I was the lead artist on Disney's The Lion King on SNES and Sega Genesis. I've seen my artwork on many TVs and converters and it NEVER looks good to me compared to a NTSC TV. The ability to blend colors by cross hatching or stripping was key do doing artwork back then and it's hard to fake the effect of the TV's raster in modern TVs. I should say that I do have the redone version on the Switch, but I've been afraid to play it. I might have to give this device a try.
You're partially responsible for some of my best childhood memories. Got the Megadrive 2 bundle with Lion King for Christmas in 1994! Best Christmas present EVER!
This is amazing, I've always wanted to ask a question to someone who had actually worked on games made for this generation! I live in Europe, so I have access to better forms of analog video for older consoles (namely RGB SCART), which is not only higher quality, but also makes it easier to play NTSC games on my PAL TVs, as long as they support PAL60, by bypassing color encoding entirely and using native RGB output. However, this added clarity sometimes comes under criticism, since techniques like dithering might not work, even with a CRT, since individual pixels are more exposed. The waterfall in Sonic the Hedgehog's Green Hill Zone is a popular example, since it looks like multiple streams of water instead of one blended, and thus translucent, waterfall. This makes some people say that RF or composite are the best ways to play these games, even if quality may take a hit. Some advocate for S-Video as a middle ground between those and YPbPr/RGB. So, did you, as an artist, expect RF or composite's horizontal blending and work accordingly? Or would you say "yeah, use a CRT, but YPbPr component or full-on RGB for added clarity"?
This video felt very genuine, like you actually did it for fun. I didnt think id sit through the whole thing and I did, its good to see you doing things because you truly enjoy them again man
100% my impression as well. It's also nice to see a bit more balance of Linus speaking his mind and his findings rather than reacting merely to the findings of someone whose job it was to work on a project for a week or two. Whilst I enjoy everyone else getting their screen time as well and this video is by far no exception, I was REALLY craving the... dare I say it... old Linus Tech Tips times where you felt where the L in LTT comes from and Linus talking about HIS interests and projects. Yes this was clearly worked on by more than just Linus, which gave the video more perspectives and depth, it was in some way... Old Linus 2.0. Or Old Linus Plus Edition. Oh and it's a project that whilst not cheap, has a lot of value to those intereted, is affordable enough and won't be outdated in half a year, because these sorts of devices generally give you a great idea of where they excel and where you may feel hesitant for something it's missing. This is, by the looks of it, not missing anything crucial that I could think of that would otherwise boost the experience on a competitor where you feel buyer's remorse. And the video portraits it. Probably been my favorite LTT video in a long time besides WAN shows, those are kinda their own thing and never started feeling different or such. Truly a genuine result of LTT's restructuring phase it feels like. Long story short, banger video.
I would love to see something like this applied to TV Shows/Movies from the early 2000s. Alot of the "upscaled" versions that are on streaming services and kicking around torrent sites look terrible on modern TVs
Holy crap! This is 30 minutes and contains a lot of useful info! The normal LTT format doesn't work for this type of video (in my opinion), so it's good to see you extended the time out to really go in-depth with the product. I'm watching it all the way through for sure :).
I feel like it focussed a lot on the "What?" and not as much on the "How?". Some people just want to know what something does in nearly every scenario, but I'm more into how it's done, what the inside looks like and stuff like that. For a 30 minute video, I expected to see a lot more of how it works.
I don’t get why people are surprised considering this is how LTT videos used to be. I guess now it’s more about feeding the algorithm with as many videos as possible
CRTs are still such a wild concept to me. I mean: an electronbeam, steared by magnetic fields, hitting the perfect pixels, line by line and all that multiple times per second.... Thats just sounds so wild
There was actually a metal screen of pixels inside the tube behind the glass that stripped off any Splatter from the electron gun making the pixel elements Sharp That mask is what helped the clarity of the image. Trinitron claim to fame was it they only had two wires holding up that mask. And if you look closely on a Trinitron Screen you can find them about a third of the way from the top and the third of the way from the bottom on the left and right sides.
Wild to think most people had an electronic particle accelerator at home. Some even had multiple. And some people still use them for niche applications cause they don't want to spend hundreds of eurodollars on the devices shown in this ad video
One of the things I find interesting about a theoretical future "endgame" 8/16K 1000hz+ self-emissive display, is how easily such a display could emulate all past display technologies. With enough pixels and frames, any quirks of older technology could be recreated almost entirely faithfully. Scanlines, noise, soft pixels, color fringing, even stuff like LCD motion blur and backlight bleed could all be realistically simulated. So hypothetically the visual quality of any older display wouldn't ever truly be lost.
You'd need a 15 625 Hz refresh rate to emulate the order of drawing lines on an NTSC CRT. I don't think we're ever going to get that, unless the panel could use different timings for each row of pixels to delay each consecutive one by 64 microseconds. Big technological challenge just to emulate the "flickery mess" aspect of a CRT. And it still won't work with light pens, that'd need basically zero input lag and similar but much, much faster delay for the columns.
@IgnacyG1998 I don't necessarily mean with 100% physics perfect accuracy. Just that it can be realistically simulated to the human eye. I know that true noise and flicker can happen at stupid-short time-intervals, and pixel by pixel scanlines, of course, but 1000+ frames per second is still a lot to work with to achieve an effect that one could really be fooled by.
@@GoldenSW A CRT takes nanoseconds to draw each pixel in a scanline. Sample&hold panels can't match that speed because of physics and electronics. It doesn't matter if you have a 300KHz digital audio file, you can't replicate an analog audio waveform from a Reel-to-reel tape because analog by definition is an infinite range of values and no latency.
@@LilBoyHexley A CRT takes nanoseconds to draw each pixel, 1000Hz is still 1000Hz, not fast enough. You take a Plasma TV and it has better motion clarity than an OLED since it draws each frame with an impulse, not holding a frame for long persistance of vision. The numbers speak for themselves, CRTs are lightyears faster than modern displays, this is why the frequency is measured in KHz for how fast can the electron gun can draw a pixel in a line combined with the vertical refresh rate.
I have a CRT in my room as the couch TV that I was lucky enough to get from my grandfather. It's unbelievable and I can't recommend it enough. But man it's completely impractical for anyone that doesn't wanna have a massive brick in their room, and the noise really upsets some of my friends. This looks like a cool solution from the few minutes I've seen!
The two best uses I've had for the RetroTINK-4K so far have been for the N64 and the PS3. Personally I think it really does a miraculous job with 5th through 7th gen consoles! A couple things to note are that: - You can combine scanlines and 4K resolution and HDR out of the scaler at 60Hz and use your TV's BFI implementation too. This way there's no compromise. - MiSTeR Direct Video output into the RetroTINK, after some collaboration between Mike and the MiSTeR devs, works fairly seamlessly! Thanks for this awesome video! So proud every time I see coverage of this awesome product.
Yeah, David and/or Tanner did write about using the TV's native BFI in the video, that's why Linus was talking about the different BFI algorithm in modern OLEDs, and why they used the CX & C1. The BFI duration for 60Hz on the CX is measured to be around just under 13ms, with about 4ms of light output adding up to the 16.67ms of 60fps. The C3 on the other hand is lit and dark for about half the time, which improves perceived brightness while using BFI, but is exactly half as effective in improving motion clarity. Interestingly, C1's BFI ratio is about 7:8, which isn't really that much quicker than other OLEDs with BFI at about 1:1. In fact, the only OLEDs with BFI that's as quick as 4: 13 are LG's entire 2020 lineup: BX, CX, GX.
It's crazy how good of a host David is, he is a great camera guy that always joining convos which makes videos feel more personal and funnier. I wish he was a host too more often.
I'm thoroughly impressed by the comprehensive comparison of the CRT tube TVs and Retro tank. It's truly an eye-opener how technology has evolved yet some old tech still holds its ground. It's surprising how the Retro tank has managed to emulate the look of a CRT so closely. Good to know we're not completely losing the charm and quality of classic technology!
@@johnnyfoxx9379Depends. High end displays are pretty fine at motion and I've heard "black frame insertion" helps a lot. Plus the SNES never had perfectly smooth scrolling anyway. The CRT just hid it a bit better.
Fun fact: You can still technically get brand new, freshly manufactured CRT screens. You just have to put in an order with one of two manufacturers who still make them. Problem is, you have to wait until they have enough orders to spin up the factories, and then wait until the orders ship out. I've heard of some people waiting 8 years for theirs.
@@Patrikstar24 Off the top of my head, I don't recall. But I can ask the guy at my company who knows. He restores arcade machines for a hobby, so he's pretty familiar with that whole process. Worst case, I'm sure there's some forums one can dig through to find out.
A single google search shows me the last CRT was made in 2015, note that I said it's a single google search and you probably know your stuff much better than me so if possible please elaborate. I've been thinking about getting one and if not I will just get a second hand one.
@@flintfrommother3gaming The person I'm referring to at my job used to work at Midway, so I like to think they know what they're talking about. That being said, I'm sure that if such a thing still exists, the wait time is absurd. You might as well get a used one.
YEEEEES I’m so glad Linus is covering RetroTINK. There NEEEDS to be more competition in the scaler space and that only happens with awareness of these tools. Love to see it.
Honestly, and with competition hopefully more affordable options arise, because even factoring in the high cost of shipping with CRTs I could buy 3 of them for the current price of the RetroTINK lol
@@gavinharris4170 I can't see it getting cheaper though, its still a small niche of a niche and using FPGA is necessary to do this in such small quantities, but keeps that cost sky high. For me personally for example, I'm perfectly happy with the MiSTer HDMI output alone, I simply don't play retro games enough to warrant the cost of a dedicated scaler. In fact, I only got MiSTer for Amiga games due to its refresh rate scaling over WinUAE.
why? Why do you spend as much on a new tv for a thing to USE on your tv that makes no fuc#ing sense. I think that's your problem you have more money than sense.
