Well, hello and welcome in, friends, to a lovely late night after dark edition of, well, The Bunker. You've made it in here live tonight. Somehow I've stayed up till past midnight because this show normally is in the boring daytime of Mondays and Thursdays at like 11 a.m. So thank you all for showing. I see a ton of people in the chat, so I know that changing my schedule from that early showtime isn't messing up everything. I do have special guests waiting on the other side here to jump in with us, but please, if you're coming in here and you haven't done so already, do hit the like button for us. It's definitely helps the algorithm. It will let everybody know the show's going on, and it will also, you know, lead to everyone, like leads to 10 new viewers, and that's what you can do to help out the show tonight. So with all that spiel being said, let me introduce my guests. And that would be right over here. Well, right over here, actually. There we go. Welcome in. None other than my friends, Mr. Apid Esquire and Greetings, Mike Chi. Greetings. It's Happy Saturdays, everybody on the East Coast. Oh, yeah, it is already Saturday. We've already lost Mike's. It's Saturday. Mike, your video. We already lost Mike. So it's going to be fun. Yeah, that's right. This is my Hawaiian feed. My Hawaiian shirt. Thank you, Roll Pats. So I know that people here on Thursday, it was my wedding anniversary. I actually bought this on my wedding trip in actual Hawaii, this shirt. And they were like, this is the same store that Mick Jagger bought all his Hawaiian shirts from. And I was like, oh, so I could pay $500 for that shirt. Awesome. And I wear it now. It looks good on you. I wear it now. I don't know. Well, you saw Mike Chi was here. Okay, I'm sorry. He was here. I don't know what happened to him. Oh, here he goes. He's coming back. Oh, here we go. He'll be back. There we go. I'm not on sale. He's on his phone. Oh, no. Kind of lame. But whatever. Sorry. That's all right. Listen, you're here, pal. Oh, well, we're going to have some, we're going to have something happen tonight. Okay, we're all here to have a good time. And while Mike's getting his technical, his technicalities fixed up, why don't we go ahead and get ready to make a toast for everybody on a lovely Friday evening since it's appropriate. You know, normally it's not appropriate to drink on this show too much when it's 11 in the morning. Hey, Belmont, thanks for showing up tonight. Look at Mike. Steve, you're self-employed. You could do whatever you want. Well, yeah, but it doesn't look good when like the wife comes home at five and I'm blacked out on the couch, half naked with a three CRTs pulled apart, the kids walking around. What's going on? You're hammered. You're hammered. You're going to tell your audience. I'm going to take apart three anode caps and, you know, let's all hook up some. Yeah, let's let's electrocute ourselves. Actually, I did almost talk myself in an episode recently. Hey, everybody. All right. So what I've got, I'll show, I'll show you. I'm going to start off since I was called.  So I'll bring that out of my second drink. But I'm going to start with some good old fashioned bourbon. This is the double barrel old Forster 1910. And what that means is, so they took this out of a barrel once and then they stuck it in a second new barrel that was charred and aged it longer. And so it's like the sweetest, like most decadent regular bourbon I've ever found. So that's what I'll be popping out tonight. So there we go. What is, what is Mike? What is Mike drinking? Mike actually has a chair looks really comfortable. What is he drinking? What do we got here, Mike? That's a mo-bon. Look at this. This is sent to me by my good friend Caleb, Super Cowabunga. It's very kind. Actually, I haven't tried this yet, but it was very good. It's got like a sweet honey aftertaste, which I like. And he also sent me these cards. Oh, the Kasumi card. So, very nice of him. I was like, I remember when you sent me that clip, I was like, where the hell did Mike get the Oax playing cards? Like that's wild. Thanks, my good friend Caleb. Caleb, yeah, Caleb. I know Caleb. He sent me some, some like cool random stickers in the past and things, believe it or not. Cool dude. Yeah, Caleb has sent me anything. So he must hate me. Yeah, I saw where he had done some testing, I guess, right? Yeah, he and his friend had this really wild set up up in Seattle, and I think they were just at it. Oh, after they got this time lapse. Nice. That was a really cool video. That was really neat. Where, where was that? Like, like that place was awesome. It was an amazing view that he was at. I think it's his friend's house. Really? It looks like an airport or something. Yeah. Or no, I thought it was like a fancy hotel or something like that or a lodge. Like it was gorgeous. So his friend's, he's got a loaded friend. That's good to know. Not arcade boards. Not arcade boards. So yeah, right? It's like, it's like the DOGO collectors. Well, what do you have for us tonight, Mr. Esquire? Well, well, you know, I'm just a man of the people. So I just have, I just have the old Buffalo Trace, but this is the single barrel. As you can tell from the moniker here. So it's, it tastes a lot better than just the standard stuff. So single barrel makes a difference, folks. It does. It's good. It's good. Not a bad, I think it was like 50 bucks. It's awesome. Yeah. Well, here we go. Cheers, everybody. Thank you for joining me. I wish I could climb glass with you. But absolutely. Thank you. Thank you guys for joining me. Thank you. I know it's much better than mine. You guys. I appreciate that. Whatever. Hey, we had to get this done because the schedule is just, this is the perfect night for this. So for me and for you really, like the timing, I mean, we got to get into this, this most recent episode that we were all privy to that the movie man himself, Mr. Spielberg. I'm going to tell you more of that. This is like, this is, this is, uh, give me a flop from steel Spielberg. This is like, uh, uh, I can't think of AI. There we go. AI with a Spielberg flop. This is, I got, I got 3,000 views in five days and I'm like, what, what's going on? I'm so sick and tired of people telling me this is a great video and nobody watching the damp thing because the algorithm just, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's wild.  Like it is what it is. Subscribers in the business of making money, the bigger channels make the most money because they got the most subscribers and all they want is eyes watching ads. That's it. So when you get a guy, my channel's like eight months old, I think, and you know, I've got like 1500 subscribers. I mean, I, my watch time is super long. It's like the average watch time is like 20 minutes, which is crazy for YouTube. Um, but it's still just a small reach. So, you know, the algorithm's going to crush it, but it is what it is. I'm, I'm happy with the video that your guys segments turned out incredible. Um, the, the audience feedback has been amazing, uh, and I'm getting good feedback from people who actually know stuff about CRTs, like, like Andy King's saying nice things. Bob gave me a really nice note. Um, oh, and, you know, obviously Steve and Mike, you guys, uh, had good things to say. So, um, I just appreciate everybody watching it. You know. It's not getting it. It didn't go viral, but it'll get there eventually, I guess. That's, that's the unfortunate reality of, you know, making videos on, uh, YouTube for this. And I'll be honest with you. I went back, I got a reminder on my YouTube channel or my, like something where it was, it was five years ago at this point where I had had been doing this for about six months and I had 1800 subscribers. My videos I would put out and they would get like 300 views and I would be happy.  There's definitely fizzy, fizzy stuff.  So anyway, that's a weird, yeah, I, I don't care if the thing gets a lot of you. I'm not here to make money. I don't care. I just, I just want people to see it. That's all I care about. And, um, yeah, because there's a ton of good information, ton of good information from you, Steve, ton of good information from Mike, um, you know, and, and people, yeah, like people want to get in and buy a PVM and they're like, okay, I'm going to go spend a couple of grand and just get the best thing I can and, and that's not always the best thing to do, uh, in, in everybody's circum, because everybody's circumstances are different.  So, um, anyway, uh, it was, it was a good video. I was really happy with how it turned out. There was a couple boobies in it. Thank you, Mike. I appreciate it. Your, your spot was good. The only part that everybody complains about is me talking to the tink flybacks. That's the only part people didn't like, but I don't care. I'll defend that bit to the day I die.  I thought it was funny. So that was great. Yeah, that's, that's interesting. I want to know, like, uh, well, first off, I wanted to say, I definitely commend you for all the amount of technical details that you put into that thing that were beyond what I was expecting by far. It was beyond really anything I've ever pieced together in one single video. I've never had one video. I would be like, okay, what you just did was what I'd make like 25 videos out of with all the things you were talking about, but you're like trying to do all this in one shot. And it was so great, like to sit there and, um, YouTube's goes through its spells, they'll, they'll go back to like and long content again, and you'll get some more hits sometime. But all that, you know, all that information, it came from, came from just sitting and watching your channel. And it came from conversations with Mike over the years. And it came from conversations with Bob and conversations with Andy. And, you know, it just, you just learned so much from so many people. I just stand on everybody's shoulders and I just, I just, how can I just present this, you know, all at once, uh, to something that's really easily, uh, palatable, uh, in one hour. And, um, yeah, I, I, it's always weird when people are like, man, I didn't expect all that technical info to come from me. Like, I know I didn't expect it either cause I'm more on, but, but I'm glad that you learned something from it. You know, I think one thing you've always been very good at is distilling the information. Ah, yeah. I mean, well, that's, that's just my trade. Like I, I, my job is to present facts that I learned over the course of a year and a half, two years and then present it in front of eight strangers off the street, um, so that they understand and get persuaded by my side. So that's, it makes, you know, it makes sense that I do stuff on YouTube like this, but, um, uh, it, uh, it was, it was a lot of work. It was a huge production. It took like, I mean, God, Mike, you know how long I've been buying up these TVs. Yeah, we've been talking about it for months. I mean, I, I, every time, every time I would buy a TV, I'd send it to you or I'd send it to Steve and Steve's just like, how have you lost your house yet? Like what, what is going on? Um, but, uh, uh, yeah, I'm just glad it's finally done. And I could just move on to other projects I've been thinking about for months. Move on to something new. What are anything with PBMs? Yeah. So well, Mike, what like, let's just change subjects real quick, Mike, because you're usually, you're obviously known as the scaler genius. And for good reason, yeah, there you go. And what, but what, what, I like it. I remember when we first met, which was pre-pandemic, and that's the last time we saw each other, the person we're talking about, that's pretty funny. But what, I know you were telling me then, you had a couple of CRTs and, uh, I know you have been inspired by CRTs, right? So what, like, what, do you have CRTs right now? Anything? Yeah, um, I'm wondering if you can see what you could, but I've got, um, you know, actually my, everyone right now, that one right there, um, I got two new inbox security monitors, 20 inch, uh, Panasonic. They don't, they actually have this video. Yeah. So they're pretty nice. Okay. And, uh, being new, the, the tube is nice and bright. I mean, it's not like, otherwise it looks like a consumer TV, but, um, it works really well. Uh, I'm a big fan. And then I've got this FB310 right here. As you can see it. Yeah, I can see that one. There it is, there it is. I haven't powered it on anymore because I think it needs a recap, like the vertical deflection just kind of jumps every few seconds. It goes like, so it annoyed me enough that I stopped using it. Yeah. And I don't think I have the chops to recap it, so it's just kind of sitting there now. You'll just have to, uh, it's have to fly me out and let me sleep on your futon or something. There we go. Deal. Oh, well, yeah. So, uh, that's awesome. I, I'm going to be honest with you. I've never actually gotten a 310. They just never, they just, people don't let them go. And the ones that I do see are huge. Like, and I don't have a spot. Yeah. I can't even fit the place I'm living now. I can't, it's sad to say, but I can't fit a CRT 36 inches in it. Like the door jams. I don't know. They're old and narrow. How big is yours? How big is yours, Mike? It's 27 inches. Yeah, that's perfect. The smallest one. It's a good size.  She, she wanted to see our $20 before she'd let us in the door. $20. You have to be for real. And then my wife and I hauled it back when we had a van. But, um, she did not know where she had. Yeah. And this is a, this is a 2017. I didn't even know that it was a good tube. It was just the first one that I found on Craiglist. I'm like, all right, I'll get this. And it turned out to be a good one. You ever watch, uh, have you ever opened that up actually, Mike? I haven't opened that up. Steve, Steve. Well, I thought you had a video, Steve, on an, on an FB3. No, it wasn't that when it was the one. It's the whatever FS or the other 110 or it's like a, it's the 100 series. So it's not the same one. There was one Sony consumer tube you opened up.  This is, this is some good components that they're using here. Yeah. I can't remember what model that was though. Yeah. It was a, it wasn't the three 10. It was a, I can't remember either. It's been so long. You go through these things. But well, that's the thing. That's how many videos you have, Mike. So I wrote Steve and I'm like, Steve, you've got a video where you're, you're, you're adjusting potentiometers on the mainboard. You're doing geometry settings. Can you point me in the direction of which video that was? He's like, how?  No idea.  I have no, I can't keep track of these things.  