RetroTINK 5x-Pro

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mikechi2
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Re: RetroTINK 5x-Pro

Post by mikechi2 »

neorichieb1971 wrote:I get the impression most users on here are steam users, or have mods done to their older consoles and just rip all the games to an SD card for older consoles.

Well they still work with the Retrotink 5x.

Certain titles have gone up in the past year, simply because of the amount of youtubes reviewing older titles, car boot sale finds, garage sales in the USA etc.


On a separate note, are there any official distributors for the Retrotink 5x in the UK/EU? I read on twitter paypal isn't working for UK customers in regards to buying this product.

I have a feeling this will be a hard product to get for the rest of 2021, just simply because its what everyone has been waiting for. The OSSC was hard to get for ages.

Is there a preorder page up? Any idea on the amount of people waiting etc?
Paypal unfortunately decided to go down at the exact time we were going to launch. It was back up in an hour and we were able to off the units that we had held in reserve for the UK.

Larger batches are coming now and throughout the rest of the year, as we stocked up on components. Not sure how messy the June/July order will be, but our goal is to build enough quantity to have inventory ASAP.
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PixelPhoenix
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Re: RetroTINK 5x-Pro

Post by PixelPhoenix »

darcagn wrote:
I was not surprised at all, but I'm kind of surprised you all were! I was geared up in fast ordering mode because I anticipated they'd sell out in minutes, no matter how chill people seemed about it.
Black Dog Tech regularly sells-out products that are far more niche than this device (given they only work on a single console and require heavy DIY skills or sending off a console to be modded).

I've mentioned the Framemeister second hand market on here a few times recently, but I don't think people here pay attention to it. I put mine on eBay in March used, in-box with the English remote overlay, euroscart adapter, d-terminal adapter, and everything it came with, buy it now for $700 and it sold and I had payment within 24hrs.
Yes, the US money supply is crazy right now and we can attribute inflated prices in this area to that, but we are talking almost double the money I spent on this stuff 7-8 years ago. The cables for this stuff are selling out fast too. All this points to the niche growing.
And there's the obvious: RetroRGB has 45K subscribers, then include the retro gaming twitter cliques on twitter all abuzz about this... there's a lot of word of mouth going on now with these "niche" products.
As for me, I'm taking all I cleared on selling that Framemeister and with another $100 or so, I'm buying the RT5X-Pro, the Morph, and the N64Digital. It's practically a no-brainer and with the enhanced feature sets of these devices I have lots of excuses I give myself to own all of it.

For at least as long as there are parts shortages, there will likely be scalpers in this market soon, unfortunately. I'm just glad Mike is limiting orders to 1 per person, otherwise it'd be impossible to get hands on these.
This is the mindset that I've been approaching with as well. Dan's work is superb, but it's for a more limited audience as they only cover the console his products are designed for. The GCLoader is specifically tailored for the Gamecube and requires a bit of tinkering, something folks unfamiliar to modding or to the retro scene may not be privy to (granted, even that is plug-and-play too, it just needs to be taken apart then put back together, no soldering required). The Tink 5X is a plug-and-play scaler designed for multiple consoles.

The increasing popularity of Bob's channel, introduction of people with larger followings being exposed to the scene (which subsequently exposes their followers to retro gaming), Dan's products selling out in a minute (they haven't recently, but did last year and in 2019), COVID forcing people to stay home and explore their childhood games, it all provided telltale signs of things to come with. After all, logistics, shipping and handling, production, and all that is often headed by a small team of people (sometimes only one or two) due to the nature of the scene and the individuals who design these products. They don't have the means or resources to release millions of product at a time.
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evil_ash_xero
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Re: RetroTINK 5x-Pro

Post by evil_ash_xero »

Are the bilinear filters similar to "Interpolation" on the Analogue systems, or is it more subtle? I couldn't tell a big difference in the review video.
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Fudoh
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Re: RetroTINK 5x-Pro

Post by Fudoh »

It's more or less a vertical blur of about one line.

Middle: 5X in 1080p Full mode with soft interpolation, Right: 5X with sharp interpolation (and Left: Framemeister)

http://retrogaming.hazard-city.de/FZ_24 ... RION_1.png

On 480p material is way more subtle.
fernan1234
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Re: RetroTINK 5x-Pro

Post by fernan1234 »

The FM on the left actually wins there. Even sharp interpolation is not as sharp.

