Wouldn't be a DF podcast without "bespoke" in the first 10 mins!

These DF Directs are getting longer and longer every week and I don’t mind

Alex in the thumbnail giving off those "older brother just witnessed you pull off your first ollie on a skateboard in the garden" good vibes.

i love when Rich said "its bespoken time!" and bespoked all over John and Alex

Poor John, you could literally see his heart breaking when talking about the portal. 😂

I'm glad you guys are going longer with the show, more content is always welcome and this show is the highlight of my podcasts every week!

I've been working at a job recently where I have lots of time to listen to podcasts, and I always look forward to these Monday uploads for my fix! Keep up the amazing work, DF team!

The VR discussion was awesome! Shout outs to TeamBeef!!! Using Steam VR there are tons of custom mods for classic PC Games, but SideQuest is even easier to set up much of the time.

The soc in the portal is snapdragon 662, its found in 100$ phones.

People forget psp had remote play with ps3 way back in 2008. It used the traditional WiFi connection method but, also had this direct WiFi connection to the ps3 itself w/o the need of a router. It suffered the same intermittent latency and connection issues as the vita did with ps4 and now the portal. At least in my experience. I remember being amazed at remote play feature back then streaming pixel junk monsters from the ps3 to my psp Lol

Nothing like getting to work on a Monday with DF in the background. Keep it up, good folks.

2h 11mins? Thank god. This podcast is getting me through all week but often I’ll be done by Tuesday

Regarding the portal if you turn off HDR, VRR and 120 mode in the PS5 settings, you get next to no latency and what looks like higher resolution, so maybe the full 1080p.

I'm not sure why someone would think you could get a "small more capable laptop" for the price of a ROG Ally.

My first “HD Ready" LCD Samsung 32 inch tv, which I bought in late 2005, was indeed 1366 x 768. Just as John said.

As a video editor I appreciated the discussion on encoding and upload settings immensely, always trying to get better results from KZfaq uploads 👌 I also wouldn't doubt whoever's doing these games trailers are just using the KZfaq render preset in these programs because they don't know any better

On the backwards compatibility thing, the pixel perfect mode for DS games on the 3DS is actually great if you're using one of the XL models. The shrunken image actually ends up being similar in size to the screens on the original DS, DS Lite, or DSi.

I started paying attention more after the first time i heard DF crew talking about the youtube upload topic and yes indeed they do have clearer videos than a LOT of other outlets. Glad we have people like this figuring out how to deliver quality content

PlayStation Portal not having a browser and thus unable to access public wifi is shocking.

Thanks for again adding the chapters into the KZfaq video instead of just descriptions!

Can't believe you all talked about arcade racing games at home and NO mention of Crus'n Blast... it was an incredible throwback.

As a UK based network engineer I enjoyed the pronunciation of router 😜

Glad you are back on the VR train John! I got a psvr2 and a Qest3 as well and the quest3 really impressed me with the wireless vr and hand tracking. Assassins creed is also surprisingly good and complete, not a demo, an actual game.

I think Alex meant the -O optimization for the C compiler that was missing from Mario 64 in the original code. The decompiling project fixed that and made that game run much faster in original hardware.

The biggest issues with remote play are not related to the network connection. The encode/decode has too much latency. On the same network moonlight has a fraction (not exaggerating) of the added latency.

it's very interesting to know that there is a decent "FOMO" market for something like the PS Portal but it doesn't change the fact that it's a niche device ( with lots of requirements to work half decently) for a very niche audience

I got CRT scanlines slightly burned-in on my 4K lg oled so I'm not too keen on using HDR crt scanlines with the retrotink 4K, and now with this price..

John, make sure to test the Bigscreen Beyond in your VR headset roundup. It has a wire but it also has the most glorious high res OLED screen of any headset currently available.

Nice mellow pod to help me slide into my work week.

