Whether or not you think an HDMI mod is worth it is up to you
in my opinion, HDMI internal kits are not worth it. you pay about 150$ on average which is very expensive (I know they cost a lot to produce) and they don't really deliver that "game changing" value people claim they do.
All you need is a good RGB cable (and mod to your console) then deliver all your consoles RGB\Component high quality signal to a good external scaler say RT5X which will give you practically and reasonably the exact same end result! why would you pay a lot per console instead of just one time good scaler which takes all?? for what result?? when you sit and play, internal "fully digital" won't give you any real noticeable result over RGB + good scaler. this is a fact not an opinion. >> with that said I don't mind people buying any HDMI kit and I think they are good cleaver designs.
one SKU they can actually keep in stock
this is certainly good move, one product to do multi... but for the end-user it means nothing. I keep reading "only one product for 4-5 consoles" which is useless to end-user! the end-user if he needs to HDMI mod his consoles he MUST buy a kit for each console, so what benefit will this "one SKU for all" benefit him here vs buying a different kit for each console? nothing.
if you want to HDMI your setup, then getting RGB\Comp cables and a good scaler is the best option (as we said above, no real practical added value of pure digital) and cheapest. it will cost you say 300$ for 5X and 100$ or so for cables = 400-500$ total. while going internal mods will easily cost you +1000$ for mere 5 consoles!
all these awesome scaling and scanlines features are already exist in external scaler... it is not really beneficial to have them per console.
This for sure. Both the 5x and 4k will deal with absolutely every console scenario imaginable. As cool as I think HDMI mods are, the only console that really, absolutely needs it is probably the OG XBox as the component output is just a touch soft, although not what I'd consider bad. The PS2 has pretty great component/RGB output, so I'm not sure why so many people were clamoring for an HDMI solution. I suppose I understand, as most games are 480i and an internal HDMI solution would bring better deinterlacing with it, but current scalers already do it quite well, as will future scalers.
yes correct. mostly what I personally think.
I don't have xbox so can't judge but I think you can just use RGB SCART with it instead of component. 480i processing has gotten to a really nice status where complaining about them is not really acceptable. I mean, what is more than motion-adaptive deinterlacing which is minimal lag?
Since I posted that in February the 5CEFA5F23C8N is available to purchase in small quantities now, which is a massive improvement over "64 week lead times". I think end of this year, start of the next we're going to see movement. Mike posts about the RT4K enough that I think it's coming within half a year.
140$ is too much which will drive the total price up. I believe the 4K will use a lot stronger FPGA which is not within the reasonable pricing range. FPGAs are not specialized chips thus need more power to deliver good results. they are not ASICs after all.
From what I hear, people have enjoyed the HDR flagging feature when combined with scanlines to brighten the image back up, it all depends on how your display can tone map. I would not personally have any interest in any algorithms to do a full artificial conversion from SDR to HDR, but maybe some more ability to tweak the colors when flagging the output as HDR would be nice.
the brightness thing is nice but not as big as putting "HDR" into the set of features. converting SDR to HDR is not a gimmicky thing but can deliver actual good results which makes the image way better especially for 3D games which has detailed backgrounds and so on. but ultimately it is up to the user himself.
