RetroTINK 5x-Pro

[Guspaz]

rt4k does the later, but now up direction is shown as right and so on.

The RT4K does neither, it does not support rotation and may never support rotation. There's a chance that it might be added in the future, with the requisite additional frame of latency, but Mike has always been careful to say that it would be a lot of work and it may never be implemented.

[orange808]

if i have a vertical shooter and want it to be horizontal, then either i rotate the tv or rotate the picture. rt4k does the later, but now up direction is shown as right and so on. which is why I asked what people are doing.

for me i have an original ossc and stopped using it when i got a good sony crt, all my setup is in the crt.

however, still interested in the scene

AFAIK, no Retrotink machines will do rotation.

Who suggested doing 90° (or π) rotation on a horizonal shooter? Nobody. I assume you figured out what "tate mode" means and how it works? Good for you. We all know you learned that today. So, this business about horizontal games was unnecessary. Move on.

[VEGETA]

The RT4K does neither, it does not support rotation and may never support rotation. There's a chance that it might be added in the future, with the requisite additional frame of latency, but Mike has always been careful to say that it would be a lot of work and it may never be implemented.

I am sure I read somewhere it will support rotation, but as you said not verified to be on launch day.

of course it will add at least a frame of lag since it should have a frame buffer to sort the pixels in.

AFAIK, no Retrotink machines will do rotation.

Who suggested doing 90° (or π) rotation on a horizonal shooter? Nobody. I assume you figured out what "tate mode" means and how it works? Good for you. We all know you learned that today. So, this business about horizontal games was unnecessary. Move on.

I thought tate mode is a typo of rotate xD now I know it. but what is the fuss about rotation feature in scalers then? do they mean for games which does not support tate mode?

[SavagePencil]

the fuss is about how it is inconvenient to physically rotate many existing TVs, so for a game that natively supports tate mode, a scaler that can take the frame buffer and rotate it for you would be nice.

[orange808]

Tate mode has deep roots in coin op arcade games. Naturally, some ports offer tate mode as an option to reproduce the arcade experience. This is pretty basic stuff.

[Mr.Ash]

I will try to connect the PS2 via RGB cable and see if it works.

Same here, only the colors are now richer. The picture signal is first correctly recognized as PAL 625i 50Hz (FMCB Menu and OpenPSLoader), but as soon as I start a game and the PS2 outputs a 576p/480p picture signal via GSM Settings, the RT5X reports "no signal".

Again, the DVDO VP50 has no problems with the 576p/480p signal from the PS2 via GSM Settings and displays a clean picture.

Of course, I could do without the GSM settings and continue to output the standard 576i/480i image signal. But this is where the RT5X weakens a bit compared to the VP50. Not that the RT5X image is bad with interlaced sources, but you notice that the RT5X is optimized for progressive 240p/480p signals.

I should also mention that the 480p signal from my Dreamcast is recognized on both the VP50 and RT5X without any problems. Only with the PS2 the RT5X goes on strike with progressive image signals.

[VEGETA]

PS2 480p uses sync on green as I remember, maybe you should tweak the 5x for this.

[Mr.Ash]

PS2 480p uses sync on green as I remember, maybe you should tweak the 5x for this.

That's what I thought at first, since the PS2 outputs an RGsB instead of RGBs signal. But this should only affect the RGB image output, but not YPbPr image output.

So I don't know what I should tweak on the RT5X. And even if I would do a hardware modification on the RT5X, there is a high probability that 480p/576p from the PS2 would work, but nothing else.

Is there no one here who uses a PS2 to the same extent as I do?

[ldeveraux]

https://www.retrotink.com/post/introduc ... trotink-4k

I assume you've all seen the announcement by now. No offense, with the slim upgrades over the RT5x, I won't even be 'pleasantly surprised' paying half the amount he's mentioned. It's just not for me I suppose.

[Guspaz]

Is there no one here who uses a PS2 to the same extent as I do?