Removing the HDMI cable from the PS5 reduced lag for me. I don’t know how this works but I’ve just tried it and it does!! I have an LG C9 with the PS5 connected to a Hue Sync Box and the Hue Sync Box connected to the TV. I don’t have a Portal yet but I have the PlayStation Backbone controller and use remote play often with my iPhone 14 Pro Max and remote play works flawlessly with my Series X but whenever I tried with the PS5, I’d have to wait for about 5-10 minutes before games were playable. The way I’d test it would be by going to the home menu and pressing the d-pad to cycle between games. It would sort of freeze for a second on a game before eventually catching up with a different game tile highlighted. I put my console into rest mode, unplugged the HDMI from my console and tried that test again. It cycled through the games and menus lag free! Hopefully Sony can release an update that if you’re connected by remote play, it doesn’t trigger CEC from switching the console on. Now to source a Portal for my wife to get me for Christmas…

Regarding Alex's "export thing" Bethesda used the wrong compiler on Skyrim. A modder did it in the correct version and uploaded a .exe, and it provided something like a 20% FPS boost immediately. It was a pretty embarrassing look for Bethesda.

The "router" joke must be making me feel how every other culture feels when Americans joke about their pronunciations lol thank you for that experience

the only Portal i want in my life now is Nintendo 64's Portal version! it's awesome

Appreciate Rich looking to the camera and saying, "that doesn't really happen," with regards to paid reviews. Makes me feel better :)

I love my Ally, for battery made a 18w power profile. A happy medium between 15w and 25w stock profiles.

I use the ROG Ally. It works well for me because in most use cases I can plug it in at some point. At work, in an airport or on a plane, in a hotel, or at a family member's house during the holidays. The times I don't have it plugged in are few and far between.

There's a whole world of PC-VR using Quest too John sir! I've been playing Portal 2 VR a lot lately, its so cool.

It'd be cool if John gave us a dedicated YT encode/export workflow video.

John: "Why people loved the Arkham games?" I'd say a lot of people (including me) loved them because Rocksteady made you feel like Batman. Now you're generic "Haloguy" with a Harley Quinn skin and the shooting is not designed by Bungie. But hey, so many people spend outrageous amounts of money on skins so maybe the game will find success.

Congrats Rich,EA are no longer outsourcing QA, they fired them too and they’re getting DF to test. Your payslip is in the post.

The router identifying the device as an Xperia could be down to its WiFi chipset sharing a MAC address range with that line, so I’m not sure how much that tells us. Still, intriguing...

1:46:00 I think it was Morrowind that shipped without optimization flags, hard to find documentation about it without the wayback machine. Randy Pitchford's Aliens: Colonial Marines had a single spelling error in the code that nullified the Alien AI. They spelled tether as "teather" which caused the Aliens to just stand there and hiss at the player when they had animations and interactions for crawling, climbing, diving, dashing, venting etc. Shipping an Aliens game without AI is my all time favorite.

One of Rich's first answers says all you need to know about the PlayStation Portal. "The Wii U was built from the group up for second screen streaming, whereas the PlayStation Portal is just a hardware add-on". Disappointing that this custom hardware SOLD for streaming clearly wasn't actually custom hardware BUILT for streaming. "There's no secret sauce here" -- "that's what you'd expect from Sony" -- "I've seen no evidence of that".

Has John actually used the Portal?

Great video , just FYI unplug the HDMI and it runs smoother fyi I guess doesn’t have to transmit audio and video to TV

23:20 Hey John you might get better performance out of a mesh wifi style network, rather than wifi repeaters/extenders. I live in a granny flat next to the main building and found after upgrading to a mesh network it improved performance and also stopped random drop outs 👍

Woo-hoo! So glad to see so much VR attention, can't wait for John's VR Showdown! 😮 Nexus is a blast 🥷

The #1 criticism I have with the ROG Ally is the battery. Saying you want a light weight system is fine but when your processor performs optimally at 20 watts it needs a 60Wh battery, (50% larger than what it has now).

