@@Yogarine This comment right here is so real, it hurts... but I feel MARS + CRT = $700ish for the value of at least 5,000ish is the way to go (you'll spend thousands in getting all consoles with their accessories, servicing them, getting their RGB mods and cables, flashcarts with big memory cards, etc...)
So amazing to see you cover this amazing thing of technology. Mike seems have gone the extra mile here and create a really beautiful piece of technology here.
Considering that the FPGA itself is close to $300, $750 is quite reasonable when you figure in development costs. If you're saying it's too expensive then one, it isn't intended for you and two, you don't understand production costs and margins
I love mike and his products but I don't like how he recently has gone out of his way to quote tweet people and getting his followers to dogpile on them complaining that the 4k is expensive.
devices like this are important. My crt sony trinitron 21'' is not working anymore and I cant find any maintenance for crt in my city anymore, so a retrotink like this would be the solution for my LG c1 55''.
After buying the X360 at launch i purchased a 34" Sony xbr 960 crt. It handled 720p/1080i input and output was in 1080p. At least i remember it did so? It did not need to upscale i believe? (That crt had the best image quality i ever seen, oleds included) Two decades later and were still trying to match crts, from motion clarity to refresh rates, to image quality. Damn, i miss that 34" xbr 960, even with using a plasma and oleds since. (Not to mention my old 17" NEC Multisync pc monitor...)
Very true, and good CRT panels that can do up to 1080p or maybe 1440p (with a lower refresh rate) are getting very hard to come by at reasonable prices now. Flat panels have always been a flawed technology, sure the poor black levels, smearing and input latency issues have been worked on but it's still behind decades old top tier early 2000s CRTs. I still wish I'd kept my old trusty 21" Sony Trinitron VGA monitor, that thing had incredible picture quality and even supported sync-on-green because I remember I got a converter cable and hooked the PS2 up to it, stunning results...
Native resolution on those "Super Fine Pitch" Sony CRTs was 1440x1080i, they were some of the only consumer CRTs that came close to resolving full HD resolution. Horrendous input lag if they weren't run at full res but they were just *beastly* if you had the cables and content to get the best from them. I had an older 4:3 Hi-Scan (853x1080i) unit growing up and it was gorgeous running anything PS2 or newer.
Xbox 360 & PS3 consoles were definitely played on native 720 displays since most televisions during that time had both 720p & 1080i no problem at all, and We definitely played both Consoles on those televisions
Not something I would buy but I'm glad stuff like this is being developed. Got to see one of the prototypes in person last week at Free Play Florida along with the MARS.
Wow, even you guys heard about it. I will probably get a lower priced device like OSSC Pro available in Europe at no extra taxes. 1440p upscaling is enough for me right now and that price. I have a 1440p LCD monitor capable of 170 hz and a 4K TV that can do upscaling very, very well. OSSC Pro can also do HDR as well.
I find as John himself has said in previous episodes, it really depends on the TV model and the scaling of the various modes because even within the same TV panel, not all modes are created equal. Most 4K TVs I've found do a good job of upscaling 1080p to 4K, but a poor job of taking 720p to 4K. My two-year-old Sony X Series 4K120 HDR set doesn't de-interlace well either - visible flicker. It struggles to hold 480i, literally loses sync every few seconds, so even converting an OG PS2 from Component to HDMI doesn't mean you can play it. It'll do 480p but it looks *awful* when scaled up to 4K by the TV, it's a blurry mess no matter what you do with picture settings.
@@whoiscuriousgeorge I totally agree with you. I have bought a PS2, a cheap HDMI adapter and it looked awful on my Sony 4K TV from 2018 (XF series). The image was shimmering and my even older TV (LG 3D from 2013) was not better with the direct analog input (I was using an AV cable with both TVs). It was then that I realized something was wrong with modern screens. Because I usually get good TVs, I would be ok with a 1440p or a 1080p device like Retrotink 5X or OSSC Pro. As good as Retrotink 4K is, I would not use even half of its capabilities. I don't have a retro PC with VGA or anything that could benefit from it, except a PS2 and probably older consoles in time.
I just got the OSSC Pro and it's amazing. The basic analogue-digital conversion is incredibly clean, it has HDR output, 120hz, BFI built in and the ability to upscale HDMI consoles is a game-changer (turning into Richard now) for retro scalers. The deinterlacing is fantastic too. Personally I think full 4k output is relatively unimportant compared to those features - if you don't use BFI you're chucking away quite a lot of that detail every time the image actually moves anyway, and the Tink can't do 4k 120hz with BFI as far as I'm aware. I've decided to save myself a few hundred pounds. I also suspect that the Pro will remain the best option for people like me who want to upscale retro pcs and off spec arcade boards etc etc, but I could be proven wrong on that of course.
Horses for courses, obviously, but I think having a good scaler will always introduce a little lag along the way, and personally you want to minimise that when you're going to your panel display. Not to dunk on the OSSC Pro because in the right hands it's a great bit of kit, but lacking true 4K when going to a 4K screen means you're still being held back by the TV's own upscaler which is going to undo some of the effects of an external scaler as well as adding some input lag frames. Sure the RT4K is expensive but this is a truly premium device with versatility and response times etc beyond almost anything else on the market unless you start spending $10,000+ for pro grade rack mount stuff as used by TV and movie studios I'm sure, so getting one at a still three-figure price point when comparing it that way represents excellent value, even though it it relatively expensive.
@@whoiscuriousgeorge Sure. Personally I think the importance of inpug lag is overstated (that being said, today's TVs and monitors are almost universally low-lag anyway, 1080p input or not, and needless to say the OSSC's is very low too). It's really not an issue for me. "Premium" TVs are excellent at upscaling 1080p these days. I have a high end Extron IN1804 4K scaler and it's scarcely better than my Panasonic OLED's - certainly not from a comfortable viewing distance. Neither the Tink nor the Pro can do 4K 120hz as far as I'm aware so I put them on a similar level really. BFI/motion clarity and HDR are the real jump up here in my opinion, not "true" 4k. 1080p 120hz with BFI trumps 4k60 with cleaner upscaling. Yeah you have crisp 4k detail but it gets smeared all over the place when anything actually moves. If the Tink could do 4k at 120hz with BFI, my opinion would change.