Many many many people use the RT5X with the PS2. But it works perfectly fine over component for them.

[VEGETA]

That's what I thought at first, since the PS2 outputs an RGsB instead of RGBs signal. But this should only affect the RGB image output, but not YPbPr image output.

So I don't know what I should tweak on the RT5X. And even if I would do a hardware modification on the RT5X, there is a high probability that 480p/576p from the PS2 would work, but nothing else.

Is there no one here who uses a PS2 to the same extent as I do?

I suggest first trying a game that supports 480p natively without GSM, such as gran turismo 4 from its internal menu. but first make sure your choose YPbPr in PS2 main menu.

then post images here and we'll see what happens.

https://www.retrotink.com/post/introduc ... trotink-4k

I assume you've all seen the announcement by now. No offense, with the slim upgrades over the RT5x, I won't even be 'pleasantly surprised' paying half the amount he's mentioned. It's just not for me I suppose.

yes, it is mostly just the advanced scanlines effects which very little people actually use them for gaming sessions. still 4k60 at 444 is good if you can afford it.

more likely, what features you assumed it should exist for that device to be worth +500$?

Tate mode has deep roots in coin op arcade games. Naturally, some ports offer tate mode as an option to reproduce the arcade experience. This is pretty basic stuff.

Now I am more confused.

if certain games allows you to rotate and manage controls internally, then why people request rotation to be included in external scalers?

kindly explain it to me like I am a 5 year old.

[bobrocks95]

Now I am more confused.

if certain games allows you to rotate and manage controls internally, then why people request rotation to be included in external scalers?

kindly explain it to me like I am a 5 year old.

A rotation mode for a vertical shooter expects you to rotate the monitor with it, just like the arcade original. When you have say a 65" flat panel it's pretty hard to do that.

On a PS1-era port, if you opt not to play in tate, since the screen is now shorter than it needs to be, the game has to do something about it- cut off part of the screen, use bad looking scaling to zoom out, maybe run in 480i (much more common for PS2 ports). They're always a compromise so ideally you play with a rotated monitor or use a video processor to flip the picture right side up again, on a modern display that has plenty of vertical resolution to show everything.

[TooBeaucoup]

https://www.retrotink.com/post/introduc ... trotink-4k

I assume you've all seen the announcement by now. No offense, with the slim upgrades over the RT5x, I won't even be 'pleasantly surprised' paying half the amount he's mentioned. It's just not for me I suppose.

Same. I was fully ready to pay, probably, $600-$700 for this thing, but man, when he said budget $1000 and hope to be pleasantly surprised... ehhhh. I totally get it, and I don't blame him. He's poured thousands of personal hours into designing it, so he deserves every penny he charges, but that's going to be rough for me to justify, even though I know the device is going to be brilliant and absolutely worth it. I love my 5X and Mike is an awesome dude, but man, that price hurts my soul. LOL!

[fernan1234]

Same. I was fully ready to pay, probably, $600-$700 for this thing, but man, when he said budget $1000 and hope to be pleasantly surprised... ehhhh. I totally get it, and I don't blame him. He's poured thousands of personal hours into designing it, so he deserves every penny he charges, but that's going to be rough for me to justify, even though I know the device is going to be brilliant and absolutely worth it. I love my 5X and Mike is an awesome dude, but man, that price hurts my soul. LOL!

Calling it now, it'll either be 799 or 850.

[Gara]

Calling it now, it'll either be 799 or 850.

I'm not sure I'd be pleasantly surprised at $800. $599.99 feels more like pleasant surprise territory with a dash of, "oh you!". Realistically though I imagine you're dead on at $799.

I'm eager to see the adoption rate. The Framemeister launched in 2012 at ¥38,800 which was about $500 with the horrid yen conversion rate. Adjust that to about $660 with inflation. Framemeister was able to sit pretty with 4-5 years of no real competition though. These days there are so many good options, but the user base is also much larger.

