Mind has been opened. Lol
Probably.
Even if so, it’s not a problem. I’ve been through worse. Was just thinking about the new end users as well who might now be trying to wrap their heads around this whole Megatron/HDR shader thingamajigger.
I’m definitely on board with the update and improvements to be made so I’m not against them in any way.
Will most likely be trying and testing everything that is new once I have time to get my hands dirty again.
New users are partly who i am thinking of with a potential variable name change. I think Rec 601 is more appropriate as a default generic gamut than Rec 709. And while i want Expanded 709 to remain available as an option for those who actually want it, i am firmly of the belief that no one should be using it accidentally without knowing what it is.
Same goes for a number of the gamut options i added actually (namely 1953, 1958, 1964, DP3, and 2020). I went into more detail regarding what all these gamuts are and why i included them in this post.
I had a Sony Trinitron with S-video and have been trying to repliate that for years but it is a curved glass model: KV-27V20. I like a clean picture, but not razer sharp like my FV310 produces or similar higher PVMs (I have many).
I took advice from someone further up in the thread and set the resolution to 8k and used a TVL of 800, it made a big difference on my 48" OLED panel and looks very good now. If we could add some curvature options to the paremters this would seriously be the most perfect set of shaders.
Congrats on your accomplishment!
I just wanted to take a moment and thank you @Cyber, I used the pack tonight and holy hell my jaw dropped once again. This is absolutely the closest I have EVER seen a crt shader meet that of an actual CRT. I am using SNES9x current with a Blargg Composite filter and it looks exactly how I remember it as a kid on my old CRT once loaded with the MegaPak shader. Super excited once we start getting brighter OLEDs in the near future!
Has anyone had a chance to run these shaders on a Steamdeck OLED? Curious how it looks with the super bright screen, assume the 720p resolution will hold it back some.
Megabezel allows this - the megatron shader is a built it one and you can apply curvature through that.
Thanks Cactus, @Cyber helped get me on track. I am using the MegaBezel Adv-Screen crt-sony-megatron-default-hdr shader+exodus_cl_day overlay and for the first time EVER I am 100% satsified with how everything looks for SNES. I have a 48" C2 OLED, along with a 77" C2 OLED and both look fantastic, I can’t imagine once we get brighter panels in the future. I also have a basement full of CRT TVs and VGA monitors and now I won’t need to stress about these things dying one day, this is absolutely incredible.
Thanks again for all your hard work and time on this. You should reach out to Mike Chi, creator of the retrotink 4k and see if he can integrate your shader into this new upscaler, apparently they have ported several major-line shaders already. https://www.retrotink.com/product-page/retrotink-4k
Really glad youve found something that works for you! Its really a testament to the quality of the displays we now have. Mind you its ironic that we’re still trying to reach peaks hit by 30+ year old technology. The major thing we’re missing now is the clarity of the image in motion. The nearest display Ive seen that can hold a light to a CRT is my phones 120hz AMOLED.
Steamdeck needs a shader written for it that specifically copes with three pixels per scanline.
Thanks for the heads up on the RetroTink 4K - yes maybe - I suppose the shader will eventually reach over there. Baffles me a bit paying $750 for a device that gets you a poorer experience than a $400 CRT or a $60 HDR Pi5 with the Megatron or similar shader but there you go - it sounds like itll be popular judging by YouTube reaction.
Yeaaaaah. I totally understand the appeal of being able to hook up essentially any TV/monitor-based device ever made to a minimal lag variable resolution/refresh rate HDMI converter/scaler that also supports HDR, software BFI, and shaders, but the lack of HDMI 2.1 absolutely cripples it.
I still dont get it or at least where the market for it is: if youve got all these devices (presumably old consoles/home computers) then surely youd want a CRT as youve gone to all the effort of collecting all these old devices?
If you just want a big display that wont be authentic no matter what you do (i.e motion clairty) then surely cycle accurate software emulation is good enough with one of these shaders?
I can see a few niche cases but I really dont understand how it gets sold out on day one - fair play to them though theyve obviously got great marketing going on. Is it just a convenience thing? But then why go to all the effort of original hardware? Nope I still dont get it but am interested if you can shed some light.
YouTube influencer hype to be honest. There has been so much hype around this product, especially since it will be the first with 4K support to the market. A lot of “influencers” are also hyping the fact you can plug an Xbox360/PS3/Switch era into it and upscale to 4k.
The RetroTINK-4K works with a great many devices that don’t have a (relatively) low power requirement cycle accurate emulator available, like Gen 5-7 consoles.
Software BFI is good enough on an 800 nit+ HDR OLED that i think even most CRT enthusiasts would choose the extra size, convenience, and improved black.
