GAF wouldn’t be GAF without the morons. Lord, some days that place just FRIGHTENS me.
I’m admittedly shaky on this part. I imagine the establishment you’re in would have to indicate they have the Wireless hub there for you to hook into for you to use it. In Tokyo or somewhere like that, it might not be too hard to find a location with WiFi. In say…Reading, PA, where I live… good luck!
Indicators… doubtful.
Just keep in mind that for local communication… a friend sitting near you… you won’t need to do or have anything special. It just makes the connection out of thin air.
–Dave
No problem. Let’s see - TCP/IP is just another way of saying “internet.” The way a computer connects to the internet is through use of the Transport Control Protocol and Internet Protocol - also known as TCP/IP. So anything that connects to the internet uses TCP/IP as its language, and thus, all devices that use TCP/IP can talk to one another.
Broadband is just a way of saying “fast connection.” A slow connection is refferred to as “narrowband,” which is best to visualize by thinking about pipes, say, for water. A narrow pipe can only push through a small amount of water at a time, while a broad pipe can push much more at a time. They both can push through the same amount of water, but a broad pipe can do it in a much shorter amount of time. Hence “broadband,” since the data amount is broad and most communication services are said to operate on “bands” - going back to the radio days.
ad-hoc - well, let’s look at it this way. Most Wi-Fi devices, such as computers, connect to a base station which handles all the hard parts of networking, switching, routing, all the complicated stuff. It’s like the cordless phone analogy. Think of the laptop as the phone and the base station, connected to the phone line, as doing most of the work.
In an ad-hoc situation, there isn’t a base station, but two Wi-Fi enabled devices can still communicate with each other without going through a base station. I imagine that’s something the PSP will be capable of - connecting to other PSPs in an ad-hoc fashion without there needing to be a base station somewhere in the area for multi-player gaming.
As for transmission limits, those are typically more predicated on the antenna of the base station than an antenna on the device. Usually, base stations operate within a range of something less than 1000 feet, in the 500-700 range or so, depending on what materials the signal has to pass through. For ad-hoc connections to other PSPs, I wouldn’t be surprised if the signal dropped off sharply at 100 feet or so. Still plenty of room. And yeah, it’ll take additional power to use, but I would expect that spinning an optical disc is going to always require much more power, anyway.
Heh… it’s not nearly as bad as TeamXbox Forums… oy! I was in that thread during the Microsoft conference on Monday night. They were excited about the fact there were 275 people viewing the thread! I just shook my head…
I couldn’t get into GAF much today so I didn’t get to witness most of the Sony and Nintendo stuff firsthand through there. I got the IGN version instead which was similar to a GAF thread…
–Dave
Thank you Dave Long and Mr. asspennies. I really appreciate the time you took to help clarify things for me. I am in your debt.
Speaking of GAF, last night, when the USA Today thing about the DS came out, Gahiggidy said he wouldn’t look at it because of SPOILERS and that they were ruining Nintendo’s surprise. Several other people chimed in.
I used to think GAF resembled a circus, stupid spectacle, but amusing, the bearded lady and the siamese twin. Now I think it looks a lot more like a mental asylum. My parents always used to say when someone insults you with something you know is baseless and untrue, and you can’t avoid it, just imagine they are yelling at you from the window of a mental hospital. While I’m not exactly insulted by what goes on at the GAF, that image does come back to me.
-Kitsune
Well, I sort of understand why, but I don’t care. It’s doing that particular job worse than something that costs less and doesn’t require you to re-purchase every single movie in your collection just for portable viewing.
320x240 is fine for me, I’m pretty sure the image quality is just as good as a TV that size.
Anyway, gamewise I’m interested.
Robert:
I have NEVER bought batteries for a gba and can’t really beleive someone that actually uses it would stick with normal batteries. There are lots and lots of 3rd party rechargable packs for like 10$, they even have cradles to drop the thing in.
Or grab an SP, it has a dandy battery.
That’s a fair point. Though I’m still curious to see whether Sony will encourage a rental market for PSP movies.
No problem. [/quote]
And Kitsune, realize that Bluetooth is something completely different!
As for the PSP, man, big black handheld thing that eat batteries like tictacs? Its like Game Gear: The Return!
Looks more like a Lynx.
The DS is better, but this has Darkstalkers. Hmm.
10 hours for games sounds perfectly acceptable for the PSP, if that turns out to be how it really holds up in practical use. Even 2.5 hours for movies is understandable–hell, my laptop just barely gets that running DVDs, and I keep two batteries in it. That 2.5 hour figure had me worried at first–if that was for games, then that would have been pretty lame.
In terms of battery life, what’s the difference between a movie and a game that accesses the drive a lot or even more or less constantly (like maybe a handheld Grand Theft Auto - which would be amazing)? If drive access is such a big drain, it seems like battery life has the potential to fluctuate wildly from title to title.
What I want to know, and haven’t seen any indications one way or the other, is whether or not I’ll be able to get video or audio content off my PC and into the PSP.
I’d be very interested in this device if I could move music, or TV shows that I record with my Snapstream Beyond TV, onto the PSP for later enjoyment, either wirelessly via 802.11b/g or on a Memory Stick.
Or is everything going to be proprietary and sealed up to prevent piracy?
/Eph
Yeah, that’s pretty much my opinion. When I saw the 2 hour number, I thought eeep!, that’s not enough. But 10 hours of games is reasonable. I’d like a bit more movie time though. What I’d like is 2 hour movie + 3-4 hours of games for cross-country flights. Sounds more like you’ll probably be lucky to get 1 movie in and an hour, maybe two of gaming in, which still sounds a bit tight for a 6 hour flight + in terminal time.
Yeah, that is a bit on the tight side. What they need is a removeable battery, so you can carry a spare for long trips.
Not entirely correct. As the name suggests, it is the “Internet Protocol” (IP) that is the common protocol for the Internet. If you play games or watch/listen to streaming media over the Internet you will mainly use UDP/IP.
Ad-Hoc networks don’t have to carry IP-traffic at all, so it’s possible that they could use some other protocol. IP is actually somewhat difficult to use in an Ad-Hoc way because the addresses have to be unique and you have to assign them manually and hope that there won’t be any conflicts. I guess it’s possible that some Ad-Hoc protocol can resolve conflicts automatically but I haven’t heard of any.
Yeah, I realized the explaination was a bit simplistic and incomplete, but I didn’t really want to get into that when explaining the common usage of the terms.
I was under the impression that ad-hoc networks assigned IP addresses themselves. Its the same way that if you set your XP PC up for DHCP and then plug it into a network without a DHCP server that it’ll randomly pick an address from a range.
Yes, by “manual” I just mean that it can’t automatically receive an IP that is guaranteed to be unique. (I have a slightly different perspective since I’m currently modifying Linux drivers and routing protocols to improve connectivity in Ad-Hoc networks). I’m not sure if it is even possible to create something that is DHCP-like for Ad-Hoc.
… if they’re using IP in the first place. You could set up an ad-hoc network with some other protocol such as IPX or NETBEUI, if you really wanted to.
If you’re talking IP networking, you’re in the exciting realm of ZEROCONF. In particular, Rendezvous.
Do you know enough about zeroconf/rendezvous to be able to give a short explanation of how it would work in an Ad-Hoc (multihop) network?