@Bewefau it's a calm discussion here so I'm not sure why you're getting hostile, but I'll break it down for you to hopefully understand at least as how my setup goes. I primarily use my computer and monitors for TV, UA-cam, etc.. I also occasionally play retro consoles like NES, SNES, and so on, but use a CRT for these systems. In terms of affordablity it makes way more sense to spend $150-200 on a small used CRT than $750 on something that can emulate a CRT, albeit with much more setup involved than just plugging up a TV and console. Again, it's great that tech like this is reaching a renaissance and gaining attention so that hopefully competition arises and more affordable options become available in the future, but as it currently stands it makes way more sense to purchase a used CRT for 1/4-1/3 of the price of this device.
I have a VHS/DVD combo unit with HDMI output... which doesn't give better quality but is pretty convenient. But using the Retrotink 4K to do CRT Emulation actual interlaced video and the scanline and mask options really helps with VHS. And I bet people who are into LaserDisc would appreciate it
Note to the mixer. CRT TV's and some lights produce high-end noise. You can hear allot of it popping in and out during the video. Check for frequencies above 9k or so and EQ accordingly
@@tsartomato I'm in my late 20's. It's pretty common for people to not be able to hear frequencies that high. Especially as you get older. Also depends if the headphones/ speakers your listening on can reproduce high end well
Bro they can't even record/mix Linus' voice to not sound over modulated and dull (tough considering he's miced under a thick hoodie) and you can see David's mic horrendously taped to his shirt. They obviously have no clue how to audio professionally
Great video. Love the comparison with CRT TV. Despite having profiles provided by the community I would still recommend to read the wiki, watch video tutorials and tinker with the settings. 🙂
Thought the video was pretty great as well. Some tiny little criticisms about CRT info they missed, but nothing worth getting particularly upset about. Overall I think the advice here is pretty spot on.
Been following the Tink4K development, and I would love one, but the price tag is prohibitive. It's understandable though due to niche application, low volume, and FPGA cost, plus letting Mike Chi earn a packet for his great work
@@HowieDune One guy makes this thing and sources the parts. It is not cheap to make and its a full time business so he needs to earn something from selling it.
@@crazybeatrice4555 Yeah wasnt disputing that as it is a very high price. Was mostly saying that for why it is that much and combat the "I could get something like this for less". The previous model that isn't 4k is a more affordable cost.
I have REALLY loved the content lately. I love the changes made after what happened. I feel like the “Old Linus” is back. It feels like I’m watching the show I grew up watching, and I love it! Keep up the good work and content. This stuff if FUN!
I know it's not within the scope or intended use case of the RT4K, but I'm curious to see what it could do with a VCR player or other retro video media formats. Perhaps it could be a means to take old home recordings and run it through the RT4K with some scaling, filtering, and color grading to then capture the output for digital safekeeping? I really have no idea how practical that idea is, but it crossed my mind while watching this video.
I love watching content like this because enjoying older games isn't just plug an play anymore. In some ways it is a lot harder due to needing filters and things like this. In other ways it is a lot better due to the addition of things like save states. I love watching how we can bring older content back to life and enjoy it just the same. One of my favorite videos was when you both upgraded your game gear and psp.
Nothing beats a monitor grade CRT and a MiSTer for image quality and simplicity, took me 30 mins to put the MiSTer together, copy the firmware to the SD card, nothing comes close to the 1000 TVL CRT and the MiSTer as far as image quality goes, perfect motion clarity, zero input latency, very simple menus, everything is pretty much done for you when you copy over the plug & play firmware to the SD card, just got to choose your console and game, no overlays or shaders needed when using a CRT, it's all native to the hardware, @ 240p those scanlines are jaw dropingly beautiful, that said, the MiSTer would be great to use with a nice OLED monitor too, just toggle on the scanlines and BFI, OLED has video lag and input latency, and obviously lower motion clarity than a CRT, but the BFI really helps with that on an OLED monitor.
@@infernaldaedra Just one console though, the MiSTer has everything up to the PS1/N64/Saturn, N64 games look better than real hardware by quite a decent margin, plus it has tones of computer systems like the Amiga, Sharp X6800, 90's PC games, and then there are all the sweet sweet arcade games it plays beautifully, everything is 0 latency and 0 lag thanks to bare metal FPGA, the MiSTer is crem'da'la'crem, a work of art, well worth the 30 minutes it took me to setup for years of playing dozen's of consoles, computers and arcade system's, my retro computers can take ages to setup, sometimes hours, and if there is a fault somewhere I may not even get it working.
@@infernaldaedra The Dreamcast is where the MiSTer FPGA draws the line, but the new MARS FPGA is going to have a DC FPGA core, which is awesome, when the MARS is mature and refined as the MiSTer, ill probably get one. Yes I love the Mega Drive, Terminator VS Robocop is one of my faves, as is Castle of Illusion, Robocod, Truxton, so many masterpieces on the SMD, one of the reasons why SMD on the MiSTer is so good, is FPGA gets the audio pretty much 100% accurate, especially now there is the nuked Mega Drive core on MiSTer, based of the x-rayed de-lidded Mega Drive chips, the MiSTer with a HQ DAC and a quad stereo amp sounds incredible, I never thought it would be possible to get 100% accurate audio, as even the best software emulation falls so short of real Sega Mega Drive audio quality, there is also the MiSTer MT-32 MIDI & FM Synth sound add-on, so good for Amiga and 90s PC and DOS games.
This video makes me wonder what happened to those SED and FED TVs that were supposed to give us all the benefits of a CRT in a slim flat panel format. Maybe you guys can do an episode on that sometime? I know Canon had a 36 inch prototype they showed at CES in the late 2000s that appeared to be essentially ready for commercial production, but for some reason it never made it to market. I think one of those released today could really give OLED a run for its money.
I would love to see how they stack up, but I don't see how they'd be competitive with WOLED or QLED. They don't have the bandwidth to handle higher resolutions and larger sizes would get expensive to manufacture. Micro-LED is really the modern equivalent of those ideas, if the price ever comes down to something a mere mortal can afford.
@@Easelgames Considering they had production ready 1080p SED TVs in 2006 and the first 4k TV didn't release until 2012, you are simply wrong. Not even close. When 4k TVs came out they were much more expensive than other TVs and it took years for all of the different manufacturers to migrate their LCD production. LG didn't release the first 4K OLED TV until late 2014 at a cost of $7,000 for the 65 inch model. I imagine had Canon and Toshiba brought their SED TVs to market, they probably would've had a similar timeline. Also, their are still plenty of 1080p and 720p TVs in 43 inch and smaller sizes, with very few 4K TVs that size because they are more difficult to produce since you have to pack the pixels closer together. I really don't think 4K was an obstacle the SED manufacturers wouldn't have been able to overcome.
@@Easelgames Thats also the main reason why PlasmaTVs were phased out, they sucked too much energy with high resolutions by that time Oled already was on the horizon as possible replacement.
Using composite is really missing a trick here. A SCART cable into either the CRT or the Retrotink would have provided a significantly superior picture in both instances (noting North Americans did not have CRTs with SCART). It makes a huge difference! RGB is awesome!
but then you also would get a ton of hidden ugliness aka the tricks applied back then composite hides, aka, dithering, which was used to produce extra colors really pop out on an rgb scart connection, you would gain sharpness which means more visible blocking!
OH MY GOD! First ball Thank you very much guys for allowing me to consume your content in my mother language, this opens a huge world of consume your excellent content for my compatriots. I hope that content creators in my country can also share with you our culture and content that only we produce in the near future. And the second ball, retrotink 4k is the best! I am a young man aged 40, with a small collection of old video games and for reasons of space I prefer to play on modern TVs, I already have an OSSC and now I NEED an RT4k!!! Fantastic video, very explanatory and complete, THANK YOU again!
When Linus says “I dont think I care if it gets views” The Views 1.6 million lol 😅 Great video y’all. I just got my RT4K yesterday and it is as good as advertised. I love the Analouge Super NT settings it’s perfect to me.
I have been watching Linus Tech Tips for so long that it seems like these guys are a part of my family. I subscribed back in the day on Nov 26, 2010, thats 13 years! Just wanted to say thanks for all the amazing memories and amazing content you guys work so hard to produce for all of us.
My CRTs get plenty bright. Age is an issue, but I can recap bad electrolytics as necessary. The image on my KV-27S42 is awesome, though it’s not without its little quirks. That being said, I’m excited to grab an RT4K after having missed out on the first batch. It’s an awesome time to play retro games in general, and the advancements we’ve made in less than a decade are pretty amazing.
I just use my high end Samsung VGA PC CRT monitor, the image quality is lightyears better than a CRT TV, even Sony's very expensive BVM's for TV broadcasting can't compete, 1080i is worse than 1080p. I reach 1080p (4:3 1080p) on my monitor, i can almost reach 1800 x 1400 as well.
@@TheBackyardChemist I mean, display aging is true of oled as well. But I have no problem finding CRTs for cheap or free in my area, and since I’m only using them for retro gaming, I’m only putting maybe a couple hundred hours on even my used one per year. At that rate, it’ll probably take me another decade or two to put a significant amount of time on the tube. I’m more likely to have experience a failure on the chassis. Inevitably there will come a day when crts are no longer an option, but I’m not too worried about it. Who knows what amazing scaler+panel will be available to the mainstream in another decade.
I'm just happy i found a SCART capable flatscreen for my amiga, it looks GREAT. Also usually not really interested in highend TV videos but this was an exception for obvious reasons.
I really enjoyed this video. It was funny and informative. Nice to see LTT can still make good content without a unnecessarily jank project for added engagement.
I personally am more interested in emulation, and what filters you'd have to chose then to get an very close to authentic experience. I hope that video would also be made at some point!
This was a fun awesome video...THIS is what I like to see people doing...what they really want to do. I think it would be cool to have one staff member a month (or two, whatever's possible) do a review like this...on something they just WANT to talk about.
RetroTink systems are what I recommend to the majority of people at our retro store. I have several in my collection from the 2X, 5X and I plan on trying to afford the 4K. Only reason CRTs are going to be relevant still is for lightgun games for most folks.