Thanks. Appreciate it. It was, see, look, the chat knows. I don't even know the chat knows. It was FS 100. I know these guys are, these guys are hardcore. Oh yeah. So thanks everybody. Hey, hey guys, everybody. It's been 17 minutes. We're, we're here. We're rolling. We have had, you've done great. Whatever you did to switch over, Mike, you've been part of your technical difficulties have disappeared. It's on my telephone, which is really sad. I have no idea. Oh, that's great. So, hey, if you haven't already, please hit the like button for us, everybody. Okay. There's my, I'm going to go down there and say that again. Thank you again. Let's, let's get back to it. We need to stop talking about CRTs for a second, because Mike Chi put out a very, very cool post on X Twitter, whatever it's called. He is at the point where he has the, the actual injected molded cases on the Tink 4K. And he's got the labels that he's sticking on the back of these. Mike, when are we shipping this thing, pal? This is coming out next month, isn't it? It's coming out next month.  Next month is already November, right? It's only 10 days from November.  You're there. Yeah. We're days from November. I don't think it's going to ship next month. I think there's a good chance it will ship sometime December. That's what I'm projecting. You know, last week, the factory said they were going to get the FPGAs, but then it turns out it's Friday. So they haven't gotten those yet. So you're still waiting for that hopefully next week. I'll see. No, I saw, I saw a picture of a bag and had 59 parts. Mike, I someone stole 10. Of course they did. Well, it's getting there. I can tell you, I think it's getting there with any luck. I think we're still good for the end of the year, but it's always, there's always stuff that comes up and, you know, you know how it is. It could be something completely out of left field that slows it down a week. You never know. But I appreciate you making that kind of announcement here. I didn't know it was that close. Look, are you with the super chat? Yeah, we got somebody replicant. Thank you for the 499 super chat. I know it just said their 20th super on a live stream. Well, thank you. Thank you for the super chat. I want to give you $5. Yeah, he wanted you to buy a nicer shirt. I need a hundred more of those super chats so I could buy a nice new fluffy genuine Mick Jagger Hawaiian shirt. The guy told me it was worn by Mick Jagger. No, he didn't really say that, but he said it was the same store Mick Jagger bought his from. So that's why I had to pay that much. But anyway, hey, Smoke Monster. Thanks for coming tonight. Oh, wow. Look at that. That one went a little too quick, fellas. So let's talk. So Steve, you labeled this thing CRTs versus the RetroTink 4K. Well, right. What was your goal there? What were you trying to do? My goal there was to fish as many people into this drinking session as possible. So I apologize. If you hate me for that, you are welcome to hit the down vote button too. I think Mike's exactly right. There is a trend on YouTube that if you put RetroTink in any title, you will get a million views. Well, that's what you should change the thing is odd trial RetroTink. The RetroTink in like three minutes is dedicated to it. Right, exactly. That's hilarious. Perfect. Oh, never mind. But anyway, Jack from Shenzhen right now. They got the package of FPGAs today. So there we go. We're going to install it on boards and then power it up. Do some tests. And then if that's good, then I can green light the production. Steve, you just broke news. That's what I was going to say. Look at this. Look at that. Friday night. You guys hear that? Literally, I saw like a little WeChat box. Yeah, that's the Chinese app. Show up at the top of my phone. Very nice. Thank you, man. Good. Good job, man. That's awesome. That's great. It's better than hey, it didn't show up. Awesome. Yeah, that's true. Or we got lost. Fell off the boat, fell off the truck. Oh, wow. Yeah, so I don't know. I mean, besides like that, so that right there, that's the big breaking news. See, if I didn't know that was going to be on here, I would have put that. We know the release date of the, you know, something like that. That would have been a better teaser, right? So maybe I'll midstream change the name. But no, in all seriousness, I am so intrigued by your product. And there's a whole segment of business that I don't even know if you know about. And I've been one to talk to you about for a while. And it's the museum world.   And then they have to figure out a way to get that to reproduce on something.  And I mean, I've given whole scalar presentations to like the people from MoMA and in Manhattan. And yeah. And in about half a dozen artists, art curators in the Houston, Texas area from schools and museums. I mean, there's like 15 people in this presentation. It was about like scalers and stuff. And a lot of it was about your products back then, just because they were looking for solutions.  And I'm like, look at these, you know, they're making.   One of the museums reached out to me recently and asked me to bid on a Nam June Pike job, which is a, he's dead now, but he's an artist who used CRT video walls.  And it has 20 CRTs in it that are 10 inches on a loop. Wow. And they're all from 1991. And they're like, we have two of those. How much to restore all 40 of those CRTs? Oh, it's not like a year of work. That's what I was like. No, they asked how long it would take. And I said, I can do it done in six weeks. Four, I don't want to tell you. I don't want to tell you how much I bid. But anyway, I'm a machine when it comes to that. Steve, I'm a platinum Patreon member. I need to get my PVM restored in your shop immediately. That's fine. You're just going to push me to the side? That's fine. No, I didn't say that. I didn't even get this job yet. They probably think, you know what happens after that? They're going to have 25 board meetings to see if they will approve this guy's bid. That's what's literally happened for the next two months. But anyway, they were like, hey, you think you can hook us up with one of those like new prototype thingies for two?  So, you know, the market is not just gaming people. It's it's and I think actually, you know, Smoke Monster has been posting a lot of views in his with his laser disc player. And that's all he's been posting. Literally what they want. Like the exhibit I'm working on is that bid for would be 20 TVs. And the medium that is playing the art is a laser disc player still. Literally still a laser. Or should. Yeah. So you got well, Mike, you do you have a laser disc player, Mike?  I it's definitely on my to buy list. But yeah, right now, like I've basically zero space in. I'm not trying to stomach another piece of equipment. That's where I'm at, too. Like I got into this discussion once on Twitter with with laser disc is, you know, somebody like it was probably Steve.  And I'm like, damn, that looks awesome. And then, you know, Scarlett Sprite shows up in my reply.  Like, like a DVD just looks way better. Like, why would you do that? And I'm like, oh, yeah, that's right.  You're right.  It's a waste of time. But but, you know, there is like some really cool legacy media. Like it just hasn't made the transition to DVD or Blu-ray or anything like that. And still I think it was saying there are some releases that you could only get on laser disc. Like Star Wars, the original ones without that haven't been redone. So there's definitely that. Yeah. There's a few things. Star Wars is like the perfect example. Well, yeah. So like the way, though, that the kind of thing I've always felt like with the CRTs versus scalers, you're the one who's who. Well, I can't say you're the only one because I guess the OSSC, you know, I met. I met Mark's back then, too. And that was another product. But outside of like him and then I mean, you've gone the next kind of the next level with it. Everything else has been like kind of a joke, right? So you're the only one, but I feel like you do because you've been obviously inspired by looking at CRTs, right? And like, yeah. I mean, that's kind of where I started just getting back into this. I mean, I'm sure it's the same story for everyone, both of y'all, too.  And I was kind of going at it the other way at a Raspberry Pi. It's like, how do you get it to output to a CRT? And then that's how I got the TEA. I got the FB310. But yeah, I mean, I think it's the same story for everyone. I want the games to look and kind of feel like the way they used to. The thing that impressed me the most, Mike, about the 4K is, and I have to apologize, you sent me a tester and I was so busy with this production that I just have not had a chance to break. But my next video that I'm publishing will be not so much a deep dive into the 4K because Joe from Game Sack already did that and Bob already did that. And they were way better at doing what they do than I am. So I'll let that stay. But the thing that I really liked was when I took the macro lens right up to the OLED, and you could see, I mean, you could see it. You made the sub-pixels look like phosphors on a CRT.  It almost had that just aperture grill, phosphor look.  But when you compare that to where you were with the 5X, I mean, it's night and day. Oh my God, it's such a huge difference. It's so cool, so cool. What was I saying? What was Chris Tabor saying?  Yeah, though you really do. Just seeing it down, seeing RGB down to the sub-pixel level on the OLED was just so cool.  I got it right here. Where is it? This was the best $150 I've ever spent. Just my little Nikon macro lens. You can get right up to a screen and see right through it. I mean, you could see the individual phosphors on the CRT, and it's a thing of beauty. So I was like, I'll try to get really close to this OLED, but I bet I can't get anything that good. And then I saw it and I was like, holy shit, Mike is killing it, man. This is incredible. It's just such a departure from what I used to see in from the 5X for the last two years. It's really, really awesome. Yeah, so the 4K, that extra resolution really buys you a lot. And then if you combine that with HDR, that makes up for a lot of the loss brightness that I think really kills scanline effects. So I think we're getting closer. I mean, obviously it's not perfect, but I think we're inching closer. We just need to, I just wish that TVs could get a little bit more bright, but supposedly they are. Yeah, that's going to come with the, what is it, the nano OLEDs and the AKs and all that stuff. But the one thing I didn't really touch on in my video was introducing black frame insertion at all this, right? I mean, that was what made it next level. So where we removed that ghosting when we had those 2D characters across those 2D planes. You know, it's crazy. I was never sensitive to it until I started playing with BFI and then started looking for it. Now that I can see it, I can't unsee it. It's pretty annoying.  And God, the flat panels, they still can't get it right.  And then I would start looking for it. I'm like, he's right. It's there. But on the, the Tink 5X, it was just, it was just too, you know, you want to inject it, you want to inject the HDR to, so you can compensate for that black frame insertion, but then the colors were all off.  But now the 4K, you got true HDR 10. It looks so good, man.  It's going to be talking about just not just the, how close we can get to the individual phosphorus, like you can on a CRT, but just appreciating, you know, recreating that, that perfect motion that you get on a CRT on a digital level. It just, it's off, man. It's just, it's so cool. I, you sent me a tester on buying a retail one anyways.  It's, it's just the next big thing. I cannot wait to get my hands on the final finish product. I appreciate you saying that. Yeah, not to mention it looks beautiful. So, yeah. So, you know, Mike, this always brings me something that I've like popped in my head a while back too. Like what, what is, you know, you talked about, you're running into, I'm sure a lot of times, the deficiencies now and the variations in the actual display that your scaler is being hooked up to, right? What is, what is like the perfect, is there, is there like a, I mean, is there, you already have this, maybe, I don't know, like a list of preferred OLEDs that you'd like are seeing that maybe are better or that you like more personally with the product or is there anything you would say like that or, I don't know. I would say, I mean, I have obviously the most experience with a Samsung, not the Samsung, Samsung suck, the LG C1. Well, there you go. They do, they really do. And then a lot of the other people testing the device have various LG C9, CXs, C2s, and they all work really well. I wouldn't say, I can't say which ones don't work well. I don't have that much information, but I think, you know, these late model OLEDs all tend to work really nicely. I will say though, on my cheap Samsung LCD from 2017, it does look really bad, especially once you turn on HDR, everything has this like weird peach haze. So, you know, to that extent, you're still kind of at the mercy of having a nice display, but I shouldn't be too surprising. Right. You know, that's the thing is like, with the Tink 5X, I got most of my mileage out of it with an LCD with a, what's it called? A, you have a backlit full array LED panel, those big monster sets. And they're nice and bright and everything, which is great, but the problem is you get a lot of blooming.  I just, I don't think you're going to get the benefit, Steve, from anything else other than a good quality OLED display. I just, you know, I'm a little biased. I've got an LG G1. I love it. The only thing I hate about it is, is webOS, which every LG owner will tell you webOS is the worst.  It's complete crap, but I think to really get the benefit from this new scaler, you just, you got to upgrade to OLED. You really do. What is, what is, like, what's Sony doing? They don't have any good consumer OLEDs? I think they do, but you know, Sony to me is kind of a sad story. It used to be like King of the AV world.  I think a lot of their, they don't, might not even make some of their own panels anymore, which is kind of sad. Yeah, that's probably, you're probably right. I don't, I bet they don't make panels anymore. They're more interested in making movies. You know, like, I think with Sony, Sony made the, there was definitely a shift with Sony as far as their new flat panels, where they, and the irony is they make the PlayStation, but they kind of shifted to the cinephile realm, you know, they, they want to make the best possible presentation for movies. Because, you know, I did a lot of research before I picked up my G1, and the Sony flat panels were amazing in putting out, you know, movies, but their latency numbers just weren't as good as LG or Samsung. And it's the same, but, but they still carry the Sony premium price, you know, and LG's you can get rather, it's hard to say something over $1,000 is affordable, but in comparison to what you'd spend on a Sony, it's, they're pretty affordable. At least I could be wrong. Maybe somebody in the chat would tell me, but I just feel like they made that shift, like they went to movies rather than, rather than gaming. There's not a lot of products that are Sony's anymore on the shelves, it seems like. I mean, I can still go in and find some TVs, but they're not, they're not like the prevalent thing that they used to, they used to be, but. Yeah, you know, I follow this channel, this is an account on Twitter that has posted a lot of retro Sony gear, and it's, they made some really nice stuff, and it really is sad. Well, obsolete Sony, obsolete Sony, that's like my favorite account right now, it's like that and CRT bot. Like if I could get rid of everybody else and just have those two, and you guys of course, right, and you guys of course. But like, yeah, obsolete Sony is such a cool product, it's such a cool.  