[SuperSpongo]

Framemeister was able to sit pretty with 4-5 years of no real competition though. These days there are so many good options, but the user base is also much larger.

This is a big factor I think. Most people blew their load on the comparatively RT5X and now the RT4K is coming out rather soon after. This makes it an unreasonable buy for RT5X owners and they're left salty because they soon won't have the latest and greatest anymore.
Personally, I did not buy the 5X because I was waiting for the OSSC Pro, so I might end up buying a 4K. I'm mostly interested in the HDR + BFI + scanlines feature.

[ldeveraux]

Framemeister was able to sit pretty with 4-5 years of no real competition though. These days there are so many good options, but the user base is also much larger.

This is a big factor I think. Most people blew their load on the comparatively RT5X and now the RT4K is coming out rather soon after. This makes it an unreasonable buy for RT5X owners and they're left salty because they soon won't have the latest and greatest anymore.
Personally, I did not buy the 5X because I was waiting for the OSSC Pro, so I might end up buying a 4K. I'm mostly interested in the HDR + BFI + scanlines feature.

I was waiting on the Morph because of the HDMI in, but decided it was probably never coming, so I bought the RT5x to upgrade my OSSC. Best decision I made. I don't bother processing native HDMI consoles through this thing, and my older consoles aren't changing. But I don't feel salty that the 4k is coming out, I don't think the RT5x is really a downgrade for my purposes. Also that's a no to $800

[cfx]

The Retrotink 4K has two dedicated threads; could its merits be discussed in one of those instead of cluttering this one up as well?

That said, I feel the need to respond to:

yes, it is mostly just the advanced scanlines effects which very little people actually use them for gaming sessions. still 4k60 at 444 is good if you can afford it.

And you know the bolded how exactly?

Personally I bought the 5X specifically because of the scanline options. And even then I wouldn't declare how important the feature is, or isn't, to buyers in general.

[ldeveraux]

The Retrotink 4K has two dedicated threads; could it's merits be discussed in one of those instead of cluttering this one up as well?

Because people want to compare the two? Stop trying to monitor the forum and let people discuss.

[cfx]

The Retrotink 4K has two dedicated threads; could it's merits be discussed in one of those instead of cluttering this one up as well?

Because people want to compare the two? Stop trying to monitor the forum and let people discuss.

I made a request nicely. You, as the person that started the off-topic nonsense, are instead rude to me about it. "People" in this case seem to just be you.

And someone agreed with me, since this has been moved to where it belongs. You can discuss it all you want in the appropriate place, this thread.

[pulsemod]

hey, apologies if anything I ask here has been answered before, I can't search "PS2" with phpBB's built-in search and the rest of the video game web seems to be filled with terribly wrong information about analogue video.

I've been given a 5X to play with for a while, and I've been trying to set up presets for the 2 most common interlaced PS2 video modes. firmware 3.0.

I've been following the suggested settings on the Console Mods Wiki for PS2 at 1080p (over) (2.5x scaling?), and the HiRes 858 mode settings were straightforward, but I can't seem to get the HiRes 512 settings to match at all. the V Size value in particular is so off that I can't help but assume the 1612 is wrong for that resolution. it cuts off far too much when the percentage value matches, too. how are these optimal H interp and and V Size values determined? they apply additional scaling but nothing I seem to set actually looks super great in the end. I was going to try going by the 4:3 ratio in the scaling menu but the HiRes 858 settings have that at 0.90, so I'm not sure about that either. there are no suggestions for 1080p (under).

on another note, for determining whether a game uses 512 or 640 video modes, is it OK to go based on aspect ratio? if I'm correct in that the two modes 512x576i and 640x576i are both anamorphic 4:3, if a game appears at the wrong aspect ratio when using the HiRes 858 settings, that's evidence that it's outputting a 512x576 signal? the PS2 menu seems to output like that.

sorry about the overload of questions, it's my first time using any kind of analogue to digital scaler, so I'm a little bit confused about some things. thanks for reading.