I think it’s nice that you guys have been putting in the extra work on translating your content to different languages in order to reach a bigger audience and being more inclusive in that sense, thumbs up for that 👌🏻 That being said, does any of you guys know why am I getting the translated tracks by default? I live in the US and I’m lucky/blessed to be bilingual, all of my app and account settings are set to English so I can’t really think of any reason why I’m getting translated tracks instead of the original ones on your videos other that probably racial/ethnic profiling (Mexican here 🙋🏻♂️) (most definitely not on your end but rather UA-cam's) I really do applaud your commitment to be more inclusive and to make your content more easily accessible but personally I’d very much rather have the original track play by default so that I don’t have to change it every time I click one of your videos which I’m a big fan of. Talk about first world problems, right? 😅
My mother pulled out the last CRT left in the house while my nieces and nephew were over during Christmas. She showed them what it was like to watch a VHS on a CRT. They instantly started freaking out and complaining about a terrible high pitch noise that only they could hear when the CRT was turned on. It made me feel old.
What many are going to miss about this is while that 750 cost seems to "only" replace the CRT, it actually replaces most of video I/O people usually have for their retro systems, it's small and the price will go down. I would consider this a good purchase for anyone trying to hunt down large good quality CRTs just for visual and connective compatibility
I have a RetroTink 2xPro for capturing VHS and LD media. After trying a bunch of those little $20 upscaler boxes, I think it's well worth the price of my RetroTink. No more issues with blown out whites and dodgy contrast.
The reason I haven't went full CRT is the durability question. Even if I got a 100% brand new CRT (almost impossible and absurdly expensive I imagine), it will still break one day. When it does there isn't a store where I can buy a new one, or many people who actually know how to work on them. I had the opportunity to buy a pretty nice CRT display, but I don't want to buy something I cannot buy again. Why get used to a product you cannot buy. This seems like a really good product, and I actually may pick one up now. Thanks guys!
This is awesome. I would really like to test my Amiga with this. I wasn an artist on the C64 and Amiga and used the softness of TVs to my advantage. You could really make the images more like real paintings because the pixels would bleed together.
CRTs are amazing for rhythm games, specifically Beatmania IIDX. The PS2 version along with arcade cabinets still run preferred on them. Newer IIDX machines use 120hz, but nothing beats the feel of a CRT
One of the earliest memories I have that convinced me of the unique visual allure that CRT's TV’s afforded video game content that was natively rendered at standard definition or lower, was when I had the chance to compare a friend’s a SNES version of Street Fighter 2 with what was an admittedly cumbersome PC port that nonetheless at the time, was as close as any non-console edition came to the arcade original without dedicated custom graphics hardware to handle the sprite sailing routines and multilayered parallax backgrounds. Both incarnations featured the exact the same number of on screen colours, extracted from an identical palette of 262.144 and ran at the standard VGA resolution of 320x240. But the SNES involuntarily benefited from all those analogue “imperfections” that not even early PC monitors appeared able to replicate when running at interlaced resolutions which alternately scanned half of each displayed frame, this was likely due to the involuntary smoothing effect that that the crosstalk you mentioned had upon images transmitted via Composite, Scart or RF compounding the “complementary” anti aliasing which this method of “screen refresh” afforded the same source. It’s interesting that later CRT monitors, which stretch the bandwidth of both the HD15 and DVI-D interface up-to their respective capacities of 2048x1536 and 2560x1600 (technically well over 1080p and 1440P), provide a similarly unique and desirable “soft sheen” when compared to all subsequent flat screen technologies, including LCD, LED and OLED, simply because they are a later evolution of the same projection method. It’s truly inspiring that premium quality scalers are now such providing such convincing emulations of these antiquated transmission techniques, though I get the impression that even the most expensive and highly specified contemporary displays are being “pushed” to their "backlit" extremes to compensate for “retro effects” such as scanlines and simulate “phosphor roll-off. It would be ironic if their functional lifespan was rendered shorter than if they were used for contemporary gaming as direct a result of trying to perfectly mimic the classic “analogue” characteristics of many genuine CRT TVs still out in the wild which are now manifesting clear signs of age despite legions of skilled engineers striving desperately to to extend their longevity. For the record, my overall preference was the HDCRT, both on its own and with RetroTink 5X
Im only 19, and my very first TV was a CRT with built in VHS player. CRTs persisted for quite a few years into the 2000s, longer in some countries than others.
It's high but it's technically a fair price if you consider that the FPGA alone is around $260 of the full price. Add to that R&D, that it's only a single developer handling both hardware and software development, and it's low volume runs and you can't really get that thing any lower and still live off of it. It's definitely high, though. And if the features don't justify the price tag I can highly recommend the cheaper 5X Pro. It's still 300 bucks total but does almost everything the 4k does, just at 1080p and the CRT emulation is more basic. But it's a great device and everything looks great on it.
Otherwise, folks should look into GBS based upscalers. They're a pretty straightforward soldering project. They don't compare to the RetroTink, but they're essentially really good at making older consoles look decent on modern panels. They're good enough, at least, to help decide if people want to go the route of original hardware, upscalers or emulation.
This is also mainly for people who don't already own a CRT, if you are used to a good quality CRT, then the Tin 4K isn't gonna really do it for you, even at 4K, the mask emulation offers much lower fidelity of a real 600 TVL CRT (it looks something close to around 350-400 TVL at its best), but that is a huge upgrade over the Tink 5x, and a step in the right direction, though I can't personally see myself paying 750 £$ for something that offers less fidelity (especially compared to my 1400 TVL PCM CRTs) than what I already have, but if I didn't have any CRTs, the Tink 4K would be priceless imo.
One comparison I think you missed was running retro NES and SNES games direct to HDMI on the Switch’s own emulator versus the original hardware via the RetroTink.
I have a tink4k. I've found it's a game changer for 720 consoles (ps360 etc) if you use the "LCD Mono" scanline setting. To quote the wiki "Will place a 1x1 pixel border around every upscaled pixel in the image" - you wouldn't think this would make it look better but yeah it just enhances the image. I was smiling from ear to ear when i first used this function
yeah if 4K can be good for anything, it's having the pixel density to do a decent job of presenting lower res content as native. Even using the shaders on PC games injecting through Reshade it's great for 360/ps3-era titles. And sometimes even with newer games, the assets & art style really don't benefit from such pin-sharp fidelity that just lets you easily see all the visual seams & imperfections going on.
Well, I'm sold. HDMI input is the killer feature for me. The convenience of playing retro games on a Switch or Classic Mini but with visual quality trading blows with a CRT is a dream come true. (And thank you for the absolutely A++++ review LTT!)
Love the video; such a cool product! I'm a bit biased but I do wish you'd have compared to MiSTer's native CRT filters (which are different from the more rudimentary scandoubler effects that exist primarily for 480p VGA CRTs). They only hit 1440p in SDR but are probably a decent benchmark for what existed before the RT4K
If it can be priced more within a casual range in the future, it'd definitely be an easy choice. That being said, CRTs can still be found under $100 all over the place, which is a fraction of the price of either the 4k or 5x. Outstanding piece of hardware, but thats a huge pill to swallow for anyone but the most dedicated collectors.
I would love to see these compared with CRT Shaders like MegaBezel or CRT-Royale on Retroarch. I use MegaBezel with HDR on my LG C9 and it looks amazing. I'm very curious to see how it compares to the real thing or the fancy expensive scaler. Especially on the C1 with BFI 4K@120hz support.
Edit: sorry for the sass. Just reread what I wrote. I make good points, but I clearly need my morning coffee so I can lose the snark. ---- It's an LCD. What makes you think a scanline sensing light gun like the original zapper would work? Also, light gun games are cool and all. But they're a gimmick. They're the Wii bowling of that console generation. Not bad games, but there are way better games on that same console. Dozens, if not hundreds of better games. It would be shelling out extra, sucking up extra space, and having a (subjectively) worse experience with the flagship titles just so you can play the gimmick title. Maybe it's just me, but I only need to play duck hunt for 5 minutes every quarter century. Someone else can go through the hassle to set it up. In the mean time, I'll set up my entertainment center for the other 200-odd NES games that are any fun.
I'm getting mine soon and I am a man of culture. I will be running my Switch, among other modern systems, through it to simulate running them on an HD CRT. Along with all my retro consoles of course.
This reminds me, 20 years ago plasma TVs were a contender in the screen market, but they turned out to be an evolutionary dead-end. Though I know there are people out there who appreciate them. The low-grade LCD years won't be missed either, lol, I recently watched a GTA V Chaos mod vid and one of the effects is a greatly exaggerated TN panel 😂😂😂 I laughed my ass off at that! And LCDs did commonly look like that well into the mid 2000s.
@@CandyManSC I have a 2002 32inch WEGA CRT TV for consoles in native res. But i almost don't use it, since the PC CRT is lightyears better for anything, the exception is the Nintendo Wii because of motion controls.
yes we can replace a $50 facebook CRT with a $800 scaler and $500+ oled, for 26x the price. That being said, I am not against this, the price will come down in time, but it is not a financially viable solution for most people from a value perspective.
Rookie mistake plugging in 240p content into a 16:9 HD CRT meant only for 360/PS3/DVDs, and also using an Orion tube Toshiba with washed out brightness settings that are not at all dialed in to be representatives of the CRT experience. Lol come on guys.
Biggest problem with CRTs is the size, it's hard to fit into a smaller game room and for some people like myself living in the UK - 50HZ just kills it with the flicker, doesn't look great and makes my eyes feel like they are bleeding after 30 minutes use.