Can't wait for John's review of this thing, like the Tink itself it's going to be immense! Mike Chi as an engineer is miles ahead in terms of being a pioneer - it's really nice to see a product like this getting released at all, but especially in 2022/2023 when the tech industry looks decidedly stagnant. You've got Intel and Nvidia phoning it in with incremental upgrades to their flagship Core and RTX products, lazy ports of old games like RDR1 and MGS1-3, a lot of triple A games being released in buggy states across consoles and PCs despite the fact consoles have PC AMD PC architecture underneath. It's all pretty underwhelming, so when a product like the RetroTink 4K is announced and initial reviews look stunning, it's easy to get excited about some genuine innovation.
I’ll just stick with the RetroTink 5x, that was the absolute limit I’d spend on a scaler and I’m somewhat disappointed with it to be honest. It just isn’t as great as all the RUclipsrs have been making out (probably because they got it for free). Thankfully I don’t have a 4K TV and even when/if I do get one I won’t hook my RetroTink up to it. £800+ (which is what it will end up costing in the UK after postage and import duty) is just too extreme. I’m a retro gaming nut, but I’m not a nutter.
its some head scratching wonders lmao, and anytime someone make a cons comment about why not to purchase one, they all start throwing the not being wealthy card and surround you like a pack of wolves.
You have to remember that it's still an upscaler. It's great for making sure you can still use your older consoles on an HD TV or monitor, especially since CRTs aren't made anymore and they'll die out over time. But it sure as hell isn't going to make instant HD remasters out of your old games either, it's still going to take that low resolution image and just blow it up to your display, just with far less input lag compared to other upscalers. That's not to disparage Mike Chi's work either, but it's for the average consumer there probably isn't much point in going further.
For retro consoles, perhaps yes, but we're getting to the point where there are people like me who want their 1080p maximum consoles like the PS3, Wii U and Switch to scale better on 4K HDR TVs with less lag added by the TV's internal upscaler. Plus some of the zoom etc functions that my TV doesn't do which the RetroTink can, often with proper integer scaling, means when I'm using the PS3 to do BC PS2 emulation which itself is already scaled, I can preserve the look I get using OPL/GSM to push PS2 games to sharp, crisp 1080i which is a little windowbox cropped, then de-interlace and scale that to 4K as needed. Consoles like the PS3 and Xbox 360 basically *are* hitting that 20 year old retro point soon, and were designed with 720p/1080p 32" or so flat panels in mind as we all moved into the HD era in the mid 2000s, so the RT4K is going to be able cover those too, as well as the very retro stuff like NES, Genesis, N64 et al.
Would this improve the image quality of the xbox series s running games in performance mode? Performance mode often drops the signal to less than 1080. Obviously selling the series s and getting a series x is a much cheaper solution, but I like that this can also be used with my Switch, N64 etc; could negate me wanting to purchase a fpga devices going forward (like the Analogue 3D for example) as well, saving a bit more money. And last question, is there some kind of adapter thst woukd allow me to hook multiple consoles to the tink4k so that i dont have to constantly plug/inplug hdmi cords everytime i want to change systems?
For the Series S it probably won't help unless you set the console to 1080p, as the RT4K won't handle anything higher than 1080p. The Nintendo Switch will benefit depending on the game and your personal taste. As long as you don't pixel peep, using HD consoles will work fine on here and can help image quality. The best way to handle multiple consoles is to buy an HDMI switch. I'm not very familiar with those so please do your own research, I just wanted to let you know that this was a product!
My wife is going to love the 40” CRT that is now the true centerpiece of our living room; begone filthy casual OLED with its slim wall mount and invisible cables!
@@whoiscuriousgeorge The ps3/360/Wii were also RCA/Component compatible. The generation after not at all. I don't see anyone jonesing to play anything from that generation on a retrotink. It's patently obviously to anyone reading my OP that I was talking about retro games et al.
I just got a 4k Gamer Pro that's connected to my PC. I'm very satisfied with it. It legit feels like a GPU but it isn't. This is the cheap method to do PC gaming because the unit requires minimum of 900p 60fps which still counts as 1080p 60fps. Your TV will upscale 900p straight to 1080p. When you turn on the device. Real 4k 60fps. You can settle with a weak GPU and just attach a 4k Gamer Pro on it.
That's just stupid. Might be usefull to a very niche target, but there's a less expensive option for a less but still niche target audience: the Ultimate MiSTer PRO for 550$.
Switch output resolution is what matters. Switch always outputs a 1080p signal even if the game only render at like 800p. So I believe the Retrotink wouldn't be that useful.
@@KaiSchSpNo this is wrong. They straight up say in the video this can help make things a lot sharper for the Switch as well. This device can help any console that can't output at a native 4k.
it is a neat device. But for 750$ you can get a sony trinitron or a good oldschool crt tv including the extra you pay for it in electricity for a long time. I don't know if this justifys older consoles who might be on the verge of breaking "components etc". While the experience like back in the day will set you back 100$. Without modding consoles with the correct ports etc to work on the think4x. back in he day we modded nothing. We played like it was ment to be. Rgb scart or composite through "some" crt monitor. Looked just fine.
Ah yes, the only way to get the original whiteish Skywalker lightsaber upscaled well enough to enjoy on a 4KTV. Although there's some amazing LaserDisc preservation going on at the moment... ruclips.net/video/QDlbwl3f39Q/видео.html The Domesday Duplicator so I'm guessing high quality LaserDisc rips will be available soon somewhere if they aren't already (I haven't looked)...
@@youngladaustin2012same, I have a few hundred laserdiscs I acquired for a song. I just want to play them as they are, not spend 90 minutes of my life copying a movie to a hard drive and then have to re-encode a 90gb file to h264 and toss on a USB stick. Great project for people to share rare titles with the world though.
If the Pixel Morph is as good which from what we have seen so far it seems it is then $750 for the Tink is not worth it. How can it be worth it when there is a much cheaper option that does the same thing?
Morph + Analog is what 400$ + 100$. Its difference but still not cheap. We will see what kind of capabilities will Morph have. At this point its about PixelFX team and how much capability can thy get out of Morph (presumably smaller) FPGA. No doubts both devices will get SW updates for years
The Morph will “probably” be amazing. But it’s currently unproven. The RT4K prototypes have been in the hands of people like John for months now and has been thoroughly debugged, improved and will be a complete and well developed product from day one. No preorders either, it will be in stock at launch in the next couple of weeks and ship immediately. Honestly the best idea is probably to wait and see how they both pan out. I don’t believe the Morph will be better than the RT4K but it may well be close enough that the price difference will sway some folks.
