Getting the Most out of my PlayStation 5

When I first got my PlayStation 5, I kept it on my desk in my home office as I used it for work. Now that I am no longer working for Sony Interactive Entertainment, I have moved it into my theater room. I now have it connected to my brand-new 85-inch television. Unfortunately it was not as simple as plugging it into my TV as I had to also connect it to my surround-sound system.

Yesterday I posted about the importance of refresh rates and why 120 frames per second or Hz is significant for the latest televisions. I want to preserve the high refresh rate from my PlayStation 5 and that just isn't possible if I plug it into my current television receiver which is then connected to the TV. My receiver only supports 60 Hz at 4K and I do not want to spend money replacing it right now. I probably will in the future but for now I want to keep using it. So how do I keep the high video quality and also keep the high sound quality?

I can't take full credit for this as my oldest son helped me figure it out. The solution is to use the audio return channel or eARC HDMI output from the television. The high-definition multimedia interface (HDMI) has been around for over 15 years and has evolved to allow for various scenarios like this. When I set up my PlayStation 5, I plugged it directly into my new television using one of it's two HDMI 2.1 interfaces. The second is used to connect the TV to the receiver. Now what happens is the picture and sound are sent to the television from the PS5. The sound is then sent back to the receiver for that shake-the-neighbors experience. HDMI works both ways so that any devices connected to the receiver use that same HDMI interface into the television.

One would think that with a PS5 I wouldn't need to connect any other device. It streams video, has a DVD drive, a Blu-ray drive, and can play 4K Blu-ray disks. I also have a PS4 Pro connected to a PlayStation VR as well as an old VHS video cassette player, from Sony, of course. The moment you connect your PS VR to your PS4, you lose the ability to play games in 4K without having to swap cables. Rather than deal with that, I just kept my PS4 Pro and use it with my PS VR. I also use it to play video games with my grandson and keep a healthy mix of age-appropriate games loaded on it. As for the VHS tapes, their quality is really horrible even with 4K upscaling. You never know when you may need to watch an old video though.

My son and I connected everything and then started watching Return of the Jedi on Disney+. While we enjoy the movie, we wanted to make sure the sound and picture were in sync. After all, nothing ruins the experience of a movie when you hear an explosion before you see it. The lip movement not matching the dialog can also be really annoying, which is why I prefer subtitles to dubbing for non-English movies. Fortunately both the TV and the receiver have mechanisms for delaying one or the other. In my case, the sound led the picture. I went into the receiver settings and added a 10ms delay. That improved things somewhat but wasn't perfect. I upped the delay to 20ms and everything synced perfectly. If it had been the other way around and the picture led the sound, I would have added the delay to the television.

Once we got the timing worked out on the PS5, I had to go in and check it on the PS4 and VHS cassette player. The PS4 is in sync but there is a 20ms delay on the VHS. I can turn off the delay setting in the receiver when I play video tapes to solve that problem. As I doubt I will watch a lot of VHS tapes, I'm fine not worrying about it. I can probably set custom parameters for each device and save them to the receiver but am fine with how things are set up now.

Should you find yourself with a new PS5 and an older receiver, just connect it directly to the television. Then use eARC to pull in your surround-sound receiver. You may have to adjust some settings but once you get it set up, you will be amazed at the quality.

Setting up a New WiFi Access Point

My wife and kids have been complaining about the slow Internet at my house and so I had to take a look at it this weekend. When your kids are young, you can blow off their complaints about slow Internet access. When they know more than you do about computers it is time to listen and fix the problem. That is where I found myself on Saturday.

I couldn't understand what the family was talking about because my primary computer has a physical wire connected to our Internet router. Everything worked well for me. I even ran a speed test and got close to the physical limits of my hardware. Then I started running speed tests on other computers around the house that connect via WiFi. To keep things uniform, let's assume my max Internet connection is 100 Mbps (that's mega-bits per second, not to be confused with mega-bytes per second). Running an Internet speed test on my hardwired desktop results in a speed of 93 Mbps. The laptop next to my WiFi access point came in at a paltry 23 Mbps. The further away from my access point, the slower the speeds. That indicated I might want to update my WiFi access point. I headed down to the local Best Buy and spent $60 on a new piece of hardware.

Setting up a WiFi access point is not as simple as plugging in the hardware and turning it on. I had to turn off and on the cable modem and run a configuration program to let it set itself up. It only took a few moments and then I had things working to the point where I could run my speed tests. My hardwired desktop still had a result of 93 Mbps. Next I tested my laptop and it came in at 83 Mbps. That is significantly better than the 23 Mbps from before. Furthermore I was getting significantly better numbers on devices scattered throughout the house. The PS4 Pro in my TV room came in at 53 Mbps while the PS4 in my bedroom tested at 45 Mbps.

