skywake

Except the Vita had a SD screen and PS4 remote play was, by its very nature, a compressed video steam. Switch games will look better than both Vita games and PS4 remote play. Easily. It also helps that you won't need to have good network connectivity to play games on the Switch in portable mode.
 
Oh, and a Switch may be expensive but it is quite a bit cheaper than a ps4 AND Vita. Not really much use comparing the two. Apples v oranges.

To be fair that happens across the board, how many PC ports have been garbage? It depends on who is doing it and how many resources they get. And that depends on how much money they expect to get in return. With the Wii U it was a vicious cycle of low install base, low profits, less investment, less interest from consumers. If the Switch gets off to a good start then hopefully it doesn't fall into that cycle. Poor ports will always happen but if it's a profitable system publishers are going to more frequently spend the extra money for better ports.

To be fair that happens across the board, how many PC ports have been garbage? It depends on who is doing it and how many resources they get. And that depends on how much money they expect to get in return. With the Wii U it was a vicious cycle of low install base, low profits, less investment, less interest from consumers. If the Switch gets off to a good start then hopefully it doesn't fall into that cycle. Poor ports will always happen but if it's a profitable system publishers are going to more frequently spend the extra money for better ports.

Wow, I didn't notice that. I guess that explains the difference in cost then. I remember back when Labor first started pushing the idea of FTTH this was one of the ways its opponents used to argue against it. There was one article in the Australian which argued that in order to use FTTH households would have to spend $5000 in order to "fully take advantage" of FTTH. They never said what that $5000 would buy and I still can't work out how they ended up with that number but still. Any way to expand the cost.
 
Of course that sort of misleading information ignores the fact that you need network gear to take advantage of any fast connection. Regardless of what technology is used to deliver it to your house. And getting a professional to install Ethernet to every room in your house and get some decent APs? Yes that'll cost you ~$1000. But you don't *need* it. Including that in the cost is like including the cost of extra power points in the per-house cost of one network upgrade but not another.

Definitely. For the average end user there wouldn't be any difference in cost on their side. At the end of the day what they get is a new modem which either is or isn't part of the install. From there it's all their own gear and it's the same gear regardless of what tech is used. The cost difference between technologies is entirely on the other end. To the end user all that happens is that after the stuff was done at the other end they move an Ethernet cable and change some router settings. That'd be it.

At the absolute most maybe they work out that they can't get the speeds they want on their old gear. At which point they could upgrade their gear to get those speeds. But really, for the average end user? You can get a combo unit with Gigabit ports that should be able to get pretty close to 100Mbps on WiFi for ~$100. And most ISPs bundle that sort of router in with their plan anyways.....

the difference in cost to the end user is connecting one or both of the UNI-V ports to the existing wiring. 
 
sure there 'may' be trenching required, but in the 10+ places that I have overseen getting installed at work, not a single one required to be re-trenched, sure some of the pits needed to be cleared of mud, but the trenches where fine.
 
We didn't even spend $5000 at work to modernise each branch's network infrastructure. Just grab a ~$500 network cabinet, throw it on the wall, replace existing Ethernet runs with newer ethernet (about $1000), grab a cisco box that supports ethernet and 4g (approx $1000). and thats that, would do it cheaper if NBN had actually acceptable SLA's / their contractors weren't shit.

I don't understand why this is a sticking point for so many people. You don't need the dock to charge because it's USB Type C and you can get a USB Type C cable for a few dollars. You don't need it to have the Switch work on your TV because there is a dock included in the box. The only reason you'd want extra docks is so that you can easily swap between multiple TVs/monitors. Emphasis on the easy because you can still physically unplug the dock and move it even without a second dock.
 
Is it overpriced? Definitely, 100%. It should be at least 30% cheaper if not half the price. But it's not a necessary thing. An extra dock is a convenience ontop of a convenience that you didn't even know you wanted a few months ago. The fact that we're even talking about being able to unplug a console from one TV and move it to another mid-game is crazy in itself. The closest thing you can get to that on other systems is in-home streaming. I just think its odd that people will complain about the asking price for this non-mandatory option for a fairly niche scenario which isn't really available on other platforms....
 