The biggest problem is that even the best of the best consumer CRT's like the Sony WEGA Trinitron's from 2005 have all aged with image quality, due to the internal guts being nearly 15 years old, and based on how many hours have been poured into the set itself. Finding a low hour set is key. But it's becoming harder, and they're still getting older, with more hours thrown in. They're just going to get worse and worse as time goes on. Plus, i don't like the idea of throwing an old 2005 Silver boxy Bezeld' TV in my apartment in 2024 on the side for retro gaming. I loved my brand new 32" WEGA back in 2005 - 2012 during the tail-end of the GameCube generation, and especially for the Wii + Virtual Console, but that was then and this is now. It's never the same! :P It doesn't feel right, it's a 15 year old TV, and due to age it will most likely have lighter black levels, worse colour, brightness loss and potential softening of the picture, and whatever else. :P And I don't think TINK4's black frame insertion will be ideal if your HDTV is pushing 10ms of latency. Tink4K + Frame lock is 2.5ms lag(unless I'm mistaken), combined with Tink4K's BFI which is 8.3ms and then your OLED TV is most likely about 10ms. That's over 20ms of latency....Not good enough imo. The trick is to find a QD-OLED using 'boost mode' which should have very minimal latency(2.5ms of lag on something like an LG C1 for ex) if your dead set on using BFI to cut down 50% of OLED motion blur. Plus BFI will have screen flicker, another downside to that feature. Sorry for the sea of text! :P
That's why i still use HD CRT and CRT Monitor for older games and movies. It's a shame, you can't play propper older consoles on your $2000 OLED TV. It shows how far behind CRT even with modern technology we rly are
I have 5 CRTs, 3 colors, and 2 monochrome, and I restored the TVs myself. Having one of the TVs in my game room certainly does consume substantial space and is really heavy. I can understand why people would want to switch, but at the same time, I love the nostalgia of having a box TV, it feels more authentic.
Consider your self very fortunate, as good as these box's are, we will never have anything that can replicate phosphor glow, curved glass, three dimensional depth CRT images have (so cool), raster-scan modulation which gives unobtanium levels of latency/lag/motion performance/incredible shadow detail and grey-scale performance/and so on, devices like the Tink 4K are more for preservation, there are less and less CRTs available, and are getting hard to come by, and wont be around for ever, but nothing beats the real thing.
@@Wobble2007 100% concur. One day CRTs will no longer be around, the CRT itself will deteriorate over time with thousands of hours of usage. Unfortunately, a CRT can't be constructed at home, it has to be done at a factory. Luckily they are relatively decent prices if you look locally.
This was interesting to see. I wouldn't mind having the opportunity to compare emulation and upscaled setups on an LCD with a good CRT, just to see how far apart they are, but I'm also content with my setups and think they look good. I've moved on from CRT and don't really care about looking back. That's mostly because I had a handful of CRTs that just didn't last very long(and some that just wouldn't die). I had two Toshiba TVs similar to the one in this video and both developed picture problems. I had a pretty nice CRT monitor in the mid 2000s and it only lasted several years. I know there were issues with many electronics during that time period, so it could just be bad luck and timing. I also had a very early 4:3 1080i Sony CRT HDTV which was the last CRT I had. It was still working when we got rid of it, but was underwhelming as a CRT. It was also nearly 200 pounds and just really bulky. I did manage to find some info on it and it apparently wasn't really good with older systems hooked up to it directly as it still did a lot of processing for that, so I don't really feel like I'm missing out now that it's gone. I had heard before that 4K would bring some benefits for artificial scanlines and CRT effects for retro games, along with better scaling, and that's about the best use case for 4K for me. I've been resistant to 4K because it doesn't really offer me any benefit that I care about otherwise. And I'm happy with my retro gaming setups at lower resolutions, so I'm just not in a hurry. But it is cool to hear how this device works and how 4K provides nice benefits to achieving a good final image.
I think tube displays had the advantage that artifacts were not very complicated and every form of loss of fidelity was analog. So it was possible for the brain to get adjusted to it perfectly, and it was also possible to produce experiences that made art out of the limitations. Modern displays have less fidelity issues by far, but the ones they still do are convoluted and feel very alien. This is the first tech I saw since the dawn of digital displays that feels like it satisfyingly closes that gap.
This is awesome, and for serious enthusiasts it is probably one of the most exciting releases for preserving old games and old consoles in years. The only thing I can't get my head around is that price tag, $750. It wins this comparison hands-down, but ultimately Linus is comparing the RetroTINK to a really cheap, random CRT bought off a non-specialist site and that hasn't been tested and selected for quality. $750 can buy you a really, really nice CRT with a huge chunk of that cash to spare. I'd wager more than 50% to spare even if you are very picky. Therein lies my struggle. I could buy one of these, but it feels very hard to justify it right now, when really good CRTs are still out there available in good condition. Maybe in the longer term it will win out because it's future-proof whereas all CRTs are slowly heading for inevitable appliance death, and there's definitely something to be said for colour accuracy and display consistency in all conditions. I guess I'm just not the target consumer as a keen gamer but casual retro console person. I have old consoles but I don't obsess over them and I think you need to obsess over them to make this price point make sense.
But you also need to be pretty into retro gaming to get a dedicated TV (which takes up a ton of room) just for retro gaming. I can't imagine people actually wanting to use their CRT TV as their "daily driver" for all content, so that means an extra TV for it. If I had enough interest in retro gaming to buy a CRT TV it would be pretty hard to talk myself out of spending the money on the RetroTINK instead as I could game on my regular, much larger TV instead.
Honestly, it would be so much easier to just emulate it and do that stuff on the same device in software. Or even the owners remastering it to how it is supposed to look like (either HD pixels or drawn look).
@@Alias_Anybody so emulate and I'll use my insanely expensive physical cart and disc collection on my expensively modified consoles on my expensive 98 inch tv
@@Alias_Anybody It's probably aimed for people that already have a game collection and a big oled tv they wanna use. For most people a crt is the best there is for retro gaming if they want the original experience since they can be found cheap.
Awesome video Linus and team! Please continue making those fun out of script videos! We can feel that you guys having fun, and this vibe is getting trhough the screen!
I recently got the RT4K (replacing my older GBS-C) the difference is night and day with SNES & PS2 games, in particular the upscaling up to 4k on my new Samsung OLED TV.
You’d need a Sinden Lightgun. I’ve had a lot of growing pains w/ mine. The room has to be completely dark for them to work. And you’re not using it w/ original NES hardware. You’re emulating w/ something like a PI so the Retrotink isn’t necessary.
I was the lead artist on Disney's The Lion King on SNES and Sega Genesis. I've seen my artwork on many TVs and converters and it NEVER looks good to me compared to a NTSC TV. The ability to blend colors by cross hatching or stripping was key do doing artwork back then and it's hard to fake the effect of the TV's raster in modern TVs. I should say that I do have the redone version on the Switch, but I've been afraid to play it. I might have to give this device a try.
You did the art only? You didn't have anything to do with the programming of the DIFFICULTY of that F'N game??? :)
I loved that game
You're partially responsible for some of my best childhood memories. Got the Megadrive 2 bundle with Lion King for Christmas in 1994! Best Christmas present EVER!
This is amazing, I've always wanted to ask a question to someone who had actually worked on games made for this generation! I live in Europe, so I have access to better forms of analog video for older consoles (namely RGB SCART), which is not only higher quality, but also makes it easier to play NTSC games on my PAL TVs, as long as they support PAL60, by bypassing color encoding entirely and using native RGB output. However, this added clarity sometimes comes under criticism, since techniques like dithering might not work, even with a CRT, since individual pixels are more exposed. The waterfall in Sonic the Hedgehog's Green Hill Zone is a popular example, since it looks like multiple streams of water instead of one blended, and thus translucent, waterfall. This makes some people say that RF or composite are the best ways to play these games, even if quality may take a hit. Some advocate for S-Video as a middle ground between those and YPbPr/RGB. So, did you, as an artist, expect RF or composite's horizontal blending and work accordingly? Or would you say "yeah, use a CRT, but YPbPr component or full-on RGB for added clarity"?
Thanks for working on a game that I played for hours during my childhood.
This video felt very genuine, like you actually did it for fun. I didnt think id sit through the whole thing and I did, its good to see you doing things because you truly enjoy them again man
echoed that sentiment during my watch
100% my impression as well. It's also nice to see a bit more balance of Linus speaking his mind and his findings rather than reacting merely to the findings of someone whose job it was to work on a project for a week or two. Whilst I enjoy everyone else getting their screen time as well and this video is by far no exception, I was REALLY craving the... dare I say it... old Linus Tech Tips times where you felt where the L in LTT comes from and Linus talking about HIS interests and projects. Yes this was clearly worked on by more than just Linus, which gave the video more perspectives and depth, it was in some way... Old Linus 2.0. Or Old Linus Plus Edition. Oh and it's a project that whilst not cheap, has a lot of value to those intereted, is affordable enough and won't be outdated in half a year, because these sorts of devices generally give you a great idea of where they excel and where you may feel hesitant for something it's missing. This is, by the looks of it, not missing anything crucial that I could think of that would otherwise boost the experience on a competitor where you feel buyer's remorse. And the video portraits it. Probably been my favorite LTT video in a long time besides WAN shows, those are kinda their own thing and never started feeling different or such. Truly a genuine result of LTT's restructuring phase it feels like.
Long story short, banger video.
We need more gamer Linus and less video-maker Linus.
Being back more linus diy home improvement project videos said no one ever
haha true though @@spraynardkruger6426
HDR is such an important factor in scanline emulation, and you did a great job of explaining why.
Linustech bro 😊
I would love to see something like this applied to TV Shows/Movies from the early 2000s. Alot of the "upscaled" versions that are on streaming services and kicking around torrent sites look terrible on modern TVs
HDR has been a thorn in my side. When it is working on all aspects it's great, but mostly a pain.
Holy crap! This is 30 minutes and contains a lot of useful info! The normal LTT format doesn't work for this type of video (in my opinion), so it's good to see you extended the time out to really go in-depth with the product. I'm watching it all the way through for sure :).
I feel like it focussed a lot on the "What?" and not as much on the "How?". Some people just want to know what something does in nearly every scenario, but I'm more into how it's done, what the inside looks like and stuff like that. For a 30 minute video, I expected to see a lot more of how it works.
I don’t get why people are surprised considering this is how LTT videos used to be.
I guess now it’s more about feeding the algorithm with as many videos as possible
CRTs are still such a wild concept to me. I mean: an electronbeam, steared by magnetic fields, hitting the perfect pixels, line by line and all that multiple times per second.... Thats just sounds so wild
AND it's been projected into our faces.
And with less latency than modern anythings.
And it was figured out a looooooong time ago.