It's been a couple months and I'm gonna bump these questions, if someone knows where to point me in the right direction to learn how values should be determined that would be fantastic.

[VEGETA]

The Retrotink 4K has two dedicated threads; could its merits be discussed in one of those instead of cluttering this one up as well?

That said, I feel the need to respond to:

yes, it is mostly just the advanced scanlines effects which very little people actually use them for gaming sessions. still 4k60 at 444 is good if you can afford it.

And you know the bolded how exactly?

Personally I bought the 5X specifically because of the scanline options. And even then I wouldn't declare how important the feature is, or isn't, to buyers in general.

I said what I actually see on the internet, even most videos on youtube they clearly say that scanlines are nice but they don't use them. That does not mean no one ever uses them, this is not what I aimed to say.

the point is, if the advanced scanlines is the only major feature of this device, then it will limit the sales. that is what I think

[bobrocks95]

John Linneman just shared excellent results for 720p and 1080p scaling. Tons of people complain that their 4K TV doesn't do a nearest-neighbor scale for 1080p sources, now here's a device that can.

[ldeveraux]

I made a request nicely. You, as the person that started the off-topic nonsense, are instead rude to me about it. "People" in this case seem to just be you.

And someone agreed with me, since this has been moved to where it belongs. You can discuss it all you want in the appropriate place, this thread.

Request made. Request denied. Just stop dude, let conversations happen. I want to discuss the differences between the 5x and the 4k. It's fully appropriate to do that here.

[tongshadow]

John Linneman just shared excellent results for 720p and 1080p scaling. Tons of people complain that their 4K TV doesn't do a nearest-neighbor scale for 1080p sources, now here's a device that can.

I will say the upscaling looks amazing for 2D/2.5D visuals, but for 3D content it will just amplify the low fidelity and end up generating a very pixelated picture.

It might look better compared to what some TVs do, but it's better to keep expectations in check because it wont suddenly make 720p look like native 4k as some people would believe. But at least the grid mask effect helps to counteract the pixelation, in the same way fake scanlines do : https://twitter.com/dark1x/status/1686442231392063509

[bobrocks95]

Contra looks incredible there to me, including the 3D elements, but you can do a softer bilinear scale as well, it doesn't have to be razor sharp! But a lot of people want nearest-neighbor for 1080p, not that I'm sure they'll necessarily like the results.

[orange808]

Depends on what you expect. Do you think the FPGA is out of gates and there won't be more filters and options as the firmware matures? It's possible more features will appear later. Maybe that won't happen. It's okay to think the machine will ship with a complete feature set and only receive maintenance updates. I don't believe that, but you can.

You're not really replacing the VP50 pro without something like the negative edge enhancement, anyway.

[bobrocks95]

Video game scaling-wise other than rotation I would really like to see a dynamic blur filter for dithering or SNES high-res effects. Just de-dithering specific areas rather than having to blur your entire output or use composite/s-video. I think some emulators can do this, right? Don't know how feasible it is in hardware but it's the only other oddball feature I can think of for general video game use.

[orange808]

Video game scaling-wise other than rotation I would really like to see a dynamic blur filter for dithering or SNES high-res effects. Just de-dithering specific areas rather than having to blur your entire output or use composite/s-video. I think some emulators can do this, right? Don't know how feasible it is in hardware but it's the only other oddball feature I can think of for general video game use.

Without direct access to the SNES hardware, I don't know how the upscaler could know mode 7 is use, identify the background layer, and smooth it out--while leaving the other elements alone.

[Guspaz]

It's not mode 7, they're talking about the SNES 512-pixel mode, which some games use for transparencies, similar to dithering. Filters for these effects can be done as postprocessing by trying to identify if the current pixel is part of a dither pattern and averaging the pixels together if they are. I've seen these sorts of filters implemented on FPGAs before, but they're finicky and the user has to select the sensitivity, and they usually have side effects.