30:00 you guys talk about youtube upload quality a lot, but I still see you uploading content at only 1080p on occasion

I tried the Bloodborne via PS remote play on PC. Input lag was noticeable but was better than I expected. While image quality was lower resolution, video compression somehow improved anti-aliasing effect.

I can share with you a better solution albeit a bit more expensive "if" you don't currently own a PC. If you do own a PC. Buy $200 Elgato 4K60 pro. Connect your PS5 to the capture card and download OBS to the PC and configure it to stream. Then Download Moonlight to your android device and you can stream your PS5 wherever and at whatever resolution your internet can handle. Way better experience for roughly the same price if you already own a PC. Also it's way more stable. I use a 15" Samsung Tab S8 Ultra on a swivel mount by my bedside. It's Oled and I play on 4K60 using gigabit internet wired to the tablet using a USBC ethernet hub and my dualsense connected to the PS5 so you still get the Dualsense haptics.

I would love a PS Portal vs Wii U gamepad analysis😍

2:01:51 If i remember correctly you can at least stretch the image to match the screen.

Quick point about this Sony portal: Why didn't they allow direct connection between it and playstation, not just for remote play, but as a second screen like the wii u, for maps, inventory etc etc

This show is my single favorite thing to watch on KZfaq. I get giddy every time I see a new episode.

Please, for the love of everything Holy, keep the content coming. I love that you are making the Directs longer. I look forward to every Monday, coming into work and turning on DF.

HEY! I really appreciate the Render / Upload settings discussion. I edit videos on an industrial level, and most of what I put out is pretty mid, but works for lecture videos. Now, when I get my own content online, I want it TO LOOK GOOD. Thanks for the discussion!

granular detail out of ten, fellas. great stuff.

I used to use remote play on my PSP with direct connection to my PS3 and it worked pretty good most of the time. I tried it once on the PS4 with my cousin's PS Vita and that worked good too. They've done it in the past with good results there's no reason they shouldn't have done it now. Such a bad decision.

Can't wait to get to DF's deconstruction of the PS Portal in this episode!

I agree that KZfaq prioritizes 1080p. I have a channel that recently uploaded up to 3X 30 min video's every single day for 5 weeks- 1080p was 20 mins to publish at 480p(30 for 1080p), 1440p was almost 1hr. The file size difference was about 1gb(4gb for 1080p). Even though the original content was 1080p, 1440p did improve visual quality on a larger screen, so used it when.......I couldn't sleep

Dang I noticed a fair bit of consternation between John and Alex on the bit about the PS Portal.

I can imagine the xperia 10 products haven't sold very well over the years so they will break down those SKUs and then turn either the Snapdragon 665/690/695 chipsets along with the speakers from those models into a playstation portal, the Xperia 10 models usually sell within the three hundred range, they did have a LCD screen for the first iteration for that device, if this is the case it would kind of make sense to use that also.

Thanks for the EA Sports WRC update. Would love to see a dedicated video comparing the PC game to the consoles. Please dig deeper on the issues that the PC version has... there is definitely something wrong with the frame pacing and frame rate in general. The 0.1% lows on the PC are huge even on Alder lake CPUs and up... the game appears to be CPU limited at mid to high FPS (120-165) even on the lowest settings when visually it has no right to be CPU limited... it's just odd.

I bought a Quest 3, and have been impressed with how freeing wireless VR can be. Streaming through air link and virtual desktop has been surprisingly effortless and enjoyable to use. Really happy to see John diving into that world also, and can't wait to see his experiences with current gen VR MR headsets.

the PS Portal discussion nailed all the gripes i had with how its being reviewed, like sure it performs well with excellent wi-fi but how's the portal actually? let alone the latency it has. glad there's more discussions like these bc Sony really missed the mark with this one

IMO for the price they should at least using PS1 games to be played native. And you got a good point over the signal capacity. I work at IT and signal is still a huge problem because here in Brazil ours houses and apartaments are made with bricks, not to mention apartaments are so much close to each others making interference a colossal problem to be fixed. All this do fight with your router QoS. Is impressive how we got mix bag Playstation Portal, with was made by a company that have a huge historic of doing portable devices like PSP and PSvita, and at the same time we have Valve doing heavens with the Steam Deck OLED. No comments about Suicide Squad. Will be dead at arrival.