And it's like ever since then, it just started to fade. It's almost like the Homer Simpson thing where he just fades slowly into the bushes, and it's like, wait, they used to make TVs. But I don't know. So what, what would be, I guess my question too, also, have you ever thought of making your own television? No, that's, I don't think so. No. Come on, Mike. It's not that hard. Mike, if we can, hey, Mike, we can make a Sony cube fake thing that the museums will buy for $5,000 a piece. You know, one thing I have thought about making is just like a 240p display out of discrete LEDs. That'd be awesome. Like this giant 240p LED, alright, with zero latency. Like that would be sick. That would be sick. Yeah, man. Hell yeah. I just might be sick.  It's the biggest, most expensive and practical thing on the planet, but I want it. Oh, that's funny. Well, Mike, did you play around? I don't know, Steve. Sorry, go ahead. Well, I was going to say, Steve, do you, I mean, what do you think? I mean, do you don't have a Tink 5X, do you? No, I don't. I don't have the most I've got is, well, they're usually over here. I have a bunch of the twos. The two X's, because I take them, I take them to, I take them to my, my mom's house with the kids, because they always want to go play games and I troll them by only letting them play the N64. So I literally take four controllers, N64 with the N64 multi-card and S video cable retro take 2k to the four, and then it goes straight to 16 by nine. That's it. Every time. And I have two of them.  God, my sister is like the is batshit crazy. Good, I don't know how like she's the best.  Like I still have never seen anybody play better than her. I think she should try like speed running. Because she'll just pick it up and like laugh at us. I don't know how she's so good at it. But just those, the old mountain areas mostly. Nice. I used to think Mario Kart 64 was by far the best. But I think Mario Kart 8 is pretty much the planet, right? I mean, does anybody, does anybody really differ with, Mario Kart 8 is just perfection in every way. You still, Steve, what do you think? Are you still clinging on to Mario Kart 64? I've never even played Mario Kart 8. Are you kidding me? Look, they released it twice. I haven't even played it on the Switch. I only played it on the Wii U and it's goddamn perfect. You're going to out me the last time I bought a console when it was in its current generation was the Xbox 360. Okay, think about that. So one better than me. The last console I ever bought was a PS2. That was in, you know, the 2000, whatever.  That's right.  I actually, I did cause some people to get injured at a Walmart launch night of the PlayStation 2. I've told this story a couple of times. Do you know, do you want to hear this story for the internet? Yeah, I haven't heard it. I haven't heard it, of course. Okay. So yeah, great. Launch day of the PlayStation 2, right? I didn't have any money to go buy this thing, but my, one of my best friends was like the richest kid.  And he's like, yeah, man, I'm getting it. I'm getting it. My mom's going to let me go drive and stay all night wherever I want to get the PlayStation 2. Because it was one of those things that were like, we'll release it at midnight if the store's open all night. So there was a Walmart open all night. And we went in the Walmart and I was like, oh, this is awesome. I was a poor kid. So I was like, yeah, I'll go like me and my other poor kid friend and then the rich kid friend and then his brother. Okay. That's the four of us. We convinced our moms to let us go with them so that we could just let him buy the PlayStation and hang out all night. So we thought this was the greatest idea ever. And we went and got, we go into the Walmart. It's like 8 p.m. And it's like maybe selling at midnight.  They're not saying anything. We go in the, they were like, they're like secretive. And all of a sudden we go back to the layaway section and the back of the store has about 10 people lined up in a queue and we're like, hey, what are you guys doing here? And like, oh, we're waiting for the PlayStation 2. And like, oh, really? Did they say they were leaving it here and selling it here? No, but we all just kind of figured we just start a line here. And we all agreed to that and everybody just keeps coming. So we keep telling them to wait here. And we're like, okay. And so my buddy who's getting the PlayStation and my other poor friend is waiting there.  I'm in high school at the time, like 15, 16. So, well, 16, because I had this, there's a reason. I had prior to this worked at Walmart, a different Walmart, for like six months in the garden section, load and mulch.  And I was like, hey, I know how to use the intercom system in every Walmart. And they'd have all these phones like hidden, you know, on poles. Shit. I'm like, it's like 10 o'clock at this point. I'm bored to tears.  So I grabbed intercom and I press the code that lets you get on the intercom of the whole store. And I go attention, Walmart shoppers. I would just like to announce that we are selling the brand new PlayStation 2 gaming console in the sporting goods section of the store. Please get here quick because they are running out fast. And then I hung up and, and the funny thing was this, we were hanging out. This is the opposite side of the way. We were hanging out in the toy section, which is right next to the sporting goods section. And I'm like, that was pretty funny. Huh. And he's like, oh, yeah, how did you know how to do that? And I'm like, yeah, it's who cares. I don't think he's going to happen. Well, all of a sudden we're like standing there.  There's like no Black Friday, like people clawing over each other, getting through the hallway. They tear like four or five shelves over. I've never seen this happen.  No, that's wild.   And we go back and we go back and we find our friend.   And so we literally ran behind the Walmart and hung out in a drainage ditch for an hour while the cops came, did this whole investigation, couldn't find who did it. And they kicked every person out of the store who was there to buy a PlayStation two. And after that happened, we're sitting there waiting at the drainage ditch and we're like, shit, can we come out now?  He's like, I kicked everybody out of the store. Come back to the front. We're out front.   I'm handing out raffle tickets. If you get a raffle ticket, you get a PlayStation two. If not, you can get the hell out of here because you're not getting it. This guy was so mad. And so we didn't get a raffle ticket. And so I felt even worse.  It's like it wasn't even that funny. So thankfully there was a Best Buy across the street, but we had to go there. They didn't open till 6 a.m. So we got so we just had to literally wait outside the Best Buy. I remember till 6 a.m.  We're definitely here. All right, I'll wait. And I remember we did that. We got the console. We went home and we played for like eight hours till we were like zombies. You play and there was like two games to play. Yeah, it was like SSX or something. I think we're something like that. Smugglers run. I ever saw.  I was like, it was worth it. I was like, this is the greatest day of my life.  Oh, cool. Well, I have a Sega Dreamcast, okay.   But then I did finally get a PS2. I got one from a kid that I think had drug issues. And he had two games. He had Smugglers Run and he had FanaVision.  I'm not going to play those games, but one day I will play something on this console. So I got it. Actually, I got it for the DVD player because I really wanted a DVD player for my room.  I mean, we're talking like six guys. They rolled deep Friday night.  Okay. And they roll up in my room on a Friday and they're like, hey, Roger, what are you going to do tonight? I don't know. I'm probably going to go to the trap party or something. They're like, hey, is that cool if we just stay here and play your PlayStation 2?  I was like, I don't have any games.   I don't care. All right, cool.  I got eight dudes in my dorm room. They're all playing FanaVision. Have you guys ever played FanaVision? No. No. FanaVision is the dumbest game. Well, actually it's a pretty addictive game, but you just make fireworks go off.  You make them all explode. I got eight dudes that are baked out of their mind watching fireworks go off of my PlayStation 2 and they're listening to Dark Side of the Moon.   I want to go to bed. All right, guys, FanaVision's over. No. FanaVision's over. Get out of here. I think that was the last time. I still have it. It's up here somewhere. But that was probably the last time it was ever played. How about you, Mike? You want to reveal any secrets here? I mean, sadly, my PlayStation 2 launch story is not that exciting. I think I was actually the same age as you, 16. We must be... I was working at Best Buy at the time. All I remember is that the employee discount didn't work. It was $2.99 with or without the employee discount, so that sucked. I don't remember if I actually got on a launch day or a few months later, but I do remember I was just using it to watch DVDs and play PS1 games for a long time. But you got that new firmware update where you have... I can't even describe it, where you have 30 frames per second on the PS2 games. That is awesome. Yeah, it works really well for the games where the frame rate runs at a steady 30 FPS. It kind of breaks the glitches, so it's kind of a bummer I haven't figured out how to fix that yet. But yeah, the thing about PS2 is that it really just, I think, aged really badly to the point where if you compare the PS2 with its contemporaries, it's like the worst. It's almost unplayable. Yeah, especially when you compare it to the GameCube. I don't know. The more and more I played with the GameCube, the more and more I think that was the best console of that generation. It really was. And it sold a fraction of what the PS2 and Xbox sold, ironically. It's just such a great games library, and they hold up, whereas most of the PS2 library just kind of doesn't anymore, especially with your update. It's like, oh yeah, now you can finally play Final Fantasy X, and it's somewhat tolerable now. Yeah, you know, one thing that surprised me is just how robust the GameCube community is.  No, there's no extremes for the PS2, you know, there just isn't. And no one hacking away at it, right? No, no, but I damn enough forgot what I was going to say. Oh, I was going to ask, how does a firmware update like that even come to fruition? Like, is that something you develop on your own? Is that something community driven? Like, how did you even implement that? How did you even get the wherewithal to say, you know, on these 30 frames per second concept? That's specific when we should thank Mark, the Bloorbusters. Are you guys, do you guys know who Bloorbusters is? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, the UFO guy, he's been a huge help, and he's been, I think he like, he and I have been talking a lot, and then every time I talk to him, he's kind enough to write like this giant email, and then I walk away, my mind's blown, and then if I'm lucky, I understand like a fraction of it, and then something useful comes out of it. But yeah, a lot of it's been basically from his device. That's crazy. Yeah, but so you just came up with like, you just get the idea, okay, I'll just do this for the, then make a firmware update for it.   First, Steve, you know what he's talking about, right? Yeah, of course. It's like, you know, hey, let's see how that actually worked, and it actually did work pretty well for some games. Like this is pretty cool. Let's put an update up. You know, one thing that's interesting, that's been driven, drove me crazy, is that I took the Framester out two weeks just to see how I did it. The reverse pull down on that is perfect.  And I looked at it really carefully. It's like, it's weaving the fields perfectly. And I'm like, I don't know how I did that, but... Mike, listen, you got to talk to Steve and I like we're idiots, okay? Because we are. Okay, what is reverse pull down? What does that mean? Well, basically, the game renders at 30 frames per second, right? But then it breaks it to two fields. Oh, okay. So you render the top fields and the bottom fields. If you get to detect the order, then you can just weave the fields together half the time at 30 frames per second, and then the fields that don't line up, you just throw away. So you don't get the combing. And if you can detect the pattern, then you can weave it perfectly. But the game drops a frame that pattern shifts. So you have to shift how you're weaving it, and you have to detect it without glitching out. So right now, the way I do it, it doesn't adapt fast enough. So when it drops a frame, then all of a sudden you start seeing glitches until it picks the pattern back up again. But somehow the Framester is able to detect it perfectly. Somehow the Framester is able to do that. That old device can just pick it. That's crazy. Yeah. It means there's a solution. Oh, you're probably... Some like little logical series. A serious one. Yeah. Chain that's... I'm tough. I don't know. I always stand by that the Framester was more developed for scaling movies. And I think that would be so, you know... It's got to animate. ...where it... It's got to animate. Right, exactly. I don't know what it does, but... Exactly. It just shows, you know, cartoon boobs. That's all it does. I don't know. It's a Demos Egg filter. Yeah. It's the profile for the PCFX. I don't know. But... Yeah, that's crazy to me. So what you're telling us is that we should just buy Framesters. We shouldn't be buying things for kids. Yeah, you know, I think if someone said... Tobias, the scaler... You know, kind of the scaler master said, for the best deinterlacing, you still have to go to the Framester. That's the only round. It did 480i so well. It really did, you know, compared to the OSSE. But I think I talked about this with you before, though. But you spend so much time with PVMs, you start to realize that that Bob deinterlacing is really the way to go because that's... Boop deinterlacing? Yeah. I mean, that's the way it looks on a PVM, you know. So... Yeah, that's... What are the things that... Well, I mean, I have to qualify that a little bit. On the really high line count PVMs, the deinterlacing does bother me because you can really see the lines and how they flicker. To the point where I'm like, you know what, I got to get a softer tube. Do you... As you know, I was wondering... Not a lot of people complained about that in my video, but when I got to that point where I was talking about, you know, interlaced content on a 800 line tube, when I shot it at... When I shot it at 24 frames per second, I mean, it was really jumping. I mean, it looks really bad. It didn't look that bad in person, but 24 frames is what... It's naturally what the human eye sees, apparently, I guess. Well, at 24 frames, basically, the thing is running at 30 or 60 fields per second. So 24 means that the frame rate that you're capturing or your camera is shooting versus the tube. They're not in sync. So basically that really makes the... That really exaggerates the jittery effect. It did. It did. And I tried to make a note of that. Like, this is way more pronounced than it is in person, but if I put this at 30 frames or 60 frames, you wouldn't see it at all and that's not fair. Like, I'm trying to demonstrate.   