And what do you think of that difference in the colors? Or maybe it's the white balance.
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Tempest_2084
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Re: RetroTINK 5x-Pro

Post by Tempest_2084 »

Has anyone gotten a shipping notice for their 5X Pro yet? Just curious. I was one of the later orders so I imagine mine will take a while.
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darcagn
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Re: RetroTINK 5x-Pro

Post by darcagn »

Tempest_2084 wrote:Has anyone gotten a shipping notice for their 5X Pro yet? Just curious. I was one of the later orders so I imagine mine will take a while.
I got a shipping notice Sunday May 2. I was the second earliest order # mentioned in this thread. Still in the mail though...
fernan1234
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Re: RetroTINK 5x-Pro

Post by fernan1234 »

Mine was a bit later but also in transit already too. I'm guessing they're getting around 100 units out the door per day.
Chacranajxy
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Re: RetroTINK 5x-Pro

Post by Chacranajxy »

fernan1234 wrote:Mine was a bit later but also in transit already too. I'm guessing they're getting around 100 units out the door per day.
Yeah, I think the site said it might take a couple weeks. I'm sure they're slightly overwhelmed right now.

For reference, I had the lowest order # I've seen listed and mine shipped on Saturday and arrived on Wednesday.
mikechi2
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Re: RetroTINK 5x-Pro

Post by mikechi2 »

fernan1234 wrote:The FM on the left actually wins there. Even sharp interpolation is not as sharp.

And what do you think of that difference in the colors? Or maybe it's the white balance.
Look closely at the height of the Pixels in the FM shot... they’re not even. It looks like non-integer nearest neighbor lmao :wink:
fernan1234
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Re: RetroTINK 5x-Pro

Post by fernan1234 »

mikechi2 wrote:Look closely at the height of the Pixels in the FM shot... they’re not even. It looks like non-integer nearest neighbor lmao
That's true. Not sure why it appears to be sharper on that comparison picture. Maybe part of it is the colors, looks more contrasty for some reason. Could be something to do with Fudoh's capture.
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Fudoh
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Re: RetroTINK 5x-Pro

Post by Fudoh »

The captures are raw uncompressed 4:4:4, nothing wrong there.

The FM does - in 4.5 scaling mode - indeed shimmer vertically. Here are two shots a few frames apart and you can see how the black top row of pixels on that sprite changes from 5 to 4 px thickness. http://pms.hazard-city.de/FM_vertical_shimmer.png The FM does only interpolate horizontally. One of the main reasons why 3x for scanlines or 5x without was always a better choice there.

The difference in color is obvious in comparion. It's not THIS obvious when just playing. I would say the Retrotink's image has a little green push compared to the FM. I could be wrong, but I think the FM and the OSSC are rather close though.
mikechi2
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Re: RetroTINK 5x-Pro

Post by mikechi2 »

Fudoh wrote:The captures are raw uncompressed 4:4:4, nothing wrong there.

The FM does - in 4.5 scaling mode - indeed shimmer vertically. Here are two shots a few frames apart and you can see how the black top row of pixels on that sprite changes from 5 to 4 px thickness. http://pms.hazard-city.de/FM_vertical_shimmer.png The FM does only interpolate horizontally. One of the main reasons why 3x for scanlines or 5x without was always a better choice there.

The difference in color is obvious in comparion. It's not THIS obvious when just playing. I would say the Retrotink's image has a little green push compared to the FM. I could be wrong, but I think the FM and the OSSC are rather close though.
Serious question - would there be a use for a 4.5 scaling mode that uses NN and shimmers? Pretty easy to add, not sure if it will be well received,haha.

And thanks, I’ll pay attention to the green push along with the gain in 480p soon.
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darcagn
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Re: RetroTINK 5x-Pro

Post by darcagn »

Thanks for adding new features/modes and communicating based on feedback on here, Mike. I can't say enough how much of a breath of fresh air it is to be able to see communication on issues like this directly on this forum vs. the framemeister which had such a mystery roadmap for its firmware
fernan1234
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Re: RetroTINK 5x-Pro

Post by fernan1234 »

Who knows, maybe the Micomsoft people were communicating on Japanese forums, but it's also possible that they were not pushed much since, as far as I can tell, standards for this kind of retro gaming stuff are very different in Japan, in general.
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kitty666cats
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Re: RetroTINK 5x-Pro

Post by kitty666cats »

Anyone putzed around with theirs set to “passthrough” with sources like VHS / Laserdisc yet?

