Easy Mode For Modern Retro Gaming - RetroTINK-5X Pro
ShortCircuit
·ShortCircuit
·2022-05-05
·
2,946 words · ~14 min read
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- It's retro time! The OSSC, the open-source scan converter.
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This is an amazing device that we took a look at a little while ago.
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It lets you basically upscale any of your retro consoles,
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or even retro computers, with so much control that you can basically guarantee
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that you can get a good signal out of it, regardless as to what display you're looking at.
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The only problem is this thing gives you a lot of control, for one.
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That's not necessarily a good thing in all cases. And two, it's lacking some key features.
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So first of all, yes, it's got SCART,
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that peritel slash European connector
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that everybody is so familiar with, and it's got component,
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and it's got VGA. But that's all it's got.
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You might notice many consoles actually
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didn't come with either of those things.
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In fact, most of them only came with this.
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Now you can plug these in, but you're not going to get very far.
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So in order to expand this, you need one of these. It's a core you transcoder.
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This component here is output that goes into the OSSC and you can then plug
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in composite and S-Video. So, this is kind of what
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your OSSC stack has to look like.
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That's fine. I mean, I obviously went and got one.
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But there's another way.
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Enter the RetroTINK 5X-Pro by Mike Chi.
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This thing, it comes in a very unassuming package.
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The RetroTINK, for those of you who are not familiar, was a, or is, an upscaler
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that basically gives you very little control,
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but at the same time, provides a pretty good upscaler
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for most things you'd want to plug into it. So it's a very set it
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and forget it kind of thing. We actually have this here,
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it's a RAD2X, sent over by Retro Gaming Cables.
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It uses the same technology as the RetroTINK.
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So what's special about the 5X-Pro?
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Let's get into the box and we'll see for ourselves.
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All right, we've got, I guess this is a sticker
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and this is a postcard with some setup instructions on it.
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Yep. The full manual is available online and it is powered off of micro USB.
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Cool. So it comes in this nice little bag,
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the unit itself. Oh, let's set this aside for now though and continue our exploration.
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The controller is interesting. It's actually a standard controller that
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I think may be also used for stuff like the Roku.
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It reminds me of a Roku controller. - [Brandon] It's very similar to a Roku.
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- So let's whack a couple of batteries into that real quick.
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It's nice and clicky. The OSSC controller, by comparison,
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is significantly more in-depth, let's just say.
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We'll get back to that later. For now, we've got a nice braided micro USB cable
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that can be powered directly off of USB, as you probably can tell.
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As can these, but these are require two for the price of up-scaling one console.
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Finally, we've got one of these, it's a SKART to composite slash S-Video adapter.
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And what's pretty sweet about this is that it's actually got an input and output switcher.
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So this can be used as either an input or an output.
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It actually supports a mode where you can actually take
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a high definition bit of content, say from an Xbox 360 over component
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and downscale it to 240p. For now, let's get to the main event.
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And there it is. It's a strange design, actually.
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There are no feet here. I thought at first I thought these were like mounting points, but no,
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they're just there. So on the back, we've got micro USB for power,
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HDMI, left and right audio, component video.
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The green also acts as a composite in, and S-Video.
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And on the side here, we've got a SKART connector,
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just like the OSSC. So on the top here, we've got a menu button, nice and clicky,
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an option button, nice and clicky, and an input button.
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Very straightforward. And all of the inputs are labeled here actually,
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just in case you were wondering about that. So.
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- [Jono] But what about coaxial?
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- Do you want to talk about war crimes? (crew laughing)
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Because if you're talking RF, I mean, that was my childhood,
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but it was a war crime. With everything in the video, like,
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smashed into a single wire. It's also got audio.
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Yeah, it looked real bad. So I was going to take this thing apart.
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It just snaps together, but I don't really feel confident
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in snapping it apart. 'Cause I don't know where those snaps are and I don't want to actually snap it.
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So, I guess now would be a good time to turn it on.
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But first I need to turn you on to, iFixit and their right to repair movement.
5:34
iFixit wants to help you join the right to repair movement. They make step-by-step guides that are easy to follow
5:39
and help you replace integrated batteries and just generally repair your devices.
5:43
With support for more than 30,000 devices, you can be certain, you'll find something you can give new life.
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Check out what iFixit can help you repair in the link in the description.
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All right, so this cable is pretty short. Do you have that thing?
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- [Crew Member] Yup. - Yeah. Hello? No signal.
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Is it because it's trying to output a high resolution?
