Here are a few quick facts issued from my personal experience with the Retro Tink 2X Pro (RT2XPro) unit I ordered a few weeks ago from VGP, feel free to ask for more detailed results. I don't have that many 8/16-bit consoles laying around to test it with (unless an Amiga 500 could be confused with some beefed-up 16-bit console
), I'll see what I can do. Device's firmware was updated from v1.0 to v1.4, not too enthusiastic about power saving features for small scale production electronic devices but v1.4 firmware is supposed to add a feature which consists in turning it off by pressing input for 3 sec.. Line-doubled S-Video signal from the FAT PS1 looks surprisingly nice on the 26'' Sony Bravia LCD TV, I must say (so much for HD Retrovision Genesis / PS1 component cables offering!). No, really, Mike Chi did a good job considering how S-video usually looks on LCD TV's (somehow sloppy, unfocused, similar to composite, only marginally better).
Let's bring to light a specific LCD monitor, the HP LP2065. For one, the latter is 4:3. Not only that, it can be rotated and set into portrait mode, counter-clockwise-ly. Why does it matter ? See, PS1 port of DoDonPachi would be displayed upside down if one attempted to play it as intended (aka in tate mode) on any other LCD monitor bearing a portrait mode. As a matter of fact, the vast majority of such LCD's do pivot clockwise-ly and not the other way round, for some reason. This situation brought me to browse numerous online store pages in order to dig out a LCD which display would correspond to the 4:3 format (it is a well known fact that any 4:3 image stretched to 16:9, even to 16:10 produces a distorted image), and which bezel could pivot counter-clockwise-ly. Not an easy task, fortunately, the HP LP2065 fits the bill nicely. Apart from that, what we have here is a relatively no frills LCD monitor compared to, say, what Eizo, or even NEC had to offer, with only two inputs (dual DVI-I) at one's disposal, and a modest 20 inch screen.
I will be testing more PS1 shmups bearing a tate mode with this exact setup within the next weeks. A word about RT2XPro filtering abilities : Basically, some adjustment is made under the hood by the device, though it's up to the user to activate the comb filter (set it on "notch", or on automatic) and press filter button once for smooth effect, press again for scanlines. (again, feel free to check the manual, it is well written, and rather straightforward). Since the notch filter is targeted at NES owners apparently, I opted for that trigger set on automatic. Generated scanlines from the device are a bit too dark for my taste, maybe my eyes are fooling me, but it appears they look ugly or decent, depending upon circumstances. AFAIK, other than DoDonPachi, most polished PS1 smhups bearing a tate mode are : Raiden Project (arcade perfect ports of Raiden I & II), Raiden DX (guided purple lightning style lasergun ftw!) and Strikers 1945 II (think 1942 coin op' on steroids). The NTSC-U (US) versions of some of these games were deprived of a true tate mode, so I use NTSC-J (Japanese) version instead (a hack can be applied to bring back true Tate mode to NTSC-U Raiden Project / DX ISO, through the use of Gameshark or other similar cheating accessories).
With the right cables and equipment, I'd say S-Video output is not to be neglected for conveying old consoles and old machines signal, the RT2XPro deals with it beautifully, up to 480i / 576i. While we're at it, among the few downsides, the led indicators are too bright, almost Christmas decoration bright! I play all of these shmups bearing a tate mode on the FAT PS2 through POPS / POPStarter project with scanlines, thanks to the made in France scanline generator I bought from eBay (as discussed in some other thread), with the console component cable being plugged into my VGA box. I know, I know, square pixels, no glowing effect around edges of sprites... Nevertheless, bullet hell has never been so vivid! In all honesty, the RT2XPro doesn't seem to like too much LCD monitors, so I opted for using my FAT PS1 mostly with the Mitsubishi 22'' CRT. So, it goes like this (take a deep breath) : FAT PS1 (video output through S-Video cable) -> RT2XPro -> HDMI to component converter -> component video selector -> VGA box -> scanline generator -> 22'' Mitsubishi CRT, not for the faint of heart! And to play PS1 (or PS2) shmups in tate mode, like so : PS2 (video output through component cable) -> component video selector -> VGA box -> scanline generator -> VGA to HDMI convertor -> HDMI video selector -> HP LCD in portrait mode. So now, I can easily switch between the Gamecube, the PS2 and the PS1 at a press of a button, nice! Since I don't have an original component cable for the Gamecube, I can't play any of the supported games in progressive mode. PS2 ones I may though, and, icing on the retro cake, I have no input lag at all and no delay between resolution changes. Hopefully, this summary of mine which describes tinkering with various devices and monitors won't be resented as protracted.