 2160p components are very expensive compared to 1080p, so a big price increase over the 5X is inevitable. I would be very curious to see a detailed cost breakdown though. Although I imagine some people would get very salty over whatever Retrotink charges above BOM cost, so it might not be a good idea.
Not gonna lie, almost certainly not going to buy this. But I was happy to learn about the 1080p to 4K scaler at the start of the video. I have a RT5X and an mClassic for my gen 6 consoles, and both can give me a nice 1080p signal to upscale.
I've set up all my old consoles years ago for RGB SCART and a CRT and right now it's my preferred way of playing older consoles. I use an OSSC as well and while it gets the job done It's not perfect. Being able to scale just about anything up to 4K lwith minimal lag and without artifacts or bad filters is really amazing, this will even be great for 720p PS3/360 era games. Never been a fan of "fake" scanlines but this looks really impressive. It only needs to be more affordable but I'm sure that will happen some day.
So pumped for the amount of inputs that the 4K accepts! Even things like hdmi in that I didn’t even know I wanted until it was shown! Thanks for such a detailed breakdown!
Obviously, the current features on this make it an insanely good choice. I only really have one quick question - why does the Tink4K support 1080p/1440p at 120hz but not 4k 120hz? Is the device not HDMI 2.1? BFI at 4k 120 would be insane, and wouldn't have my TV upscaling picture at all. I guess current tech means we either accept no motion blur, but a "softer" image, or a sharp image with some judder... I get it - 120hz 4K is pretty new, but my LG OLEDS at 120hz have been insane for PC/Xbox/PS5 gaming, and given that there's a real-world use-case for BFI, it's making me desire even MORE out of what is clearly already an amazing device. Not a criticism tho.
I’ve been waiting for this video, and I remember Mike saying on his website to set aside around $1000 for this. I thought “I’ll just stick to my Tink 5X”, but dude, this is absolutely insane. Screw the rent, lol
Thanks for the great overview. I don't really use a 4k tv aside from streaming. My projector is 1080p and most of my retro gaming happens on my 720p plasma 😅
Fuck Bob, awesome vídeo as always. Like you said, this thing is so awesome thats you want to have one of these. Thank you for your time on this video 👍
Finally VGA support. The stock 720 x 480P on Dreamcast looks sharper and better than composite/SVideo with the RetroTink 5X even on my 4K Samsung TV since SVideo and composite don't make use of the VGA resolution and it's a noticeable difference.
This is definitely the best way to play X360/PS3, or really anything with 720/1080p on a modern 4k TV. I hope Mike keeps these in production for awhile because I'll probably get one but not for another year
Hi :) I'm just wondering if you could tell me what features the Retrotink 4K has over the 5X? I don't imagine you will be able to see the difference between FULL HD 1080p and 4K when playing a retro game on a modern display?! I just simply want to be able to play my Genesis, NES, SNES, N64, PS1 and PS2 games on my OLED and have the best picture possible. As I have already mentioned, I cant imagine the 4K, technically being the "best possible" option, being visibly better than the 1080p option. Am I right in thinking this? I don't do live streaming or anything, I just like to play though some of my old games now and then. Any information you could provide would be greatly appreciated
I wonder if RetroTink will ever make a standalone external BFI/strobing box, as this is the only feature I am interested in, I use my CRTs for retro games, I also use my 21" CRT monitors for modern gaming, but I'd love to have the option to use an 32" 240hz RGB-OLED monitor when one finally comes out for modern gaming, especially the upcoming dual-stack RGB-OLED displays, can you imagine really good quality 240hz BFI combines with a 4K dual-stack RGB-OLED, that just might give the FW900 a run for its money. Though ultimately I'd like to see something like a 1000hz subfield drive used with dual-stack RGB-OLED, the same tech that gave Plasma perfect 60hz CRT grade motion clarity, I wonder if Plasma's subfield drive can be simulated like CRTs rolling-scan drive can, or Panasonic's focussed field drive that ran @ 2500hz, they even had a 1600hz version of it for LCD's, so imagine how good OLED could be with it, OLED should NEVER have been sample and hold driven in the first place, that's an interesting thought though, I see BFI as just a bandaid to a really big problem, OLED needs a permanent motion clarity solution to do that instant pixel response justice.
Bob, thanks for the video. Can you confirm (if you know) that the 4K can accept 1080p over it's component and/or VGA input? I have a scaler that outputs 1080p over component and I'd love to use the 4K as a passthrough. Thanks!
From Mike Chi's announcement post: "There are currently settings for standard consumer video (240p/288, 480i/576i, 480p/576p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p) as well as retro PCs (EGA/DOS 70 Hz, VGA, SVGA, XGA, UXGA)." I think that means yes, but specs on exactly what each input can handle would be nice.
I am so happy to see this device and really can't wait for the full release to see final price and what it can be pushed to do. Have to ask though, what is the chance a v2 will be released with HDMI 2.1 at some point in future? yes it will be more money, but if we are already putting our hand in our pocket to pay close to $1000, not many of us will complain about an extra $50/$100/$150 to have the latest HDMI standard and potentially have more 4k modes opened up as well.
I asked Mike the same question. It would raise the price so high, that it's not even worth it. So my guess is it'll be *years* before we see one that can go as high as 8K60 / 4K120.
I completely and utterly disagree. Mike is great, but I had an issue with my PS1digital and one of the PixelFX team offered to repair it for free on their discord channel, even though the repair could have been solder/installation related.. Really wish people wouldn't make this kind of baseless comment.
@@totalprocall6894 their customer service is not the great I’ve had issues with Dans attitude in the past as well. He’s not someone that should be allowed to be the face of a company or make public response. The mods are great but his disrespectful attitude has been a well known issue for some time
The per core settings for Mister would be awesome. If the Tink 4k doesn't have network access, it could be possible if it has some kind of command line interface via USB. Someone could theoretically create a tiny web service that can control the tink (maybe pico w?), so the Mister could announce what it's launching (either a web request to the tink or a broker in the middle) and launch the correct profile.
From an implementation standpoint, I imagine it would be easier to code MISTer cores to display a test pattern at startup for the scaler to lock on to.
Any advice on whether or not the Gamer Pro is actually worth it for the 5X? Everything looks pretty great on my C1 already, just wondering if it's really worth getting for the 4K output.
Love the M Classic shade. Completely deserved, that thing is garbage. I wasted so much time researching it. The ONE thing I would love to see on this would be adding 4k120, just to take advantage of the BFI at that resolution. The video from My Life in Gaming showing the limitations of the C2 (and LIKELY other OLED's on the market) with classic consoles is pretty damning and this can nullify that pretty well. Blur Busters involvement is a BFD.
3:50 - tried modding my spare GBS 8200 into a GBS Control the last few weekend, with little success. Ended up not working at all, and throwing it in the trash. May give it another try in a few weeks. Tempted to sell my Tink5X now to get money for the 4K later, and getting by with a GBS C.