Like, even if my FW900 weren’t as good as dead at this point, i would still favor Megatron + Retroarch’s software BFI on my C1 for the grand majority of use cases. And the RetroTINK-4K gives Retroarch-tier software BFI for everything up to half your display’s max refresh. (Possibly better, even, since Rejhon has presumably refined it further compared to the Retroarch implementation.)
But again, the lack of HDMI 2.1/2160@120-144hz support kind of undermines it to say the least, especially on an LG given how mediocre their 1080p to 2160p scaling is.
Yeah I can definitely see the ‘niche’ of N64, PS1 but then when you get to PS2 surely everyone was using flat screens at that point and in that case a much simpler device is needed to upscale.
With regards to BFI its still no where near as clear and bright as my CRTs - a great comparison is the first stage of dynamite heady on the Megadrive. Try reading the signs on the roller coaster - you can on a CRT you cant really on an OLED although BFI is an improvement its not up to CRT levels in my experience at least - testing on a Samsung S95 QD-OLED (Id be interested if its that TV though)
The signs are perfectly legible for me. Not necessarily quite as clear as they would be on an absolutely ideal CRT, but very close.
Are you using the S95’s hardware BFI, or Retroarch’s software BFI?
What are you talking about? Many people were using CRTs well into the late 2000s playing PS360 games on them(until Dead Rising small font forced many to upgrade) let alone PS2.
PS2 is a CRT console through and through. Its a 480i console with very few 480p games and the first few years most games were using field-rendering(heck Ico ran at 240p) and many games use different resolutions(the most common was probably 512x448i with 8:7 PAR). PS2 is garbage on modern flat-screens and one of the ones that benefits the most from shaders(or scalers like Retrotink etc.). Heck PS2 still had many lightgun games that only work on CRTs which just says it all.
I also want to comments on a few other things here
This is hilariously shortsighted. You do realize that the RetroTink is basically a small business from a guy and his wife right? The FPGA to do 4K cost a lot. There is support for almost every legacy video connection out there, there is VRR support to some degree, now even BFI and algorithms for turning 60i video into 24p video thanks to Blurbusters, a shit-ton of options and all sorts of modes being implemented basically mostly by one guy via firmware updates(and he still updates the previous 5x where possible), decimation/vertical pre-scale to unfuck modern indie pixel art games, downscaling features, tons of audio options etc. . He also has to pay for HDCP to cover his ass. Adding HDMI 2.1 would have made this thing over 1000 dollars easy. Its not a stretch to say that with all of its features this might be basically the best 4K video scaler out there with all the features it offers. It not only supports so much legacy hardware(including weird resolutions from old PC games, many arcade boards etc.) but its also very good for video in general. Like you could play your old DVDs or Laserdisc or even VHS with this on your big TV and with all the options you have you can have a very good experience.
This is a fallacy I often see people spouting. CRTs took 50-70 years to get to the level they were at in the late 90s. And back then CRT was the only game in town too. Modern displays otoh have progressed far far faster in comparison. Just compare 90s VR to todays VR. CRT could have never pulled this off. 4k at 240hz? On a CRT? Not a snowball chance in hell. 65 inch screens? Forget it.
re: retrotink 4K, it’s apparently going to be able to do similar HDR shenanigans, and at that point, you just need decent scanlines and workable masks, which are all pretty straightforward. So, while the megatron shader won’t be on there, exactly, it’s going to be a similar setup.
As for the market, there’s a ton of people who won’t touch emulators but don’t have CRTs for various reasons. The whole retrogaming hobby is just concentric circles of gatekeeping and dick-waving 
Tbh, if it only would have added a few hundred dollars to the price, skimping on HDMI 2.1 was a far more grievous error than i expected o.O
Like, given how catastrophically limiting it is having to choose between 1080p at 120/140hz with bad TV upscaling or 2160p at 60hz (and thus no software BFI) is, i was assuming it would have increased the cost by something like 5-10x…
My intuition is that practically no one will be buying an RT4K for $750 who wouldn’t have bought it for $1000-1250 just as readily if the price increase were justified.
This has been known for a while now. You can inject HDR with it without going to the service menu and voiding your warranty. The various shaders on 5x and 4K are pretty good.
People were/are already bitching about the $750 price as it is.
If this RetroTink 4K scaler was made/sold by a traditional big company they would probably position it as a high-end premium product and charge 2000 dollars or more for it and would not give a fuck. And it would not have the same amount of features.
But seeing that this started as a niche product aimed at a retro gamers by a small company they cant afford to go too high with the price I guess.