New product: Retrotink 2X-SCART

[britelite]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

Because majority of people who say that, could make room if they really wanted to.

Yeah, and I could fit an elephant in my apartment "if I really wanted to", meaning I would have to get rid of other stuff to make room for it. So saying "I have no room" is still perfectly valid.

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by britelite

Yeah, and I could fit an elephant in my apartment "if I really wanted to", meaning I would have to get rid of other stuff to make room for it. So saying "I have no room" is still perfectly valid.

Sure it's valid, when you really have no room. Which is why I did not say it's everybody.

For the rest though, it reminds me of the time my folks were fobbing off my pleas of buying a microcomputer with "but where would you put it?". I see now that they really were concerned with an insurmountable spatial conundrum such purchase would create (and not some other irrelevant stuff like cost and ills of gaming), so thanks for clearing that up

[lilwshu]

My Amiga returned from recapping today and I got to try it on my Retrotink 2x-SCART setup. This setup produces no noticeable lag and an excellent picture on my PS1 and Saturn.

On the Amiga via RGB SCART at 576i, I immediately noticed significant lag when moving the mouse, plus slight interference on the screen and occasional screen flicker. Overall the picture was sharp and Workbench looked pretty good.

I loaded SWOS (excellent lag and blurriness test) and again significant lag was noticed. Some blurring on the players was apparent also.

I got my trusty CRT out of the cupboard and tested again to make sure memory or rather old SCART cable wasn't playing tricks - no interference, no lag, no blurriness.

Conclusion: at the moment, Retrotink 2X-SCART is horrible with my PAL Amiga 1200. I will be in touch with the guy who makes it to see what could be the cause.

[npagonis73]

That is interesting because I am waiting for people to try it in order to make up my mind. What resolution your amiga is outputting? What pal mode? Laced or interlaced? What hdmi monitor are you connecting the retrotink to? I don’t mind a little lag since I don’t play games but at least I want the picture to be sharp, nice colors etc.

[lilwshu]

I tried it in High Res and High Res Laced in PAL and NTSC modes with no difference. The interlaced modes are present with flicker on the Retrotink so not really usable (the built in SCART on my TV deinterlaces the image and gives a better result on Workbench, it looks horrendous in games). I have a Panasonic TX-24G302B TV.

After posting here I checked the Retrotink site and they have released new firmware in the last week - this has helped a lot with the lag but the "interference" is still there, it looks like a clock/phase problem. I have logged it with Retrotink and will update if anything comes of it.

[npagonis73]

Great thank you for all detailed info. I will be waiting for your news if you manage to improve the situation. One more question. What have you been using till now in order to have a nice picture from yr amiga; I am asking in order to compare with my equipment and get an idea.

I have the cheap but good for my use hdmi converter which does a good job for people who don't play games and use amiga workbench, internet, emails, music, productivity software and writing some code. I also have ossc the latest model which I can't seem to be able to configure properly with my amiga and the results are disgusting so I don't use it.

Thank you again for yr time

[lilwshu]

I have been using a 14" Panasonic CRT over RGB SCART up to now (and have switched back over to it today).

I have had a response from the guy from Retrotink so will update if/when anything changes.

[lilwshu]

Update: the guy who makes them has blamed everything except the box for mostly implausible reasons, so I strongly recommend not using a Retrotink 2X-SCART with an Amiga.

[npagonis73]

Ok good to know!! Probably it is just for retro consoles and nothing more. Thanks for letting me know. Won’t be buying it!!

[jbilander]

Thanks lilwshu for letting us know regarding the 2X-SCART, I wonder if the same goes for the RAD2x PS2 cable if modified with a d-sub db23 plug. If anyone tried that with an Amiga please let us know about your findings here.

[alexh]

It's sort of hard to understand how this could be possible because the 240p signal the other consoles produce that look ok to good on RetroTink should be identical to the one the Amiga produces. There are lots of reviews of RetroTink2x / RAD2x for SNES, N64, Dreamcast etc and were all ok to good. Little negative feedback.

Either this lag/blurriness exists on all 240p input or it doesn't? Surely?

