Sir_Crocodile
Member
Guess the super-hitech wifi is why the battery life is so bad.
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Wii-U streaming tech: custom form of wifi, advertised range is conservative
- Thread starter gofreak
- Start date
It is hardware based though, since Miracast uses Wi-Fi Direct. From Wiki:
Unless it was designed to support it, it's unlikely the Vita will be able to work as a Wi-Fi Direct device. The PS3 is almost certainly not Wi-Fi Direct compatible, so it can't establish that pairing between the two.
Good point. I wonder thought if it shouldn't be possible to establish a direct connection between Vita and PS3 by some other means, it doesn't have to be Wi-Fi Direct. My guess would be (and has been for a while) that the reason it works so well is a combination of low-latency encoding/decoding, and a low-latency network software stack that gets rid of TCP/IP overheads. Both of these are software issues really (though of course both can also be improved by dedicated hardware).
blu
Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
Of course there is custom communication hw, unless you think the frame compression is done on a cpu. As re the 'custom sw' - it's a custom network layer, could be the datalink layer just as well.
A 'better software stack' is the same difference between MSDOS and WinNT. Apparently there's a significant technological difference introduced by the tech, so that the adoption of the Miracast standard requires deliberate effort from the various hw/fw vendors. We'll see how many vendors will manage to retroactively fit this tech in a-couple-of-year-old products. If Sony somehow manage to do that with the vita I'll be impressed.
If you have wired up your PS3, it can act as an access point for remote play functions. And the HDMI chipset has proven very flexible to updating, so there is potential with that perhaps.
The radio is a fairly standard 802.11n (as we'd expected), but it's likely that there are a pair of ASICs handling the compression/decompression, which would potentially be expensive given the inability of any commercial solutions to achieve the necessary latency.
KojiKnight
Member
Is it a surprise to anyone that it uses a modified wifi protocol? You didn't think Nintendo somehow licensed it's own band of frequencies just for the gamepad did you? We knew it had to be some sort of existing protocol running on an existing bandwidth available to that.
This is the point where I wish the Vita was an open platform. Would be fun to see how well you could get it to work using a PC, x264 "zero latency" mode and the Vita's built-in h264 decoding hardware.
I'm not surprised at all, but there's a difference between a frequency band and a full wireless communications protocol such as 802.11.
yes we we're saying all the time it's not bluetooth, this is nothing new, check my posts from months ago(search google too) i don't have bookmarks handy right now
the gamepad wireless tech will also use ~5ghz, great against common wlan interference
also broadcom cooperation was already mentioned before, in iwata asks, lol at polygon
moniker
Member
The speed of light is pretty fast.
KojiKnight
Member
Frequency bands are licensed by the government to companies. These companies have to fully describe what they plan on using their frequency for... The wireless protocol's are part of the 802.11 consortium. Nintendo could not use the wireless spectrum for 802.11 without using the technology without getting government approval (and of course, permission from the 802.11 consortium as well)
WiFi operates on the 2.4GHz ISM band and 5GHz U-NII band, both of which are unlicensed in almost all countries. The only restrictions are on the maximum power output of any device which operates in the bands.
Edit: "Unlicensed" is an over-simplification. Licensing exists in many cases, but there are very few restrictions on the use of the bands, as the regulations don't guarantee interference-free operation.
DeuceGamer
Member
Very very interesting information. If I read that correctly, Nintendo could offer a console that could have a Handheld portion anywhere you could get a Wi-Fi signal in the future. That's very interesting, even if it doesn't end up happening with the Wii U (maybe Wii U's successor?). I don't think it mentioned it, but is this technology exclusive to Nintendo?
This tech works locally.
Of course it could be extended to work over the net, but at a latency cost obviously (see: remote play).
The software would be. But if others wanted to use wifi miracast for this kind of thing they'd have their own software stack anyway.
Dreamwriter
Member
That article was only about the wireless protocol, and that is not exclusive to Nintendo. What *is* exclusive to Nintendo is their software, which is really where the magic happens - the protocol allows it to have a nice fast connection even in places full of wifi interference, but the ability to stream video is mainly based on Nintendo's own video compression/decompression scheme which took them two years to perfect. In other words, don't expect anything else to be doing similar super-low-latency video streaming anytime soon.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=499720
Nintendo also recently confirmed that there's going to be a Wii U VC too, with the VC games playable on the GamePad.
Boss Doggie
all my loli wolf companions are so moe
So it will work in the bathroom without latency then.
DeuceGamer
Member
That's what I thought. Like you said, the software is the important part.
I also think one of the most important parts were the ability to use "repeaters" and still achieve a super low latency. While there may not be plans for that now, it's definitely something to keep an eye on.
Kai Dracon
Writing a dinosaur space opera symphony
If they actually released a upad repeater to essentially use it anywhere in the house regardless of most walls or interference, hot dang.
StoppedInTracks
Member
You can rag about Wii U's CPU etc. but this Wi-Fi tech is extremely cool and innovative. Once again Big N is cruising the new tech seas that are simply not on graphics whores charts.
Keep doing articles like this Polygon. It's really interesting to read.
Finally, something good comes from Nintendos "Japan only" approach!
joking
TheGreatMightyPoo
Banned
Why does this thread have so small the amount of pages as some of the others???
;]
;]
Hellsing321
Member
Depends on the layout of your house.