Well, that's what I was going to say. You're getting right back. We're kind of getting actually staying in a good circle here with the PlayStation 2 content because you're... Like, so much of that stuff is in 480i that... All of it. Almost, yeah, 90% of it is. Yeah, it's really. And it doesn't look good most of the time on like a BVM and 480i, even in component. Like, you go straight in component. And I mean, not to say it doesn't look good, but like you say, if you notice that, it's almost like what you said earlier, Roger, with John Lenneman noticing all the crazy stuff in the backgrounds. Once you see it, it's hard to unsee it. It's hard to unsee it. It really is. Well, and with scalers, 480i has just always looked bad. I mean, with the Framemeister, it was the most tolerable. I tried it on the OSSC and the guys who say, oh, it's fine on the OSSC. It's just because they've kind of built up a tolerance to it, because they're just so used to it over the years. But I think it wasn't until the Tink 5X where I was like, oh, motion adaptive deinterlacing, it looks really good. Okay, I think we're fine now. We could start playing the PS2 again. Because for the longest time, I would only play PS2 on a CRT. It's the only way to play 480i content. And a consumer CRT at that. Yeah, it's really high to flicker. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, you could make an argument that you could basically get the best for PlayStation 2 out of itself, put it in something like a PVM 2030. It's like that 20-inch just right under about 500-600 TV lines. And you're like, okay, then everything looks kind of good. But it's almost like sitting 600 and higher. It really does start to amplify that flicker. And in the larger the tube, the worse it gets. And you guys will see, I'm putting out a video of my 14N6, which is 500 lines. 480i looks awesome on it. Looks really, really good. Oh, I'm sure. Yeah, because it's got that soft look. 500 lines is the sweet spot. It really is. So are the 2030s, are they better than a consumer tube? Or is it just basically like a consumer tube with the RGB inputs? No, they're better. I mean, they do have about a 5-600 line tube, which is like, you know, the best tubes. Sony were probably making in the 90s like 300, I bet, 350 in that size. Now, you might have found some models that have that tube in there. I don't know. Like a consumer set that may have that. The weird thing, the 2030 is more of like an aesthetic thing. And it's one inch bigger than the others. So it's like, ooh, it's one inch bigger. But Keith Rainey is saying he plays Dragon Quest 8 on his 2530, and it looks pretty flickery. So that's the same kind of line count. We got Keith. We got a bunch of people in here. Leon. Man, I've looked at the chat. Kearlieck was in here, and he was saying that besides, yeah, I mean, basically PlayStation 2 was pretty bad. He mentioned that the Xboxes, and I do remember that Xbox was held up pretty well, too. I remember having a hacked Xbox like really early on. I don't know how many other people like everybody did. There was some dude. There was some dude that was in high school with me that he was going to play everything. Yeah. I got it on my xbox. He's like, all you got to do is bring me an Xbox and a hard drive. And $150, and you'll be able to do anything you want. And a couple packs of Doritos. Half the time they worked for like five years. The other ones worked like six months. It was hilarious. But the funnier part was that that guy did that because that was his hustle, because he was the first guy in our junior class to knock a chick up. Like he knocked a girl up. And he needed the money. He dude was in my grade. He knocked a younger girl, a girl in the younger grade under us up. He had to go through night school, graduate. And then he was like, we were like in our senior year. And I was like, what the hell ever happened to that guy? Like, oh, he graduated like early. He's been working for Comcast for like a year now.  And he had a house and like, I'm marrying her. And I'm just like, what? Well, can you hack this Xbox or you got too much family life going on?  I'm like, what? Oh, I always got time to hack an Xbox. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'll bring those Xboxes. It seems like in this case that kind of pushed him in the right, in a good direction in life because it's got a shit together. And that's right. I saw I saw him recently and the fucker has grandkids. And I'm like, oh, that's insane.  He's 39 years old. He's 39 years old. And he's a granddad. Yeah. Where did you go up, Steve? You grew up in Tennessee, didn't you? Tennessee, baby. They weren't related. I don't think. Good old rock top. Mike, are you into sports? I'm sorry. I'm going to take this out of the dumpster. I'm going to, you're not into sports? OK. Because I'm waiting for Steve.  Why would I care about that? Because I like I like coaches to give give the NCAA a hard time. Screw the NCAA.  Why is that? And why can't James Madison play in a bowl? What happened?  They say you're not prepared when you come from the division two level to the division one level. So you have a two year probation.  They're undefeated. Hey, not. What do you mean you're not ready? That's what they said. I don't understand this whole point.  I'm calling your motherfuckers act.   I hope we go 12 and oh.   And we'll give them out to campus kids here. Artistic pixels. Yeah. It's the fun belt, by the way, Steve. It's the fun. Not the Sunbelt. That's right. The fun belt. But it was like that. I'm like, what this little guy at Pittsburgh's whining about, I don't even know who it was. Was that who is whining about stuff? No, it's fucking. Oh, what are you talking about? Whining about what? Sign Stealing. Sign Stealing. Oh, it's Ryan Day. It's Ryan Day at Ohio State.   I'll just put it out there. Put it out there. Put me on the record.    All right? All right. This stream's become unhinged. Thankfully, it's late night. Unhinged.  Poor Mike.  I'm like, I'm not even sure. I'm going to call Heron right now. Hey, hey, it's OK. Oh, my gosh. We just went like unraged there. Yeah. We'll just think about Dukes. Dukes, Dukes. Yeah. The chat went crazy over that. Gotta love the Dukes. I mean, it's funny. Steve, everybody loves mid-major football. Everybody. Oh, I love it, too. This is like a mob. People don't understand. This is a mob from my house. My wife works for the.  All right. People don't understand this. I live a mile from this campus.  Like, because my wife's works there, it has a special administrative set of keys to open every door. The master key. Yes. As they call it. I have my old man car, my old 97 grand marquis. It's like a registered to park anywhere on campus. I mean, I'm like, I go there and I get, I go and I have season tickets to everything. Like I have eight football season tickets for four baskets. I didn't even tell my wife. They just kept giving. I'm just like, I just bought two more season tickets of basketball just for the hell of it. Like in a different section. I have a problem. This is what I want to know. This is what I want to know about your grand marquis. When are you going to full out? Just pimp that thing. When are you going to make that drug dealer mode? Like put some put some 20s on it. Like no, like some 24s on it. Yes. Yes. It's like, so this is this is. So this car is the 97 grand marquis 1997 mercury grand marquis LS. My grandfather. It was my grandfather's very last car that he bought. He he he bought it brand new. So it stayed here with the with him. And when he passed, my dad was like, nobody wants this car. Do you want it? I'm like, are you kidding me? Yes. Yes, I want that car. And I get it. And like nothing.  It's 80,000 miles and there's nothing. It looks perfect, right? So it's almost 30 years old. It's got 80,000 miles. Yeah. So I'm driving it all the time, right? Well, I'm starting to get to where things are starting to go bad. And it's funny. It's like little computers, but I find them at the junkyard and I've replaced almost every computer in this thing. And then I went in and I've been looking for like that's the thing you can't find shops now that like the shop. The shop's techs are usually younger than my car. They're like, sir, how do you open this hood? And I'm like, that's a bad sign. I'm sorry, son. You failed. I'm going to the next shop.  They're like, yeah, man, I love that car. Oh, yeah. You want anybody to work on that car? I'll do it. And I'm like, yes. Thank God. Okay. So I took it in there the other day because I'm like the alignment's terrible on it.  And I'm like, I gotta go.  I'm like, I got to get the alignment fixed. Everything else is fine on it.  Don't worry.   And I'm like, what is he doing? And I'm like, don't worry, man. He's, he's good.   Like he's been used at the chimney sweep like Mary Poppins.   I got dust all over me from this grandma key. He's like, I can't get these tie rods to change, man.  We're like, come here. They got the car up there like, look at this.  The guy's trying to turn a tie rod that is like a solid arm of rust. It's a 30 year arm of rust. And I'm just laughing.  I'm like, I know that's bad. If it's bad, just tell me and I'll change it. So they're like, yeah, you got to change all this. And I'm like, well, yeah.  They're nice. They change all that. And I'm like, it's like, it's like, it'll be a two hour job. Don't worry. And I'm like, yeah, okay. I saw you guys banging on it for an hour and he didn't get it. So I'm like, I'll leave it or I said, I'm going to leave it with you. I'll leave it with you the next day they got the parts. I'll leave it with you. And I did that and it's like, I left it at 9 a.m. And it's like, I'm looking at my watch. It's like 6 30. They close at 7 p.m. And I'm like calling them. I'm like, I need the car because I got to go to this like bourbon drop. Literally that was the big deal. I had to go to a bourbon job at 10 a.m. I'm like, I'm alcoholic. I need to go get my bourbon priorities, priorities. I was like, you're going to interfere with my bourbon. And they're like, no, don't worry. We'll get you the car. Come on down here. I get in there.  He's like, they're like, hey motherfucker, he's he changed all that in there. And I look under there. It looks beautiful.  And I'm like, well, this looks great. And he's like, yeah, he's been on the alignment sheet for two hours trying to realignment because every time he gets off the alignment sheet, it just goes to like he drives it. It just goes sideways. And I'm like, man, I don't know. I've got to have that car for tomorrow. And they're like, OK, hang on.  And there's like this little arm on the steering column that's like rusted solid that he didn't see that also needs to be replaced because every time he's like, OK, here's what it does. And I'm like, I don't care. I need the car tonight. And he's like, OK, we'll give you the car tonight, but I got to change this arm.   That's everything's straight, but literally the steering wheel is cocked 90 degrees sideways. And I'm just like holding it. It just stays like that. But it's like it's like that's the normal way. And so the funny thing was the mechanic, he's an old man. He has like one tooth and he's like, he did not want to let me take the car. He was like, I do not let clients take cars like this.  I'll bring it back tomorrow. That's the way he was looking at me.  They were like, since we missed that on our initial inspection, we're going to replace this part for you for free. And so I brought it back. And then, dude, again, they put the same kid. And to get that, he had to drop it down.  And again, he was down there banging for an hour before his hammer pulling out the blow torch. And I was like, motherfucker's trying to blow my car up twice. And he's, and he gets a part out.  And I'm like, I get out on the road and I'm like, damn, this thing's riding perfect now. Perfect. I mean, it's perfect now. And they're all like, don't worry, man. And I'm so, so I'm talking to the guy while I'm in there about like what I do. He's like, what do you do?  He's like, I used to, he's like, he's like, all this, you know, telling me about the whole business, about his business. And he's like, don't worry, man. If you ever want to do anything, this is the labor rate. You bring me the parts. I'll put anything on your car. I don't care who I work on this car. He's like, we'll work on any old cars.  He's like, I'd rather have working on your car than any other car. He said, but there is a gearbox in that car. So if your car still doesn't drive straight, there's this gearbox.  He says, hang on. And he pulls up this old thing like the CRT database of cars. And it's got like all these service notes on the grand bar key. And he's like, here it is. And he pulls it up and prints it out. And it's like this two page service process of like hooking all these probes up to this, this thing cutting off all these service lines. And then like adjusting this steering device.  He said, I actually want you to bring this in. He said, it says, I have to charge you 0.9 hours to do this. But it's going to take about seven hours. And it's going to take about three of them to do it. But if you bring it back, I'll do it because I want all them to learn how to do it because nobody's done it in 20 years there. So thankfully it didn't need that adjustment. But now, but now the grandma key is in tip top shape. Right. But to make it like it's ready to go to Nashville. Yeah. But see now they have them fuckers got me. They have fuckers got me really hot because like you said, they want me to want me to turn it into like a moonshine runner. They're like, have you heard of the Marauder? Oh yeah, Marauder.  The Mercury Marauder.   What the hell's the Mercury Marauder? And like the Mercury Marauder. And it's like this Mercury they made for two years that still sells for like 50 grand. It's like a supercharged grandma key is what it is. Yeah. With like a 300 pound or 300 horsepower engine in it. And they're like, hey, look man, I can get you one of them Marauder engines and I can install it in your grandma key for three grand.  