Also curious how it “stacks up” against the old units on passthrough w/ a DAC for use as (essentially) a decoder. Silly niche use case, I know, haha :)

Lastly, has anyone here verified a HDMI to VGA DAC that will pass 1920x1440p @ 60Hz? I had once heard the HDFury Nano GX is capable / if that’s the case I would assume quite a few others are as well. Gotta try my Portta with that res soon...
deeplistened
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Re: RetroTINK 5x-Pro

Post by deeplistened »

I haven’t found information regarding the ADC for the audio. Does it go up to 96/24 like the OSSC? Or is it 48/24?
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evil_ash_xero
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Re: RetroTINK 5x-Pro

Post by evil_ash_xero »

Fudoh wrote:It's more or less a vertical blur of about one line.

Middle: 5X in 1080p Full mode with soft interpolation, Right: 5X with sharp interpolation (and Left: Framemeister)

http://retrogaming.hazard-city.de/FZ_24 ... RION_1.png

On 480p material is way more subtle.
Thanks.
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darcagn
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Re: RetroTINK 5x-Pro

Post by darcagn »

ldeveraux wrote:
darcagn wrote:I just sold my Framemeister off for $700 last month.
Yeah? I call BS
Somehow missed this reply earlier.
Really? Who would lie about this? :lol: Okay, here you go: XRGB-mini Framemeister with Box, English remote, component/SCART adapters with my username on it



Anyway, I just got the RetroTINK5X-Pro in the mail this morning. I've had a little bit of time to play with it. This is my first time using a RetroTINK product, but I've followed the company's offerings for a while and have almost bought one several times. Here are my thoughts on it for those interested.

What has been sorely needed is a cheap-ish box that that quickly and easily takes any common consumer standard-def/analog TV input from yesteryear and convert it for modern displays properly. Every RetroTINK product until now, from my perspective, has had a compromises (lacking one port or another) preventing it from fulfilling that role. The RetroTINK5X-Pro is still not that device.... but it only falls short because it's not cheap: $300, the price going forward, is still a lot to ask for this kind of device for your average person. So, while there are still obstacles to using retro hardware easily these days, it's just price, not technical knowledge, with the RetroTINK5X-Pro.

Previously the closest thing for me was the Framemeister, so I really wanted to know if this was a good upgrade from that. Hardware-wise, it's thicker than a Framemeister, but has a slightly smaller footprint. While not the sleekest or prettiest design, it's appealingly practical. All the ports are built in so no need for RGB and d-terminal adapters as was the case with the Framemeister. Big plus. The SCART plug is "backwards" depending on how you look at it, but I prefer it this way because I usually keep my upscaler in place and hook up my analog consoles in front of it.

It uses microUSB for power. I prefer USB-C these days, but no big deal. It doesn't include a power adapter, though. I don't like this trend of not including power adapters with devices just because they take USB power. I don't actually have a bunch of USB power adapters laying around as some believe everyone must. I can dig one up easily, sure, but I'm usually taking away from something else in the mean time. A microUSB cable is included (I wonder why include one, but not the other? [edit: see about plugging into TVs here]), but with mine it was a white braided cable that doesn't match the black RetroTINK5X-Pro. It's short, too, so I immediately swapped it out with a long black cable, something I do already have a lot of laying around luckily.

The remote is a generic remote, so the buttons of course have symbols that don't represent what they actually do, but it's a remote that has just the right amount of buttons for what you need. Definitely beats the Framemeister/OSSC remotes. 2 AAA batteries not included. It would have been nice, though, for HDMI CEC control to be included. I have enough remotes to keep track of, and I'm starting to appreciate HDMI CEC functionality more as a result. The manual is PDF download only, but they include a nice postcard-size starter instructions that tells you what you need to know -- important because you might want to reference it real quick again to recall which remote buttons do what.

The options are limited, but in a good way: I see the most relevant settings, and I don't see all of the extras. If you're the type that gets caught messing with 1000 settings on your video equipment only to realize you no longer have any time to actually play the games, this will be refreshing, because by default the picture is fantastic and there's not much you can mess with.