@@jameslarham5936 I agree, well said. Empirically speaking, you've got some people who really know their stuff when it comes to retro gaming running on modern tech, including John Linnemann, saying this closes the gap between flat panels and old CRTs like never before. It's pretty convincing even when you're pixel peeping ruclips.net/video/3ZmPkozY6Cg/видео.html
There's so many factors that affect this, it's probably worth you checking out the My Life In Gaming mini-series primer to learn more. I knew some of what they spoke about but I learnt loads. ruclips.net/p/PLTNBVisVMbSRW6GIFybpOJbjU65T8eFVM - worth noting that Marc is a regular on the DF Retro series and longtime friend of the channel in general.
I’m especially interested in the accurate scanline filters out of the box. While RetroArch is great for this, I’d prefer to not need a PC solution. Plus, scanline filters will only get better as go into 8k territory in the future.
While I would greatly benefit from this, I just can't stomach that price tag. Especially not when I can go pick up a local CRT for $50 or less. It literally costs more than the TV that I would be hooking it up to. lol
@itranscendencei7964 not at all, it's the honest truth, it'd be crazy for anyone to buy this for a TV that doesn't support HDR & having OLED is a plus! I've had mine for a week and loving it. Used the RetroTink 5x for 5 months. This device is for those that have multiple consoles and want to play their analog consoles on a modern TV, but you first need the TV that'll take advantage of the Tink4k
@itranscendencei7964 my comment keeps getting deleted, but no I wasn't just being straight forward. You wouldn't wanna purchase this for a TV without HDR & a OLED panel
@@lovelorn88nick Gotcha. Hard to tell sometimes with only text. But yeah, I've had this UP8000 for a few years now. It was slightly more expensive at the time than it is now. I spend more time on my PC though, so I can't justify the cost of an OLED. And that's coming from someone who wants literally every display that I look at to be OLED.
I guess what I’m most curious about the RT4K is backwards compatibility. Specifically how are PS2 and PS1 games are going to look on the PS2 with the PixelFX hdmi mod vs how they would look on PS3.
I'm sure it does what it says on the tin, but ludicrous price - the kind of money that really moves you away from just playing and enjoying videogames into the realm of stupidity
It’s stupid if you’re not an enthusiast of media or have alot of if. If you own several hundred laserdiscs and DVDs like I do this alone has me intrigued even not counting the gaming aspect. Quality scalers just a decade ago used to cost several grand.
@@mikeg2491 funny you should say that Mike I was actually thinking about home cinema since this post be interesting to see what it can do for LD considering Lumagen and Crystalio stuff were big bucks. In my mind I didn't give gaming the same respect as films.
as much as i'd really love those crt/lcd filters i cant justify $750 when my gbs control does most of what i want already do wish tv makers gave us a nearest neighbour scaling option tho. its be so easy for them to do too!
The main difference is the resolution. It makes it so expensice and you cant forget the R&D. Just the FPGA in RetroTINK 4k cost 260$. I did not make it up. Mike has rewield which FPGAs he uses in both products (5X and 4K).
Interesting, A thing that only upscales the picture quality costs 750$ and is totally worth it but the PS portal that does a hell of a lot more costs 200$ and it's too expensive and unnecessary? Should be the other way around. I have a hard time imagining why the Retrotink 4k (With zero HDCP support) needs to cost more than a PS5 or a series X or even a good 1080p PC. Wait for a 60% price drop, it will come faster than you can say "Illusions of grandeur" or "Don quixote and Sancho Panza". If you are a switch owner and hate how the switch looks on your big 75" tv, then get a Photofast 4K gamer pro or +. They will do the job nicely for under 200 bucks and are constantly on sale on Amazon. 750$ really? It's overpriced by a mile.
The TINK4k is a zero compromises approach to scaling your retro consoles, or basically anything, to your digital display. HDR, Scanlines, scaling, color correction, everything is customizable. It's not marketed for everybody to buy one to play their super nes on, it's for that person who has a bunch of consoles and wants to eek out that last perfect pixel from a very high end display, at low latency, and make it look exactly how they want it to without sacrificing (most) features. If you only have a handful of consoles and normally use composite video, maybe a per-console solution like the RAD2x is for you, or maybe you want a tink2x, there's no judgement (until you buy a pound cable or similarly cheap crappy hdmi converter that's not made for videogames, but video). the tink4k is for that asshole with a ton of consoles, the best cables for all of them, and has an extron or some crazy setup to make sure you can play them all at once.
Yeah I'm sure they can't afford it because they don't understand what it does.... LOL Did you even read what you wrote there? If they cannot afford it then it doesn't matter if they know what it does!
@@TatankaTaylor Well, too expensive can mean “I can’t afford this,” but it can also mean “it’s not worth the price.” I can’t afford a $500,000 mansion, that doesn’t necessarily mean $500,000 is to expensive for that mansion. I’m not gonna buy a $750 scalar (I already have a RetroTINK 5x anyway) but looking at its features I don’t think it’s “too expensive”. Oh and you conveniently skipped the first condition in my statement; if you can’t afford a RetroTINK 4k, this product is probably not for you anyway.
@@keyboard_g I mean, the target audience of my comment (people that complain that a prosumer product is too expensive) kinda has it coming. And personally I'd say I'm being very blunt rather than elitist. I don't make any claim that I know anything. It's just a simple rule I apply to myself as well: if I don't see the value of something I'm not an expert on, than it's very likely the product is simply not for me, or I just do not understand it's value.
@@MichaelM28 the input lag for emulating on my PCs hardware is pretty much just for consoles i actually own and homebrewed (ps2/ps3), so i wont have input lag on my CRT :)
To you, maybe, but compared to pro grade rack mount stuff used in movie and TV studios it's an absolute bargain, and if you're serious about picture quality with a good disposable income it could actually be relatively cheap. Certainly is cheaper than a QD-OLED of a decent size.
The obsession with resolution is what led to games running at 720p on current gen consoles while being reconstructed into a blurry, artifact plagued 4K attempted image. I'd play at 720p before I'd buy an 800$ device to upscale it to play with altered images. Or even play with FSR/DLSS. Original consoles in their original formats are what makes their charm. Especially SD consoles on CRTs. As interesting as upscaling is, A 480p image on a CRT looks infinitely better than a game running at 1080p upscaled to 4K with either FSR or DLSS.
