It has come to our attention that composite video out is broken on the 4.5 image due to a firmware bug.

We updated the firmware/kernel to one from Raspbian Buster as the latest Raspbian Stretch kernel had an issue breaking Sony Bluetooth devices. However it seems that the more recent firmware has stopped composite output from working.

This is the upstream issue. It has been fixed, but it isn’t yet available as a Raspbian update. https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware/issues/1166.

If you have already installed 4.5 – you can fix this by downgrading the Kernel. You can do this via SSH if you have no display output. You can enable SSH by making a file called ssh in the /boot folder using another system. See https://retropie.org.uk/docs/SSH/#enable-ssh.

Once you have access to the command line you can manually downgrade the Kernel with the following command (after running this reboot, and you should be on the older firmware and kernel).

sudo ~/RetroPie-Setup/retropie_packages.sh raspbiantools install_firmware 1.20190401-1

This older version also works with Sony Bluetooth devices. RetroPie-Setup will only try and update the kernel again if you choose to update system packages.

Sorry for the inconvenience. We will update to a newer kernel as soon as one is available.