There was actually a metal screen of pixels inside the tube behind the glass that stripped off any Splatter from the electron gun making the pixel elements Sharp
That mask is what helped the clarity of the image. Trinitron claim to fame was it they only had two wires holding up that mask. And if you look closely on a Trinitron Screen you can find them about a third of the way from the top and the third of the way from the bottom on the left and right sides.
Wild to think most people had an electronic particle accelerator at home. Some even had multiple. And some people still use them for niche applications cause they don't want to spend hundreds of eurodollars on the devices shown in this ad video
One of the things I find interesting about a theoretical future "endgame" 8/16K 1000hz+ self-emissive display, is how easily such a display could emulate all past display technologies. With enough pixels and frames, any quirks of older technology could be recreated almost entirely faithfully.
Scanlines, noise, soft pixels, color fringing, even stuff like LCD motion blur and backlight bleed could all be realistically simulated. So hypothetically the visual quality of any older display wouldn't ever truly be lost.
You'd need a 15 625 Hz refresh rate to emulate the order of drawing lines on an NTSC CRT. I don't think we're ever going to get that, unless the panel could use different timings for each row of pixels to delay each consecutive one by 64 microseconds. Big technological challenge just to emulate the "flickery mess" aspect of a CRT. And it still won't work with light pens, that'd need basically zero input lag and similar but much, much faster delay for the columns.
@@IgnacyG1998Technology will advance so much in 50 years we won't even be probably using conventional displays anymore so don't say never
@IgnacyG1998 I don't necessarily mean with 100% physics perfect accuracy. Just that it can be realistically simulated to the human eye. I know that true noise and flicker can happen at stupid-short time-intervals, and pixel by pixel scanlines, of course, but 1000+ frames per second is still a lot to work with to achieve an effect that one could really be fooled by.
@@GoldenSW A CRT takes nanoseconds to draw each pixel in a scanline. Sample&hold panels can't match that speed because of physics and electronics.
It doesn't matter if you have a 300KHz digital audio file, you can't replicate an analog audio waveform from a Reel-to-reel tape because analog by definition is an infinite range of values and no latency.
@@LilBoyHexley A CRT takes nanoseconds to draw each pixel, 1000Hz is still 1000Hz, not fast enough.
You take a Plasma TV and it has better motion clarity than an OLED since it draws each frame with an impulse, not holding a frame for long persistance of vision.
The numbers speak for themselves, CRTs are lightyears faster than modern displays, this is why the frequency is measured in KHz for how fast can the electron gun can draw a pixel in a line combined with the vertical refresh rate.
I have a CRT in my room as the couch TV that I was lucky enough to get from my grandfather. It's unbelievable and I can't recommend it enough. But man it's completely impractical for anyone that doesn't wanna have a massive brick in their room, and the noise really upsets some of my friends.
This looks like a cool solution from the few minutes I've seen!
don't crts also consume a lot of power?
@@dontmatter4423 i love my crt :) who cares what amount of power it uses
Don't worry about the noise. It goes away once you reach about 30yo.
Not much different than a record player, isn't it (beside the size)? A nice thing to have if you appreciate some old tech and quality!
Its not about the resolution, its about the soft hum and flowing radiation into your eye holes
The two best uses I've had for the RetroTINK-4K so far have been for the N64 and the PS3. Personally I think it really does a miraculous job with 5th through 7th gen consoles!
A couple things to note are that:
- You can combine scanlines and 4K resolution and HDR out of the scaler at 60Hz and use your TV's BFI implementation too. This way there's no compromise.
- MiSTeR Direct Video output into the RetroTINK, after some collaboration between Mike and the MiSTeR devs, works fairly seamlessly!
Thanks for this awesome video! So proud every time I see coverage of this awesome product.
Yeah, David and/or Tanner did write about using the TV's native BFI in the video, that's why Linus was talking about the different BFI algorithm in modern OLEDs, and why they used the CX & C1. The BFI duration for 60Hz on the CX is measured to be around just under 13ms, with about 4ms of light output adding up to the 16.67ms of 60fps. The C3 on the other hand is lit and dark for about half the time, which improves perceived brightness while using BFI, but is exactly half as effective in improving motion clarity.
Interestingly, C1's BFI ratio is about 7:8, which isn't really that much quicker than other OLEDs with BFI at about 1:1. In fact, the only OLEDs with BFI that's as quick as 4: 13 are LG's entire 2020 lineup: BX, CX, GX.
The PS3? The PS3 has HDMI FFS.
@@twoeggcups What has that to do with the price of fish?
@@twoeggcups yeah? So what? Did you even watch the video?
Why the ps3?
It's crazy how good of a host David is,
he is a great camera guy that always joining convos which makes videos feel more personal and funnier. I wish he was a host too more often.
He sure makes up for the lack of quality in the tests and the lies Linus puts up. Good showman that. Great entertainer.
@@nvelsen1975whats with these bots lately
@@nvelsen1975lmao. Keep coping.
I'm thoroughly impressed by the comprehensive comparison of the CRT tube TVs and Retro tank. It's truly an eye-opener how technology has evolved yet some old tech still holds its ground. It's surprising how the Retro tank has managed to emulate the look of a CRT so closely. Good to know we're not completely losing the charm and quality of classic technology!
I didn't see a single tank in the entire video, bud
Nothing can match the motion clarity of a CRT though, no matter how good it looks, its still blurry when you scroll the screen.
@@johnnyfoxx9379Depends. High end displays are pretty fine at motion and I've heard "black frame insertion" helps a lot. Plus the SNES never had perfectly smooth scrolling anyway. The CRT just hid it a bit better.
Fun fact:
You can still technically get brand new, freshly manufactured CRT screens. You just have to put in an order with one of two manufacturers who still make them. Problem is, you have to wait until they have enough orders to spin up the factories, and then wait until the orders ship out. I've heard of some people waiting 8 years for theirs.
Who are the manufacturers?
@@Patrikstar24 Off the top of my head, I don't recall. But I can ask the guy at my company who knows. He restores arcade machines for a hobby, so he's pretty familiar with that whole process.
Worst case, I'm sure there's some forums one can dig through to find out.
I'd like to know as well
A single google search shows me the last CRT was made in 2015, note that I said it's a single google search and you probably know your stuff much better than me so if possible please elaborate. I've been thinking about getting one and if not I will just get a second hand one.
@@flintfrommother3gaming The person I'm referring to at my job used to work at Midway, so I like to think they know what they're talking about.
That being said, I'm sure that if such a thing still exists, the wait time is absurd. You might as well get a used one.
YEEEEES I’m so glad Linus is covering RetroTINK. There NEEEDS to be more competition in the scaler space and that only happens with awareness of these tools. Love to see it.
Honestly, and with competition hopefully more affordable options arise, because even factoring in the high cost of shipping with CRTs I could buy 3 of them for the current price of the RetroTINK lol
@@gavinharris4170 its sold out rn, how much does it cost?
@@gavinharris4170 I can't see it getting cheaper though, its still a small niche of a niche and using FPGA is necessary to do this in such small quantities, but keeps that cost sky high. For me personally for example, I'm perfectly happy with the MiSTer HDMI output alone, I simply don't play retro games enough to warrant the cost of a dedicated scaler. In fact, I only got MiSTer for Amiga games due to its refresh rate scaling over WinUAE.
why? Why do you spend as much on a new tv for a thing to USE on your tv that makes no fuc#ing sense. I think that's your problem you have more money than sense.
@Bewefau it's a calm discussion here so I'm not sure why you're getting hostile, but I'll break it down for you to hopefully understand at least as how my setup goes. I primarily use my computer and monitors for TV, UA-cam, etc.. I also occasionally play retro consoles like NES, SNES, and so on, but use a CRT for these systems. In terms of affordablity it makes way more sense to spend $150-200 on a small used CRT than $750 on something that can emulate a CRT, albeit with much more setup involved than just plugging up a TV and console. Again, it's great that tech like this is reaching a renaissance and gaining attention so that hopefully competition arises and more affordable options become available in the future, but as it currently stands it makes way more sense to purchase a used CRT for 1/4-1/3 of the price of this device.
I have a VHS/DVD combo unit with HDMI output... which doesn't give better quality but is pretty convenient. But using the Retrotink 4K to do CRT Emulation actual interlaced video and the scanline and mask options really helps with VHS. And I bet people who are into LaserDisc would appreciate it
getting all 5 of those 1UPs in the bonus level at 9:50 is legit one of the most amazing things I've ever seen.
Yeah, my jaw was DROPPED
@@michalko.b Bro that was INSANE
Note to the mixer. CRT TV's and some lights produce high-end noise. You can hear allot of it popping in and out during the video. Check for frequencies above 9k or so and EQ accordingly
@@tsartomatoyou sound 12yo lil bro
@@tsartomato I'm in my late 20's. It's pretty common for people to not be able to hear frequencies that high. Especially as you get older. Also depends if the headphones/ speakers your listening on can reproduce high end well
Bro they can't even record/mix Linus' voice to not sound over modulated and dull (tough considering he's miced under a thick hoodie) and you can see David's mic horrendously taped to his shirt. They obviously have no clue how to audio professionally
Great video. Love the comparison with CRT TV. Despite having profiles provided by the community I would still recommend to read the wiki, watch video tutorials and tinker with the settings. 🙂
Thought the video was pretty great as well.
Some tiny little criticisms about CRT info they missed, but nothing worth getting particularly upset about.
Overall I think the advice here is pretty spot on.
Any time one of these videos comes out -- meaning pretty much any subject the writer is very personally enthusiastic about -- it's a great watch.
Been following the Tink4K development, and I would love one, but the price tag is prohibitive. It's understandable though due to niche application, low volume, and FPGA cost, plus letting Mike Chi earn a packet for his great work
Yeah it costs more than all my retro consoles combined lmao I wish I could afford one
@@HowieDune One guy makes this thing and sources the parts. It is not cheap to make and its a full time business so he needs to earn something from selling it.
@@Izanagi747 the price makes sense, but its still a prohibitive price
@@crazybeatrice4555 Yeah wasnt disputing that as it is a very high price. Was mostly saying that for why it is that much and combat the "I could get something like this for less". The previous model that isn't 4k is a more affordable cost.
