Which next-generation retro-gaming video processor are you most interested to buy?

[SGGG2]

Wasn’t there talk of flash carts doing on the fly ROM patching to send GameID embedded in the padding of analog signals?

[orange808]

Okay. So, I can save a profile locally and new games (on new consoles) can be detected over the HDMI wire. Then, a locally saved profile can trigger. I suppose I could download a set of them for my sd card on occasion. Seems like that's something the OSSC Pro, Morph, or TINK4K could do. Downloading a few files to my sd card one day and forgetting about it for months afterwards isn't perfectly seamless, but it's not really that difficult, either. These profiles are going to be little JSON files, right?

I'm still not making the connection between wireless and anything I desperately need from a video processor. I've wanted a lot of features in video processors over the years, but wifi hasn't ever made the list.

[bobrocks95]

It is dumb but I also want the Discord integration PixelFX showed that will pull your game ID over Wi-Fi and then update your currently played game.

Game ID requires several steps in a chain. It requires support from the flash cart or ODE to process the name of the ROM/ISO loaded and pass it to the HDMI mod installed in the console (it doesn't work with real cartridges/discs, I believe)

See my sig for GameID with original discs on PS1. PS2 you can use OPL and hopefully in the future either boot discs from it or someone will just create a homebrew disc booter you can run with FMCB that passes it along. Swiss on GameCube can pull it as well, hopefully GCVideo in the future by some means.

If someone is already this deep into the PS1, might as well install the relatively inexpensive XStation, which does the GameID thing perfectly with the MemCardPRO and even the RetroGEM.

I like playing with original discs and the XStation doesn't support PSOne's. I'd of course recommend the XStation in general to people, it's great.

Okay. So, I can save a profile locally and new games (on new consoles) can be detected over the HDMI wire.

Unless they're modded they're not going to transmit anything about the current game over the wire, the idea was pulling from other sources, hence the Wi-Fi support. Some of that might involve web scraping which wouldn't be ideal, hopefully it can hook into Discord integrations or something, but not sure.

[BuckoA51]

I'm still not making the connection between wireless and anything I desperately need from a video processor. I've wanted a lot of features in video processors over the years, but wifi hasn't ever made the list.

I mean everyone's different, but we've already given several solid use cases. GameID, over the air updates, remote control, easier to manage and share profiles, easier to edit and update advanced settings....

Let's come back to remote control for starters, if I'm just kicking back and gaming I prefer to use an IR remote in most instances, but if you're setting up more advanced things, like maybe trying to find the perfect pre-scale for a game, a web UI can be extremely useful. I mean for one, you can control it without a menu overlay appearing on the screen, potentially obscuring what you're trying to see while you are setting it up.

If you're using downscaling then it's perfectly easy to lose the picture on the TV altogether, with a web UI on a phone or tablet it's much easier to switch back settings, given that you can't actually see the menu on the screen at that point. The OSSC Pro's OLED display is incredibly useful here too, but adding a OLED/LCD to the TInk4k isn't even an option.

If you're trying to do something complex like HDR colour correction, have you seen the UI for that on the Tink4k? You can't tell me that wouldn't be easier to do sat at a computer, where you can input values using a keyboard. Hopefully Guspaz can implement that through the SD card thing he mentioned though.

Then there's the potential for things like custom macros, if anyone's ever used the HD Fury series of splitters/scalers you know how powerful they can be. Through their web interface you can set macros so that, for instance, every time a SDR image is received you can set custom HDR tone mapping settings. In the case of Morph you're probably going to want to map this per console rather than per SDR/HDR mode, which would require their infinity switch add on (at least for analogue consoles anyway). Again not something you'd need very often (or potentially at all) but something I'd expect from a premium scaler.

Annoying but ever present things like debugging CIC, dumping EDIDs, sending debugging information are all easier through a web UI. Again, hopefully not things you have to do every day, but things that you might need to do occasionally.

Personally though I'm always going to be a PC gamer so I'd always have a PC in my games room, so having a WebUI on my scaler is always going to be useful for me for these little edge cases.

GameID sounds great on paper, but I would be curious how well it works in practice. It needs a lot of understanding about the customer's setup and their preferences. You don't want the device making decisions "for" the user that step on their toes, or worse, put them into an incompatible situation. The first time that happens, the user is going to lose trust and turn it off.