The retrotink is made to basically tranform any flat panel into a CRT. It has perfect scaling at 4k, CRT filters (and even lcd filters), BFI, etc. You are completely off topic
@@femto8402 Still not true 4K, good upscaling is still subject to internal resolution and pixel density - 720p looking like native on a 4K panel is nice, but is it worth 800$ when most mid-range 4K TVs have more than good scaling? Still not true CRT, the filters are filters and don't hold up to the real thing - Although on that one not wanting the trouble of a 200 pounds monster I'd understand, but is it worth 800$ when smaller, more convenient CRT models exist? So I wouldn't exactly say it's completely off topic to say that I'd rather have the classic experience over an overly expensive upscaled eperience Hell even a 1366x768 TV would make 720p look good as native
@@gabgame300 Either way it will still look sharper than whatever your modern TV does to a 720p signal. But overall the RetroTINK 4K is not that useful at all for anything more recent than PS3. It’s most useful for sharp ADC and upscaling of analog signals, or for very specific niche use cases. In the end, it’s a prosumer product. So unless you have a really good reason to use it, you’re probably better off with a RetroTINK 5x Pro.
@@gabgame300 "is it worth 800$ when most mid-range 4K TVs have more than good scaling?" Not sure how many TVs you've tested but I'd guess with a statement like that, not a lot. In my experience, having tested several, most 4K TVs do fairly decent 1080p to 4K, pretty bad 720p to 4K and total garbage with anything below that. Some TVs won't even hold sync for older resolutions like 480i if you can get that signal into it via HDMI, which I have done - my Sony X Series 4K120 HDR capable TV loses sync on 480i, for example. Even when resolutions like 1080i work, the TV flickers in a way that my 13 year old Sony Bravia don't - yep, another case of older tech being superior to newer tech despite the age, it's not just CRTs being better than flat panels, it's older flat panels being better than newer ones for certain things too. The RetroTink 4K can solve all of the problems I just listed in most use cases, so $750 actually looks like great value.
Well we will see when we actualy gets the see the SW capabilities. Its sad that Morph is coming little bit later and hasnt been distributed to comunnity member for testing. It makes it harder to estimate what will be supported. At this point we have quite good overview of 4K option including all the menu options. Really happy we have option to choose. Personaly waiting for better comparsion. Neither of them will be bad. SO far Im very happy with products I bought from PixelFX and Mike
Will not happen. The FPGA chip used for the heavy lifting alone costs $263 in procurement, not including R&D, production, quality control and all other expensive chips like the AD converters etc.
@@kwinsch7423 Well, too bad then. The FrameMeister was way too expensive back in the day, now it is this. It is hard to justify the expense compared to more affordable devices like the Retrotink5X and OSSC Pro, which are less than half the price. As great as the Rink4K is, it isnt twice as good.
Free software can to that on my PC for video players, emulators etc. - so, hell no! You could probably hack this functionality together with a cheap board, plus some cables and software for a fraction of this. This price feels like 'audiophile' products, who still haven't realized that most vinyls were digitally processed, too; who think that gold plated cables make a difference for digital signals. Or even buying a plastic and resin 'orgonite pyramid' from some esoteric conspiracy bs site for 1000$, to 'shield bad energies' or something.
What a total misunderstanding of the thing and incorrect equation of it to snake oil products like you mentioned. It's measurably, quantifiably better at upscaling than most things you can buy that are under $1,000 as observed by people who know what they're talking about, John Linneman included. The audiophile/pyramid nonsense comparisons just demonstrate you don't really know how it works, but there's plenty of knowledge out there. Why not start here, the My Life In Gaming boys know their stuff :- ruclips.net/video/43dzrCAfU3A/видео.html
OLED = 2k
Mister = 700
RT4K = 750
Audio Setup = 500
Finally, I can enjoy Super Mario Bros. as intended
Just As Nintendo intended it to be played back in 89’
NES = ~25
CRT TV = free
@@Yogarine This comment right here is so real, it hurts... but I feel MARS + CRT = $700ish for the value of at least 5,000ish is the way to go (you'll spend thousands in getting all consoles with their accessories, servicing them, getting their RGB mods and cables, flashcarts with big memory cards, etc...)
Mister = 325$ and then I just use a decent va panel that was 300$( 55 inch 4k Hisense). Works great!
Driving a 1963 Porsche is also much more expensive nowadays than back then.
So amazing to see you cover this amazing thing of technology. Mike seems have gone the extra mile here and create a really beautiful piece of technology here.
Considering that the FPGA itself is close to $300, $750 is quite reasonable when you figure in development costs. If you're saying it's too expensive then one, it isn't intended for you and two, you don't understand production costs and margins
I love mike and his products but I don't like how he recently has gone out of his way to quote tweet people and getting his followers to dogpile on them complaining that the 4k is expensive.
devices like this are important. My crt sony trinitron 21'' is not working anymore and I cant find any maintenance for crt in my city anymore, so a retrotink like this would be the solution for my LG c1 55''.
After buying the X360 at launch i purchased a 34" Sony xbr 960 crt. It handled 720p/1080i input and output was in 1080p.
At least i remember it did so?
It did not need to upscale i believe?
(That crt had the best image quality i ever seen, oleds included)
Two decades later and were still trying to match crts, from motion clarity to refresh rates, to image quality.
Damn, i miss that 34" xbr 960, even with using a plasma and oleds since.
(Not to mention my old 17" NEC Multisync pc monitor...)
Very true, and good CRT panels that can do up to 1080p or maybe 1440p (with a lower refresh rate) are getting very hard to come by at reasonable prices now. Flat panels have always been a flawed technology, sure the poor black levels, smearing and input latency issues have been worked on but it's still behind decades old top tier early 2000s CRTs. I still wish I'd kept my old trusty 21" Sony Trinitron VGA monitor, that thing had incredible picture quality and even supported sync-on-green because I remember I got a converter cable and hooked the PS2 up to it, stunning results...
Native resolution on those "Super Fine Pitch" Sony CRTs was 1440x1080i, they were some of the only consumer CRTs that came close to resolving full HD resolution. Horrendous input lag if they weren't run at full res but they were just *beastly* if you had the cables and content to get the best from them. I had an older 4:3 Hi-Scan (853x1080i) unit growing up and it was gorgeous running anything PS2 or newer.
Xbox 360 & PS3 consoles were definitely played on native 720 displays since most televisions during that time had both 720p & 1080i no problem at all, and We definitely played both Consoles on those televisions
Not something I would buy but I'm glad stuff like this is being developed. Got to see one of the prototypes in person last week at Free Play Florida along with the MARS.
This segment was a masterclass by Linneman.
DF is a genuinely valuable source of knowledge that we continue to learn from weekly.
I am sure it is worth it to some people....but for me that price my god what I could get that for that instead lol
A new gpu vs this.
