I've been using S video. I've been switching back and forth between s and composite, but S seems better.
I'm a novice, so I've been playing around a lot with all of the settings and have little comprehension of what I'm actually doing. LOL..
But, I do have to say that the picture using the 4K has made a huge improvement.
Do you have a 4k? What settings are you using? I found that the Laserdisc profiles on the 4K were not to my liking.

Yeah the LD profile wasn‘t to my liking as well.
I used it as some kind of starting point and than worked my ways through the settings.

I guess that is the only way as there are so many different combinations of TVs and LD player.

Cheers,
Markus

The Tink4K is a great device, though the price can be a turn off some. For around $300 you can get PixelFX's Morph4K, which has all the same features as the Tink4K. Currently there is no analog input board for it, but since the Morph is modular, an Analog input board has been in production and PixelFX is trying to have it available before the end of 2024.
https://www.pixelfx.co/

I myself have the Tink5x and I can say for certain that the comb filter is better than any you would find in a consumer grade crt from the 90s. I have a couple consoles that I only use composite out with and they all look fantastic, essentially S Video quality with almost no color bleeding or dot crawl at all.

Is German company Dragonbox the only importer for Retrotink-4K in Europe?

Would this Retrotink be a better buy than Lumagen final units 2124 and 2144 which had analogue inputs?

As far as I know Dragonbox is the only one at the moment if you do not want to have to deal with import fees.

I personally was never able to get one of the Lumagen Models you mentioned so I do not have any valid reference.
The RT4K delivers the best results for both NTSC and PAL I have seen so far.

The RT4K has one significant advantage: It is available.

Dragonbox only at the moment for the EU. You can also find it at 8bitmods in the UK, or Consoles4u in Switzerland. But, EU and taxes makes it a Dragonbox buy for us inside the EU. You’ll save with them vs importing one the legal way yourself. I’d love to get one in the US to get the much lower sales tax, but production hasn’t caught up with demand.

Not sure what you would gain by looking for a Lumagen? The RT4K does comb filtering, cadence detection and deinterlacing. Plus scaling and colorspace/gamma conversion. It has all the inputs you might need, plus a kickass low latency gaming scaler with support for all sorts of shadow/slot mask effects, HDR and all that good stuff not found in a Lumagen. The latter is more proven amongst videophiles, but the Tink isn’t exactly lacking, has warranty and is in production.

The Morph also does the above the Tink does, except for that analog bridge that’s coming later. The Morph firmware currently needs a little polish compared to the Tink, but it will get there. Currently the Morph is a HD to 4K scaler only, but give it time to mature and hopefully the analog inputs will come.

Damn! You just beat me to it, I wanted to post exactly the last line of your post @mth1986!

At around just 30% of the cost of a Lumagen R2144 I would hope the RT4K wouldn’t better it, having said that I haven’t seen one in action so unable to give an opinion unfortunately.

Like already mentioned You also could get the 4k via a Swiss company

https://consoles4you.ch/retrotink-4k-upscaler

but I don't know how much the shipping costs would be. Within the EU, the German dragon box shop is probably the better option.

I am also at the verge of getting the 4k after i am not fully happy with the scaling features of my D925 player.

Does anybody here has experience with ordering stuff from the Dragon Box store? Would you recommend this store?

I ordered mine form RT directly when it became available.
Import taxes etc. were handled by DHL so it was no problem but expensive.
So far I never heard anything bad about Dragonbox.

Yes, ordering directly from Retro Tink would be an option as well. I have ordered my 5x directly from them, and it worked flawlessly.

Checked out the ordering form and it seems that shipping costs to Austria for the 4k would be 89 Euro. Not cheap but still acceptable.

Unlike Dragon Box, the retro Tink 4x is also in stock on the official homepage. In that store, the device is on backorder.

For me it is hard to decide what to do next since I do not have enough money for both upgrades.

Sticking to the 5x for now and invest some money into my first AVR and a set of speakers and save some money again and get the 4k in few months or doing it the other way around is the question.

Just my personal suggestion:
Go for the AV and some speakers first.

Of course the picture will be better with a new scaler, but we are talking about minor improvements. After all it is an old low res format. You can reduce the noise and increase the overall feel but that’s it.
Spending almost a grand on in a scaler should be one of the last updates in your chain of devices.

The grand is well better spend for some decent audio first, especially as your 5X is not a bad scaler at all.

You have a point. I also think that 5x is still a very good scaler. Works perfectly for my gaming needs and it does also a decent job for LD. It is just tempting to have scaler that fully supports the 4k resolution of my TV. My pansonic does not support the 1440p mode of the tink so I am using 1080p only.

But for now an audio upgrade is definitly more important because it would elevate my whole home cinema set up. it is not just going to improve watching my ld movies. It will also give me a better experience with watching DVD, Blu Ray and UHD Blu Ray on my ps5.

Was only wondering about comparing features between both devices as the Lummagen 2144 used to be the #1 reference unit for 3D comb filtering.
Nowadays Retrotink-4K has probably more new up to date features than Lumagen when it was released many years ago?

At Dragonshop, I saw the photos of RT-4.
This unit is it made of plastic material or is it a full metal chassie?
For the cost of €900 euros one should expect Rolex build quality with hi-tech components?