I was like, did you just say that?    You get yourself a Marauder. I'm sorry. Mike, I'm sorry. I'm sorry about that. Mike, I know like Mike, Mike, have you ever been, have you ever been in the Steve vortex? Have you ever like, you get into sometimes Steve gets rolling into his stories and you just, it's like a roller coaster.  You just enjoy it. I'm enjoying the ride.  Oh, poor Mike. Come on. We got to get back to this.  Where's our debate? I know. No, the chat loves it. The chat, the chat was dying. I was dying. I need to know what happens in real America. That's what I needed. That's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to like find as many grassroots people like that as I can. So, Mike, what's going on in California? Let's talk about San Diego. What's going on in your world, man? Same shit, expensive gas, expensive everything. Want to blow my brains out.  You did. Yeah. Nope. I thought you did. You didn't? Oh, what are you doing? What am I doing? I thought you did.  I thought you did, motherfucker. Wait a minute. Yes, you did. I'm going to pull this up. I'm going to pull this up. You totally did, motherfucker. Don't lie to me. He's not lying. Well, he's not lying. Oh, send us. Send us. Just put things up. Okay. What is it? What is it really? Where you don't, we all know you don't just work on scalers for all day, right? How's the brain scale? Pretty well. I do most days. That's pretty much what I do most days, to be honest. I kind of just show up at work and I just kind of hide out my office and either just try to avoid as many people as I can.  Is anybody in your office?  It was on Discord. Fuck. Fuck. Look at it. Oh, sorry. Everyone in the office is a gamer. But you know, that's not so much retro, though. I did hook up someone. There was someone at the office who was a big N64 person, so I did send.  Oh my gosh. My son's sitting around and I'm like, what's up? And he's like, oh, I can't wait for Fortnite to drop this new skin. I'm like, give me a break, bro. Fortnite?  Like, I was hearing about Fortnite five years ago. Fortnite's been around forever. Isn't that crap? I know, right? They still do. They still do. Like, gaming is nothing but Fortnite, Roblox, and... Dude, Roblox and yeah. My kids play that. And the sale of one, Minecraft or whatever.   This was probably like seven years ago. So that crap's old.  All those people did.  I mean, I don't know. If I did see some pretty interesting things in Minecraft, like they're building stuff that... Like someone built a computer simulator or something. So, I mean, there's probably something to the game, but it looks primitive. How about that? Like, do you have time to play video games, Mike? Like, do you play anything right now? I have not played games in a long time. Is there like a game that you are in the middle of right now? Yeah, that's... Is it just...  It's just DOAX. It's just DOAX, always. You know, it's pretty much any fighting game, because it requires zero energy and investment to start and get into and then just mash a few buttons. And 10 minutes later, it's like, all right, gotta do something else. Now I'm done. I tried playing... What was that game? Shit, this is not that... This is already a few years ago. What was that game called? Like Fallout 4 or something. And then like...  Like, this is my time.  Like, you're not in the middle of Starfield right now or Baldur's Gate or any of those. No. Just like installing it is probably requires more patience than I have. No, it's true. No, you're right though.  I mean... Yeah. Nobody. I mean, I don't know. Steve, are you playing games around? No, no, like I used to get on there and I would occasionally... The only new thing I would occasionally play would be... And I haven't even tried the new one, the original Counter-Strike.  And leave. But that's like a free game. Yeah. And again, it's just a shoot together. Like, again, if there's no investment there as far as the storyline, as a matter of fact, you kind of feel weird if you play it like more than 20 minutes.  But no, not other than like... I tried. I tried a couple of months ago to get in Earthbound. I made it a couple of hours. And I just don't... I don't know. Like the last one of those kind of games I actually finished was Kronos Trigger. You finished Kronos Trigger? Good for you.  I never could figure out how to get out of it until I find it until the internet. I remember being a kid, I could never get past that part. It's a 40-hour game, isn't it? Oh, yeah. Especially if you go through and do all the extra stuff to just... Like if you do all the stupid... Well, it's not like you collect all these items to beat the leader, the bad guy, that Magnus thing. You could beat him easier if you get all the items that you're supposed to. Or if you don't, you can fight him for like three hours. Like the leader.  My wife is playing the Hogwarts game, the Harry Potter game. She loves it. She's so... Is that an online game, or is it single player? No, it's single player. It's just a traditional RPG.  She doesn't understand that stuff because she's never played games, but she loves Harry Potter, so she wants to play this one. It's a beautiful game.  But she gets stuck at the boss battle, so she has to give it to me. And I'm like, all right, hey, hey, play this game. Okay, whatever. And then I just beat it. And then I... She's like, how did you know how to do that? I'm like, it's in my DNA.  But yeah, she... But that's it. That's the only gaming going on. My kids play the pep... You guys get the Peppa Pig game? Have you gotten into that one yet? Oh my God, there's a Peppa Pig game.  I don't know, sorry. That's what you're doing. That's the gaming you're doing. That's what I'm doing. That's what's going on at the 8-bit household, man. That's Peppa Pig.  We're pathetic, man. Does anyone at your firm know about your YouTube channel? No, not yet. I can't wait for that day. I cannot wait for that day. Everybody's going to be just raking me over the coals. You really haven't told anyone? No, I'm in their business. There's not anybody you get along with there that's into gaming either. I mean, it's kind of a niche. There are, I don't want to say, and I don't want to go there. But there are people that are, but I just don't want to...  Everybody in the comments will start calling my law firm. You're like, hey, can we talk to 8-bit Esquire? I really liked your newest episode of On Trial. It was really cool, man.  How many hours did he get to charge the firm for? Did you know that he did a whole bit where he was talking to a retro Tink 5X? It was an anamorphic rabbit.  Three guys on YouTube totally hated it. I don't know. What are you going to do? Ariel Aces, you guys have been awesome tonight, but I am crashing. I have been up since 5 a.m. That is quitter talk. Quitter talk. I thought you were from the 305. 305 doesn't go to bed. They don't go to bed until 5 a.m. Ariel. Oh, man, you guys are awesome. I don't know how much longer everybody can hang in here, but do us a favor if you haven't. Hit the like button. Yeah, we got 60-some people in here, I'm sure. I'm sure of it. 72, I think it says. It's 130. How is that possible? I don't know. What are you people doing? Are you from Australia? No, you know what? Are you from... Steve, we're talking too much. They want to listen to Mike. I know. Put Mike. What? I got nothing useful to say. I'm wasting it. We're talking about Mike. You're the only one developing anything cool. What? I've never developed a thing cool in my life. I'm so lucky. I sit around and pinch myself because I'm the dumbest guy of all the RetroTech people. And I've got the most steady inflow of customers just because I picked the ultimate niche that nobody wants to mess with. I've got myself so lucky there, but... So you used to be in the insurance business, right? Is this how you're full-time being? Yeah, this is it. I still have my insurance license, but I haven't written an insurance policy in four years. I've been doing this, you know, one day. You know, it was back when COVID happened.  They... I had been with them for 10 years. I built that insurance agency on my own. No, I didn't like buy any other agency. I had built it up and it was like... It was that winter. It was December.  They have to buy your contract out, which was funny. I was like an athlete, right? Where they're like, well, we're not going to fire you. We're just going to buy your contract out. And I was like, what? Oh, okay. But they did a real shitty job to me because they did it like a week before I would have... My contract would have been double value. It's lame. Yeah.  It's what it was. And not only that, they did it. They sent me an overnight FedEx that was dated. The letter was written from the lady on Christmas Eve. And it was like, I was out of town and they sent like a dozen of them to my house because I was out of town for Christmas through New Year's. And I didn't just even know they sent it. They sent it. They sent like a half a dozen FedEx overnights with this letter to my house. So it was just piled up on the front porch. Dated from this lady saying, say we're buying your contract out. Literally dated Christmas Eve. I was like, what kind of psycho? I was like, I feel bad for them actually. I was like, why am I wasting my time with these dipshits of this? And I tried to go. I tried to go work insurance with another guy who was like another agent that had like independent agency.  And after like four months, I was like, man, here we go. Oh, this story, the story gets dark. Yeah, I was like, he was starting to like, he would have like embezzlement problems and it asked me about it.  You got like money going out and it's got nothing to do with me. I'm not, I was like, I started to feel like he was trying to like scapegoat me for stuff after I was, and I was like, you know what? Finally, one day he's like, I remember, I'll never forget this. He was, it was like three months after I said I would go. After I did that, I was like, well, I'm going to try to stay at insurance a little bit and see if I want to stick with it. And I, so I'm sitting down now like, I'll go work with this guy. He's independent agent. He's got a bunch of different companies. I'm trying to learn them all. And it just, it just wound up being a mess.  I didn't know what I was doing. And then he would always be like, blaming me for missing money.  And like, he's like, it was really bad when he wanted to start calling like the people I'd write insurance for and be like, hey, can you get them to send more money in and stuff?  And so I, I just didn't, I just stopped writing business for him. Like, instead of telling him I wasn't going to work for him. So like two or three months go by, I hadn't written a new policy, hadn't talked to him. He's like, can we go to lunch? And I'm like, sure. We go to lunch. And I'm like, he's like, yeah, you know, when you started here, I thought you would write a lot more business. And I mean, and he starts saying that. I was like, look, man, I'll be honest with you. I've got like a way better gig. I built my own business doing this other stuff. And it's like so much better than insurance.  And I have no interest in working for you any longer. And then it was like, oh, well, are you sure? I mean, I would love to have you say blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, no. And then he's like, it just, and it didn't end very well after that kind of went all weird. And, and I knew I wasn't going to be in insurance anymore.  And we love you for it. And we love you for it. Till I, you know, don't worry. Because, because guess what? I got a fallback plan. Those hillbillies will sit with that. I already talked to them.  They said, I got jobs down here, $27 an hour, if you want to do it, man. Mike, I got a comment in the chat and says, I bought the RetroTink 2X and I thought it was broken because I didn't know you had to switch inputs with the button. So I put it away for like seven years, LOL. How, how often does that happen?  It's usually, it's always the N64. I actually know. Right.  And I think it's because the N64 has a high speed bus. So that it's, it's really sensitive to contamination. Whereas the older consoles, you could be dirty. It's still work. But yeah, people will always say, yeah, my Tink's broken. It's like, no dude, your N64 is, it just needs cleaning.  Like, I don't know how it happens, but in North America, shitload of people have it set to RGB. I don't know why. I don't know why you just set it RGB or if that's just the way it came out of Sony, which would make no sense because no one, no one in North America would ever use RGB.  But that's interesting because I think it shows you that it's shifting away from the N64 more towards the PS2. So those are the most, okay. So if we were going to group the consoles into the largest group of dumb questions, the console, you know, number one is the N64. Oh, definitely. Yeah, definitely. But it's been like, it's always the N64. Now, I mean, I want to be very clear, and I've always been very clear about this.  I think the N64 car connector is just more sensitive to dirt than the older consoles because as a high speed bus, then I think that's all it is. That's weird that most PS2s would ship with RGB because you can't, you can't get 480p with RGB, can you? It's got to be with YPVPR. You can, but it's RGSB, so it's Sync on green, which basically nothing's deported outside of the few specialized VGA monitors. They did that because they don't want to blow up your TV. If you send 31 kilohertz sync down SCART or, you know, down as old standard FTV in theory, I think, or at least people thought you could blow it up. I don't know. You can blow up the sync line. Not with that, not doing, I don't know, but I've never heard anybody do it with a PlayStation. I just hear about it going over that with the, like, arcade board. If you do that RGB and you send in there syncing without any kind of protection into a PVM, I've known that. I've never heard about it, but I've never heard about it on a regular CRT since there's not SCART ones. So, what about, Steve? Well, what about the, I was going to say, didn't Voltar complies, so you're going to say it's something about, it's 64s just to have some models that are just dark.  I don't remember that one specifically, but I do know that, like, for example, a lot of how in 64s just had broken S-video, or it was either like some models had S-video that was broken and then other models that were just missing completely, which is kind of weird. That's weird.  It happens all the time. Once I turn 40, it just, it all went to shit, Steve, you know this, right?  I was having this conversation with graphics. Mike, you got a couple years still to your 40, right? Oh my gosh. I'm done, my brain's done for you, don't I? Like, I definitely think there's a cliff around somewhere in my early 30s where just like the energy level of the mental clarity when...  