If it would support FPGA emulation, it might be a good deal
12:03 This statement is kind of ironic. We need 4K to finally correctly emulate the picture we were getting on display from 30 years ago.
I have REALLY loved the content lately. I love the changes made after what happened. I feel like the “Old Linus” is back. It feels like I’m watching the show I grew up watching, and I love it! Keep up the good work and content. This stuff if FUN!
I know it's not within the scope or intended use case of the RT4K, but I'm curious to see what it could do with a VCR player or other retro video media formats. Perhaps it could be a means to take old home recordings and run it through the RT4K with some scaling, filtering, and color grading to then capture the output for digital safekeeping? I really have no idea how practical that idea is, but it crossed my mind while watching this video.
This exact thing has been covered by retro gaming youtubers. I think retrorgb did a video about this
@@quinnocent Oh cool I had no idea. I'll definitely check that out.
@@quinnocentdo U know the title of the vide?
now thats a use case that i would actually buy one of these for
That's a great idea, honestly!! I still have movies on VHS that have never been put out on DVD/Blueray/Streaming!
I love watching content like this because enjoying older games isn't just plug an play anymore. In some ways it is a lot harder due to needing filters and things like this. In other ways it is a lot better due to the addition of things like save states. I love watching how we can bring older content back to life and enjoy it just the same. One of my favorite videos was when you both upgraded your game gear and psp.
Nothing beats a monitor grade CRT and a MiSTer for image quality and simplicity, took me 30 mins to put the MiSTer together, copy the firmware to the SD card, nothing comes close to the 1000 TVL CRT and the MiSTer as far as image quality goes, perfect motion clarity, zero input latency, very simple menus, everything is pretty much done for you when you copy over the plug & play firmware to the SD card, just got to choose your console and game, no overlays or shaders needed when using a CRT, it's all native to the hardware, @ 240p those scanlines are jaw dropingly beautiful, that said, the MiSTer would be great to use with a nice OLED monitor too, just toggle on the scanlines and BFI, OLED has video lag and input latency, and obviously lower motion clarity than a CRT, but the BFI really helps with that on an OLED monitor.
@@infernaldaedra Just one console though, the MiSTer has everything up to the PS1/N64/Saturn, N64 games look better than real hardware by quite a decent margin, plus it has tones of computer systems like the Amiga, Sharp X6800, 90's PC games, and then there are all the sweet sweet arcade games it plays beautifully, everything is 0 latency and 0 lag thanks to bare metal FPGA, the MiSTer is crem'da'la'crem, a work of art, well worth the 30 minutes it took me to setup for years of playing dozen's of consoles, computers and arcade system's, my retro computers can take ages to setup, sometimes hours, and if there is a fault somewhere I may not even get it working.
@@infernaldaedra The Dreamcast is where the MiSTer FPGA draws the line, but the new MARS FPGA is going to have a DC FPGA core, which is awesome, when the MARS is mature and refined as the MiSTer, ill probably get one. Yes I love the Mega Drive, Terminator VS Robocop is one of my faves, as is Castle of Illusion, Robocod, Truxton, so many masterpieces on the SMD, one of the reasons why SMD on the MiSTer is so good, is FPGA gets the audio pretty much 100% accurate, especially now there is the nuked Mega Drive core on MiSTer, based of the x-rayed de-lidded Mega Drive chips, the MiSTer with a HQ DAC and a quad stereo amp sounds incredible, I never thought it would be possible to get 100% accurate audio, as even the best software emulation falls so short of real Sega Mega Drive audio quality, there is also the MiSTer MT-32 MIDI & FM Synth sound add-on, so good for Amiga and 90s PC and DOS games.
This video makes me wonder what happened to those SED and FED TVs that were supposed to give us all the benefits of a CRT in a slim flat panel format. Maybe you guys can do an episode on that sometime? I know Canon had a 36 inch prototype they showed at CES in the late 2000s that appeared to be essentially ready for commercial production, but for some reason it never made it to market. I think one of those released today could really give OLED a run for its money.
I would love to see how they stack up, but I don't see how they'd be competitive with WOLED or QLED. They don't have the bandwidth to handle higher resolutions and larger sizes would get expensive to manufacture. Micro-LED is really the modern equivalent of those ideas, if the price ever comes down to something a mere mortal can afford.
The reason is resolution’s couldn’t dream of 4k. Not even close
@@Easelgames Considering they had production ready 1080p SED TVs in 2006 and the first 4k TV didn't release until 2012, you are simply wrong. Not even close. When 4k TVs came out they were much more expensive than other TVs and it took years for all of the different manufacturers to migrate their LCD production. LG didn't release the first 4K OLED TV until late 2014 at a cost of $7,000 for the 65 inch model. I imagine had Canon and Toshiba brought their SED TVs to market, they probably would've had a similar timeline. Also, their are still plenty of 1080p and 720p TVs in 43 inch and smaller sizes, with very few 4K TVs that size because they are more difficult to produce since you have to pack the pixels closer together. I really don't think 4K was an obstacle the SED manufacturers wouldn't have been able to overcome.
@@Easelgames Thats also the main reason why PlasmaTVs were phased out, they sucked too much energy with high resolutions by that time Oled already was on the horizon as possible replacement.
Using composite is really missing a trick here. A SCART cable into either the CRT or the Retrotink would have provided a significantly superior picture in both instances (noting North Americans did not have CRTs with SCART). It makes a huge difference! RGB is awesome!
but then you also would get a ton of hidden ugliness aka the tricks applied back then composite hides, aka, dithering, which was used to produce extra colors really pop out on an rgb scart connection, you would gain sharpness which means more visible blocking!
OH MY GOD! First ball Thank you very much guys for allowing me to consume your content in my mother language, this opens a huge world of consume your excellent content for my compatriots. I hope that content creators in my country can also share with you our culture and content that only we produce in the near future. And the second ball, retrotink 4k is the best! I am a young man aged 40, with a small collection of old video games and for reasons of space I prefer to play on modern TVs, I already have an OSSC and now I NEED an RT4k!!! Fantastic video, very explanatory and complete, THANK YOU again!
The VGA and line in should make this the new easiest way to stream/capture footage from DOS computers. Looking forward to getting one in the future.
David's done a great job of writing! IIRC he did another video recently that was also incredible, awesome job changing positions so far!
The dude's good.
9:22 pure focus and at 9:30 hes proud of himself haha! Love you Linus!
When Linus says “I dont think I care if it gets views”
The Views 1.6 million lol 😅
Great video y’all. I just got my RT4K yesterday and it is as good as advertised. I love the Analouge Super NT settings it’s perfect to me.
I have been watching Linus Tech Tips for so long that it seems like these guys are a part of my family. I subscribed back in the day on Nov 26, 2010, thats 13 years! Just wanted to say thanks for all the amazing memories and amazing content you guys work so hard to produce for all of us.
My CRTs get plenty bright. Age is an issue, but I can recap bad electrolytics as necessary. The image on my KV-27S42 is awesome, though it’s not without its little quirks.
That being said, I’m excited to grab an RT4K after having missed out on the first batch. It’s an awesome time to play retro games in general, and the advancements we’ve made in less than a decade are pretty amazing.
I just use my high end Samsung VGA PC CRT monitor, the image quality is lightyears better than a CRT TV, even Sony's very expensive BVM's for TV broadcasting can't compete, 1080i is worse than 1080p. I reach 1080p (4:3 1080p) on my monitor, i can almost reach 1800 x 1400 as well.
@@saricubra2867is it a monitor that’s 31khz only?
Tubes age sadly, both the phosphors and the hot cathode has a finite lifespan.
@@TheBackyardChemist I mean, display aging is true of oled as well. But I have no problem finding CRTs for cheap or free in my area, and since I’m only using them for retro gaming, I’m only putting maybe a couple hundred hours on even my used one per year. At that rate, it’ll probably take me another decade or two to put a significant amount of time on the tube. I’m more likely to have experience a failure on the chassis.
Inevitably there will come a day when crts are no longer an option, but I’m not too worried about it. Who knows what amazing scaler+panel will be available to the mainstream in another decade.
I'm just happy i found a SCART capable flatscreen for my amiga, it looks GREAT. Also usually not really interested in highend TV videos but this was an exception for obvious reasons.
I really enjoyed this video. It was funny and informative. Nice to see LTT can still make good content without a unnecessarily jank project for added engagement.
Too bad their title and thumbnails have never been more useless
I personally am more interested in emulation, and what filters you'd have to chose then to get an very close to authentic experience. I hope that video would also be made at some point!
I love David's energy and how passionate he is about this. I'm looking forward to seeing him in more videos!
First video I watched from you in at least 5 years. You covered this in a really thorough and entertaining way. Thank you!
This was a fun awesome video...THIS is what I like to see people doing...what they really want to do. I think it would be cool to have one staff member a month (or two, whatever's possible) do a review like this...on something they just WANT to talk about.
RetroTink systems are what I recommend to the majority of people at our retro store. I have several in my collection from the 2X, 5X and I plan on trying to afford the 4K. Only reason CRTs are going to be relevant still is for lightgun games for most folks.
Price and aesthetics? I've yet to find a nice looking OLED.
I'm glad LTT covers this niche. It's crazy what the Retrotink4k does. If I had enough retro systems to use it with, I'd get it. Despite the price.
I think it’s nice that you guys have been putting in the extra work on translating your content to different languages in order to reach a bigger audience and being more inclusive in that sense, thumbs up for that 👌🏻
That being said, does any of you guys know why am I getting the translated tracks by default?
I live in the US and I’m lucky/blessed to be bilingual, all of my app and account settings are set to English so I can’t really think of any reason why I’m getting translated tracks instead of the original ones on your videos other that probably racial/ethnic profiling (Mexican here 🙋🏻♂️) (most definitely not on your end but rather UA-cam's)
I really do applaud your commitment to be more inclusive and to make your content more easily accessible but personally I’d very much rather have the original track play by default so that I don’t have to change it every time I click one of your videos which I’m a big fan of.
Talk about first world problems, right? 😅
Fun tip: use a video wall processor/scaler, and you can take any 4 player split screen game, and send it out to 4 separate screens
I would love this… outside of the $750 price tag. Holy jeez louise. I thought maybe $250 but I cannot ever justify its price.