The "sharp" interpolation setting is softer compared to what I remember from the Framemeister, and at first I assumed it was on the soft setting. But I honestly could barely tell when I sat on the couch where I would be sitting during regular gameplay, and it looked quite sharp once scanlines were applied. Soft looks pretty decent if you're one of those types who hates getting your eyes cut on the edges of the pixels. There's only three settings for scanlines, and you can't finely adjust the intensity, but the settings chosen all look great to me, so again, it's another one of those things that you won't waste time adjusting back and forth, but you will probably find it just works here.

And that seems to be the type of device this is: sort of a "it just works" device. Its name is a misnomer; it's quite non-Pro, to be honest, and that's not knocking it; its simplicity is actually the device's biggest strength. It operates so simply that, after having used it, it blows my mind that somehow it hadn't been created sooner. That being said, with the "Pro" name I would expect some more configurability... but I'm honestly not missing it very much. A horizontal crop would be nice, for example, as certain consoles have annoying overscan garbage still even with the RT5X-Pro in 1080 OVER mode.

A lot of photos have been shared on twitter and the like of RT5XPro excelling at processing composite, so much so that I wondered if somehow the RetroTINK could end up doing such a great job that it would nearly render RGB modding pointless. Well, while RT5XPro does do a fantastic job, don't sell off those RGB cables and modded consoles just yet. Seeing the device in action, composite is still shit, even if the RetroTINK does do a great job trying to polish the turd.

A year warranty is included which is practically more than enough for this type of device, unless there's some kind of flaw. RetroTINK is basically just Mike and his wife, so if you have to deal with support in any way, that's who you'll be communicating with. While Mike has a great reputation and seems like a genuinely good guy, he has a "zero tolerance policy for rude or hostile behavior" which translates into him sometimes posting screenshots of negative customer interactions on Twitter. While I am definitely not the type of person who thinks the customer is always right, and Mike is within his legal right to do so, I frankly find it distasteful to do that, especially as it's made worse by the fact that Mike has a twitter following. They, too, seem like genuinely good people usually but twitter can sometimes foster extremely toxic hivemind mentality in otherwise good people. Speaking of poor support decisions, all of the RetroTINK products including the RT5X-Pro only support updating the firmware using proprietary software on Microsoft Windows. Mike makes it clear that trying to avoid using his proprietary software on Microsoft Windows will very likely result in your RetroTINK being bricked. The manual (and previous twitter drama) implies that he doesn't want to hear your input about it, which really makes you wonder why he didn't just include a microSD port for updates to avoid the issue altogether like almost every other device does these days.

Truth be told, this is the reason I never purchased any RetroTINK products in the past when I almost did, because I have a pretty firm stance not to buy products that unnecessarily require "the cloud" or proprietary software for no good reason, which outweighs any desire to purchase a product in support of a small business. I wanted to permanently mount the RT5X-Pro but I don't own a Windows laptop so that's a no-go as I'll have to take it into the office to connect to a virtual machine for updates. Still, the RT5X-Pro is so much better of a solution even with that flaw that I did overlook it for this purchase, especially if it meant being able to offload my Framemeister sooner than later while its value was high.

All in all, it's a great device, and right now is by far the best general solution to playing nearly any vintage home console hardware on modern televisions. If RetroTINK can manage to keep pumping out batches of the RT5X-Pro they will most definitely continue selling out and being the leader in this market niche, at least until the PixelFX Morph, with a bigger set of features in the same price bracket, makes it to market later this year.
Last edited by darcagn on Mon May 10, 2021 5:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.
fernan1234
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Re: RetroTINK 5x-Pro

Post by fernan1234 »

Thanks for sharing your extensive thoughts, darcagn.

Pretty much all of that falls in line with my expectations for this nice device.

And I agree wholeheartedly that it's a shame updating requires Windows. More and more we are living in Apple's world ;) plus simple Mac apps can usually be ported to Linux without much trouble, and vice versa.