1:25:20 the Oculus name persists lol. I love it

Sweet spot for the z1e apu in the ally is 18w, not 15 or 25. Use manual mode. Gaming laptops need to be plugged in to game at full wattage and if trying to play a game on battery performance is way worse than plugged in, and battery life is worse than a handheld.

i just got done beating ff7 intergrade with my portal and honestly was a very good experience to be honest if they could update it somehow to just be a constant smooth experience it would be golden!!! 💯

IGN’s video review of EA WRC also showed and lamented the horrendous performance and bizzaro stutters of the console versions. Think this one definitely needs a DF review and a lot more spotlight…

The right place for streaming just seems to me on devices you already own for me, streaming from my PC to my Phone or FireTV is like, yeah why not, it costs nothing extra, while the people willing to pay that kind of price for just a streaming device just seem few. Also regarding the ROG Ally, it would be awesome to see what SteamOS can do on there as there are ways to get it onto other hardware and SteamOS now actually does support VRR. Might be interesting if it can be 'enhanced' that way.

1:46:23 Yeah, it was Skyrim which didn't supposedly use the compiler option to generate SSE instructions, so all of the math code was using slow x87 instead. A mod called "TESV Acceleration Layer" tried to fix it, before the official patch which came months after launch.

20:33 that has happened. Many times. There has been enough reports around regarding hardware manufacturers paying or coercing youtube reviewers to confirm this. Is it happening with Sony in this case? Possibly not but Rich's assertions are provably false and the defensive position for somebody in the industry for so long is rather strange.

I got a PS Portal for my 10 year old for Christmas because I have the PS5 on my main TV for 120hz but with him getting more into gaming, I need my TV back from Fortnite and Roblox along with everything else he is playing. Edit: I want the tv for regular TV and Series X use.

Got a Quest 2 a few years back after not having played with VR since demo'ing the original Oculus. Got the Quest 3 a few weeks ago and was equally blown away by how far things have come; particularly the AR aspects of it but of course the screens and lenses as well.

Regarding John's workflow best practice for video encoding, does anyone know what would be its equivalent settings in DaVinci Resolve?

The Portal is the most Cult-of-Apple product Sony has ever released. I've seen all the popular arguments for why it exists, yet I'm still convinced that this thing's primary purpose is to milk more money from PlayStation diehards.

DF Directs are a staple in my week, that I highly look forward to! Longer ones are always a super welcome surprise as well!

I have the Ally and the (now) OLED Deck. Like them both bunches. The Playstation Portal seems superfluous though.

Bee Spoke has to be the best DF related nickname ever to be part of one of these videos 😂❤️

To answer Alex's 'I don't know how you guys feel about boss level fights in looter shooters' I'd say it depends on the game. I never much cared for them in the division when I played that when it launched, but in something like destiny, the raid bosses and even some strike bosses are some of the best content in the game by far. My friend used to say the same thing about the bosses in borderlands 2, though I don't have much experience with that and can't personally attest to it.

When your phone display absolutely blows the ps portal LCD screen away

If the SteamDeck’s theoretical advantage is its performance at low wattage, that is torpedoed for me by its large size. I don’t want such a gigantic device on the bus. And most of us pleebs aren’t flying on the regular, but many of us take public transit regularly. And the battery life is sufficient for many of us for that. Keeping in mind the battery only needs to last one way, as many of us can recharge at our destination before the return trip.