Silva, thank you for the super chat. Said, Silva, five, seven, nine. Canadian, Canadian, all right. Didn't expect to see you three legends on tonight. What a treat, love. What all of you are doing. Oh, thank you very much. Cheers, boys. Thank you. And yeah, the N64 is a headache, LOL. Absolutely. Thank you very much. Oh, I know what I was gonna ask. So, Mike, when the RetroTank 5X was pre-shipment, there were issues with like second master system, there were issues with NeoGeo, you know, those all got ironed out with subsequent patches and whatnot. Did you do any degree of testing with arcade boards and things like that with the 4K before? Now, or are you just completely dependent upon the community to, you know, iron out those issues? I mean, is there anything that's still like stuck in your craw that's still like a problem that you're still trying to work out as far as compatibility or sync or anything like that? You know, I think I was really lucky in the past few months to make a lot of good friends in the arcade community. I mean, like we talked about Caleb and his buddy, Hope Deck.  The issue is arcades, you know, you have all these different super guns, so I can't say that it's going to work for everyone, but the compatibility seems to be very, very good.  So I'm like, I'm super grateful for that. Well, I was going to ask, is there anything that's still like a problem spot? Like anything that's still giving you issues that you're still trying to iron out? Well, I wouldn't say this is a problem spot, but I would say that between our gateboards and PCs that output weird resolutions, I don't exactly have profiles set for them out of the box. I think we'll have some profiles that people have been making that as they're testing to help. But I don't think there's any fundamental sync problems where like the picture is just bad, but you do have to go ahead and not really crop it. So let's say, hey, we have to expand the image this way and this way and scale this way, so it's on screen. But I think other than that, everything's in pretty good shape. And that's what I meant. It's not so much, oh, do you have optimal timings in this profile? It's more so just like, this fucker ain't syncing. You don't have any issues like that right now. That's so impressive to me that you're even going down, I'm sorry to interrupt, but you're going down the avenue of supporting a lot of these strange, because I get those questions all the time. I don't even have the devices to test the output of some of these old PCs that people are like, will this work on this? Or arcade boards? Arcade boards are nuts, man. They're all over the place. Yeah, I've never been exposed to much of arcade crowds.  They are, but it's an interesting world. It's a complicated world, to say the least. It sure is. There we go. A complicated world. It's a complicated world. It's a complicated world. No, Steve, it was funny. Like you recoiled, and then there was like an internal burp. There was like a, yeah, man. One thing that I did notice about arcade systems is that I didn't appreciate it at the time, but if I'm just looking at it now, they were so much better than console games, like just the quality of the graphics, the sound. It was, it's like a completely different ball. Completely different league. That's right. Yeah, you're good.  Okay.  I think we're even close to 100 for the night, I bet. Yeah, it looks like I think we're at like 91. So come on, people. Let us, let's do this for Mike. And his lovely announcement tonight that he has gotten, he's gotten word that some FPGAs have come in. That's the big deal. Allegedly, I know it sounds big deal. Got a WeChat message at the beginning that some FPGA showed up for the factory. So now the next step is to have them make another set of boards and then sign off saying, hey, this actually works. You know, I still, the cynic in me says they're still fake, but I don't know. We'll see. Or rebadge like, you know. Oh, but they, that's the new markings on it. It's like they'll sell you a lower speed grade as a higher one by remarking the chip. I don't know. I don't think so. I think probably the chances are low, but I tend to be cynical about these things. Has anything like that ever happened to you, Mike? Where you've done, like what's the, what was, what was like the worst so far maybe where like there's a production error and it just like all gets sent to you or you got a part that wasn't, do you have anything specifically maybe? Yeah. My company, we had, we had, and this is, I don't even know how this happened because it's like on a $1 part. So fake it is just not even worth it, but we got fake off amps.  I don't know why someone would sell you fake off amps for on a $1 part. We ended up having to spend like two weeks reworking them at our office.  Wow. There are a, there are a number of questions that have popped up, Mike. And audience, please, you've got, you've got the Mike Chi sitting here. Like ask him all the questions. Yeah, let's take this second. Like, we'll stop. I'll stop. I'll start jabbering. Well, if you want to put some questions now. No, I got one right here. It says, it says, Mike, you've previously mentioned the Tink processes internally as YPBPR. Is it better to have the console send RGB and let the Tink convert or have the console convert? Oh, definitely have it. If the console can natively output YPBPR, like the PS2, just send YPBPR video chip on the Tink 5X. This is designed to handle that natively. Yeah, that's a PS2 question. If you only outputs RGB, then you just just output RGB. Right, you got no choice. The HD retrovision and cables are pretty good. So you could use that for RGB native consoles, but you don't have to. I will say though, I think my experience in YPBPR space is like punching yourself in the nuts. I never ever want to do that again. I am so happy to be out of there.  I mean, did you have any drugs on it? Let's be honest. How could you not have one on there? Would you ever really not put on there? Well, because Mike, listen, Mike is anti-SCART. Okay, we all know this. Well documented. I'm not going to disagree. I don't like SCART myself either.  Good. I don't have a pro. I actually think SCART is a brilliant idea. I mean, it's like, it's like HDMI, right? You got one connector. You got video sound. There's like no screw-ups. There's two problems. First of all, people abuse the standard. So they end up with sending five volts or some 10 volts or 69 volts down the sync line and a blowing up. 69 volts for no good reason. And then it's like, and then people kept doing it. That's what I always say. Why would you do that?  Yeah, the other thing that really bothers me is that the quality of the connectors you get today just aren't that good because they're made in some shitty Chinese factory. For all you know, they're not made anymore. It's like just old stock. But they really, the quality is not good. Like they're loose, right? And I would say the lifestyle, I actually spent a lot of time talking Chinese vendors. They claim a 10,000 cycle lifetime. I'm like, you guys are lying. There's no way you're going to cycle that shitty S-scart cycle 10,000 times.  That is what it is. But then, you know, people complain, right? They're like, okay, for a $300 device, I expect that you have a rubbish S-scart for it. Like, dude, it's the same S-scart for it, whether that's a $30 device or a $3,000 device. You're not going to set up a new S-scart connector factory. That's, you know, that's you're talking about. Which I did. I actually spent a lot of time saying, hey, can you make me a higher quality S-scart? I said $100,000 a year, which is way more than all I need. I just said that to get to see if there's an interest zip. They don't want to take it, right? So you're not going to set up a new S-scart factory to get a higher start. But people blame you for the shitty connector, which is the only option you have in the market.   The only, you know what? It's weird. I found, I don't know if maybe somebody in the chat has seen this too, but like, you know, if I say, what is it, Bahar Brothers out of Turkey, they make the ToroBox and they make the Akuma, they make all these Dreamcast and Xbox connectors and shit. If you go on their website, they just have a standard mail-to-mail S-scart table. And it's based on the Sony design. I don't know if it's the Sony OEM S-scart mail-to-mail, but fuck, that is a good cable. Like it just, it locks in, it doesn't jiggle that much. It's a good quality cord. It's really shielded. I don't see any noise on it. I don't know if anybody else has gotten those, but I've been buying those. I think they sell them for like, I don't know, maybe 30 bucks, but they're just good. They're just the Sony mail-to-mail S-scart cables. I don't know if anybody's ever bought those before, but, but yeah, S-scart, S-scart does suck. I mean, I'm glad, Mike, that you put it on the 4K, but, and you know what, you've got, what is it, KaiTor Labs is putting together the, basically the screw mechanism for the S-scart. Yeah, I put the screw holes on the S-scart. So it was like, you know, what can we do to actually try to make this better instead of just complaining?  That way you can at least screw the connector in. I think it's cool. That secures VGA, yeah. And, you know, I'm hoping that, at least my recommendation would be if you use S-scart, if you really want to cycle a lot, you should just put like a mail-to-female dongle, or a VGA to S-scart female. That way you're, you're putting the stress on the dongle versus the connector on the device itself. Or even just, or even just like, I've got a simple one that is like a push button. You get like a $5 S-scart push button to switch where you put a, it's like, it's completely mechanical. And you could put two S-scarts in there and you have an input. The problem with S-scart is again, moving it in and out, in and out. It's such a fat, heavy thing. I mean, I can't tell you how many times the S-scart cables, I've had to open them back up and re-solder them. I'm thankful I don't have to re-solder. But, but I'm a kind of person, I go through 10,000 cycles on a cable because I just plug it into a new monitor. Yeah, right. I mean, I think S-scart was designed for European households that plugged into VCR or some device, set the top box device once and they never touched it. It's not meant to be a game that's plugged in all the time. You don't unplug it and plug a new thing in and keep swapping the cable. That's not probably what they did. You know, one thing, we're talking about connections on the 4K. I just bought, Mike, a Toslink splitter and I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to try out the Toslink input, man. I want to, I want to get the X-box because I got the OEM X-box connector with the Toslink connection. And I, you know, obviously you got a PS2, speaking of PS2 a lot. Toslink native right on the back. I want to try, have you had a chance to play with that at all at your house? Me, I've only tested the Toslink from the PlayStation 2. It sounds great. But, you know, I'm kind of sad to say, it's sad to say I mostly game on the monitors built, the speakers built into my computer monitor. I'm like audio like challenge here. Well, you know what though, but that's all of us. Like, like, I think of all of retro gaming YouTube, the only person that gives two craps about audio is, is Game Sack, is Joe. Joe's the only one that really, you know, and Bob has started to put out a couple things with surround sound pro logic and he did a cool video on that. But I don't know, I just, I just saw the 4K and I'm like, I got to do some of that optical connection. Like that looks cool. Like why not? Let's try it out. Because most monitor, or most AV receivers, you know, they got the simulated surround sound. They could take any stereo input and just, you know, effectively emulate what a surround sound environment would be.  You know, what sounds better?  How much of an advantage do you get? I wish I had a microphone that could capture that so I could like put it out in a video. I don't know if there's a microphone. I'm sure there's a microphone out there that does it, but it's probably really expensive. But I just think it's cool that you put it in there. I don't know why you did. I didn't know if there was a demand for it. But I'm just like, ooh, something new to play with. Why not? You know, I think there's basically two systems that might be worth it. You can get surround sound out of like a PS2 or an Xbox. That's it. Well, the Gamecube does prologic natively out of just the stereo connection. So you can get prologic that way. But yeah, but for the hardcore Gamecube users, you're probably using something like a Carby with HDMI anyways. Yeah. So you don't need the toss link. But yeah. Oh yeah. There's that there's that SNES mod that I think Firebrand was involved in, that outputs digital audio. That that actually I'm most interested in that. God, I forgot about that. There's like there's like six Famicom games that support it. It's it's crazy. Six Super Famicom games or something. It's very small number of Super Famicom games that support it. But that's awesome. Like that Sony. I was talking about different things. So I made it a digital digital audio out mod for the Super Nintendo. Oh, OK, OK. Yeah, it's on Firebrand's website. That that to me is that's pretty slick. Yeah, because there's not too many other consoles that take advantage of it. You know, yeah, it's really that PS2 Xbox generation. And then next step up, you got HDMI. And that's pretty easy from there on out. But look at all these people. PS2 only does 5.1 surround for DVD playback and certain cutscenes in games. Well, that's a waste of time. Yeah, like speaking of this, like speaking of this, like audio stuff, I was blown away, like watching the I mean, not to change something completely, but the like laser disc breakouts for the audio stuff too. That Smokemonster and Joe from Game Sack were showing off.  Like from the 90s, early 90s, that are breakouts, giving them digital audio out of the ARC. Out of the RF and things and out of the laser disc player. And I'm just like, man, now now you've got me hunting for new junk. Here we go. New junk. Always a rabbit. It's like you got me on the this silly box to stick under a PVM that's eight inches. Oh, the RF connector, the RF. Oh my God. That's what these are. That's what these are. But these are like for really old ones. Yeah, there you go. Do they do that? Does that have the battery slot? Does that have the battery?  I've actually never gotten those to work.  