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The Gadgetry Thread


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1 hour ago, Craig H said:

I use the Chromecast or PS5 when it's just me watching TV because I understand the hoops to jump through to make that work. 

The other two just want convenience and just want it to work.

Oh, my one big complaint for my TCL is that the remote sucks. I'm used to my other Roku remotes that work off of wifi and the TV remote we have works off of RF. You have to aim the remote above the soundbar and it's really squishy. 

That's why the Roku remote app rules.

You can even use your headphones/earbuds of choice if you don't have a jack in your physical remote.

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On 12/31/2020 at 3:46 PM, Control said:

Do they even make non-Smart TVs anymore? I literally could not find one.

They're tough to find, yeah. Your best bet may be to buy a smart TV and just not give it access to the internet.

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Got the TV yesterday and everything has been great (well, except having to buy a new stand), except streaming The Expanse, which I’m doing right now. Image is choppy whether or not I use motion smoothing. Not sure what the fix is. 
 

EDIT: *might* have fixed it. 

Edited by Control
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My Samsung Tab Pro 12.2 Android tablet that I got in December 2014 (used!) has started to crawl the last few months, so I decided to get a new tablet.  I'm 100% an Android guy so no iPads.  The market for Android tablets outside of the low end is extremely small.  And large tablets?  There aren't any except Samsung.  So I started looking at a Chromebook but saw a clearance deal at Walmart for the Tab S6 - $154 for a tablet whose list price is still $629.  Had some reservations about the size (10.5" coming down from my 12.2") but decided to give a shot and bought one.  Wanted to buy two so I could sell one but they only had the one.  Anyway, started using it and it's super fast and the screen looks great.  But........the screen is tiny.  Something I hadn't considered is that, besides having a 12.2" screen, my old tablet has physical buttons for home/back - remember those?  The new one has a virtual set, which take up even more of the already smaller screen area.  Gave it the old college try for about 10 days before I decided the screen is too small and looked into getting the tab S7+ with its 12.4" screen.  Samsung has a trade-in program and my $154 S6 was worth $500 in trade-in towards an S7+.  So I bought one of those and it just arrived today.  Haven't unboxed yet, gonna wait until I have a case for it (I never use devices without screen protection and cases in place) but am quite eager to try.  After I sell my Tab 12.2, which should get me $150-$200, I'll have paid about $380-$400 for a Tab S7+.  Not bad.  

Oh yeah, the S7+ also comes with a free bluetooth Xbox-style game controller that's apparently really, really good.  

Edited by Tabe
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  • 6 months later...
3 minutes ago, Travis Sheldon said:

Reservations for the Steam Deck open today.

Assuming what I read yesterday is correct, it's only open to Steam users who already had an account (as of June 2021) and had made at least one purchase.  I'm not in that category, unfortunately.  

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2 hours ago, Travis Sheldon said:

Reservations for the Steam Deck open today.

Looks like a nice bit of portable PC tech, but I'm not keen on the button placement.

Handheld portable gaming is fine, but I'd likely want the dock to throw it on the big screen.

Not sure if I'm going for it or not.

Yeah, the buttons and sticks seem a little high up on the console for my liking.  

That said, it looks like a terrific value.

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1 hour ago, Tabe said:

Yeah, the buttons and sticks seem a little high up on the console for my liking.  

That said, it looks like a terrific value.

I have average sized hands and the Switch makes my hand cramp if I use it with no holder/grip.

Most of my playing on it is done through the dock while I'm using a Pro controller.

The two trackpads also look to be in a problematic position, seems like you could easily trigger them with palm of hand.

I didn't put a reservation in until a few minutes ago as I had stuff to do this morning, but I've read people had trouble getting in earlier.

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I snagged one of the 512 MB Decks, but the confirmation email estimates Q2 2022 as a delivery date.  Apparently this isn't unusual.  Lots of people seem to be getting emails estimating 2022 as delivery dates, with the higher-end models seemingly shipping after the $299 model.  I'm not too deterred, but I am having flashbacks to the Steam Machine, which had the same lengthy gap between announcement/pre-order and delivery.  Granted, Steam Machines had a lot of other issues, but it's still not encouraging.

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The chip shortage is murdering tech right now.  I'm not surprised that consoles are getting pushed back considering infrastructure devices are currently on a 7 month backlog.

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IS there anything on the market now similar to the Steam Deck or Steam machine?  Basically, I'd like to have access to Steam/Epic games libraries but with the setup and ease of access I have with my consoles.  That is, I'd like to have something I can connect to my tv, navigate menus with some sort of controller, and be playing in a couple minutes.  Not too interested in getting into "real" PC gaming and having to fuss with keyboards and mouses (mice?  I hear it both ways when talking about PC accessory) and compatibility issues, hardware upgrades, etc.