[xyzzy1]

Originally Posted by lilwshu

Update: the guy who makes them has blamed everything except the box for mostly implausible reasons, so I strongly recommend not using a Retrotink 2X-SCART with an Amiga.

Have you switched your TV to game mode?

[lilwshu]

My TVs (I tried a couple to be sure) are in game mode.

You would indeed expect the same results from consoles and the Amiga but that isn’t what I am seeing. There could be something particular to my setup which is messing things up but I have no idea what it could be - I tried NTSC mode on the Amiga in case it was the PAL signal messing it up with no change and the lag thing is a total mystery.

[alexh]

I have to question whether the review of RetroTINK 2x on Amiga by lilwshu is valid? Were the issues only associated with interlaced modes?

It was reviewed with an Atari ST(e) today and it is comparable with the PSOne / Saturn and other 240p/288p devices already tried.

https://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=39445

[lilwshu]

All I can say is my A1200 looks horrible on it on 5 different TVs/monitors with flickery and ghosted output. There is no lag on the monitors however and my 240p consoles work fine with it (480i not so much, they look quite blurry).

It flickers in interlaced modes but no worse than a CRT. I would be very interested in other experiences as they obviously vary.

[sepecat]

Hello all, just wanted to add my experience with the Retrotink SCART unit and my PAL CD32. I'm happy to report that at least for some screen modes it seems to perform pretty well. I'm using the Amiga RGB video port on the backplane of my TF328 addon board as my video source. My observations:

• Only 15Khz modes appear to be supported out of the box. I have not had a chance to upgrade the Retrotink's firmware yet, but so far any 30Khz modes like DBLPAL or Multiscan do not render, neither do higher refresh modes like Euro36 or Super72. All 15Khz PAL and NTSC modes that I tried with AIBB worked with the exception of NTSC low-res interlaced for some reason.
• Since the main function of the Retrotink is to line-double 15Khz modes, that result wasn't a surprise. It does mean it doesn't make a complete solution for a desktop Amiga where those other modes may come into play, but for gaming I can't think of any titles that won't run in a 15Khz mode.
• The supported modes look quite good to me. I would say not dramatic but significant improvement from the generic S-Video to HDMI upscaler I was using previously. The picture is very stable, edges are sharp, no color edge blurring or ghosting for me. There is a minor amount of noise detectable in brown or dark red areas when those are prevalent onscreen, however my previous upscaler had this as well so I need to experiment with another display and CD32 and see if there is something else generating that, it seems unlikely that it is caused by the Retrotink.
• Interlaced modes do flicker as they would on a native RGB display, which I personally don't mind as it's another property that feels very Amiga to me. But do note that you'll need to add more processing with another device if you want deinterlacing.
• Just trying out Workbench and some games, I could not detect any lag present in mouse movement or game response. I'm sure a formal test would reveal some small number, but for me the experience was immediate.
• This likely won't apply to many people, but I happen to be using an EDTV CRT TV from the early 2000s when the transition to flat panel and HDMI was in progress so it has the unusual combination of being a CRT with an HDMI port. However the HDMI input only accepts up to 720p. When I connected the Retrotink initially I got no video for any mode, but once I redirected it through my similar vintage Sony Internet TV player which is locked at 720p output I got video and did my testing with that setup. It's possible that my TV (an LG 30FZ4D) also doesn't support 480p or 576i, but I wonder if the Retrotink may actually be sending the video at 1080p despite upscaling to the lower resolutions. I can't readily tell what mode is being used but someone else may be able to answer that.

I'll try testing some more soon after I have the opportunity to update firmware and sit down with it again. With regard to the problems mentioned so far in the thread, I wonder if the SCART cable might be causing problems. I'm certainly no video expert but what little I have read seems to indicate that there can be some variability in the specs of those cables, for example the CSYNC signal output from the Amiga video port can reach 5V peak, but some low power devices may have video issues or no video with the signal at that level and in the case of OSSC and possibly also the Retrotink anything over 1V can lead to damage. I'm using one of Ian Priddey's high quality cables and he has provided very detailed information on the specs on his site (https://www.retrocomputershack.com/S...iga/index.html). I have one of the older ones with the DB23 connector but his page states the new cables are the same spec. I have another one hooked up to my A500 and a PVM with SCART to BNC breakout and it performs well there too.