I’ve got a lot of GC, DC games I want to play in 4k. It’s a bit eye watering.
£500 seems more palatable.
I'll probably get a RetroTink 4K, but I support the idea of the Morph 4K. Looking forward to a real comparison between them :)
Wow, even you guys heard about it. I will probably get a lower priced device like OSSC Pro available in Europe at no extra taxes. 1440p upscaling is enough for me right now and that price. I have a 1440p LCD monitor capable of 170 hz and a 4K TV that can do upscaling very, very well. OSSC Pro can also do HDR as well.
I find as John himself has said in previous episodes, it really depends on the TV model and the scaling of the various modes because even within the same TV panel, not all modes are created equal. Most 4K TVs I've found do a good job of upscaling 1080p to 4K, but a poor job of taking 720p to 4K. My two-year-old Sony X Series 4K120 HDR set doesn't de-interlace well either - visible flicker. It struggles to hold 480i, literally loses sync every few seconds, so even converting an OG PS2 from Component to HDMI doesn't mean you can play it. It'll do 480p but it looks *awful* when scaled up to 4K by the TV, it's a blurry mess no matter what you do with picture settings.
@@whoiscuriousgeorge I totally agree with you. I have bought a PS2, a cheap HDMI adapter and it looked awful on my Sony 4K TV from 2018 (XF series). The image was shimmering and my even older TV (LG 3D from 2013) was not better with the direct analog input (I was using an AV cable with both TVs). It was then that I realized something was wrong with modern screens. Because I usually get good TVs, I would be ok with a 1440p or a 1080p device like Retrotink 5X or OSSC Pro. As good as Retrotink 4K is, I would not use even half of its capabilities. I don't have a retro PC with VGA or anything that could benefit from it, except a PS2 and probably older consoles in time.
I just got the OSSC Pro and it's amazing. The basic analogue-digital conversion is incredibly clean, it has HDR output, 120hz, BFI built in and the ability to upscale HDMI consoles is a game-changer (turning into Richard now) for retro scalers. The deinterlacing is fantastic too. Personally I think full 4k output is relatively unimportant compared to those features - if you don't use BFI you're chucking away quite a lot of that detail every time the image actually moves anyway, and the Tink can't do 4k 120hz with BFI as far as I'm aware. I've decided to save myself a few hundred pounds. I also suspect that the Pro will remain the best option for people like me who want to upscale retro pcs and off spec arcade boards etc etc, but I could be proven wrong on that of course.
Nice profile pic. 😄
Horses for courses, obviously, but I think having a good scaler will always introduce a little lag along the way, and personally you want to minimise that when you're going to your panel display. Not to dunk on the OSSC Pro because in the right hands it's a great bit of kit, but lacking true 4K when going to a 4K screen means you're still being held back by the TV's own upscaler which is going to undo some of the effects of an external scaler as well as adding some input lag frames. Sure the RT4K is expensive but this is a truly premium device with versatility and response times etc beyond almost anything else on the market unless you start spending $10,000+ for pro grade rack mount stuff as used by TV and movie studios I'm sure, so getting one at a still three-figure price point when comparing it that way represents excellent value, even though it it relatively expensive.
@@whoiscuriousgeorge Sure. Personally I think the importance of inpug lag is overstated (that being said, today's TVs and monitors are almost universally low-lag anyway, 1080p input or not, and needless to say the OSSC's is very low too). It's really not an issue for me.
"Premium" TVs are excellent at upscaling 1080p these days. I have a high end Extron IN1804 4K scaler and it's scarcely better than my Panasonic OLED's - certainly not from a comfortable viewing distance.
Neither the Tink nor the Pro can do 4K 120hz as far as I'm aware so I put them on a similar level really. BFI/motion clarity and HDR are the real jump up here in my opinion, not "true" 4k. 1080p 120hz with BFI trumps 4k60 with cleaner upscaling. Yeah you have crisp 4k detail but it gets smeared all over the place when anything actually moves. If the Tink could do 4k at 120hz with BFI, my opinion would change.
Can't wait for John's review of this thing, like the Tink itself it's going to be immense! Mike Chi as an engineer is miles ahead in terms of being a pioneer - it's really nice to see a product like this getting released at all, but especially in 2022/2023 when the tech industry looks decidedly stagnant. You've got Intel and Nvidia phoning it in with incremental upgrades to their flagship Core and RTX products, lazy ports of old games like RDR1 and MGS1-3, a lot of triple A games being released in buggy states across consoles and PCs despite the fact consoles have PC AMD PC architecture underneath. It's all pretty underwhelming, so when a product like the RetroTink 4K is announced and initial reviews look stunning, it's easy to get excited about some genuine innovation.
He's done a hands on about 3 months ago I need to check it out myself
Lmao gamers are so delusional
I’ll just stick with the RetroTink 5x, that was the absolute limit I’d spend on a scaler and I’m somewhat disappointed with it to be honest. It just isn’t as great as all the RUclipsrs have been making out (probably because they got it for free).
Thankfully I don’t have a 4K TV and even when/if I do get one I won’t hook my RetroTink up to it. £800+ (which is what it will end up costing in the UK after postage and import duty) is just too extreme. I’m a retro gaming nut, but I’m not a nutter.
its some head scratching wonders lmao, and anytime someone make a cons comment about why not to purchase one, they all start throwing the not being wealthy card and surround you like a pack of wolves.
You have to remember that it's still an upscaler. It's great for making sure you can still use your older consoles on an HD TV or monitor, especially since CRTs aren't made anymore and they'll die out over time. But it sure as hell isn't going to make instant HD remasters out of your old games either, it's still going to take that low resolution image and just blow it up to your display, just with far less input lag compared to other upscalers.
That's not to disparage Mike Chi's work either, but it's for the average consumer there probably isn't much point in going further.
I love the idea of the crt filters in 4k, but can’t justify price. A 20” pvm is cheaper and will do a better job.
For retro consoles, perhaps yes, but we're getting to the point where there are people like me who want their 1080p maximum consoles like the PS3, Wii U and Switch to scale better on 4K HDR TVs with less lag added by the TV's internal upscaler. Plus some of the zoom etc functions that my TV doesn't do which the RetroTink can, often with proper integer scaling, means when I'm using the PS3 to do BC PS2 emulation which itself is already scaled, I can preserve the look I get using OPL/GSM to push PS2 games to sharp, crisp 1080i which is a little windowbox cropped, then de-interlace and scale that to 4K as needed. Consoles like the PS3 and Xbox 360 basically *are* hitting that 20 year old retro point soon, and were designed with 720p/1080p 32" or so flat panels in mind as we all moved into the HD era in the mid 2000s, so the RT4K is going to be able cover those too, as well as the very retro stuff like NES, Genesis, N64 et al.