Retrotink 5x might be your choice :)
I can confirm that the 5X is pretty great. Especially with SCART out of some consoles like the Genesis or PS1.
Sucks to be poor
@@Smartacus420 you definitely live with your parents
@@Smartacus420you do AI art, you'll forever be poor
My mother pulled out the last CRT left in the house while my nieces and nephew were over during Christmas. She showed them what it was like to watch a VHS on a CRT. They instantly started freaking out and complaining about a terrible high pitch noise that only they could hear when the CRT was turned on. It made me feel old.
Just listen to your headphones louder for a couple years, and that CRT whine will go away. :-D
What many are going to miss about this is while that 750 cost seems to "only" replace the CRT, it actually replaces most of video I/O people usually have for their retro systems, it's small and the price will go down. I would consider this a good purchase for anyone trying to hunt down large good quality CRTs just for visual and connective compatibility
Pretty good review, we are definitely much closer to get over CRT's in all aspects. And is always nice to see some MiSTer in the channel ♥
I really enjoyed this format of reviewing a product! It felt more genuine and everyone in the video was excited about it!
I have a RetroTink 2xPro for capturing VHS and LD media. After trying a bunch of those little $20 upscaler boxes, I think it's well worth the price of my RetroTink. No more issues with blown out whites and dodgy contrast.
Hell yeah, David & CRT content... I'm always down for it!
Nothing beats a crt for anything before the PS3.
I have a Sony Trinitron from 2001 and, although a little banged up and warped, I love playing on it!
The reason I haven't went full CRT is the durability question. Even if I got a 100% brand new CRT (almost impossible and absurdly expensive I imagine), it will still break one day. When it does there isn't a store where I can buy a new one, or many people who actually know how to work on them. I had the opportunity to buy a pretty nice CRT display, but I don't want to buy something I cannot buy again. Why get used to a product you cannot buy.
This seems like a really good product, and I actually may pick one up now. Thanks guys!
This is awesome. I would really like to test my Amiga with this. I wasn an artist on the C64 and Amiga and used the softness of TVs to my advantage. You could really make the images more like real paintings because the pixels would bleed together.
CRTs are amazing for rhythm games, specifically Beatmania IIDX. The PS2 version along with arcade cabinets still run preferred on them. Newer IIDX machines use 120hz, but nothing beats the feel of a CRT
I recently experienced this with my ps2 and guitar hero. Using a normal hdmi converter it was basically unplayable because of the latency lmao
I absolutely love the retro gaming videos, so I'm a big fan of this one!
Liked the enthusiasm, but i would have loved Emily's 2 cents to!
Let's be real, she's the one that should have been in the vid to.
One of the earliest memories I have that convinced me of the unique visual allure that CRT's TV’s afforded video game content that was natively rendered at standard definition or lower, was when I had the chance to compare a friend’s a SNES version of Street Fighter 2 with what was an admittedly cumbersome PC port that nonetheless at the time, was as close as any non-console edition came to the arcade original without dedicated custom graphics hardware to handle the sprite sailing routines and multilayered parallax backgrounds.
Both incarnations featured the exact the same number of on screen colours, extracted from an identical palette of 262.144 and ran at the standard VGA resolution of 320x240.
But the SNES involuntarily benefited from all those analogue “imperfections” that not even early PC monitors appeared able to replicate when running at interlaced resolutions which alternately scanned half of each displayed frame, this was likely due to the involuntary smoothing effect that that the crosstalk you mentioned had upon images transmitted via Composite, Scart or RF compounding the “complementary” anti aliasing which this method of “screen refresh” afforded the same source.
It’s interesting that later CRT monitors, which stretch the bandwidth of both the HD15 and DVI-D interface up-to their respective capacities of 2048x1536 and 2560x1600 (technically well over 1080p and 1440P), provide a similarly unique and desirable “soft sheen” when compared to all subsequent flat screen technologies, including LCD, LED and OLED, simply because they are a later evolution of the same projection method.
It’s truly inspiring that premium quality scalers are now such providing such convincing emulations of these antiquated transmission techniques, though I get the impression that even the most expensive and highly specified contemporary displays are being “pushed” to their "backlit" extremes to compensate for “retro effects” such as scanlines and simulate “phosphor roll-off.
It would be ironic if their functional lifespan was rendered shorter than if they were used for contemporary gaming as direct a result of trying to perfectly mimic the classic “analogue” characteristics of many genuine CRT TVs still out in the wild which are now manifesting clear signs of age despite legions of skilled engineers striving desperately to to extend their longevity. For the record, my overall preference was the HDCRT, both on its own and with RetroTink 5X
Im only 19, and my very first TV was a CRT with built in VHS player. CRTs persisted for quite a few years into the 2000s, longer in some countries than others.
Kinda a miss opportunity to have the team who's never seen a CRT and have them also choose which one theyd prefer. But great video as always!
750USD is pretty insane, and that's coming from a mad men with over 10 CRT
It's high but it's technically a fair price if you consider that the FPGA alone is around $260 of the full price. Add to that R&D, that it's only a single developer handling both hardware and software development, and it's low volume runs and you can't really get that thing any lower and still live off of it.
It's definitely high, though. And if the features don't justify the price tag I can highly recommend the cheaper 5X Pro. It's still 300 bucks total but does almost everything the 4k does, just at 1080p and the CRT emulation is more basic. But it's a great device and everything looks great on it.
Otherwise, folks should look into GBS based upscalers. They're a pretty straightforward soldering project. They don't compare to the RetroTink, but they're essentially really good at making older consoles look decent on modern panels. They're good enough, at least, to help decide if people want to go the route of original hardware, upscalers or emulation.
This is also mainly for people who don't already own a CRT, if you are used to a good quality CRT, then the Tin 4K isn't gonna really do it for you, even at 4K, the mask emulation offers much lower fidelity of a real 600 TVL CRT (it looks something close to around 350-400 TVL at its best), but that is a huge upgrade over the Tink 5x, and a step in the right direction, though I can't personally see myself paying 750 £$ for something that offers less fidelity (especially compared to my 1400 TVL PCM CRTs) than what I already have, but if I didn't have any CRTs, the Tink 4K would be priceless imo.
@@RAHelllord I've long been annoyed about how few make fpga, and how few are made. They are incredibly cool, but still 'niche'
True passion and love for video games is printed on every inch of this video. It was a joy to watch, thanks for making it :)
One comparison I think you missed was running retro NES and SNES games direct to HDMI on the Switch’s own emulator versus the original hardware via the RetroTink.
Wish Antony was explaining this
I have a tink4k. I've found it's a game changer for 720 consoles (ps360 etc) if you use the "LCD Mono" scanline setting. To quote the wiki "Will place a 1x1 pixel border around every upscaled pixel in the image" - you wouldn't think this would make it look better but yeah it just enhances the image. I was smiling from ear to ear when i first used this function
yeah if 4K can be good for anything, it's having the pixel density to do a decent job of presenting lower res content as native. Even using the shaders on PC games injecting through Reshade it's great for 360/ps3-era titles. And sometimes even with newer games, the assets & art style really don't benefit from such pin-sharp fidelity that just lets you easily see all the visual seams & imperfections going on.
So 1 pixel has 8 black pixels around it?
@@prich0382 its more the other way around, But highly adjustable. Hard to describe but the 360 and ps3 look so great
Ayyyyyy
Well, I'm sold. HDMI input is the killer feature for me. The convenience of playing retro games on a Switch or Classic Mini but with visual quality trading blows with a CRT is a dream come true.
(And thank you for the absolutely A++++ review LTT!)
Love the video; such a cool product! I'm a bit biased but I do wish you'd have compared to MiSTer's native CRT filters (which are different from the more rudimentary scandoubler effects that exist primarily for 480p VGA CRTs). They only hit 1440p in SDR but are probably a decent benchmark for what existed before the RT4K
I'm happy to see any sponsor where I don't have to hear about ear water.
Most out of touch ad ever. Hemorrhoid cushions would be less.
In case they reading this, if you release and LTT Hemotips pillow I'm suing.
So much cool stuff in this, Linus getting all 5 1-up shrooms in the minigame was the best part though, I've never gotten that myself 😂
If it can be priced more within a casual range in the future, it'd definitely be an easy choice. That being said, CRTs can still be found under $100 all over the place, which is a fraction of the price of either the 4k or 5x. Outstanding piece of hardware, but thats a huge pill to swallow for anyone but the most dedicated collectors.
So clear and crisp, those retro pixels have never looked better.
This is incredible and you explained it all in a way I can understand. Wonderful video guys!
I would love to see these compared with CRT Shaders like MegaBezel or CRT-Royale on Retroarch. I use MegaBezel with HDR on my LG C9 and it looks amazing. I'm very curious to see how it compares to the real thing or the fancy expensive scaler. Especially on the C1 with BFI 4K@120hz support.
The C1 with BFI has good motion clarity, CRT Royale well tuned looks excelent. The problems is brightness when you use BFI.
I saved $750 USD and i'm using a high end PC CRT monitor that i got for free. It's ridiculously sharp as well, 1440p-like for the max res.
@@saricubra2867 Does using HDR with BFI on the C1 help with the brightness?
I don't see anything about the light gun from the original NES. Thats the deepest test for being able to no longer need a CRT.
Hyperkin Hyper Blaster HD is what you're after
Edit: sorry for the sass. Just reread what I wrote. I make good points, but I clearly need my morning coffee so I can lose the snark.
----
It's an LCD. What makes you think a scanline sensing light gun like the original zapper would work?
Also, light gun games are cool and all. But they're a gimmick. They're the Wii bowling of that console generation. Not bad games, but there are way better games on that same console. Dozens, if not hundreds of better games. It would be shelling out extra, sucking up extra space, and having a (subjectively) worse experience with the flagship titles just so you can play the gimmick title.
Maybe it's just me, but I only need to play duck hunt for 5 minutes every quarter century. Someone else can go through the hassle to set it up. In the mean time, I'll set up my entertainment center for the other 200-odd NES games that are any fun.
The NES Zapper is one of the few light guns that you can actually get to work in a modern display.