Don't really care if the unit is playable in handheld mode.  And it doesn't necessarily need to run triple AAA games.  I've got a PS5 and Xbox Series X for that.  Mostly would use it to run older games (Binary Domain, Oddworld Strangers Wrath HD) and indie games that aren't on consoles - or are on the Switch, but I'd prefer to have them on Xbox or PS.

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2 hours ago, Eoae said:

IS there anything on the market now similar to the Steam Deck or Steam machine?  Basically, I'd like to have access to Steam/Epic games libraries but with the setup and ease of access I have with my consoles.  That is, I'd like to have something I can connect to my tv, navigate menus with some sort of controller, and be playing in a couple minutes.  Not too interested in getting into "real" PC gaming and having to fuss with keyboards and mouses (mice?  I hear it both ways when talking about PC accessory) and compatibility issues, hardware upgrades, etc.

Don't really care if the unit is playable in handheld mode.  And it doesn't necessarily need to run triple AAA games.  I've got a PS5 and Xbox Series X for that.  Mostly would use it to run older games (Binary Domain, Oddworld Strangers Wrath HD) and indie games that aren't on consoles - or are on the Switch, but I'd prefer to have them on Xbox or PS.

If you're just using it at a different part of the house we've been using Steam Link's app on Android TV.  Aside from the XBox One controller being a pain to pair to bluetooth at first it's been pretty painless since then.  The app also works for stuff like tablets so you can maybe cast it to TV as well through that.

As for games the only thing we had to note were the ones that said whether it was full controller support or partial.  Full gave us no problems but sometimes with partial we had to adjust the controller mappings per game.

Edited by NikoBaltimore
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Alright, let's see who knows what this is and where I can find one:

Cesaro has a soundboard in this video on top of his bluetooth speaker. I did some searching and I can't find what this soundboard is or where I can find something similar to it. Anyone have any ideas what model this is or can they link me to something comparable. Looking to get one for a podcast my friends and I want to start doing and for streaming video games.

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3 minutes ago, odessasteps said:

You could try tweeting Claudio directly. If he sees it, he might answer. 

I don't use Twitter anymore unless I see someone else link to a tweet and then I share that. I have no interest in getting that much back into that ecosystem.

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  • 6 months later...

Can't think of a better place to put this, so...

In case you haven't, Newegg is facing a good bit of controversy:

1) Gamer's Nexus on Youtube posted a video blasting Newegg for trying to rip them off on a motherboard purchase.  GN bought an open box motherboard and then returned it without opening it.  Newegg claimed that GN had damaged the motherboard.  After investigation, GN was able to show that Newegg had submitted the board for repair themselves, then refused to pay for the repair, then sold the board to GN before falsely claiming GN had done the damage.  Newegg even left the original RMA slip on the motherboard.  GN has gathered a pile of other examples of shadiness from their viewers and is going to Newegg's offices to confront them in-person.

2) UFD Tech posted a video where they claimed Newegg tried to bribe them not make a negative video about them.  This one is a little less clear-cut as UFD Tech clearly dropped the ball on multiple occasions but the gist is this: UFD signed a sponsorship contract with Newegg but immediately ran into issues as Newegg wanted to implement a very slow approval process for shipping out products for UFD to make videos with.  He eventually made a couple videos, for which Newegg did not pay him.  They also claimed he couldn't be paid as an affiliate because he lives in Florida, several months after they signed his paperwork to make him an affiliate.  Newegg then sponsored a charity stream in which they'd give away an i9 processor to a UFD viewer.  They then failed to deliver the CPU.  And then followed it up with a bunch of lying in emails and an offer to pay him 3x what they owed him in what UFD interpreted as an attempt to bribe him to stay quiet.

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You shouldn't,  but it might depend on the jack (most PC's in the last decade should have the same 3.5mm both ways Jack that phones have).

 

Double check the sound/mic settings and make sure it's working off the same port (I've had the PC switch to the DS4 speaker/headphones port instead of work off my built in jack)

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  • 2 weeks later...

The only thing about the Steam Deck's statline that looks iffy to me is the battery life, but when you look at some of the AAA games it can supposedly run I'm not really sure there's much you can do about that with a handheld. If I actually had any reason to own a protable system I'd probably buy one myself.

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16 hours ago, Death From Above said:

The only thing about the Steam Deck's statline that looks iffy to me is the battery life, but when you look at some of the AAA games it can supposedly run I'm not really sure there's much you can do about that with a handheld. If I actually had any reason to own a protable system I'd probably buy one myself.

There's apparently issues with controller drift already but they can possibly be fixed via software.  Battery life does seem iffy but overall it looks like a quality piece of hardware.  I don't need one either but it looks cool.

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