@@whoiscuriousgeorgeOr just get a 1080p plasma, without needing to upscale to 4k
Mike knows what hes got.
But youve got some competition now fellar.
LCos displays existed back then, and were capable of full 1920x1080p. Look up any of Sony's SXRD rear projection TVs.
Yeeeaaaah I'm not paying more for an upscaler than a current-gen console or VR headset lol
I guess my framemeister is getting obsolete.
Would this improve the image quality of the xbox series s running games in performance mode? Performance mode often drops the signal to less than 1080.
Obviously selling the series s and getting a series x is a much cheaper solution, but I like that this can also be used with my Switch, N64 etc; could negate me wanting to purchase a fpga devices going forward (like the Analogue 3D for example) as well, saving a bit more money.
And last question, is there some kind of adapter thst woukd allow me to hook multiple consoles to the tink4k so that i dont have to constantly plug/inplug hdmi cords everytime i want to change systems?
For the Series S it probably won't help unless you set the console to 1080p, as the RT4K won't handle anything higher than 1080p. The Nintendo Switch will benefit depending on the game and your personal taste. As long as you don't pixel peep, using HD consoles will work fine on here and can help image quality.
The best way to handle multiple consoles is to buy an HDMI switch. I'm not very familiar with those so please do your own research, I just wanted to let you know that this was a product!
I'll just buy a CRT.
My wife is going to love the 40” CRT that is now the true centerpiece of our living room; begone filthy casual OLED with its slim wall mount and invisible cables!
@@lolilolplix we must all make sacrifices for what we love.
Yes because CRTs have so many HDMI ports for devices that do 720p/1080p. Oy
@@whoiscuriousgeorge The ps3/360/Wii were also RCA/Component compatible. The generation after not at all. I don't see anyone jonesing to play anything from that generation on a retrotink. It's patently obviously to anyone reading my OP that I was talking about retro games et al.
@@Demios101 untrue I’d like to be playing some PS3 Tekken Tag Tournament 2 on my OLED with crispy pixels and no fuzziness
So which would have a better 4K quality image? Using the retrotink on a PS3 to play MGS4 at 4K or using RPCS3 to emulate it at 4K?
I just got a 4k Gamer Pro that's connected to my PC. I'm very satisfied with it. It legit feels like a GPU but it isn't. This is the cheap method to do PC gaming because the unit requires minimum of 900p 60fps which still counts as 1080p 60fps. Your TV will upscale 900p straight to 1080p. When you turn on the device. Real 4k 60fps. You can settle with a weak GPU and just attach a 4k Gamer Pro on it.
That's just stupid. Might be usefull to a very niche target, but there's a less expensive option for a less but still niche target audience: the Ultimate MiSTer PRO for 550$.
750 usd is expensive??? Look at a Lumagen Radiance, then.....
What about the Switch, how does it handle varying resolutions? Can it also be used for a 1440p Monitor?
Switch output resolution is what matters. Switch always outputs a 1080p signal even if the game only render at like 800p.
So I believe the Retrotink wouldn't be that useful.
@@KaiSchSp i see thanks!
@@KaiSchSpNo this is wrong. They straight up say in the video this can help make things a lot sharper for the Switch as well. This device can help any console that can't output at a native 4k.
If you are sticking to 1440p then the OSSC pro would be worth a look and it’s significantly cheaper.
@@jameslarham5936 thanks!
Is it worth $750? No, that price is not justified.
How would you recommend connecting both Xbox 360 and PS3? I know the Xbox 360 had a VGA cable, would that be a good connection for 360 vs HDMI?
HDMI switch fed into the input of the RT4K
it is a neat device. But for 750$ you can get a sony trinitron or a good oldschool crt tv including the extra you pay for it in electricity for a long time. I don't know if this justifys older consoles who might be on the verge of breaking "components etc". While the experience like back in the day will set you back 100$. Without modding consoles with the correct ports etc to work on the think4x. back in he day we modded nothing. We played like it was ment to be. Rgb scart or composite through "some" crt monitor. Looked just fine.
retrotwink
Would like to see how good it can handle laserdisc.
Gonna be the most convoluted way to watch the theatrical Star Wars releases.
Don’t worry, Disney will release the originals again as a “limited collectors edition”.
Ah yes, the only way to get the original whiteish Skywalker lightsaber upscaled well enough to enjoy on a 4KTV. Although there's some amazing LaserDisc preservation going on at the moment... ruclips.net/video/QDlbwl3f39Q/видео.html The Domesday Duplicator so I'm guessing high quality LaserDisc rips will be available soon somewhere if they aren't already (I haven't looked)...
the duplicator is great for preservation. but Im after decent playback.@@whoiscuriousgeorge
@@youngladaustin2012same, I have a few hundred laserdiscs I acquired for a song. I just want to play them as they are, not spend 90 minutes of my life copying a movie to a hard drive and then have to re-encode a 90gb file to h264 and toss on a USB stick. Great project for people to share rare titles with the world though.
Does anyone know if the retrotink 4k has shaders like retro arch does?
If the Pixel Morph is as good which from what we have seen so far it seems it is then $750 for the Tink is not worth it. How can it be worth it when there is a much cheaper option that does the same thing?
Morph + Analog is what 400$ + 100$. Its difference but still not cheap. We will see what kind of capabilities will Morph have. At this point its about PixelFX team and how much capability can thy get out of Morph (presumably smaller) FPGA. No doubts both devices will get SW updates for years
@@TMracer73 Mike should probably consider making a digital only model like what Pixelfx are doing
The Morph will “probably” be amazing. But it’s currently unproven. The RT4K prototypes have been in the hands of people like John for months now and has been thoroughly debugged, improved and will be a complete and well developed product from day one. No preorders either, it will be in stock at launch in the next couple of weeks and ship immediately. Honestly the best idea is probably to wait and see how they both pan out. I don’t believe the Morph will be better than the RT4K but it may well be close enough that the price difference will sway some folks.
@@jameslarham5936 I agree, well said. Empirically speaking, you've got some people who really know their stuff when it comes to retro gaming running on modern tech, including John Linnemann, saying this closes the gap between flat panels and old CRTs like never before. It's pretty convincing even when you're pixel peeping ruclips.net/video/3ZmPkozY6Cg/видео.html
Yes it is! The LCD Mono filer (cropped and Zoom image) on first-generation systems are amazing!
