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HoloDust 4 days ago
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Cerebralbore101 said:
HoloDust said:

From what I've seen of RetroTink's CRT filters (unfortunately, only videos and images) it does a solid job. I'd say nowhere near as good as some of GPU shaders out there, but it's fairly descent.

I think that we're getting there to actually replacing CRTs in next 5-10 years - shaders are already very good and we're getting there with actual display tech to support actual cathode ray movement emulation (like ShaderBeam) on 480Hz OLEDs, or even better, ultimately in the future, on MicroLEDs.

At one time, some decade or so ago, I was hoping that Prysm, or someone like them, will maybe get into consumer market as well - they make large format LPDs (Laser Phosphor Displays) for enterprise purposes, that are very similar to CRT, but with UV laser instead of cathode ray. But I don't think that retro market is big enough to be lucrative for anyone to actually produce something similar, so I guess shaders + MicroLED (or something else, Quantum Dot displays maybe) is the way to go in the future.

As someone that owns a multi-format BVM and several PVMs, I'll attest to the Tink 4K being much better than GPU shaders. Lots of other retrogamers agree, because they wouldn't pay $700 for it otherwise. You could just pass the signal from your older game systems through your PC for less than that otherwise. Also, yeah, videos on the internet do not do a PVM, BVM, or Tink 4K justice. It needs to be seen IRL. 

I would love to see RetroTINK 4K in person - from what I know (theoretically) on what it can do, they did a really great job with CRT emulation, especially for folks who aim for that "BVM/PVM via component cables" feel. I know it can do consumer via composite pretty good, it's just that for someone like me that actually wants for 80s games to look like they did in 80s on consumer TVs, I don't think that hardware inside of it can physically emulate everything that highest end GPU shaders (that can gobble up so much of modern GPUs that it's ridiculous) can. 

But yeah, it's certainly remarkable box, and if I was in the market for such standalone box at this moment, I would certainly go with it due all the things it offers, ease of use and pretty much no additional latency.