I hope this info is helpful to the community and I'll post more if I uncover any more good tidbits once I've had more time to get to grips with it. As mentioned my current take is that it may not suit everyone's needs but for a gaming upscaler I think it's more than capable for the price.

[lilwshu]

Originally Posted by sepecat

I hope this info is helpful to the community and I'll post more if I uncover any more good tidbits once I've had more time to get to grips with it. As mentioned my current take is that it may not suit everyone's needs but for a gaming upscaler I think it's more than capable for the price.

Thanks - this is interesting. Could you try Sensible World of Soccer and see if you get any flickering at the top of the screen? And could you try it on an LCD display?

[captain_zzap]

Originally Posted by sepecat

...yet, but so far any 30Khz modes like DBLPAL or Multiscan do not render, neither do higher refresh modes like Euro36 or Super72.
[...]but I wonder if the Retrotink may actually be sending the video at 1080p despite upscaling to the lower resolutions.

The Retrotink Scart is only specified for 240p/480i and 288p/576p. I guess no firmware update will change this.
The output of the retrotink will always be 240p/480p/288p/576p. This is by design, as it just doubles(or leaves it as it is) the lines and has no framebuffer and can’t freely scale.

I would be interested in a few example pictures. If you have the time, try taking real closeups so you can see individual pixels. This can be achieved with most smartphones by getting as close as focus allows and then zoom in via the digital zoom. Preferred images are highres workbench text and checkerboard backgrounds.

[sepecat]

Thanks for the video output details. That makes sense, so I assume that means the 240p/480p resolution support varies quite a bit depending on the display.

I have done some additional testing with an LCD display- unfortunately it's not a simple task to get the display and the CD32 within range of each other, but it so happens that this display is already connected to my NTSC A1200 using an Indivision AGA mk2cr with a DVI -> HDMI cable. Overall comparing that output to the Retrotink, I have to revise my opinion a bit because there is no comparison- the Indivision is much sharper, has much better contrast and has zero noise. It is cheating a bit since the signal is derived directly from the pins on the Lisa chip so there is no analog conversion in the pipeline. Retrotink output still looks pretty good with that consideration in mind, though the LCD display makes the noise more apparent- it's visible on most dark colors/screens now rather than just the red/brown areas.

Per @lilwshu 's question, I don't have SWOS but I included some video in the Google albums below of Sensible International Soccer for comparison. I did not experience any graphical issues except when I accidentally booted the Amiga into NTSC at one point and found it had some nasty effects on the game such as randomly appearing large brown rectangular garbage areas onscreen (which also showed up in Banshee) and some player sprites kept losing half of their colors. Running the games in PAL removed those issues, though.

I have taken some pictures as requested along with short videos to compare Indivision output to Retrotink (again not really a fair comparison but the Indivision makes for a good baseline of the best output you can get.) Here are links to public Google Photos albums for the Indivision and Retrotink captures to compare. I also took a few regular and zoomed samples of the Sensible title screen for the Retrotink set which show some of the faint noise I have mentioned.

A1200 w/ Indivision AGA mk2cr: https://photos.app.goo.gl/Yz4Sd53wj1DcSvCC8

A1200 w/ Retrotink 2X SCART: https://photos.app.goo.gl/3MBd3pzkKjR3ydD28

I hope that helps!

[sepecat]

Oh, and for what it's worth, I was still unable to get the Retrotink to display anything other than 15 KHz modes on the LCD display. I got either a black screen or the "no signal" color bars that the Retrotink generates on boot. All 15 KHz PAL and NTSC modes still render fine. It does seem odd that it's not able to pass through things like the 30 KHz 640x480 and 640x576 modes, but the Amiga adds a little special something that the Retrotink isn't keen on, it seems.

...oops. It helps to read the docs: https://www.retrotink.com/post/we-re...h-new-products

The SCART unit does not have a pass-thru mode; only the latest "2x Multiformat" product includes that. So that explains any mode that doesn't need line-doubling not working.