I think that there are only two "pro" settings that I really wish could be present on the 5X, and that perhaps could be added in a FW update. Mainly gamma adjustments (lower gamma is really important to approximate a CRT gamma, and even more important to compensate for scanlines-induced darkening). The other one would be custom scanline adjustment. It looks like on the polyphase modes the scanlines roll off a bit more depending on brightness/color, which is nice and more CRT-like, but with finer customization like on the OSSC you get a lot more room to closely emulate different CRT types, from consumer sets to super high TVL BVMs. Would love to do something like this on a 5X:

(Large pic)
Spoiler
Image
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maxtherabbit
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Re: RetroTINK 5x-Pro

Post by maxtherabbit »

HDMI CEC is dark and evil magic, you don't want it trust me
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TooBeaucoup
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Re: RetroTINK 5x-Pro

Post by TooBeaucoup »

I'm sure it's been talked about here or on Twitter. There's a lot of info to scroll through, but... any possibility of adding a masking feature to a future firmware to cover up the unused garbage pixels in the overscan area of a lot of games? That was something I really like about the Framemeister and OSSC. I'm sure this has been mentioned multiple times, but I've missed it if it has.
strayan
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Re: RetroTINK 5x-Pro

Post by strayan »

Fudoh wrote: The 5X claims to output perfect 240p from 480p, 720p and 480i sources. With a progressive source (480p) connected the 5X is averaging two lines to create a new one (Bob is claiming that the lines are simply dropped, but that's not the case, since trying to downscale a scanlined image will result in a dim unusable image - typical of downscalers averaging two lines). The approach is a bit risky, since not all sources will keep to the same order of lines (some sources might require averaging each odd with the following even line, while others would require averaging each even line with the following odd one). I currently can't think of any use case were averaging has an actual advantage over just throwing out each other line, so maybe Mike will rethink this approach down the road or give us the option.
This seems to conflict with the information in the RetroTink manual which says:
480i sources are converted to 240p by shifting the odd and even fields together spatially. 480p and 720p discard every other line and every two lines, respectively.


Has Mike clarified somewhere?
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Fudoh
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Re: RetroTINK 5x-Pro

Post by Fudoh »

This was my mistake. I didn't have a remote for my prototype, so I couldn't test the picture shift available in downscaling modes. Testing a scanlined image I got a dim image after the down conversion, so I assumed it was averaging the raw lines with the scanlines. But now with the retail unit on hand, I can shift the image up and down and by this you can choose between the odd and even lines getting dropped. All good. I'll update my review on a few more things over the next days.
strayan
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Re: RetroTINK 5x-Pro

Post by strayan »

Ah, that makes total sense.
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Josh128
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Re: RetroTINK 5x-Pro

Post by Josh128 »

While Mike has a great reputation and seems like a genuinely good guy, he has a "zero tolerance policy for rude or hostile behavior"
This makes me all the more glad about my purchase. Theres no need to ever act like an asshole, unless you were first personally disrespected. Now Mike, all I need is a shipping notification. :mrgreen:
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Re: RetroTINK 5x-Pro

Post by energizerfellow‌ »

At a technical level, just how different are the RetroTINK's motion adaptive deinterlacer and Yadif 2x?
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Guspaz
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Re: RetroTINK 5x-Pro

Post by Guspaz »

Without knowing much about how the RT5X works, it sounds like the motion-adaptive deinterlacer decides on a per-pixel level if it should be using bob or weave based on comparing to the previous field, while yadif seems to be spread out a bit more temporally, and uses a more complicated reconstruction technique instead of just bob (described as edge-directed interpolation).

It would be nice if the 5X deinterlacer could do some interpolation when motion is detected (as fades can appear blocky), but I'd imagine there are limits to what can fit on the FPGA.
Last edited by Guspaz on Mon May 10, 2021 4:17 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Dr. Claw
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Re: RetroTINK 5x-Pro

Post by Dr. Claw »

TooBeaucoup wrote:I'm sure it's been talked about here or on Twitter. There's a lot of info to scroll through, but... any possibility of adding a masking feature to a future firmware to cover up the unused garbage pixels in the overscan area of a lot of games? That was something I really like about the Framemeister and OSSC. I'm sure this has been mentioned multiple times, but I've missed it if it has.
You can do this on OSSC?
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Re: RetroTINK 5x-Pro

Post by bobrocks95 »

Dr. Claw wrote:
TooBeaucoup wrote:I'm sure it's been talked about here or on Twitter. There's a lot of info to scroll through, but... any possibility of adding a masking feature to a future firmware to cover up the unused garbage pixels in the overscan area of a lot of games? That was something I really like about the Framemeister and OSSC. I'm sure this has been mentioned multiple times, but I've missed it if it has.
You can do this on OSSC?
Yup, it's under the post-processing settings.
PS1 Disc-Based Game ID BIOS patch for MemCard Pro and SD2PSX automatic VMC switching.
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