Drunk_Caterpillar

I wish they'd release a 2.4GHz version with Saturn support. The RetroBit one seems fine, but the M30 is terrific.

Never mind! Discovered that there's no clues here...

LG TVs seem like they have an extremely robust feature set and great image processing (I think they even publish the amount of time it takes an image to go through the pipeline). If you had to choose a display to go with, an LG OLED is a great choice. I will probably avoid them though, 'cause I have a plasma and I am seriously done with worrying about image retention. IN OTHER NEWS Analogue is posting GIFs from NES games on their Twitter feed. Has anyone looked close enough at them to see if: a) They're rendered with proper geometry. b) They have proper pixel sizing, implying interpolation.

There's nothing necessarily specific about how the LG displays do it; it's more that their method should, in theory, work with any TV that has a 4:3/16:9 toggle.

I hope it doesn't seem like we're piling on you, but this actually isn't true either. My Life In Gaming mentioned the 4x V and 6x H scaling option because then you could get your TV to resize the image to a roughly correct aspect ratio. The problem is that you'll lose the sharpness that comes from a proper integer scale when your TV resizes that image. As a result, it would actually be much better to use a bespoke interpolation mode in the console because then you'd know you were getting the most appropriate image scaling for your content—TV manufacturers rarely publish any details about how their TVs process signals, so there is a good chance that their methods have a negative impact on picture quality, or latency, or maybe even both.

That is very interesting.

I mean, if the $200 version excluded a bunch of features present in the Noir then why would it be bad to sell a premium version of the Nt Mini? I think a lot of folks would probably consider it worth the extra dosh if it meant that they got all the fancy extras; built in DAC, controller included in the package, metal housing, all the funky extra ports for Famicom add-ons, etc.

Fortunately you can test this right now if you own a Super Nt or Mega Sg. I do, and I can assure you that interpolation is far less noticeable than incorrect geometry, especially when you're familiar with the games. Maybe that not the case for everyone, but doing a side by side comparison with the excellent interpolation in the SNt and MSg it really is barely noticeable.

So I got tired of waiting for more info and reached out to Analogue to see if their team would tell me anything about the internals of the V2. I got a fairly cryptic answer, but something tells me that there’s more going on here than it seems: So there’s more information to know, eh? Maybe I’m just being strung along...

All we have so far is speculation, which is deeply compromised by wishful thinking right now. It's fun to speculate but I can see why people would discourage it for now; when people start making buying decisions based on what they hope to be true, there's a good chance it'll lead to frustration. Here's my advice: if the Nt Mini V2 is literally the same as the V1 with the few listed tweaks and nothing else, and that's something you're in to, then you should buy it. Otherwise, there are several solid options right now that would probably be cheaper and better for most folk. Full stop.

Can we talk about this attitude for a sec? Please don't do this. Video game hardware is rarely a solid resale investment and the conditions that created the inflated used sale prices for the original Nt Mini probably won't repeat themselves. Buy the V2 because it's something you can justify buying for yourself, not because you think it'll appreciate in value. Look at all those fools who're flooding the market with V1s since the V2 got released; you're seeing them drop prices significantly, and so far the only substantial differences between it and V2 is the cartridge slot. All it'll take is for a newer FPGA solution to be released with one more marginal improvement and your "investment" will be essentially worthless—that is, unless you actually use it. This thing costs almost a month's rent folks; if you're on the fence about whether you should to spend that kinda bread, it's probably a lot smarter to hold tight for the inevitable release of a cheaper/better version.

Confirmed on Discord. Took a look for myself.

Someone on Reddit is claiming that Kevtris answered some question in Discord. The only takeaway so far is that the current version of the Jailbreak can be installed on the V2, which kind of confirms that no new hardware is present in the machine. If interpolation wasn't possible on the V1, we're probably not getting it here...

The E9 has roughly 15ms of display latency, so it'll be about a frame behind a CRT.

Safari seems to be having that issue with the Analogue store, so I used Firefox and it went through fine.

Is there any way to even attach a Paddle controller to the Nt Mini? I feel like it’d be a pretty sad Atari 2600 experience if I couldn’t play Breakout the way it was intended.

Woooo! Thanks for the hard work.

My theory is that Analogue leans almost exclusively on Kevtris to handle the software side of their entire product line at this point, so they can only realistically have a product launch every 8-12 months without burning the man out. Given that there are a few things that would need to be implemented to bring a theoretical Analogue 8 in line with the feature set of the SuperNt and MegaSg (eg, the Nt Mini doesn't support interpolation, have the same menu system as the other consoles, no DAC support, etc.), we probably won't see anything about the 8 until well after the Pocket is released.

Excited to see where Stella on the R77 will go in the future.

There are beta firmwares of AVS 1.40 that might fix the issue with that cart, but I haven’t checked myself. Also, installing custom palettes through the Scoreboard app is on the roadmap, but the timeline is kinda foggy right now.

I hear ya, and I don't disagree; the DE-10 is a crazy value for what it is. It's also subsidized by Intel though, so it's kinda hard to think of its value in an objective sense. That aside, I have a romantic connection to something that reminds me of the consoles I used in my childhood, so loading up a cart and sitting back with an original controller gives me the warm fuzzies.

I love my AVS+N8 combo and if you’re looking for NES/FDS gaming then you don’t really have to go much further than that. It is a terrific combination and plays very well, IMO. That said, it lacks several important features worth mentioning... - 1080p output - Custom pallet support (coming to AVS in new firmware, release date TBD) - Analog output - Music player - ROM playback without an Everdrive - FPGA core support for tons of 8-bit consoles and handhelds That said, when it comes to NES/FDS gaming there are two killer features that I prefer the AVS+N8 for: horizontal interpolation and save state support, which I don’t believe the Nt Mini has. Still, to each their own.

Thanks for chiming in Kevin; I’m sorry you have to suffer through that kind of needless hostility. If it’s any consolation, my friends and I have been having a really good time with the Super Nt and Mega Sg over the holidays and I’m super grateful that you put in the work you did. Thanks man.

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On paper it sounds like a spectacular idea, as I'm sure literally everyone involved wants better dither blending and knows that it is possible. That said, if I had to deal with what Kevtris deals with then I'd probably do exactly what he's doing--keeping any code remotely related to MiSTer at arm's length from whatever I was working on. Yes, it's profoundly frustrating how the politics of projects like these work but I doubt Kev or Analogue want to get bogged down in the kinds of backlash that Hyperkin gets. For the record, those screenshots look boss and I'm super jealous. I wish I could toggle blending like that on and off for certain games.