What is this? Nully says Xbox OG has some amazing surround experiences, especially Halo. Halo is Halo Halo 2 is really the games I'm thinking about when I when I talk about that. It's because it just sounds amazing. Always has. Can the surround come in over ECW or only the optical? I don't know what ECW means. It's like an extra chip wrestling ECW. Tables, ladders, chairs, tables, ladders, chairs. ECW, ECW. Hello, I am Joey Stiles with you tonight and we are about to see the green vagina take on the blue meeting in all hands out dildo fight here live in Catskin, New York. I'm real, real people. This is pay-per-view and later on we'll have Rob Van Dam smoke 20 ounces of weed live here tonight, folks. Oh, on television. Mike, you totally regret this, this whole thing. Like, you should have never done this. I'm just trying to get some power into this phone because it's giving me like the 10 percent shot. Mike's going to run out of time. No, no, listen, listen, once Steve and I start getting into once Steve and I start talking about pro wrestling, it's over like that. It just it needs to stop. Oh, it's fun. Dave, did you get excited? I did. Did you hear about what my next video is? Oh, no. What is it now? My next my next video. Well, my next on trial is WWF on 32 X. So that's your wheelhouse, brother. Man, we're talking. We're talking mid 90s. WWF like we're talking Bret Hart. We're talking Undertaker, Shawn Michaels. Love it. I love it. I remember sitting down in this very basement with my grandfather and he used to tell me about fit.  He's ever seen his life. And it was he would sit here.  Scratch his belly button. Tell me about Finley and his chileli where the hardest hidden motherfuckers on the planet. Anyway, sorry. Mike has no idea what we're talking about. Mike has no idea what we're talking about. It's OK. It's not anything. It's just silly. But that's a good thing about that's the great thing is is I've built this amazing live show to just come on and have such fun. Well, hold on. I lived in Texas for a long period of time.  You did live in Texas. He might be into wrestling. I did live in Texas for a while. I grew up in Texas. But yeah, we weren't exposed to wrestling. What about? All right. So here's something I'm really intrigued in. The new Zac Efron movie, which I never thought I would just say out like that. Zac Efron. Zac Efron is playing the lead in the Von Erick story, which is Texas wrestlers. Really? That whole tornado. That whole family of wrestlers that all blew their own brains out.  And they were like top of the world. And it's like dad hit their dad was like vets big man of Texas like right back in a day. Oh my gosh.  Somebody just dropped $100 super chat.    Thank you, sir.  You better split that three ways. Okay. Mike better get $33. I better get $33. No, no, no. Here's the thing.  E.H. Taylor waiting to claim with all of us. That's it. That's it. I've already got it. It's waiting. Steve, you want to hear something? We went out to dinner tonight. Okay. I ordered an old fashion for myself and the wife. Okay. With E.H. Taylor, the E.H. Taylor small batch. The bill was $55. Two old fashions with E.H. Taylor. It's getting insane out there. Yeah. For E.H. Taylor. It's ridiculous. We were ordering coffee and it was like $10.  I'm doing that work.  You guys are ordering $10 coffees. I got off extremely lucky and cheap this year. My wife, our 16th year anniversary was on a Thursday. And that's the day that she only has these two special workout classes after work that we're like, oh, she loves them.   And so we're like, oh, let's just throw out our anniversary. So we went to just a lunch today and we went to like the fanciest restaurant in town.  As opposed to like if we went to dinner, it would have been like 350. But they had, but they had that's one of the places that has exclusive whiskies on the menu. And they had just straight Eagle Rare, right? Eagle Rare 10 year. $15 for a two ounce pour. Blant straight regular Blanton's $25 for a two ounce pour. Yes. And that's nuts. That to me is nuts. Blanton's gold. Blanton's gold. They wanted $50 a two ounce pour. What? Blanton's. That's the single barrel or gold or whatever it is. Yeah. Yeah. Here's a hot take. Blanton's overrated.  It's that's it. Because because John Wick was drinking it at the whatever showdown it's called. I've never even seen it. But I know what it's talking about. They're intercontinental. You never saw the John Wick movies? Just the first like you've seen the John Wick movies. Haven't you? I'm not actually. I've just seen the first one.  Like G? Like G. Come on now. There's four of them for pricing. I know. All right. Let me look this way. They're good. They're good, man. Yeah. John Wick movies are great. So like well.  We're having some people talk about how hard it is to get whiskey. What do you have to like? Ape it. What do you have to do to get. I have to piss. Bourbon. Tommy, do you have. Oh, okay. What do I have to do to get Bourbon or before I piss? Well, I'll yeah. You don't have to.  Here we go. Hey, here we go. Here you go. This is what you need to do. All right, guys. If you want to get good bourbon, right, you got to get and you got to go to your local liquor store. Okay. Got to find the manager. Egg it good with him. You got to get on a first name basis with that guy. Okay. When he's when he tells you stuff, he's like, hey, I just bought a barrel of this. You go, okay, I'll buy that. Okay. You may not want it, but you got to buy it. Okay.  You're a good guy.  Okay.  I want the single barrel.  And you know what? When he gets that, he's going to get two bottles. He's going to get two bottles. So who's he going to give that to? He's going to give it to just a guy who walks in and goes, hey, you're going to E.H. Taylor?  You'll buy that. You've got to get good with the manager. Okay.  My boy Roger, my boy Steve, my boy Mike, they're going to want this. I'm going to put this on the back. I'm going to put this behind. And you got to be a regular. Okay. You got to come back every Friday. Okay. You got to come back every Friday. And then he's like, Mike's here. My boy Mike, he's here. All right. Mike, he's here. Mike, I pulled something a little behind for you. Okay. You might like this. You might like this and you pull it out. And what do you know? It's E.H. Taylor single barrel.  And guess what? I'll give it to you at a state minimum price. Oh, that's what you do. Okay. You got to separate yourself from the chat. You really do. And it's investment. It's a doggy dog world out there, baby.   If you want to get the good shit, you got to work for it. You got to work for it.  You got to get, oh, the Cosmigos. Oh, you got the Cosmig. All right. I don't really like tequila, but whatever. All right. Very fine. Oh, you got the special tequila. You got the Tito's. You got the tequila. You got the Tito's. You got the Tito's with the special shot glass and the bag. Okay. All right. All right.  Okay. Fine.  He's going to remember you. He's going to remember you. That's how you work it. That's how you work it. That's my piece of advice. I'm going to go piss. I'm going to go piss. Mike. I'm going to go piss. Mike, you are right there. Your advice is to just take some donations, right? Just try the most I've drank and it's quite some time. Well, let's let Mike relax here. And so the funny thing is, is where I live is completely the opposite of what Mr. Esquire just told you. Because there's no favoritism where I live. It's state run. It's government. It's literally how the government runs my liquor stores in my state. And they don't. I don't know what they do if there's any favoritism, but they don't do like that. What they do is you have to get on to a list, Mike. And this is how crazy it is.  They were like, all right. You can sign up on our government website and you put in your cell phone number and we will send you a text anytime we distribute allocated whiskey or bourbon to a store.  And you have no idea what you're getting. You just get a text and it says your store has new bourbon. And now, and like the last time that happened, I was in there 15 minutes after the text, my store, and there was already a line of 15 people and I missed. I missed a couple bottles. I had to get like a mixtures sour mash. And that was the only thing was left. It was like that or Eagle Rare. And I've again, I've got a bunch of Eagle Rare here. I've already got.    I've got single barrel. I've got single barrel. Blanz bottles up there.  I don't ever buy it. And it's literally every time there's a drop, it's Blanz and Eagle Rare. Most of the time you can't order anything online, right? No, like not that's off this list. I can go in there and if it's not on that list, that 2000 list, I could order it and they'll get it in store. But everything good is on that list. And so they actually did something really cool where they didn't do any drops for a month.  I had to have my car. I had to have my grandma key. So I get down to the liquor store at 10 a.m. But anyway, they saved all the bottles from a month of distribution and they put bottles at every store on the last Saturday. And they said, if you want to come, you can get one bottle or something.   Like that's how much that was the only bottle I couldn't get. The old Fitz sold before I got there. I got there 20 minutes before the store opened and I was about 20th in line.  But if you look it up, it's a $500 bottle.  Like I could go sell it to a whiskey whore for $500, which there's a lot of old businessmen.  Like we're all collecting games.  Like this is one.  Some states this will go for 300. It's just. Oh, you're going to sell it. How far is it for you to get? Wait a minute. Is that gentleman Jack? What is that? No, this is beyond gentleman Jack. This is Jack Daniels. Okay. Single barrel, barrel, proof. Rye. Rye. Well, what do we determine? The rye is more expensive than the regular. But I can get the regular too. The rise for. This is this. Rise for pussies. This costs me $70. I put $70 on this. That's the highest. Well, not the highest. I just said I put $150 on them. That's a problem. All right. Hold on. All right. Hold on.  We have people asking Mike Chi a lot of really good questions. Yeah, let's go back to the questions. Let's go back to the questions. Okay. In the retro tank 4k, will there be all the dev slash signal info details you show in the tweets? I don't know what that means. So I think there's the fellows referring to all the debug screens. And yep, they're all be there. So I think there's debug screens that just shows messages that the system is outputting. And then there's these screens that analyze the signal. Got actually pretty detailed signal analyzers. But for both component video, RGB, YPBR as well as the HDMI. And that's all going to be there. I'm a, hold on. I got to find the remote.  Hold on. I looked up and I thought Roger just like passed out live. Yeah. Well, you know, I'm trying to find my 4k remote.  But I can't. All right. While he's looking, it's fine. I can't find it. Look, I've got some good things here. I could talk with Mike about, can you tell me a little bit about the inspiration of the actual design of the product? Is there is? Was there anything? Or was it like, I'm gonna find the remote. Let him go live for the remote. But like, I know you had, I mean, I really liked the physical design of the 5k, 5x. Why am I saying 5k? Because I've had too much whiskey. But when you went up to the 4k, I noticed like on the print files and everything, you did the little like different color insert on there. And it looks like you're trying. I mean, what's your ideas for like the architecture out aesthetics kind of of the idea of the device? I'm afraid the answer is going to be really lame. I got it. The industrial designer that would use it work to do this. My only instructions were I suck at this.  That was it. No, but you know what though? Mike had a huge heart on for that sliding door. I think that's cool. For the composite nest video. I think it's cool too. Yeah, I really wanted to copy the Sony idea with the, the Sony one drops down, right? But this one slides. That's better. That's not going to break off. The Sony ones break off.   So you do have some thought to the design. But it literally has a good.  It has a great design to it. Oh, thank you.  No, Mike, Mike, there, there was like, I don't know. The one you sent me, Mike, there was like, I don't know, maybe two dozen designs. And, and the one, I knew it. Mike's favorites were the ones that had the sliding door for the compositeness video on the front. So what about, what about that? Like, what, what can you say about composite video? Like, what's, what's the, what's the biggest challenges when you're, when you're making a product that's trying to, I think that's got to be the wildest thing to me, Mike, going from composite video up to a modern 4k display. Can you, can you explain that a little bit? Yeah.  I mean, it is what it is, right? I think, you know, I think the key is you really have to paper it over with some heavy scan line effects and some blurring. The problem that a lot of just plugging into these, these AV to HD might be actually, they're actually not bad. They have a 3D comb and they can do inverse tell sign that for $10, quite a lot of power, but they try to do a lot of artificial sharpening, which destroys, just doesn't work on games. I think the key is really, you just have to dial all that artificial sharpening back down and then layer it on the CRT emulation. Then you finally get something that, you know, you can actually work with. Well, I wonder about that because there's so many comb filters and things that come from devices right on their own. That's like, everything's like, oh, congratulations. You got this composite outputting device and it comes with this amazing comb filter feature. And I mean, all that's got to be dealt with, right? Yeah, I mean, you've got, I mean, Smoke and I were talking about this, not that long ago, just a day or two ago about comb filters built in these old laser desk players. And he's like, well, what should I do? Should I get one with a comb filter and output S video from the laser desk or just output composite? I'm like, if I just output composite and let the, you let the, let the one, you're not going to get any notice. You're not going to get any actual benefit from S video really. I mean, it's, it's, it's not on a lot of these old machines. That's really bad. I wouldn't say the comb filter and the Ting 4K is like super amazing for a video because it's not a 3D comb, but it, I've tested a bunch of chips and this is the one that works the best for 240p off spec weird video game stuff. So, you know, in that respect, you're probably just better off in most cases, just plugging it directly into composite rather than trying to let an external comb filter do it.  