WildW_UK

You guys have got different rooms!? I mean, one that isn't someone else's room or something.

I'm looking for some advice on what to buy to improve our slow and weak WIFI. I'm in the UK where the most common setup is a cheap combined modem/router provided free by the internet service provider, and ours provides a spotty and barely usable experience throughout the house. We have a couple of desktop PCs upstairs that are connected through TP-Link homeplug adapters, which mostly work but drop out for minutes at a time every now and then. We rent so we can't run any ethernet cables upstairs or through walls. I'm hoping that some more modern WIFI kit will make things better. Whatever I get - WIFI router or access point I guess - will need to handle two gaming PCs and mutliple TVs streaming stuff. I see lots of choices at lots of different price points, and I don't know how much it is worth spending. Because we have desktops with no existing WIFI I'll also need adapters for those. . . is it worthwhile to go for PCIe cards with more significant antennas, or are USB WIFI dongles up to the task?

I recently got back into playing first-person shooters (or rather I've been playing a lot of Deep Rock Galactic) and I'm wondering what the current position is on good 3D positional sound. There are some enemies in the game that move around quickly and listening to them should be the best way to know where they are - but it feels like it's not working as well as it should. Many years ago I used to play Battlefield 2 and I remember being super-impressed when I upgraded to a Creative X-FI sound card, which had some CMSS-3D special sauce that did really good 3D audio with basic 2-channel headphones. Suddenly I could hear exactly where enemies were around me, it felt like such an advantage. These days I assume that proprietary sound stuff like this is long gone, and maybe decent 3D audio is just built into Windows? A quick Google search revealed that indeed, Windows 10 contains "Windows Sonic" spatial audio, which I eagerly turned on and wondered why everything suddenly sounded like it was in a bathroom far far away. I've tried playing with it turned on, and I think I noticed some interesting positional stuff going on, but it still sounds weird and quiet. The X-FI card just sounded crystal clear and amazing when I first used it back in 2006 or so. Nobody seems to talk much about sound in games these days, I wonder if it's a solved problem or just nobody is interested. Is there anything else out there that actually delivers a better experience than motherboard audio or USB headsets?

The only video output in use on my media PC is s-video to a 25" Sony Trinitron on my desk. Watching TV on a CRT is my happy place, and it's excellent for emulators.

I would like to see a TV series set in an alternate reality in which Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace use a steam-powered analytical engine to solve crimes and unexplained phenomena, like a kind of steampunk X-Files.

God-Tier Windows XP machine for those awkward old games you just can't let go of.

I know this, and I know you're right, but. . . . I'm that guy that's waiting for the console-only version they'll never do, because as a driving adult I have no need for a portable system or to pay for the screen. And my god the games are expensive. I think I actually want a fictional XBox or Playstation that has wireless controllers, HDMI output, and a store that has digital versions of every XBox/360 or PS1/PS2 game. I would've bought a PS4 years ago if it just played PS1 games, but apparently emulators are hard.

I haven't touched modern consoles in a long time now. I was thinking it would be nice to play games more with my partner in the living room and I'm not sure what to choose, or if modern consoles are anything like I imagine. We've played older stuff (360/PS3 era) but it would be nice to move to newer things - I'm thinking couch co-op games really, more indie games than AAA titles. What are consoles like now? We have a media PC and have played some things via Steam with controllers (e.g. Portal Knights recently) but it doesn't have that nice storefront with free demos of everything XBox Live feel to it. With the new XBox coming soon it has crossed my mind to go for that - I like the idea of lots of backwards compatibility, picking up some remastered classics, being able to download random multiplayer XBox games like the XBox Live Arcade days... I heard XBox Live Arcade is gone now. . .are there still fun "small" games on the XBox or is it all big single player things now? I looked at all the XBox one console bundles and they all ship with AAA single player games - if I was interested in those I'd play them on PC. Does what I want exist on any console? If I buy one to play couch co-op randomness will I be disappointed?

I received a free one just before Christmas. It's still in the box. I considered opening it once but realised there's no audio output jack so it's basically useless.

Hi folks, I've had an LG G6 for almost 3 years now. . . honestly it's fine, but I keep noticing that I would like a better camera for stills and video. I'm not sure if what I want is realistic though. So I'm working from home and I'm trying to shoot a video in my office to demonstrate some new software feature I'm working on - I'm not trying to directly screen grab a PC, this is an embedded control system a touchscreen and external hardware inputs, so I want to shoot video of my whole setup including a screen. If I point the camera at my screen, the whole background goes dark - automatic exposure control doing its thing. If the camera catches the window then the same thing happens, the room goes dark except for the window and you can't see anything useful. My eyes don't do this, they can see a reasonable balance of everything. I would like to shoot video that looks like what my eyes are seeing. How hard is that, and what is stopping it from happening? Could this be improved with a different camera app? (The built-in one doesn't have any manual controls for exposure). Is the camera itself capable? Is ANY (phone) camera capable? Am I trying to do something simple or impossible?

As an old person (40+) I would have loved to find out if this fancy upscaling does anything good on the made-for-480p content I spend most of my time watching.

That's a complex subject that you would be better asking Google and finding a proper guide, but the basics are that you'd need an older SD card (pre SDHC, less than 4GB) to transfer over an exploit file that you can open on the Wii. When opened that file will let you install a modified set of Wii operating software that will run homebrew software, including loaders that will run both Gamecube and Wii games from USB drives (memory sticks or hard disks I believe) and emulators for older consoles.

Relevant xkcd

There needs to be a secret pass-phrase you can use on tech-support calls to identify yourself as tech-savvy so you can skip all the stupid steps you've already tried. Or someone needs to tell me what it is if it already exists.

It is possible to softmod it and run games from USB however . . .