RetroTINK-4K and games consoles - am I doing it wrong? beta.testufo.com

[dh2005]

Hello all,

I suspect I'll be somewhat out of my depth, around here. Very happy to be politely educated where necessary.

I have an LG CX 55 television, and dozens of games consoles (I honestly don't know how many) - mostly retro stuff. I bought a RetroTINK-4K (it arrived two days ago), with the intention of upscaling these consoles to 4K with minimal lag. I decided to start with the HDMI end of things, figuring this would be the easiest to set up.

I connected my Switch OLED to the RT4K (via the bundled Switch HDMI cable), and the RT4K (at default settings) to my television (via a UHD 4K/120Hz HDMI cable) and, honestly, it doesn't look any sharper to me. The RT4K defaults to 4K/60Hz output, and when I change the output to 1440p and 1080p, they all look exactly the same. I'm standing a couple of feet away from the screen, with my glasses on, and there's still that characteristic soft haze around the edges of images and text on the Switch UI.

I'm sufficiently confident in my (corrected) visual acuity and OCD-tendencies to state that, currently, there is no perceptible difference.

Is this a setup issue? I refuse to believe that the RT4K is an "Emperor's New Clothes" situation. Too many people whose opinions I respect have given it glowing write-ups. It must be something at my end.

Thanks in advance,




DH.

[jorimt]

There isn't as noticeable a visual difference when upscaling from 1080p to 4k as there is when, say, upscaling from 480p to 4k, be it the RT4K or otherwise.

That, and the menu assets on the Switch UI are probably raster, not vector, so they're going to look "fuzzy" no matter how they're scaled.

As for Switch games, their sharpness when upscaled can partially depend on the post-process methods used; for instance, TotK can still tend to look very soft when upscaled to 4k due to its post-process anti-aliasing and screen effects, while the SS remaster can look razor sharp in many spots due to its lack of anti-aliasing.

We also must remember many Switch games have dynamic resolution in place, which means they are often sub-1080p much of the time, even when docked, so you won't always be getting a straight 1080p > 4k upscale from the TINK, but instead an internal upscale of x resolution > 1080p > 4k.

The absolute sharpest you can make a 1080p HDMI source appear at 4k with the TINK is to apply the default profile, then go to Advanced Settings > Processing/Effects and ensure both Vert. Kernel and Hori. Kernel are each set to Nearest Neighbor, the rest is down to the source itself.

[dh2005]

Beautiful. Thank you for that explanation.

I'd figured out this afternoon that "Nearest Neighbour" was slightly sharper, and it was my intention to leave it at this setting. But I very much appreciate having this confirmed.

[jorimt]

Beautiful. Thank you for that explanation.

No worries

[dh2005]

Further to this, I've since played some Metroid Prime Remastered, and it looks absolutely fantastic. So, evidently the RT4K is 'doing something'... it's just a matter of the source, as stated above.