If it's too expensive? Here's a novel idea. Live with the idea of the Switch being a console that you set up on one display. You know, like you have done with every console or PC you ever had before it. Live with the idea that if you want to play games on another TV you'll have to unplug HDMI + Power.

You're complaining that out of the box you only get:
- A portable console
- A dock for that portable console to connect to your TV
- Two controller halves that can be used for single player or 2 player for some games
- A bit of plastic that turns those controller halves into a standard controller
- HDMI/Power cables
 
While in every other console package you get:
- A home console that you can connect to your TV
- A single controller for one player
- HDMI/Power cables
 
"The Switch is expensive when you factor in the cost of extra Joycons and docks". Well sure. But the PS4 gets expensive when you factor in the cost of extra controllers, a Vita for portable play and a second PS4 for your other TV. So it's not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison.

I don't understand why this is a sticking point for so many people. You don't need the dock to charge because it's USB Type C and you can get a USB Type C cable for a few dollars. You don't need it to have the Switch work on your TV because there is a dock included in the box. The only reason you'd want extra docks is so that you can easily swap between multiple TVs/monitors. Emphasis on the easy because you can still physically unplug the dock and move it even without a second dock.
 
Is it overpriced? Definitely, 100%. It should be at least 30% cheaper if not half the price. But it's not a necessary thing. An extra dock is a convenience ontop of a convenience that you didn't even know you wanted a few months ago. The fact that we're even talking about being able to unplug a console from one TV and move it to another mid-game is crazy in itself. The closest thing you can get to that on other systems is in-home streaming. I just think its odd that people will complain about the asking price for this non-mandatory option for a fairly niche scenario which isn't really available on other platforms....
 
If it's too expensive? Here's a novel idea. Live with the idea of the Switch being a console that you set up on one display. You know, like you have done with every console or PC you ever had before it. Live with the idea that if you want to play games on another TV you'll have to unplug HDMI + Power.

Don't blame LTT.... or youtube....
 
it's also why they have separate channels for different kinds of content....

To answer your specific question? If you plugged the Switch into the USB Type C port on your PC all it's going to do is charge. That has nothing to with the Switch itself and everything to do with the port on your computer. So if you want to do it that way you're going to need a capture card.
 
But that's not what you necessarily want. What you're asking for is a way to put the video output of the Switch to your monitor while having the sound go somewhere else. And that's a different question entirely. Because there's a fairly high chance that if you plug a set of headphones into the headphone port on the Switch it'll send audio over that rather than HDMI. It also has bluetooth so, in theory, it could support bluetooth audio devices. But we won't know for sure until it's actually in people's hands to test it out.

An access point will always be better for a simple reason. With an access point what you ideally want is them to be arranged so that the coverage looks like this:
 

 
The range of one AP overlaps with the other APs just a little bit. They're also fairly well seperated from each other so if you have more than 3 on 2.4G you can run them without channels overlapping. It's done like this because being wired you can place them wherever you want. But with a mesh/range extender that arrangement won't work, the other APs are going to be out of range. So what you want is something more like this:

 
By moving all the nodes within range of each other you lose coverage. Because they need to be in range for it to work you'll always get better coverage with wired APs vs a mesh setup. Combine that with the fact that a wired AP is using Ethernet as a backhaul rather than WiFi? There's absolutely no reason to pick a mesh setup over multiple separate APs set up correctly. Unless you want it to be simple and don't want to run cables.

Please know that if anyone starts a fight this thread will be nuked from orbit.
 
You have been warned. 

As an Atheist the only thing I'll say in this thread is that religious arguments always go the same way. There are always fanatics and those are the people who are more likely to be attracted to discussions. The most vocal people tend to also be the newest at it because for them it's still new. And that's the impression people will always get. Extremely vocal fanatics who haven't really worked out the finer points of their beliefs yet. When you want to not like a group you will cherry pick the worst bits. 
 