It's stuff like the Guncon that has bigger issues.
Interesting, that's some fast response to work with a light gun.
@@blarghblarghyeah even back in the day I didn't care for light gun games. I'd play duck hunt 2x a year until I retired my NES.
Always review whatever You want mate
I'm getting mine soon and I am a man of culture.
I will be running my Switch, among other modern systems, through it to simulate running them on an HD CRT.
Along with all my retro consoles of course.
I have a Retrotink for my HDTV and a 36" CRT that I've owned for 20 years. Still works. Never getting rid of it.
This reminds me, 20 years ago plasma TVs were a contender in the screen market, but they turned out to be an evolutionary dead-end. Though I know there are people out there who appreciate them.
The low-grade LCD years won't be missed either, lol, I recently watched a GTA V Chaos mod vid and one of the effects is a greatly exaggerated TN panel 😂😂😂 I laughed my ass off at that! And LCDs did commonly look like that well into the mid 2000s.
I really wish I could afford the retrotink, but $750 keeps this firmly in another realm
Hard same. No shame if that's your Jam but that's easilly my entire GPU budget or more (including selling my current one used).
I have a high end VGA PC CRT monitor, cheaper than the scalar and lightyears better image quality than a CRT TV (both standard def or HD).
@@saricubra2867yeah but it only works with like, 2 consoles natively
@@CandyManSC I have a 2002 32inch WEGA CRT TV for consoles in native res. But i almost don't use it, since the PC CRT is lightyears better for anything, the exception is the Nintendo Wii because of motion controls.
I think I bought all my CRT's for around 750 bucks combined. And that is 20 CRTs.
Now try a lightgun game with your OLED :)
I always like seeing how different members at LMG have their own areas where they completely nerd out.
yes we can replace a $50 facebook CRT with a $800 scaler and $500+ oled, for 26x the price. That being said, I am not against this, the price will come down in time, but it is not a financially viable solution for most people from a value perspective.
Rookie mistake plugging in 240p content into a 16:9 HD CRT meant only for 360/PS3/DVDs, and also using an Orion tube Toshiba with washed out brightness settings that are not at all dialed in to be representatives of the CRT experience. Lol come on guys.
Im ready for the return of CRT, OLED Shmoled
Biggest problem with CRTs is the size, it's hard to fit into a smaller game room and for some people like myself living in the UK - 50HZ just kills it with the flicker, doesn't look great and makes my eyes feel like they are bleeding after 30 minutes use.
The biggest problem is that even the best of the best consumer CRT's like the Sony WEGA Trinitron's from 2005 have all aged with image quality, due to the internal guts being nearly 15 years old, and based on how many hours have been poured into the set itself. Finding a low hour set is key. But it's becoming harder, and they're still getting older, with more hours thrown in. They're just going to get worse and worse as time goes on. Plus, i don't like the idea of throwing an old 2005 Silver boxy Bezeld' TV in my apartment in 2024 on the side for retro gaming. I loved my brand new 32" WEGA back in 2005 - 2012 during the tail-end of the GameCube generation, and especially for the Wii + Virtual Console, but that was then and this is now. It's never the same! :P
It doesn't feel right, it's a 15 year old TV, and due to age it will most likely have lighter black levels, worse colour, brightness loss and potential softening of the picture, and whatever else. :P And I don't think TINK4's black frame insertion will be ideal if your HDTV is pushing 10ms of latency. Tink4K + Frame lock is 2.5ms lag(unless I'm mistaken), combined with Tink4K's BFI which is 8.3ms and then your OLED TV is most likely about 10ms. That's over 20ms of latency....Not good enough imo. The trick is to find a QD-OLED using 'boost mode' which should have very minimal latency(2.5ms of lag on something like an LG C1 for ex) if your dead set on using BFI to cut down 50% of OLED motion blur. Plus BFI will have screen flicker, another downside to that feature.
Sorry for the sea of text! :P
@@NintenPizza I find the modern screen to be a size problem. No more cute 14" models.
I still have my OG Retrotink-2x, they have come a long way!
That's why i still use HD CRT and CRT Monitor for older games and movies.
It's a shame, you can't play propper older consoles on your $2000 OLED TV.
It shows how far behind CRT even with modern technology we rly are
I have 5 CRTs, 3 colors, and 2 monochrome, and I restored the TVs myself. Having one of the TVs in my game room certainly does consume substantial space and is really heavy. I can understand why people would want to switch, but at the same time, I love the nostalgia of having a box TV, it feels more authentic.
Consider your self very fortunate, as good as these box's are, we will never have anything that can replicate phosphor glow, curved glass, three dimensional depth CRT images have (so cool), raster-scan modulation which gives unobtanium levels of latency/lag/motion performance/incredible shadow detail and grey-scale performance/and so on, devices like the Tink 4K are more for preservation, there are less and less CRTs available, and are getting hard to come by, and wont be around for ever, but nothing beats the real thing.
@@Wobble2007 100% concur. One day CRTs will no longer be around, the CRT itself will deteriorate over time with thousands of hours of usage. Unfortunately, a CRT can't be constructed at home, it has to be done at a factory. Luckily they are relatively decent prices if you look locally.
For 750 dollars I think I'll just buy a CRT monitor off craigs list and pocket 700 dollars.
"CRT Tube" is like saying "Cathode Ray Tube Tube"!
Linus just pulled a "Chai Tea"!
This was interesting to see. I wouldn't mind having the opportunity to compare emulation and upscaled setups on an LCD with a good CRT, just to see how far apart they are, but I'm also content with my setups and think they look good. I've moved on from CRT and don't really care about looking back. That's mostly because I had a handful of CRTs that just didn't last very long(and some that just wouldn't die). I had two Toshiba TVs similar to the one in this video and both developed picture problems. I had a pretty nice CRT monitor in the mid 2000s and it only lasted several years. I know there were issues with many electronics during that time period, so it could just be bad luck and timing. I also had a very early 4:3 1080i Sony CRT HDTV which was the last CRT I had. It was still working when we got rid of it, but was underwhelming as a CRT. It was also nearly 200 pounds and just really bulky. I did manage to find some info on it and it apparently wasn't really good with older systems hooked up to it directly as it still did a lot of processing for that, so I don't really feel like I'm missing out now that it's gone. I had heard before that 4K would bring some benefits for artificial scanlines and CRT effects for retro games, along with better scaling, and that's about the best use case for 4K for me. I've been resistant to 4K because it doesn't really offer me any benefit that I care about otherwise. And I'm happy with my retro gaming setups at lower resolutions, so I'm just not in a hurry. But it is cool to hear how this device works and how 4K provides nice benefits to achieving a good final image.
I think tube displays had the advantage that artifacts were not very complicated and every form of loss of fidelity was analog. So it was possible for the brain to get adjusted to it perfectly, and it was also possible to produce experiences that made art out of the limitations. Modern displays have less fidelity issues by far, but the ones they still do are convoluted and feel very alien. This is the first tech I saw since the dawn of digital displays that feels like it satisfyingly closes that gap.
This is awesome, and for serious enthusiasts it is probably one of the most exciting releases for preserving old games and old consoles in years.
The only thing I can't get my head around is that price tag, $750.
It wins this comparison hands-down, but ultimately Linus is comparing the RetroTINK to a really cheap, random CRT bought off a non-specialist site and that hasn't been tested and selected for quality. $750 can buy you a really, really nice CRT with a huge chunk of that cash to spare. I'd wager more than 50% to spare even if you are very picky.
Therein lies my struggle. I could buy one of these, but it feels very hard to justify it right now, when really good CRTs are still out there available in good condition. Maybe in the longer term it will win out because it's future-proof whereas all CRTs are slowly heading for inevitable appliance death, and there's definitely something to be said for colour accuracy and display consistency in all conditions.
I guess I'm just not the target consumer as a keen gamer but casual retro console person. I have old consoles but I don't obsess over them and I think you need to obsess over them to make this price point make sense.
But you also need to be pretty into retro gaming to get a dedicated TV (which takes up a ton of room) just for retro gaming. I can't imagine people actually wanting to use their CRT TV as their "daily driver" for all content, so that means an extra TV for it. If I had enough interest in retro gaming to buy a CRT TV it would be pretty hard to talk myself out of spending the money on the RetroTINK instead as I could game on my regular, much larger TV instead.
Hope Emily is doing well, she'd be all over the retrotink coverage.
@@yangashi born Anthony, deep voice, cross eyed guy, long hair
I miss the old CRTS’s with VHS players in them
I don't think I'll ever get rid of my FW900.
1. I like it.
2. I'm way to lazy to lift it.
This is just highlighting for me how awesome CRT's were, to require this much work and time to finally catch up
Rest In Peace headphone Juice company sponsorships 2024-2024 🫡
Linus channeled Eric Cartman with this title
Honestly, it would be so much easier to just emulate it and do that stuff on the same device in software. Or even the owners remastering it to how it is supposed to look like (either HD pixels or drawn look).
Honestly people that want to do that don't buy a device like this. 🤷♂️ I like using my physical media
@@Ninetaled
I just feel like this is jumping through expensive hoops just to jump through even more expensive hoops.
@@Alias_Anybody so emulate and I'll use my insanely expensive physical cart and disc collection on my expensively modified consoles on my expensive 98 inch tv
@@Alias_Anybody It's probably aimed for people that already have a game collection and a big oled tv they wanna use.
For most people a crt is the best there is for retro gaming if they want the original experience since they can be found cheap.
Awesome video Linus and team! Please continue making those fun out of script videos! We can feel that you guys having fun, and this vibe is getting trhough the screen!
I recently got the RT4K (replacing my older GBS-C) the difference is night and day with SNES & PS2 games, in particular the upscaling up to 4k on my new Samsung OLED TV.
Now I'm curious how Duck Hunt looks with this setup and if it's playable with an aftermarket LCD-compatible zapper (read somewhere those exist).
You’d need a Sinden Lightgun. I’ve had a lot of growing pains w/ mine. The room has to be completely dark for them to work. And you’re not using it w/ original NES hardware. You’re emulating w/ something like a PI so the Retrotink isn’t necessary.