You can say the same of auto crop/resolution detect, it's going to go wrong in some instances. Since you can read the EDID of a modern console you can be pretty sure that's the console in use.. well except a lot of HDMI switches send their own EDID instead of the consoles so... yeah. Perhaps an "undo and disable" button should be mapped on the remote, of both devices, so that such things can be disabled quickly when they do trip up.

[tongshadow]

The wifi idea is very solid for managing custom profiles/settings. In fact, even a cheaper device like the MemcardPRO has it and it's definitely useful for managing saves remotely and easily.

It's just that the RetroTink 4k is apparently immune to any criticism here.

[SavagePencil]

Bucko could you (or could you ask the devs to) upload some more footage of the Morph? Heck, even the user guide or a stub wiki page would go a long way towards better understanding what the device is capable of and how it works.

It's just that the RetroTink 4k is apparently immune to any criticism here.

Get out of here with that shit.

[d00d]

It's just that the RetroTink 4k is apparently immune to any criticism here.

Get out of here with that shit.

That was intentional irony right?

I agree with tongshadow, the Tink can do no wrong in this forum or most other retro gaming communities I've came across for that matter. Which is a testament to Mike & his products. As is the overwhelming amount of fanboys speaking out against his competitors over the drama that previously unfolded.
I'm not a fan of any of the drama, but especially not the "sheeple-groupthink-mob-mentality" bullying that some people are taking against other products. I don't want to dive into what started this, but it's clear that the punishment has already been severe.
I think continuing to ostracize them from the community when they have also brought us many great products in the past, and will hopefully continue to do in the future, is a huge mistake.

I honestly believe that all of these next-gen products are great & having options & competition is a win for all of us. I own some of Dan's previous products, the original OSSC & plan to pickup a Tink4k for now. But the Morph and Infinity switch may entice me to pick those up later on as well. If the analog bridge and infinity switch were available right now as well then this would have been a difficult decision.

[SavagePencil]

That was intentional irony right?

I agree with tongshadow, the Tink can do no wrong in this forum or most other retro gaming communities I've came across for that matter. Which is a testament to Mike & his products. As is the overwhelming amount of fanboys speaking out against his competitors over the drama that previously unfolded.
I'm not a fan of any of the drama, but especially not the "sheeple-groupthink-mob-mentality" bullying that some people are taking against other products. I don't want to dive into what started this, but it's clear that the punishment has already been severe.
I think continuing to ostracize them from the community when they have also brought us many great products in the past, and will hopefully continue to do in the future, is a huge mistake.

I honestly believe that all of these next-gen products are great & having options & competition is a win for all of us. I own some of Dan's previous products, the original OSSC & plan to pickup a Tink4k for now. But the Morph and Infinity switch may entice me to pick those up later on as well. If the analog bridge and infinity switch were available right now as well then this would have been a difficult decision.

No, it wasn't irony. It was intended to stop a screed exactly like yours. You're new here with only 2 posts, so maybe you don't have enough context. BuckoA51 already stood up and said let's drop the drama from Pixel's stuff, it wasn't right, and we're moving on. That's the right tack. I think we need to have more productive conversations without stirring the pot.

[tongshadow]

I wished the Block feature was better on this forum. I can still see Savage's love letters addressed to me when others quote him.

But yes that's pretty much it, more options can never be bad for the consumer.

[orange808]

If I wanted people to care about wireless, I'd build an app for automatic color calibration, edge blending, and keystone correction. Those are killer apps.

That's what my other video processors use it for. That's much more compelling than an inconvenient web page interface that's harder to use than my remote, sharing my "status", and downloading JSON files that I can just as easily update with my firmware on the sdcard.

I'm not trying to upset anyone, I'm just being honest about what I want from a video processor.

[SavagePencil]

I wished the Block feature was better on this forum. I can still see Savage's love letters addressed to me when others quote him.

So this is what it feels like to be apparently immune to any criticism here.

[BuckoA51]

If I wanted people to care about wireless, I'd build an app for automatic color calibration, edge blending, and keystone correction. Those are killer apps.

Can you elaborate how that would work?

On that note I did ask if the USB port on the Morph could be used for time sleuth and suchlike, but the team seemed to think it'd require the expansion port. However, perhaps colour calibration probes etc could be connected, that would be useful.

[Lord of Pirates]

Annoying but ever present things like debugging CIC, dumping EDIDs, sending debugging information are all easier through a web UI. Again, hopefully not things you have to do every day, but things that you might need to do occasionally.

Personally though I'm always going to be a PC gamer so I'd always have a PC in my games room, so having a WebUI on my scaler is always going to be useful for me for these little edge cases.