Combine that with a belief amongst some religious folk that god has a monopoly on beauty? You've got quite an image. It just happens to be a load of BS. Just like pretty much any other stereotype. And that's where these sorts of threads almost always derail. Instead of listening to each other a lot of people would rather argue against the stereotypes. Because it makes you feel better about yourself if you can think the people who disagree with you are loons.

@fulminemizzega
To be fair they were comparing two products to each other. So it doesn't matter how fast it is so much as how fast it is compared to the other one. It would have been nice if they included a control group in there. For example a single router placed in the middle and the multi-AP config they already have setup. But I think it's fair to say that it's much easier to complain than it is to produce content.
 
As for the specs? You can google it and find that stuff out if you want. I just don't think that the target market for these devices really cares. It should have definitely been mentioned though because that is the key difference between the two. Google WiFi uses an AC1900 chip and will pick which band to use for backhaul automatically. The Netgear Orbi on the other hand uses an AC1200 chip but has a second, separate, AC2600 chip specifically for backhaul.
 
To compare it to the Ubiquiti product line Google WiFi is like an AC Pro that's isolated from the network and running as a repeater. The Netgear Orbi is like an AC Lite that's connected via Ethernet. Very different systems despite the similar branding. As devices built to target the "I just want good WiFi easily"? I understand why they're advertised as if they're doing the same thing. But a tech channel should be covering it better....

It really isn't. I'm all for 10Gbps to become cheaper but lets not kid ourselves. Most end users don't have any network storage and aren't transferring files across the network. And at this stage even the ones that do are copying those files between HDDs. And therefore well under 1Gbps. The biggest files they have are probably BluRay rips which are probably 1080p and aren't going to stream at over 100Mbps let alone 1Gbps.
 
And that person with the NAS and BluRay rips isn't even the average consumer. That person is ahead of the bell curve. The average consumer is more likely streaming videos over WiFi from the internet. They're the sort of people who might stumble across this video and wonder what the point is if it doesn't make the internets or WiFi faster. They probably think that their "1900AC" router actually gives them 1.9Gbps (it doesn't) and makes their 30Mbps internet faster (it doesn't).
 
Again, I'm excited to see 10Gbps networking slowly become a more mainstream product. When it drops bellow a certain price and I have more than one device that can take advantage of it? I'll be jumping on board. Whether I have an actual need for it or not. But if it was as cheap as 1Gbps is already? You'd have consumers buying them, plugging 100Mbps devices into every port and claiming they notice the difference in speed......

The thing that made the DS/3DS great wasn't that it had worse visuals than the PSP/Vita. It was that Nintendo's content makes sense on portable systems. Nintendo makes visually simple games with cartoon-like graphics which are easier to appreciate on a smaller screen. They make games that don't have a lot of narrative structure which makes them easy to pick up and play for small periods of time. They prioritise high frame-rates and small load times which works well on a portable. Lastly they make power efficient systems which gives you more battery life.... relatively speaking...
 
And when I look at the list of the Wii U's best selling games I see a lot of games that have worked well on the 3DS. Or could have worked well. Mario Kart, Smash Bros, New SMB, Splatoon, Mario Maker and so on. I want to play those games away from my TV. When I look at the PS4's best sellers I want to play them all on my TV. GTA, Fallout and the Last of Us? Those games would not translate to a portable system well. Well GTA would but the others not so much.

To start I know some people will laugh at the idea of cartridges coming back at all. It has been so long since they were the medium of choice that people automatically assume that cartridges are outdated. But people forget that cartridges only ever had one major disadvantage over disks. Capacity. But over the years that advantage has been shrinking. Here's a plot showing every console and its game media size of Cartridges vs Disks. Note the magnitude of the gap when that transition happened in the late 90s compared to where we are today.