And there's like, at the other day, it's 480i. There's no, it's no difference. It's not, you're right. And this is a big thing. Like even in, even it's been a thing in PVMs and BVMs for a while where people go buy that certain light probe, thinking that it's going to solve all the problems because it's a certain light probe. But it's, but it's your, but you're not, if you go buy the original 30 year old light probe, it has to be calibrated. I had a big conversation with Pat, save on Pat. He's like, yeah, if you don't calibrate that light probe, it's just going to make everything look bad. Oh, definitely. You have to calibrate the light probe. It's a classic problem. Can you trust your tools? Yeah. Right. All right. All right. I've got a question for, I've got a question for Mike G. Okay. So here we go. Retro tank hand remote. I got, yeah, I got the whiteout remote. What remote does Mike have? What's that red thing you had in your hand? I was joking. Oh, this is the DigiQ ruler. Oh, I need to get that.  I don't know what the deal is. They were giving these out for free for the longest time. Every time you order something, you get one. And I have like a huge collection of these. Oh, well, you're going to have to keep one of those when I stay on your couch. All right. Before, all right. Bed buds. Let's, all right. So Mike, what is the difference?  All right. So what is the difference from me just selecting auto phase on the Retro Tank 4K versus selecting an optimal profile that someone like Firebrand X has programmed? Well, you got to do both. So Firebrand X and Wobbling Pixels and a few others spend a lot of time making profiles. Yeah, Wobbling Pixels too. Yeah, credit to him. So they set the sample rate correctly, but you can set the sample rate. But depending on your console, your cable, if you're going through a switch, that's going to change the phase. So the way it works is you load up, let's say, Firebrand X's SNES profile, and then the first time you load it up, you hit auto phase. It recalibrates the phase for your console because Firebrand calibrated for his, which is different. And you hit the auto game button, and that calibrates the RGB levels. So you've calibrated profiles, which has the right sampling parameters, and then you calibrate the gain and case for your system, and then you save the profile again to overwrite the old settings. Then from there on, you're good.   I know that. I can tell. I'm telling you. I don't understand. I'm telling you. And then, you know what I do? I put it up to a 10x scale. It's awesome. Let me ask you the most important question, maybe, of the night, Mike. And it's only been two hours for me to finally come up with this one. Have you hooked this? Two hours, 20 minutes. Have you? Who's hooked this? What have you hooked up this 4K and output to a CRT? Is it doing anything amazing outputting to a CRT? You mean it had cannon output to a CRT? Like, what? Yes. Like, I literally watched a guy today, Marco.  Oh, this guy, yeah, these guys. And I'm like, OK, well, what are they going to try to downscale or do whatever through the 4K? So here's one thing. So if you can set up a custom mode line, you can output 240p. It's not really well suited for downscaling. Downscaling is actually harder than upscaling. Much harder. That's what I wondered. Surprising. Well, surprising or not surprising, especially if you want to output interlaced video. It's a much tougher thing. So you can sort of kind of convince the 4K to output 240p, maybe, but it doesn't really have a proper downscaler. So the results aren't going to be super great. Now, one thing I really want to do is I want to actually, and I haven't been busy, I haven't tried to do this, but I want to take a DOS game that a PC outputs at line-doubled 400p, convert that down to 200p, and see if I can get a PVM to sync to that at 70 Hertz. So the DOS, these old PCs output at 70 Hertz, but it's still 15 kilohertz. So in theory, this tip, these guys should sync to it. And instead of getting a line-doubled VG output, you can actually get like 200p. And if that works, I would be super. I'd be soaked. Whoa, that would be cool. That's crazy. And that's one thing that I really want to try. But I think that, I think that like, I wonder, I just wonder like, once your product's out for a year, so what are the crazy people are going to be trying to do with it? And you know what, you know what, you know what everybody's going to be doing? It's going to be Mr. and Mars through the Tink 4K. It's not even, that doesn't even, it's like now we're at these points where this stuff just doesn't make sense. We're just doing things just because we can to see what happens. No, no, yeah. Yeah. Most have a 4K output natively. So I think it's going to be hard. Mars is going to have 4K output natively? Yeah, that's what they said on their marketing copy is that it has a 4K. Dude, I tell Roger this machine's going to cost $900. I'm surprised if it doesn't. No, it's $700. So I got to, I got to, I got to, these guys want me to take videos of their stuff. They like what I do with CRT, so they want me to do, you know, CRT captures of their stuff. And I'm excited about it. You know, I'm the emulation is for Quitter's guy, right?  Like, honestly, they're talking Naomi, right? They're talking all of these midway boards that you cannot do with Mr. at all. They're going to do everything. They're going to do Saturn. They're going to do N64, PS1. This is going to be the end all be all of emulation.  So the FPGA can actually, you know, process the consoles, let the 4K do the heavy lifting with scaling. Oh, that's going to be this. That's the setup, man. That's going to be the setup when this finally drops. And they've got a good team. Like they've got the Harlem Globetrotters developers on this thing. Because they're doing the same, like they're doing some goofy, like, still some like, like teaser marketing that we don't know. Oh, who cares about that shit?  Well, I know, but I'm also saying that like, I wanted, I wanted to, I mean, that's the only reason I haven't myself been like, whoo, Mars, I'm like, well, I'm such a late adopter. But for, but I'll be honest with you, $700 for that is going to be, I would, I would buy that a hundred times before I buy any new PlayStation five or Xbox, whatever the fuck. I'm not going to buy. I don't think of a mister. Well, I already have the mister. Yeah. Well, I understand that. But you get the DE 10. What? You get the RAM expansion. Did you hear me? I said I would buy it. No, I understand that. But I'm just saying, if you price out a mister with the additional RAM, the DE 10 Nano, like 600 bucks, you're at 600 bucks right there. Right.  I mean, you've got a fully encased enclosure. You've got the snack adapters with the controller input so you can use your original controllers. There's going to be adapters and things, accessories for that, I believe, also. Right. I mean, we can't. What they showed is right. They showed like some with that interchangeable place as the controllers. They took the one good thing from that one company. Who was it? Omega. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. One. There you go. Paulie Omega. Paulie Omega. Paulie Omega. Yeah, yeah. No, it's cool. I can't wait for this project, Mark. Mike, do any of the developers have a tester? Have a prototype? I don't know if they do. A-trackers do good. A lot has one. And then a few other, they're actually, they've been the one. You shouldn't be a surprise, but they've been the big, one of the biggest helps with testing our gateboards because that's kind of their bread and butter. Sure. That is. Yeah. Yeah. No, the second they put out, the second they put out that, oh, by the way, we're going to emulate killer instinct perfectly on Mars. I'm like, okay, sold. Sold because you can't do it on, you can't do it on Mr. You can't do it on a retro arch unless you have a pretty powerful PC behind it. That's awesome. Like, if they really can deliver 100% emulated, like, cycle accurate killer instinct, like, that's kind of, that's where it's at. I mean, that, all the Naomi games. I think it will be a game changer when it comes out. I think, yeah, I think, I think the analog stuff's good, but I think, you know, having a multi-platform device is going to be much more powerful. Well, it's definitely excited to see that it's kind of nuts, right, to think how there used to be a time where there really was just the Freymeister. And now we're talking about how much more has come along. And we're talking about this next level of products between Mike's and the Mars project that in 2024, I mean, what are we going to be, we're going to be talking about completely different shit that doesn't even, it isn't even out right now, right? That's going to be the new thing. It's going to be your product in the Mars, I feel like, for 2024. Oh, but what I like about most about Mars is that it's a, I mean, that's a good line. Yeah. Yeah. But what I like about it is that it's a streamlined, consolized product. And if you want it to be a retro gaming console, it's a retro gaming console. If you want it to be a JAMA interface arcade product, it's a JAMA interface arcade product.  I mean, Mr. is open sourced. It's just, you know, everybody has their different take on it. And, you know, I think Mr. has kind of run its course with the DE10 Nano. I mean, that's pretty old architecture that we're talking about. Very old, you know? I mean, it runs all the 8-bit and 16-bit stuff perfectly, but all right, we're ready to move on. I mean, it could run PS1 and now Saturn, which is really impressive, but this Mars stuff is, it's going to change everything. And if their price point is $700, $800, fine, I agree. For a $200 increase over what you're paying already for a, let's say you go over to Mr. Add-ons and you get a whole, you know, with the aluminum case and all the IO boards and everything, it's only a $200 increase and you're getting so much more for your money. These guys, they're up to something, man. I mean, it's going to change everything. It really is. I mean, you get that, add it to the RetroTank 4K. You know, you've got pretty much all of the arcade boards, all of the arcade lineup, all of the console lineup, from 1980 up to 2000 basically, all right there in one box in your living room. That's a pretty compelling argument. I can't wait to get my hands on that. That's going to be awesome. That's going to be awesome. Yeah, I'm excited to see it too because it's been, you know, we've all come to the point where the mystery isn't the new thing anymore. I mean, let's face it. Like I remember what Smoke Monster was making streams about, it was like five years ago almost. It's like about it when it was coming out and it was new. And it was, it wasn't even new then, the D10 Nano. It was just now it's the FPGA being used as the architecture for this new gaming system kind of set up. So that's not all, that's not, that's more established. And we're like, we've literally reached almost the end point here where we can't, we can't make this product do more. And so we need something else to take over them. All right. I'm surprised that Mike's the man yawning on the West Coast because it's only 233 here for me. You know, well, one thing that I'm, I don't know what happened. I'm kind of kind of frustrated is like over the past like four years my energy level just kind of went off.  Yeah, but I'm like, I just can't. I just can't do it the way I'm actually really frustrated. Listen, I asked you this question two months ago. I'll ask you this question again. Now that you're on like the eve of the 4k launch, how much closer are you to just making RetroTank full time?  Where are you at now?  I really try to just dial back my involvement at work, work, work. I think, you know, it's, I think we might have even talked about this because I think my memory is not the way it used to be. But you know, a lot of people kind of change their jobs after five years, 10 years, whatever, right? I think I got the point in my life where I really need to change.  But I mean, I've tried to kind of really dial about that, dial back my involvement as much as I can. And I think so far it's worked out. I mean, who knows, it could all just backfire on me. Well, we'll see. I'll see. But yeah, I mean, I mean.  I mean, I, I, shit, I remember the early days of the 5X and the 5X on launch day is a, is a, you know, it's not even close to what it is today, you know, it's not fair to compare that product. It's almost like it's almost like saying the mister when it came out. And then after all the course developed, it's like, wait a second, what?  Like I can't imagine two years after the 4K releases, what this thing is going to be capable of, you know? I don't know, man, this, this product, what I've seen from Smokemaster, what I've seen from so many other people in the community, like what it's capable of doing just from, from the Cinefile Upset, you know, of the community, like, you got a game changer, man. I mean, this thing is going to give you a whole lot. That's what I want you to think about, Mike, is how this is going to be a beyond just the gaming industry product. Yeah, it's way beyond retro gaming.  Lag doesn't matter to them.   And I look at it under, under the time sleuth, and it's like five frames of lag. And I'm like, oh, great, thanks. This is awesome, you know. But Yerdo, the, all this stuff. And then hopefully, maybe by the next stream, we'll be talking about your new TV. Hey, I'll come work for you and help you design the new TV. If you're ready to go to that next stage. I joke, but you know, I was saying, so if I ever make it big, I want to start up the CRG factory. There you go. We'll just do it.  Well, guys, it's over 2.30 in the morning. I don't know. Yeah, man.  I could tell by your yawn.  Yes, I'm sorry, Nellie. Nellie, great. GN, great listening. I'm sorry, Nellie. Thank you. Thank you for the super chat. Say good night. There you go. Good night. No, yeah. I'm ready for bed. And apologies to Mike for everything. Apologies to Mike. Thank you, everybody, for coming in. And I'll stay with everybody for a second. But yeah, if you guys want to jump off, thank you so much for being here tonight. Thank you, everybody. Thank you so much, Mike. Thank you. Oh, thank you. Thank you, Roger. I'll see both of you guys very soon. We all will talk soon. Yes, sir. Hey, you guys have a great night. I'm going to close you guys out. And I'll see you next time, all right? You're going to say bye. Fine. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Bye, everyone. Have a nice weekend. Thanks, guys. All right, guys, I'm still here with you for a second. Thank you so much for being here tonight. I have a real, I mean, this was a great, awesome, awesome show. What a fun show to have Mike here and to have breaking news here.  So Santa Claus will come early for everybody. Again, thank you so much. If you want to go back, go back and listen to the whole show. It's been a great time. I thank you all for coming in tonight to Retro Tech's After Dark special edition. I will see you all Monday. I have another special guest, my friend, Zez. Zez Retro will be getting together for an old, good old new live edition of the Cathedrae Podcast here tomorrow, or not tomorrow, Monday, sorry, Monday, 11 a.m. Eastern time. But you can always watch these on playback on our playlist or just subscribe to the channel at Retro Tech. And I will see you all next time with some more retro content.