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So what we just ended up discovering is that it doesn't automatically detect
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the display's capabilities,
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or at least if it does, it detected the capture box down there,
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which is 4K. It doesn't output 4K,
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but it can output 1440p, which is amazing,
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But this monitor is 1080p, so this monitor just thought there was no input.
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So this button up here on the remote,
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that is the resolution change button. So I can change that as I see fit.
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There we go. Now that we've got the resolution set, we can go through the rest of the settings.
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Okay, so this big button is exit OSD. This is scan line strength.
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This is interpolation mode, which is just sharp or soft. So this H sampling, horizontal sampling,
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this is something of the RetroTINK's special sauce.
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It is a little bit soft if you look at the hard edges around pixels.
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So if we go instead into these modes,
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we'll see this Genesis slash Saturn mode, which should be much better,
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but it's currently blurry. (crew laughing)
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There we go. So that currently blurry bit was the automatic algorithm,
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trying to figure out what the best settings are for that mode,
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and it thought that the blurry mode was good.
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But here we can see that the pixels are basically.
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It looks like an emulator, it is super sharp.
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And in order to get that with the OSSC,
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you need to enter in all the timings manually.
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Like, I'm talking video nerd stuff,
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like, analog timings, like, the front porch and back porch,
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and it's a thing, But you don't have to do it here. And in fact, you can't.
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Let's keep going through the menu here. So we've got sharp versus soft interpolation.
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- [Jono] How much of a difference? Like, how much in dollars, for instance?
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- This is sold for $300 US. - [Jono] Ugh!
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(both laughing) - This is a little cheaper,
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but not by a whole lot. We go through the list here. We've got Genesis and Saturn, PS1, N64, Neo Geo,
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Saturn again for a different resolution, PS1 again for a different resolution,
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and this NES slash PC engine slash PS1,
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again for a different resolution. It's got these built in, whereas the OSSC absolutely does not.
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You had to go and look at them. A guy by the name of FirebrandX
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has a pretty good repository of those, but you still have to enter it all in manually.
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- [Jono] Gimmie the RetroTINK! - Jono wants the RetroTINK. So interpolation,
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that mostly matters with this 1080p mode. So the problem with 1080p is
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that it doesn't divide equally evenly into 240p, so it needs interpolation.
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And in this case, what this is doing is the bilinear sharp,
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or bicubic sharp, that Taran likes to go on about with scaling retro graphics.
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And what that basically does is it scales up to as many multiples as it can
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to your monitor's resolution.
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And then it uses softer scaling for the rest of the way.
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So it looks sharp while still maintaining the right geometry.
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It has a slight blur to it compared to a just direct sharp upscale,
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which you can get with 1440p or 1200p.
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I prefer the sharp, but if you like soft, go you.
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For now we'll keep it on sharp. There are scan lines for so many different situations.
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We've got the standard 25% scan lines.
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We've got another 50% scan line. You've got a different type of scan line.
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Yup, those are scan lines. Then we have a slot mask.
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It doesn't quite look right at that 1080p.
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And then we have an aperture grill, which looks amazing at 1440p.
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It doesn't look quite right here, but I can show you that it can.
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But first there's also another PBM mode that kind of widens the color space a little bit
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and crushes it. And it's got an LCD filter as well, because I don't know.
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Oh, right. The LCD filter would be great for a GameCube with a Game Boy player.
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We'll come back to that. So this is a 1080p mode that basically just chops off a bit of the screen.
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The reason for that is that that bit of the screen is usually,
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but not always, the overscan area that may or may not
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have actually been shown on an original screen back in the day.
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So you're not losing too much by using this mode,
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but you do get that perfect scale. 'Cause you can actually get a one-to-one scale up.
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When you're in this zoomed in mode,
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you can actually use the up and down arrows on the remote to shift the screen up and down.
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If, for example, the gain used a little bit more one
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or the other dimension. So when we go through the scan lines now,
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the aperture grill looks pretty solid.
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In fact, I would actually argue,
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you should turn off the sharpening and go for something a little smoother
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because that, to my eye, looks pretty close to how old-school graphics looked
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on an old TV or monitor. It's the same kind of feel, which is interesting.
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And it's not something you can get with the OSSC. Now what's this triple buffer thing?
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What that does is it means that resolution changes in a game.
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Those are instantaneous. That's normally instantaneous on a CRT.
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And it's instantaneous here, but on an OSSC, it takes a second,
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which could mean the difference between life and death in the game.
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If you're like super low on resources.
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Now, you can use the OSSC's mode, which is just called, I think, what is it?