 
Simultaneously everything else is moving against disks and towards cartridges. People are increasingly less likely to care about disks for movies than they did 10+ years ago because of services like Netflix. People are more likely to care about read speeds given the way that console games now demand that you install the game to a HDD first to improve load times. And I'm not sure whether or not Nintendo are jumping the gun with the Switch but what they are doing is part of a trend. Hardware is becoming more and more power efficient and, as we see with ultrabooks and desktop PC cases, that optical drive takes up a lot of space. It's a noisy, power hungry, mechanical component in an increasingly solid state and power efficient world of tech.
 
So will cartridges be a thing again? Or are we going to be digital only before that has a chance to happen.

What did you expect? Specs matching the PS4 in a portable device, with a 10 hour battery life and 250GB of flash for $199? I mean lets be real. They're going to charge you something like $200US for the dock and Joycons alone if you get them separately. I don't see how any of this is a surprise. Frankly I am a little bit underwhelmed with the package. But I expected basically exactly what it ended up being but for $250US. But did you see the Zelda trailer? Who gives a crap what the RRP is!

What did you expect? Specs matching the PS4 in a portable device, with a 10 hour battery life and 250GB of flash for $199? I mean lets be real. They're going to charge you something like $200US for the dock and Joycons alone if you get them separately. I don't see how any of this is a surprise. Frankly I am a little bit underwhelmed with the package. But I expected basically exactly what it ended up being but for $250US. But did you see the Zelda trailer? Who gives a crap what the RRP is!

All this talk of downloading game data to a HDD to reduce load times. You know all I can think of? Cartridges. Now I know some people will dismiss cartridges immediately as some kind of relic of the past but hear me out. Cartridges have always been better than optical media in every way except for one. Capacity.
 
Guess what though, optical media hasn't been advancing as fast as flash. If you plot the size of games on cartridges over the years we should be at the point where 32GB cartridges should now be possible without being an unprofitable distribution method. If that rate continues then we're only a couple of years away from games on cartridges being bigger than the standard dual-layer BluRay. About 5 years from cartridges being bigger than BDXL. 
 
Aside from Nintendo? Nobody is jumping back to cartridges. I think that digital distribution will take over before we get to that point. The Switch can do it because it's pushing a lower visual spec so 16-32GB of storage is fine. They're also jumping into it now rather than 3 years ago. But the PS5? If it ever exists and if physical distribution is still around then? We might see cartridges return. Along with the death of the stupidly long game installs.

The Switch is the Nintendo Switch, I put it in a different colour because that capacity is the only one on the list that's not confirmed. It's a cartridge but the current rumour simply says that the standard cartridge size is 16GB. I'm not sure whether that means that cartridges can be 16GB but no games will use it. On the other hand it might just mean that the launch games are using 16GB cartridges and larger capacities will come out later. 
 
As for the other points there's no reason why cartridges can't also do those things. I mean they're not going to support BluRays but ultimately they are doing the same thing. Both mediums are just packages that hold data. So once the capacity catches up there's no reason why cartridges can't also do those things. And if in 10 years we still want physical copies of movies? Maybe those will also be on cartridges.

Worst option: Buying a new router. It won't make things worse but if your issue is coverage it probably won't make it better either
Not Much Better: WiFi Range extenders. Will they extend range? Well sure. But they'll also halve your bandwidth or worse....
Possibly ok: Mesh WiFi system. Some of these are just glorified range extenders but some have a dedicated radio for backhaul. A bit pricey but
Not Bad: Powerline + WiFi combo units. These use powerline for backhaul which adds another variable. But potentially greater speeds is the result
Best: Run Ethernet to where you want good WiFi and add access points. The only limitation here is the WiFi spec itself

Fair point, I was just trying to quantify it rather than just saying one was better than the other. For this problem MoCA + WiFi is probably the most suitable option. But for the lurkers that's not necessarily their best option. Which option is the best will vary depending on what gear/cabling is already done, what the speed requirements are and what the budget is. 

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