The resolution of your TV or monitor doesn’t matter anymore.
We’re finally reaching a point - one we already had with CRTs - where displays can
be completely agnostic to your source format for movies, TV shows, and gaming… but we’re
missing the last piece of the puzzle.
TV manufacturers need to get their crap together and start including more real useful features
instead of subjecting everyone to motion interpolation by default.
AI upscaling techniques such as DLSS, FSR 2.0 and Intel’s upcoming XESS are great
for PC gaming where it can upscale the rendering process to your display’s native res with
ease, and tools like Nvidia SHIELD and LG’s AI upscaling in their OLEDs are great for
movies, along with OLED’s phenomenal performance at 1440p and 4K on the same display, but what
about sources that are locked to a set lower-resolution output like the Nintendo Switch?
Enter the 4K Gamer Pro.
This is a tiny little stick designed to upscale the Nintendo Switch to 4K, Switch Pro be damned!
It takes HDMI input on one end, sends HDMI out the other end and takes USB C power.
It can even be powered from the Switch dock - though it’s worth noting it works with
any 1080p source, not just the Switch.
There’s 4 modes of operation at play here: OFF, which just passes through the native
1080p signal, and then Low, Medium, and High modes for the scaling.
Unfortunately unlike retro scalers like the RetroTINK 2X and 5X, the OSSC, etc., the 4K
Gamer Pro does NOT JUST scale the signal.
It also applies some sharpening and tweaks to contrast and brightness.
This is why there’s a 3-stage scale for the processing.
You’ll have to do some testing or look at my examples and see which you prefer, otherwise
you’ll have to get up and go all the way to your Switch dock to keep changing it, since
they designed a product with a button to stay as close to the dock as possible.
While retro gamers and pixel art enthusiasts would have preferred just straight integer
or nearest neighbor scaling, for most modern 3D games, a little sharpening and such helps
make the picture stand out more on your TV.
Personally, looking at some side-by-sides of the scaled 4K captures versus native 1080p
being scaled up in video editing, I think for most uses the Low or Medium setting will
be the sweet spot.
BUT if you sit really far away from your TV, like I do in my house setup, the high might
actually provide a nice visibility benefit.
Why would you want something like this?
If it’s not changing the resolution your game is actually rendering at with any fancy
trickery, what’s the point?
As mentioned in the intro, so much technology these days has been converging on the point
of the resolution of your content you watch or play not mattering, and everything working
in your favor to just cleanly upscale or convert it to your display’s format, which is really
neat.
One of the BIG advantages of CRTs is that they have no native pixel-based resolution,
only line counts, so you can get seamless and crisp-looking resolution switching with
generally no downsides, meanwhile as I covered in my recent CRT video essay, most LCDs have
a really hard time scaling 1080p to 4K or other non-native formats to their native resolution.
OLEDs are improving upon this, but even my super expensive Samsung Odyssey G7 takes 20ms
just to scale 1080p to 1440p, which is WILD.
On top of added input latency, scalers built into most TVs and monitors do a really blurry,
bad job of scaling in the first place.
We’re seeing more displays introduce better scaling models and some even with integer
scaling, but in the meantime a device like the 4K Gamer Pro is a very nice luxury to
bring your 1080p sources into the 4K era.
It’s not limited to the Nintendo Switch, either.
This device works with any 1080p source, including Chromecast and Apple TV and other consoles.
It’s also a great option for capturing the PS3 without HDCP issues - though the PS3 will
run into an immediate frustration of the device: It doesn’t support 720p.
This is strange to me, given 720p also evenly scales to 4K, so it should be just as quick
and supported by the same hardware, but the 4K Gamer Pro ONLY works with 1080p, and only
60hz.
HDR is supposedly supported, however.
This is an issue for the PS3 specifically, because many games CAN’T scale to 1080p
on the console, and will force you to a 720p mode, which then won’t work here.
Streaming-wise, it’s just a normal 4K60 signal, so all the usual requirements for
a 4K-compatible capture card, such as the ones from Elgato, AVerMedia, and Magewell,
or the 4K passthrough ones including new ones from EVGA and ASUS, apply here.
Nothing weird to worry about.
$118 USD via the Kickstarter is a lot of money for something that’s literally just a passive
nicety to have, but for those who want to solve this particular problem, it’s fairly
affordable for something that scales up to 4K, and you can get real weird with it by
daisy-chaining it with the RetroTINK 5X Pro at 1080p for 4K retro gaming, cheaper than
buying the new 4K RetroTINK coming in the future.
Plus, there’s no significant added latency with this, either.
Honestly, I’d rather we start seeing this kind of thing built-in to more TVs, along
WITH integer scaling.
TV manufacturers need to get their shit together and start including this stuff in their TV
processing, rather than focusing on forcing everyone to vomit with motion interpolation.
If you’re watching videos like this to build your streaming or content creation career,
you should strongly consider building a website for your own platform-independent presence,
or at least using their email services so you have something professional to use when
reaching out to companies for brand deals or collaborations.
Getting a custom domain email to use for requesting review samples and contacting potential sponsors
was a CRUCIAL step in establishing my channel as a business early on.
For a blazing fast domain-buying experience with over 400 domain extensions including
AWESOME ones like .stream and .live, as well as award-winning customer support, head over
to Hover.com/EposVox and save 10% on your new online home.
Kickstarter link for the 4K Gamer Pro will be linked below.
Down there will be a link to a playlist with my other scaler reviews if you want to keep
diving down this rabbit hole, along with my LG CX review.
Remember: Be kind, rewind.