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Frame lock, yeah. So this is very similar to the OSSC.
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It is actually looking at exactly what the console is
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spitting out line by line. From what I've read,
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they claim a quarter of a frame of lag in frame lock mode
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and one and a quarter to one and a half,
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I think in triple buffer mode. But you get that instantaneous mode switch.
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Now this option is interesting. It's deinterlacing.
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The OSSC just had, I think just the straight up bob.
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So it would like flicker a little bit because the lines would be going up and down,
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showing each individual field.
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Whereas motion adaptive interlacing is
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almost like running at progressive scan. There are artifacts,
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but it is significantly better. And it of course requires that triple buffer.
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So having that option is actually amazing
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for people with pre-HD consoles.
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So like not 16 bit consoles is like this, but the Dreamcast,
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the PlayStation 2, the original Xbox.
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This kind of the interlacing makes it so that even if the game doesn't support progressive scan,
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it'll look pretty much like progressive scan in most scenarios.
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Of course, it also has weave, and it has blend, and it has bob.
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And I'm not sure what linear does, and CRT simulate just kind of,
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I don't know what that's all about. Oh yeah, it's got a comb filter
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as well as a notch filter for your composite input.
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It's not something you need to worry about with component or SKART, or even with, I think, S-Video as well,
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Colorspace lets you change between full or limited, depending on what your TV supports,
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which is nice I guess. Low pass filter.
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Depending on your console, you might want to turn this on at different levels.
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I feel like mine looks pretty decent with it off.
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Pre-emphasis filter is kind of interesting because you can actually make it a little bit sharper.
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And depending on how you do it, it kind of works in the scan line's favor.
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Oh yeah, and it supports a Sinden Lightgun, if you have one of those.
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It's got the border built in. This option here is interesting, too.
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It's 240p downscale. So this is actually just straight up,
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spitting out 240p to the display.
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It doesn't look amazing because the display's scaling isn't amazing.
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It's better than I thought it would be actually. So let's turn off the scan lines here
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and go for sharp pixels.
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Let's go ahead and load up Sonic or something.
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So you can see here, there's some of the picture
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that's kind of missing down there. Oh yeah, and there's the CRAM dots.
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That's fun. And there's not really much above that.
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That's what that's all about. So, to be clear,
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this clarity is definitely achievable
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with the OSSC, and in fact I have, but it takes some doing.
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This is basically fine out of the box.
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And I mean, even if we were to like pause the game here and change this sampling back to the generic,
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that still looks real good to me. It's a little soft,
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but it's actually still really good. So generic 4:3, I think looks pretty good on normal,
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like in most circumstances.
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And when you combine it with aperture grill scan lines,
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it looks pretty amazing. Actually, one thing we can do
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before we step away from Sega is we can try out
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what this looks like with good old composite video.
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What's it look like? Oh my God. So here is a situation, I think,
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where it might actually be very beneficial
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to choose that proper scaling. Oh no, that's just bad.
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So yeah, that's what composite video looks like.
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Some people might actually enjoy that.
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I'm not sure that's me. Let's switch over to the Commodore.
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This looks pretty decent, but it is, well, it's still a bit blurry,
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and unfortunately there's not a whole lot we can do about that.
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- [Brandon] Is that Mario? - No, actually, this is not Mario.
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But it was, you know, pushed against Mario
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and I think they got sued over it. Anyway, this is The Great Giana Sisters.
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But yeah, there's no way to get a Commodore 64 mode unless they were
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to make a Commodore 64 mode. That is not quite right.
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That's not quite right. Nope.
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That's the best you get. But notice how the text up at the top,
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especially the copyright 1987, it's soft.
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And unfortunately that's just kind of what you have to live with in this case.
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And you're kind of hoping that Mike Chi will come along
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and make something that'll work with your individual console,
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or computer, or what have you. The OSSC here doesn't have that kind of support,
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but it does have all of the knobs and dials
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you need to make your own profiles.
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For the people who actually care about visual quality,
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and for the people who actually, I mean,
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don't want to spend all their time dialing in settings so that they can play their old games.
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The RetroTINK 5X-Pro is,
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I would hazard to say, almost perfect.
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The only thing is if you've got a console or a computer that isn't supported by it directly,
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you're going to have a suboptimal experience. At least compared to the OSSC.
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It'll just be a lot easier. Just like it's easy for me to say hey,
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get subscribed to ShortCircuit and make sure you check out where
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to buy these things, all of them, I guess, down below.
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Oh yeah, if you want to watch the OSSC video, that'll be linked below as well.