The power supply, does it come with different adapter power plugs for Europe/Asia/USA ?

There are several units for sale on Ebay, don't know what year these were made if it's later improved units or not?

100% with Marcus above, I know I must sound like a stuck record by now but just find yourself one of those Onkyo’s and the video from LD or DVD dosen’t really get much better, its mainly about the quality of the comb filter and LD through one of these looks great and you don’t then need to add a separate video processor unless its purely for gaming needs. You should finda nice Onkyo for a fraction of the cost of the Retro Tink!

Yes, that's what I am going to do. Will go for one of the Onkyo’s. For gaming the normal 5x will serve me well enough for the foreseeable futur. A nice avr and some speakers are the better investment. Will start looking for one of the Onkyo’s in the next couple of days.

@gweilo I can just speak for the retro-tink 5x because thats the only product of the company I have.

The power cord is just a USB cable. You can connect it to any USB of your country you can find. Maybe the 4k is similar.

Yep, Puma is right. There is no power plug, just a USB C so you are free to use whatever charger is appropriate for you.

I just feed the power with a USB-C, connected from TV directly into RT-4?
This unit shouldn't suffer from future power failiure with no power supply.

Just get a good USB-c wall charger. I’m using a Raspberry Pi4 PSU with mine. It just needs to be able to deliver 5V 2A, so no fancy 240w PD3.1 needed. The TV isn’t going to deliver more than 1A from its USB ports, so a separate PSU is needed. A correctly designed USB-c power port should come with protection against polarity reversal and short circuits. Avoid the cheapest Temu/Wish stuff just to be sure, get something branded like for instance Raspberry Pi, Otterbox, Anker, Apple, Monoprice or UGreen. Be careful not to connect cheap unregulated HDMI switches and splitters.

The enclosure is made from injection molded plastic with a metal insert to dissipate some heat from the FPGA. Passive cooling is enough, the fit and finish is nice. The remote isn’t cheap crap. We’re not going to see screen printed metal cases on low volume devices like these due to economics.

The thing about the RetroTink and similar is that they’re gaming scalers first. Then 3D comb filtering, and deinterlacing got added as some old consoles require some of the features anyways due to S-video outputs, 240P trickery, dynamic resolution switching and such. At some point it became imperative to make the scaler an 80% solution for film needs. The rest was probably a passion project and people asking. You get a TBC in there, plus a lot of goodies.

FPGA capabilities have grown by leaps and bounds since the older 21xx Lumagens were designed. There are probably cases where a Lumagen wins on video processing for movies, but these newer devices are available, sees firmware updates, and work for retro gaming too. The state of the art has moved on. The Lumagens did use a particular Analog Devices IC, the same one as on the Eval board and the Kramer VP-733 for comb filtering. It’s an adaptive 3D comb filter, the best there was. The same filter type, but not that exact IC as in the RT. The Tink does this in the FPGA. I should compare the Eval board and the RT during my goblin phase in the winter months.

Lumagen hints at their upcoming Artisan scaler, but that’s a 4K/8K scaler with projector specific features. They claim extremely good scaling, a 17x17x17 3D LUT for colorimetry, and such. The 3D LUT and automatic calibration support is often found in OLED TVs, projectors sometimes need more help. Consider your use case, display and budget. If I used a projector, anamorphic lens, or used a screen with masking I would look for the Lumagen still. Now I watch movies and game on a 65”, soon 77” OLED.

Dragonbox is a reputable seller when I write this. They, and RetroTink, have active Discord servers. You have to crunch the numbers to decide if ordering direct from RetroTink, plus shipping, customs and 25% VAT, plus PostNord fees are cheaper than Dragonbox or not due to currency rates. Availability and urgency can be tricky. Might want to check their respective Discords.

I can only say many good things about Retro Tink's Discord server. I got a lot of helpful tips regarding the settings for my many gaming systems. It can be hard to get the proper settings for the different consoles. The guys there got me covered. The group might also be a good place for the tink 4k owner to ask about some good settings for LD movies. Maybe some other users have found some neat settings worth sharing.

The settings are also the big downside of the various gaming scalers. It can be fun to play around with the different settings to find the perfect image for your gaming systems but for people with little patience, the tinkering of the settings might be strenuous.

It is also important to keep their expectations in check. The tink products are gaming scalers and no video scalers for movies. The Retro tink 5x does a great job with LD movies for what it is but when you compare the DVD image quality of a simple dvd player upscaled via the 5x and the upscaled dvd video of the PS3, PS4 and 5 you can see that the Tink products where not made for video upscaling first and foremost.


b

It's advertised as a VG scaler first and everything after is a bonus. For the cost, you can't beat it to upscale LD's. Sure, a Lumagen will probably give you slightly better results but at what.. 4x - 5x the cost of RT. You could also go with a used DVDO Edge for half the cost of RT which might also give you better LD upscaling. I think having a upscaler that will constantly be upgraded/tweaked to give better results and supported, seems like the way to go.

The LD profiles' that came with the last FW are pretty slick and I remember reading he used LD tests discs to give you a basic setup to first use, and then change according to your setup. To me it's a pretty awesome device and sure i would rather have a Lumagen but hard to justify spending a couple of thousand more for a little better picture.

PSU190