Great analysis
I keep hearing the term the sharpest pixels. Isn’t a pixel sharp by default or on its own?
Not if it’s from an old console on a moden tv without a scaler. Shit is mushy.
There's so many factors that affect this, it's probably worth you checking out the My Life In Gaming mini-series primer to learn more. I knew some of what they spoke about but I learnt loads. ruclips.net/p/PLTNBVisVMbSRW6GIFybpOJbjU65T8eFVM - worth noting that Marc is a regular on the DF Retro series and longtime friend of the channel in general.
@@whoiscuriousgeorge thank you for kind enlightenment 🙏
RetroTink 5x is great. I use it to upscale commodore Vic20 and 64. Going beyond on devices that old is pointless.
Why are you playing games that old?
@@grtcara8386 Old games are still really fun! No need to get rid of them just because graphics aren't state of the art.
I’m especially interested in the accurate scanline filters out of the box. While RetroArch is great for this, I’d prefer to not need a PC solution. Plus, scanline filters will only get better as go into 8k territory in the future.
While I would greatly benefit from this, I just can't stomach that price tag. Especially not when I can go pick up a local CRT for $50 or less. It literally costs more than the TV that I would be hooking it up to. lol
Lol yeah dude this isnt for you if your TV is less then $700 lol
Is this a cringe attempt at throwing shade? I genuinely can't tell.
@itranscendencei7964 not at all, it's the honest truth, it'd be crazy for anyone to buy this for a TV that doesn't support HDR & having OLED is a plus! I've had mine for a week and loving it. Used the RetroTink 5x for 5 months. This device is for those that have multiple consoles and want to play their analog consoles on a modern TV, but you first need the TV that'll take advantage of the Tink4k
@itranscendencei7964 my comment keeps getting deleted, but no I wasn't just being straight forward. You wouldn't wanna purchase this for a TV without HDR & a OLED panel
@@lovelorn88nick Gotcha. Hard to tell sometimes with only text. But yeah, I've had this UP8000 for a few years now. It was slightly more expensive at the time than it is now. I spend more time on my PC though, so I can't justify the cost of an OLED. And that's coming from someone who wants literally every display that I look at to be OLED.
Rf ?
I guess what I’m most curious about the RT4K is backwards compatibility. Specifically how are PS2 and PS1 games are going to look on the PS2 with the PixelFX hdmi mod vs how they would look on PS3.
I'm sure it does what it says on the tin, but ludicrous price - the kind of money that really moves you away from just playing and enjoying videogames into the realm of stupidity
It’s stupid if you’re not an enthusiast of media or have alot of if. If you own several hundred laserdiscs and DVDs like I do this alone has me intrigued even not counting the gaming aspect. Quality scalers just a decade ago used to cost several grand.
@@mikeg2491 funny you should say that Mike I was actually thinking about home cinema since this post be interesting to see what it can do for LD considering Lumagen and Crystalio stuff were big bucks. In my mind I didn't give gaming the same respect as films.
as much as i'd really love those crt/lcd filters i cant justify $750 when my gbs control does most of what i want already
do wish tv makers gave us a nearest neighbour scaling option tho. its be so easy for them to do too!
The main difference is the resolution. It makes it so expensice and you cant forget the R&D. Just the FPGA in RetroTINK 4k cost 260$. I did not make it up. Mike has rewield which FPGAs he uses in both products (5X and 4K).
it will be far better than the gbs control
@@seethruhead7119 You can build a GBS Control for a fith os the cost. The RetroTink4k is better sure, but it isn't five times better.
Interesting,
A thing that only upscales the picture quality costs 750$ and is totally worth it but the PS portal that does a hell of a lot more costs 200$ and it's too expensive and unnecessary?
Should be the other way around.
I have a hard time imagining why the Retrotink 4k (With zero HDCP support) needs to cost more than a PS5 or a series X or even a good 1080p PC.
Wait for a 60% price drop, it will come faster than you can say "Illusions of grandeur" or "Don quixote and Sancho Panza".
If you are a switch owner and hate how the switch looks on your big 75" tv, then get a Photofast 4K gamer pro or +. They will do the job nicely for under 200 bucks and are constantly on sale on Amazon.
750$ really?
It's overpriced by a mile.
The RT4k doesn't strip HDCP for legal reasons.
The TINK4k is a zero compromises approach to scaling your retro consoles, or basically anything, to your digital display. HDR, Scanlines, scaling, color correction, everything is customizable. It's not marketed for everybody to buy one to play their super nes on, it's for that person who has a bunch of consoles and wants to eek out that last perfect pixel from a very high end display, at low latency, and make it look exactly how they want it to without sacrificing (most) features.
If you only have a handful of consoles and normally use composite video, maybe a per-console solution like the RAD2x is for you, or maybe you want a tink2x, there's no judgement (until you buy a pound cable or similarly cheap crappy hdmi converter that's not made for videogames, but video).
the tink4k is for that asshole with a ton of consoles, the best cables for all of them, and has an extron or some crazy setup to make sure you can play them all at once.
Just buy a Trinitron for 100$ you'll be a lot happier
or a jvc d series, and you can proboaly find a crt for cheaper or even for free
A theory that falls apart when you want to upscale HDMI devices that output 720p/1080p as well as analogue era stuff.
It's $750, but uses the same cheap remote from those OTA DVRs on Amazon. That's very disappointing.
IR learning remotes that have better ergonomics are available for like, $20 or less, or you can go fancy with the Logitech Harmony series I guess.
I'm more interested in how much RetroTwink, Alex Battaglia, is going for.
👍👍
500 max, it's still ridiculous. the market is just not there.
People that complain it’s too expensive: this product is not for you, or you probably do not know/understand all the features it offers.
Yeah I'm sure they can't afford it because they don't understand what it does.... LOL Did you even read what you wrote there?
If they cannot afford it then it doesn't matter if they know what it does!
Pixelfx Morph is just as good and $350 USD cheaper. The Tink4K is too expensive!
@@TatankaTaylor Well, too expensive can mean “I can’t afford this,” but it can also mean “it’s not worth the price.”
I can’t afford a $500,000 mansion, that doesn’t necessarily mean $500,000 is to expensive for that mansion.
I’m not gonna buy a $750 scalar (I already have a RetroTINK 5x anyway) but looking at its features I don’t think it’s “too expensive”.