I think Valve won't release a Steam Deck 2 with a significant performance boost until we see next-gen home consoles or a very significant mid-gen enhancement to home consoles. Valve was very smart to release the Steam Deck using the same Zen 1 architecture as the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S relatively early in their lifecycle. Xbox Series S being the low-end hardware that developers basically must support for the entirety of this console generation, most next-gen games should be able to at least run on Steam Deck at a similar settings profile, but targeting lower resolutions. The continual improvement of upscaling technologies like FSR should also help ensure Steam Deck is relevant for quite a while. The games with poor optimization for PC in general won't be able to run, we're already starting to see that, but I think the majority, especially the big games which will receive frequent updates post-launch, should be in a playable state. One thing that is encouraging is we've seen pretty big improvements to the performance of games through patches and software updates - Guardians of the Galaxy Steam Deck couldn't maintain 30FPS on Steam Deck originally, but now users have been able to push it to target 40FPS for the game now.

An overhaul to remote play itself (higher bitrate? new codec? I'm sure the technical wizards could come up with something) would be terrific. I think the Portal itself is fine, given the limitations of remote play itself.

I've had a great experience with the Playstation Portal. I get a hiccup every now and then, but it's allowed me to play in bed, and I'm even gonna try it away from home next. The image quality looks pretty good to me, I haven't noticed any loss in image quality. But I'm sure Digital Foundry can do a video comparison to show me what I'm missing so I can feel bad about it.

Can you compare the G cloud with PS play app in your video?

1:58:50 The same can be said about PS4/Pro and PS5.

The Playstation Portal isn't for me, but it seems perfectly fine for "dad life". I am curious what John thinks is an appropriate price for a dualsense controller, OLED and SoC? $199 USD seems like a decent price when a retail dualsense white version is still $50.

I’d love a throwback retro Jaguar episode

How does Remote Play on the portal compare to remote playing PC games on the original steam deck?

I'm watching this podcast at 1080p60 and I gotta say: All three of you look crisp and nicely textured!

I would say its not reasonable to meet or exceed the wiiU as that had dedicated hardware for short distance signal sending. Portal will always be limited to your local network foibles. I would have liked the option of direct Wifi like they had before, or perhaps an optional dongle + Wifi 6E for less chance of network congestion

Im actually selling my ally and ive ordered the OLED deck, ive spent 6 months or so with the ally and while its been generally pretty good its become clear to me it just isnt the same experience as the deck, ive had an LCD deck shelved since getting the ally and ive tried to love the ally but i dont, the immediate turn on for the ally is the display but now that the deck has the OLED it kind of loses that advantage and almost everything else just swings in favour of the deck for me from battery life to OS down to the community support, theres nothing like getting a community made deck controller config and it just working amazing but you dont get that with the windows handhelds, then theres the accessories available, from hall effect sticks to cases, its just got that backing and after 6 months the ally does not have the same support. I also didn't find the ally to be anywhere near the performance jump i expected either, there was always a compromise to be made and often even needing to below native res which takes away from that resolution advantage the ally has to. Ive come to realize AAA games are just not for these handhelds and the thousands of indie games is where its at, and when it comes to those games the deck runs away with it... 30 plus watt on ally plugged in is impressive but nothing like as impressive as 4w on the deck and it still working well, the ally basically falls to sleep at 7w, almost everything is unplayable. obviously im trying to make myself feel better about my decision ofcourse, if i didn't order the OLED id be singing the praises of the ally naturally but for real, reality is the deck is still the king, just is, but i had a pretty good time with ally, definitely one of the better windows devices, SD card aside.

I would like to see ROG ally tested with turbo boost off. The GPU stays much higher at lower wattages which allows higher fps.

I saw 2 seconds of that AC VR game and thought it was Thief for a brief moment and then I just kept thinking about Thief in VR the whole time John told us about AC.

John’s gotta learn to let (Daddy) Richard finish making his (usually excellent) point without interrupting.

I would love to see a Wii U vs PS Portal comparison

DF Direct weekly is INEVITABLE!