Why wireless over wired? If someone wants network access they probably don't have a problem plugging it in.

[BuckoA51]

Why wireless over wired? If someone wants network access they probably don't have a problem plugging it in.

I'd have preferred both but we're not talking about transferring huge amounts of data here, wireless should be totally fine.

[SavagePencil]

What’s the full extent of the Morph’s connectivity? Is it just talking to things on my network or is it doing things over the public internet?

[kamiboy]

The die is cast.

Managed to get a Tink 4k order in before going to bed, and it apparently selling out. A bit of an impulse buy, you could say, as I was still considering if I should until last second. Hell, neither it nor any other scaler was on my radar until all the youtube reviews started to hit my feed recently.

Last time I gave scalers a look was when the Framemeister hit the market and was the talk of town.

I got one, played around with it and sold it off within a week or so. I wasn’t too keen on all the tweaking everything needed, nor the way scanlines looked on my 1080p LCD TV compared to a real CRT.

I have been rolling pure CRTs since, but with the Tink 4K I think the time is neigh to give the old scaler route another gander. The claims of the Tink being much more of a plug and play device and the CRT emulation features are enough to see whether the flat panel experience is meaningfully closer to the CRT experience for my taste. Especially after seeing how well Analogue nailed low-res LCD emulation on the Pocket.

If not I guess within a week or two of having the 4k on hand the brief romance with flat panel retro gaming will once again come to an abrupt end, and, well, I don’t know whether any future product could possibly entice me to give it another go 10-15 years down the line. But who knows, I certainly didn’t think anything could until I saw the T4K overviews.

On the off chance that I do end up keeping it, and actually use it to play games, I think the scenario that appeals most to me is to have a clean, modern, pure all digital setup of all my Analogue consoles married to the T4K on the 77” OLED, while the OG consoles remain hooked up to the CRTs in a pure true retro setup, so I can switch back and forth at whim.

Hope it will arrive in time to play around with during the holidays.

[BuckoA51]

What’s the full extent of the Morph’s connectivity? Is it just talking to things on my network or is it doing things over the public internet?

At the moment you can connect to it on your LAN for remote control, shadow mask editing/slotmask editing, upload custom modelines and gamma tables, and it has over the air updates too (same as GEM/legacy HDMI mods).

[fernan1234]

On the off chance that I do end up keeping it, and actually use it to play games, I think the scenario that appeals most to me is to have a clean, modern, pure all digital setup of all my Analogue consoles married to the T4K on the 77” OLED, while the OG consoles remain hooked up to the CRTs in a pure true retro setup, so I can switch back and forth at whim.

If you end up not needing it I call dibs on the first chance to buy it from you. Just PM me and will make it worth your while!

[kamiboy]

Buying from me makes most sense for someone who lives in the EU. Because after import taxes the item will have cost me over 1000 USD and a EU buyer wouldn’t have to pay any more import taxes on top of that.

After this, some flash carts from Krizz and the Analogue Duo shipping soon, all coming from outside of EU, I am very much reminded of how much it sucks to be located in this part of world as a retro gamer. Very few products originate here unfortunately.

[Josh128]

Buying from me makes most sense for someone who lives in the EU. Because after import taxes the item will have cost me over 1000 USD and a EU buyer wouldn’t have to pay any more import taxes on top of that.

After this, some flash carts from Krizz and the Analogue Duo shipping soon, all coming from outside of EU, I am very much reminded of how much it sucks to be located in this part of world as a retro gamer. Very few products originate here unfortunately.

Fernan has $25K OLED BVMs, if you decide to sell yours prior to the next batch coming out, I doubt an extra $300 or $400 bucks is going to make him hold off.

[SavagePencil]

What’s the full extent of the Morph’s connectivity? Is it just talking to things on my network or is it doing things over the public internet?

At the moment you can connect to it on your LAN for remote control, shadow mask editing/slotmask editing, upload custom modelines and gamma tables, and it has over the air updates too (same as GEM/legacy HDMI mods).

OK that’s good to hear. Can the OTA endpoint be selected, or is it hardcoded? I would hate to be stuck with whatever firmware was on the device because the servers were taken down in 10 years.

[BuckoA51]

OK that’s good to hear. Can the OTA endpoint be selected, or is it hardcoded? I would hate to be stuck with whatever firmware was on the device because the servers were taken down in 10 years.

You can't change it at the moment but you can update via Micro SD card instead if a connection is not available.