Oh and you conveniently skipped the first condition in my statement; if you can’t afford a RetroTINK 4k, this product is probably not for you anyway.
There’s a way of saying what you said that doesn’t come off as elitist and talking down to people.
@@keyboard_g I mean, the target audience of my comment (people that complain that a prosumer product is too expensive) kinda has it coming.
And personally I'd say I'm being very blunt rather than elitist. I don't make any claim that I know anything. It's just a simple rule I apply to myself as well:
if I don't see the value of something I'm not an expert on, than it's very likely the product is simply not for me, or I just do not understand it's value.
Just emulate and it'll look far beyond this in image quality.
It's not worth 750 at all, maybe it is to high end content creators.
It's not worth 750 *to you*, maybe it is to people who want class-leading upscaling including content creators.
FTFY
@@whoiscuriousgeorge dude you’re in every comment, get a life
Way too expensive
$750? nope
I don't get it.
Bruh, just emulate.
Bruh, just go away.
Enjoy your bugs, capability and input lag
@@MichaelM28Gonna cry?)
@@MichaelM28 the input lag for emulating on my PCs hardware is pretty much just for consoles i actually own and homebrewed (ps2/ps3), so i wont have input lag on my CRT :)
This is absurd at that price lol
To you, maybe, but compared to pro grade rack mount stuff used in movie and TV studios it's an absolute bargain, and if you're serious about picture quality with a good disposable income it could actually be relatively cheap. Certainly is cheaper than a QD-OLED of a decent size.
And yet it sold out in 20 minutes lol
@@mikeg2491 a fool will always be parted from their money
The obsession with resolution is what led to games running at 720p on current gen consoles while being reconstructed into a blurry, artifact plagued 4K attempted image.
I'd play at 720p before I'd buy an 800$ device to upscale it to play with altered images. Or even play with FSR/DLSS.
Original consoles in their original formats are what makes their charm. Especially SD consoles on CRTs.
As interesting as upscaling is, A 480p image on a CRT looks infinitely better than a game running at 1080p upscaled to 4K with either FSR or DLSS.
The Retrotink doesn't use reconstruction, it uses nearest neighbour scaling which results in a much sharper than what your TV would normally produce
The retrotink is made to basically tranform any flat panel into a CRT. It has perfect scaling at 4k, CRT filters (and even lcd filters), BFI, etc. You are completely off topic
@@femto8402 Still not true 4K, good upscaling is still subject to internal resolution and pixel density - 720p looking like native on a 4K panel is nice, but is it worth 800$ when most mid-range 4K TVs have more than good scaling?
Still not true CRT, the filters are filters and don't hold up to the real thing - Although on that one not wanting the trouble of a 200 pounds monster I'd understand, but is it worth 800$ when smaller, more convenient CRT models exist?
So I wouldn't exactly say it's completely off topic to say that I'd rather have the classic experience over an overly expensive upscaled eperience
Hell even a 1366x768 TV would make 720p look good as native
@@gabgame300 Either way it will still look sharper than whatever your modern TV does to a 720p signal.
But overall the RetroTINK 4K is not that useful at all for anything more recent than PS3. It’s most useful for sharp ADC and upscaling of analog signals, or for very specific niche use cases.
In the end, it’s a prosumer product. So unless you have a really good reason to use it, you’re probably better off with a RetroTINK 5x Pro.
@@gabgame300 "is it worth 800$ when most mid-range 4K TVs have more than good scaling?" Not sure how many TVs you've tested but I'd guess with a statement like that, not a lot. In my experience, having tested several, most 4K TVs do fairly decent 1080p to 4K, pretty bad 720p to 4K and total garbage with anything below that. Some TVs won't even hold sync for older resolutions like 480i if you can get that signal into it via HDMI, which I have done - my Sony X Series 4K120 HDR capable TV loses sync on 480i, for example. Even when resolutions like 1080i work, the TV flickers in a way that my 13 year old Sony Bravia don't - yep, another case of older tech being superior to newer tech despite the age, it's not just CRTs being better than flat panels, it's older flat panels being better than newer ones for certain things too. The RetroTink 4K can solve all of the problems I just listed in most use cases, so $750 actually looks like great value.
For something so expensive you’d think it’d come in a nicer looking box, this thing looks like some cheap android 1000 games in 1 thing.
Pixelfx Morph is better and cheaper
Cheaper yes but better ? The Tink 4K is flawless man
Highly agree
@@femto8402 So is the Morph
Well we will see when we actualy gets the see the SW capabilities. Its sad that Morph is coming little bit later and hasnt been distributed to comunnity member for testing. It makes it harder to estimate what will be supported. At this point we have quite good overview of 4K option including all the menu options. Really happy we have option to choose. Personaly waiting for better comparsion. Neither of them will be bad. SO far Im very happy with products I bought from PixelFX and Mike
@@TMracer73 If you've ever used one of the HDMI mods from Pixelfx then you'll know how the Morph works
Not worth the Price, needs to come done 400$. Maybe in 2 years or so price will b e more reasonable.
Will not happen. The FPGA chip used for the heavy lifting alone costs $263 in procurement, not including R&D, production, quality control and all other expensive chips like the AD converters etc.
@@kwinsch7423 Well, too bad then. The FrameMeister was way too expensive back in the day, now it is this. It is hard to justify the expense compared to more affordable devices like the Retrotink5X and OSSC Pro, which are less than half the price. As great as the Rink4K is, it isnt twice as good.
Free software can to that on my PC for video players, emulators etc. - so, hell no!
You could probably hack this functionality together with a cheap board, plus some cables and software for a fraction of this.
This price feels like 'audiophile' products, who still haven't realized that most vinyls were digitally processed, too; who think that gold plated cables make a difference for digital signals.
Or even buying a plastic and resin 'orgonite pyramid' from some esoteric conspiracy bs site for 1000$, to 'shield bad energies' or something.
What a total misunderstanding of the thing and incorrect equation of it to snake oil products like you mentioned. It's measurably, quantifiably better at upscaling than most things you can buy that are under $1,000 as observed by people who know what they're talking about, John Linneman included. The audiophile/pyramid nonsense comparisons just demonstrate you don't really know how it works, but there's plenty of knowledge out there.
Why not start here, the My Life In Gaming boys know their stuff :-
ruclips.net/video/43dzrCAfU3A/видео.html
Better value compared to the gaybox series x!!!! And more powerful compared to the gaybox series x!!!!!
What's it like being homophobic in 2023?
Wow, totally immature, it's like you're a homophobic six year old in 1973, using the word gay as a slur. Reported.