Retron 5

[Yonke]

Any of you have it? i had one since launch and has been very happy with it, i really recommend it and its way cheaper way to play old school stuff on LCD/plasma than a xrbg mini (upscaller) set up.

[DaMadFiddler]

I was very interested in it until it started running into a bunch of production delays. Then, when it finally did come out, it was at a significantly higher price than they'd previously advertised, and there were reports of various problems with some of the cartridge slots. Have you had any issues with yours?

[|darc|]

I don't see the point in it. If I wanted to do emulation, I could just pick up a Wii for dirt cheap and softmod it.

The novelty seems to be with using the original carts, but if I wanted to have the "original cart" experience wouldn't I want to be using the original system and such as well?

I'll stick to playing the real systems on my XRGB-mini.

[not just souLLy now]

Preordered mine in November 2013. Still no sign of a European release. Shambles of a company.

[Matisfaction]

I don't see the point in it. If I wanted to do emulation, I could just pick up a Wii for dirt cheap and softmod it.

Also if you pick up an early model you can play GameCube games and you don't have to pay £80.00 for a component cable..

[Yonke]

I haven't had any issue , one thing i do its before playing any un-played dusty game in my collection i clean the cartridge pins with an eraser. I think the Retron 5 its good if you already have a large library of games and don't have space in your game room for a CRT/PVM monitor and most important playing with composite connection its a mess on new tvs.

[DaMadFiddler]

[...]playing with composite connection its a mess on new tvs.

Part of why I just don't have any new TVs

Everything 640 x 480 and above (DC, GC, Wii U, PS3) is connected to one of these, which is our living room TV:

http://www.cnet.com/products/sony-kd-34xbr960

It's an HD (720p/1080i) CRT set, and at the time it was made, it had the best picture of any consumer TV, period. Several review houses (including CNET) used it as their reference set until 1080p became commonplace. It's still got a bit of a cult following.

Everything older (NES, SNES, N64, Genesis) is connected to a "normal" CRT in the bedroom. Average CRTs are still a dime a dozen on Craigslist (we found both of our sets for free without too much effort--another part of why I don't have any new TVs), but I expect that will gradually flatten out with time. Never owned a flat panel television, and I expect to get another 5-10 years out of the Sony before I have to start thinking about a replacement. By that time, who knows what the TV market will look like?

[Juan]

I don't see the point in it. If I wanted to do emulation, I could just pick up a Wii for dirt cheap and softmod it.

Also if you pick up an early model you can play GameCube games and you don't have to pay £80.00 for a component cable..

Best purchase I've made in a while. And I'm really digging the wavebird.

About the retron, did it get a custom rom or some way to allow game roms loading without the need for carts?

[Yonke]

DaMadFiddler : I have read wonders about that CRT you have , i still have in my possession 2 CRTs. One its a commodore 1072 monitor and the other a Sony PVM . Its great to play old games on a Big LCD/led/plasma display with a good scaler or in my case the Retron 5 , but nothing beat playing on a nice CRT , its hard to explain similar felling as playing music on vinyl disc vs digital formats.

Juan : hope someone can make it work that way, would be great if we could play roms from the SD or getting open it for neo geo , TB-16 or another old consoles emulation. To bad Hyperkin programers are not interested to make it work that way.

[DaMadFiddler]

Another potential upgrade that would make the Retron more worthwhile would be if it gained the ability to save the ROMs FROM the carts TO the SD. It already does the work of dumping the carts to RAM before running them; that's how the software currently works. It doesn't seem like it'd be that complicated to add an option to save it, so you could use it as a cartridge dumper. I'd buy it for that.

[mankrip]

nothing beat playing on a nice CRT

Something does: playing on a nice CRT at the correct resolution.

I bet the RetroN 5 is unable to reproduce the 256x224 and 512x448 resolutions of the SNES. The filters and image aspect options already hints that. Simply put, a real SNES will always look better than the RetroN 5 when playing on a CRT TV.

The Genesis also does a 256x224 video mode, albeit only a few of its games uses it.

[|darc|]

A real SNES does not output at those resolutions, it outputs in 240p or 480i and puts black borders around the images...

[mankrip]

A real SNES does not output at those resolutions, it outputs in 240p or 480i and puts black borders around the images...

That also happens in the NES. However, my main concern is with the horizontal resolution, because "consumer computing" hardware (i.e. PCs, Android devices and so on) that outputs 256-wide or 512*4xx resolutions are so rare I've never found any, or any evidence that they may exist.
IIRC I've managed to create a custom 512x448 resolution in my GeForce's driver once, but the S-Video output didn't support it, and 256-wide resolutions were impossible to create.

I've said 256x224 and 512x448 in my previous post because if I said 512-wide, someone could say I was wrong because the 512x384 resolution exists...

[|darc|]

I'm confused. If the SNES didn't output those resolutions, what exactly are you trying to accomplish?

[mankrip]

nothing beat playing on a nice CRT

Something does: playing on a nice CRT at the correct resolution.

I bet the RetroN 5 is unable to reproduce the [...] resolutions of the SNES.

[|darc|]

Again, if the SNES didn't output those resolutions, what exactly are you trying to accomplish?

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but this is my understanding -- the SNES always outputs 240p or 480i video output, but within that pixel space, it renders a window, with black borders, at the following resolutions: : 256 × 224, 512 × 224, 256 × 239, 512 × 239, 512 × 448, or 512 × 478. The television set never actually receives those resolutions natively, it always gets a 240p or 480i signal, with those windowed in.

So what would prevent the Retron 5 from doing the exact same thing?

[mankrip]

Sorry.

[|darc|]

lol -- no need to be sorry, just trying to make sure we're on the same page and that I wasn't confused.

[not just souLLy now]

Darc, posts like that are why girls don't post here.

[|darc|]

I wasn't trying to flame, sorry if it came across that way...