One thing I noticed is the degradation of the WiFi signal. My new WiFi access point actually comes with 2 access points: one at 2.4 GHz and the other at 5.0 GHz. The higher number frequency provides for faster speeds but has a range limitation. I can see the 2.4 GHz signal throughout the house but have to be fairly close to the access point to see the 5.0 GHz network. You'll want to remember that as you select where to place your WiFi access point should you be running through the same exercise. As my bedroom PS4 is furthest from the access point, it is stuck on the 2.4 GHz network as it can't see the 5.0 GHz one.

The final step for setting everything up was to configure my printers. I use IP printing with 2 laser printers (one black and white with the other color). All of the computers in the house expect the printers to be at fixed IP addresses and so I had to configure that in the new WiFi access point. It is easy enough to do and I completed it quickly. Now everything is set up.

I did all of this work while the rest of my family attended a wedding reception and so when everyone got home they noticed they couldn't get on the Internet. The old access point SID had disappeared. All anyone needed to do was look for one of the two new ones and reconnect. I do have to admit I chuckled every time I heard one of my kids exclaim, "Hey, what happened to the Internet?"

Virtual Reality: A New Way to Watch Videos

This past weekend I wanted to do some research on an area that interests me: 360-degree video also known as virtual reality or VR. There are a number of videos on YouTube filmed using 360-degree technology. So I loaded the YouTube application on my PlayStation 4 Pro and put on my PlayStation VR headset. I could have also done the same thing with my Google Cardboard and a smartphone so PlayStation hardware is not required. You can also use an HTC vive or Oculus Rift.

YouTube has a whole section of 360-degree videos with lots to choose from. I like to rock climb in the summer and so I selected a video on one of the USA's toughest climbs. Even though the video is in 2D and VR is capable of 3D, I still felt immersed in the action. Rather than having to scroll around with a mouse to see different perspectives, I could just turn my head. I found it so interesting I had my youngest daughter who is a professional rock climber watch and later my wife. Both found the VR experience significantly better than viewing something similar on a flat TV or computer monitor.

I spent about an hour watching VR videos and have decided that I much prefer a low-quality VR video to a well-made TV documentary. I have to confess that most of the videos I watched were documentaries. I tried watching one Star Wars fan film and while it was put together very well, didn't appreciate it as much as the other real-life experiences I enjoyed.

During my weekend research I could only find one 3D VR video and it documented a fashion shoot. Normally I wouldn't have bothered as I am not interested in watching models parade in front of the camera, however, I discovered something very important. When we take a 3D object like a human being and flatten it into a 2D photograph, we distort the person much more significantly than I realized. This is where we get the phrase, "The camera adds 10 pounds." While I enjoy watching 3D movies and even have a 3D television, a VR experience puts you much closer and I realized how skinny most fashion models are. I actually found them to be much too thin and unattractive.

Another thing I noticed during my hour-long journey through VR videos is that you don't know where viewers will be looking. If you want to put text on the screen, you have to put it in multiple places. One video only placed it where they expected you to be looking. If I looked somewhere else, I had the potential to miss it. Other videos placed the text in 3 different areas so I had a much higher chance of seeing it. I appreciated that as it gave me the freedom to look around all of my surroundings and not have to focus on one area.

I think virtual reality has the ability to change the way we watch videos. While I am not sure I want to watch a full movie in VR, I do think that travel videos and documentaries are much better with the technology. Now if I can only create a huge playlist of skiing videos, I might be able to make it through the summer.

Happy Halloween 2016

Today is Halloween and I am in the Bay Area staying on my sailboat this evening. I would much rather be at home welcoming trick-or-treaters. Fortunately my 22-year-old daughter is home in Utah taking care of all the little monsters that come to my house. My wife and son are there as well but this year my daughter really caught the spirit of Halloween.

I have to say I am a bit jealous. As a kid, I loved Halloween. Being able to go door-to-door and collect candy is a great tradition. More importantly to a child, it signals the beginning of the Holiday Season. We make a mad dash to Thanksgiving and then the month of December is magically filled with Christmas. I am hoping to have a number of reviews over the next couple of weeks should you be interested in finding gifts for the overgrown boy in your life. This means more about PlayStation VR and the games to go with it. I also ordered my PS4 Pro today and will let you know if you should spend the money or pick up the less expensive Slim. Now if it was only 30 degrees colder outside and the rain turned to snow. Then I could sing, "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas."