RetroTINK (5X Pro and 4K), gcomp switch, and SCA-101: first impressions

[gunrock]

Does this ship from Europe yet?

Edit: the Tink 5x

[speedlolita]

VideoGamePerfection ships from Europe I believe. Depends on stock availability of course though, none in right now.

[briareos_kerensky]

New 5X firmware available: it allows to feed false HDR info to the TV to allow for increased brightness, especially with scalines active.

[Yakumo]

New 5X firmware available: it allows to feed false HDR info to the TV to allow for increased brightness, especially with scalines active.

All fine and well but I've never had any need for that. What I do have need for is being able to name my profiles! Just having them numbered is not convenient.

[briareos_kerensky]

Firmware version for the RetroTINK-5X PRO has dropped with profile naming and some other extra features.

https://www.retrotink.com/post/retrotink-5x-pro-firmware-updates

[Yakumo]

Firmware version for the RetroTINK-5X PRO has dropped with profile naming and some other extra features.

https://www.retrotink.com/post/retro...rmware-updates

Now this is what I've been after since day one. Finally, I don't need to write down on a post-it note what each profile is for.

[fuse]

Introductory blog post for the RetroTink 4K

https://www.retrotink.com/post/introducing-the-retrotink-4k

Currently targeting a late-2023 release. The exact price is to be determined since we are still exploring multiple options on how to best source the FPGA. Best guidance is to budget $1,000 and we hope you will be pleasantly surprised when the actual price is determined.

[dataDave]

LOLOL.

[CMcK]

The RetroTink 4K does sound very impressive the mention of BFI in one of those screenshots is very intriguing. Using the higher brightness of an HDR capable panel maybe we could see proper BFI without the loss of light output?

[Yakumo]

The RetroTink 4K does sound very impressive the mention of BFI in one of those screenshots is very intriguing. Using the higher brightness of an HDR capable panel maybe we could see proper BFI without the loss of light output?

I use BFI on my LG and you know what, it doesn't do anything for me to make it worth switching on every time I'm playing retro 8 to 32bit games.
I'm also not sure if a Retrotink 4K is worth it if someone owns the Retrotink x5 Pro as that does 1440p at 60fps with full processing and looks fantastic on my 4K panel.
Of course, I've not seen a Retrotink 4K in action but I really can't see it being worth the money unless someone doesn't have the 5Xpro.

Here's a PC Engine at 1440p via RGB. Looks lovely.

[fuse]

Product page is now live.

Where, When and How Much?
We will begin taking orders early December once all the units has arrived. No pre-orders. Once we know the exact shipping dates, we will announce on Twitter and the TINK discord.

MSRP is $750.

[importaku]

actually not a bad price considering just how much it can do right out the box, think i'm gonna try & grab one and sell on my current 5x tink. Other scalers are gonna have to do something amazing to be able to compete with this thing.

[Baseley09]

Ludicrous price, im sure it does it's job greatly, not sure what realm of reality it exists in but it's so far detached having fun with retrogames anymore.

[briareos_kerensky]

Some very quick impressions of the RT4K.

Very nicely built, feels much better that the 5X in hand. The SCART input is facing the correct way, finally; out of the box there's a screw hole if you want to fix the SCART better. Needs a stand to be placed vertically, I've 3D-printed my own...Mike Chi made available an a fully-featured CAD model of the RT4K for anyone to print stands or entire case parts.
Nice of Mike to include an USB SD card reader (both A and C), though I don't really know how many people will actually have use for it.
The remote is full sized, with custome labels for the RT4K. The battery compartment is harder to open than the 5X remote, and the two AA batteries required are no included.
For power the RT4K uses the same braided USB A to C cable, but there's no power adapter included.

Installation is as easy as with the 5X: connect all required inputs, connect an HDMI cable capable of supporting 4K60 to the output, plug in the power, and you're ready to go. The RT4K defaults to a 2160p60 output.
The HDMI input is 1.4, the output is HDMI 2.0. The output does limit some of the RT4K's capabilities (like black frame insertion, which maxes out at 1440p), but HDMI 2.1 parts are still way too expensive, according to Mike Chi.

The new menu structure is oh-so-much user friendly than the 5X. It sit on the left side of the screen, with pretty much all sub-options available for a menu entry fully visible; options are in the same place as on the 5X.

Profiles are a godsend. I tried the PSP, loaded the supplied PSP 2000 profile, and everything was sized and centered correctly, with a basic scanline mask applied, and HDR turned on by default, which is probably the thing I like the least...my monitor has a lowly HDR600 certification (so barely HDR at all), and I've found it does wash out some bright colours a bit too much...and playing a bit in the menus I've entered the rabbit hole of either disabling HDR entirely or adjusting nits and colour correction to get what I want. Then I realised I was playing with the RT4K more than with the PSP, so I got back to the default profile...for now.

Tried the X360 and the Switch, and the default upscaling method, bilinear sharp, is a bit too sharp, especially when you have lowish resolution textures or text: changed scaling to cubic, and this solved the problem. I haven't tried any prescaling right now.

Now, I save this profile as new, removed the SD card from the RT4K, and renamed it accordingly on the PC. The profile itself is not human-readable but you can move it anywhere in the \profiles directory, and you can also create sibdirectories to store your custom profiles; multiple HTML files tell you want you can and cannot do (for example, up to 3 subdirectory levels). I put the card back into the RT4K, the profile was picked up, I assigned it to one of the 8 AUX buttons on the remote, and even made this the default startup profile.
Oh boy having a default startup profile and quick access buttons on the remote is so useful.