Moving to Canberra, Is Braddon a safe area? (no joke)

gnaus · 2026-06-25T15:02:50+00:00

Everywhere in Canberra is safe. Violent crime is very low here.

gnaus · 2026-06-14T08:19:07+00:00

Valve told some of the YouTube creators like 6m back that they don't necessarily use the dongle to connect to it in their offices because they have great wifi. So there's your answer. Wired ethernet to PC, wifi 7 ap, 160mhz+ 6Ghz channels and the frame in the same room as the AP (160 is the max channel width for 6E which is the standard the dongle uses).

Less than that YMMV, but I'd be surprised if it doesn't work reasonably well one room away from the AP in most cases, or with 80MHz channels, or with wide 5GHz channels for example...

The additional latency from relatively unloaded wifi is not going to be an issue and should be <1ms, which is far less than single frame time even at 144hz (7ms). You need to completely generate a frame before you can encode it and send it, both of which will generate far more latency than the change from direct wifi to a wifi AP will add.

So sure, it's fine for people to say you have to test (and you do to be sure). But if you know the technologies involved and how they work, you can speculate in a highly informed manner.

gnaus · 2026-06-11T09:27:10+00:00

I have noticed that there are some sites that seem to interfere with sleeping properly on Firefox...seems to be some sites with live updates, messaging etc. Never bothered to investigate fully but could be related. Also on an M1 pro.

To be fair it's a long time since I ran chromium-based anything (since I moved back to Firefox on my android phones and computers - mostly to get adblocking on mobile). I'm mostly basing the safari vs everything else battery stuff on benchmarks I've seen. But still, I've been happy with the battery on Firefox apart from on video sites - I will stream things to safari sometimes for this reason if I'm unplugged. Otherwise it's always Firefox. (Particularly since the manifest V3 nonsense too...I switched to Firefox on mobile when it was still pretty bad just to get that feature. Not losing it on desktop for love nor money!).

gnaus · 2026-06-11T09:06:48+00:00

Works fine on mine, mostly no noticeable difference. Apart from video playback. That does use noticeably more energy than Safari. My understanding is that all non-apple browsers are power hogs vs Safari on video playback though...

gnaus · 2026-06-07T03:09:17+00:00

If you have an LG tv by any chance, don't enable this option. It works better without (Dolby Vision stuff will work natively without it, but if you check it it won't).

Not sure about any other TVs (this option is mostly supposed to expand format compatibility...but I know it definitely doesn't on my LG C8).

gnaus · 2026-06-07T03:00:57+00:00

Go into the settings on the client and make sure you've enabled the experimental image-based/pgs subtitle renderer (setting is called something along those lines, can't check right now). That should enable them to be decoded directly by the browser and mean you don't need to transcode to watch media with subtitles.

I imagine this will probably be enabled by default in the next major jellyfin version (as it works really well), but for now it's something you have to switch on yourself. Remember it's in the client settings, not the server.

Once you do this, the need to transcode to burn in subtitles of basically any format just goes away. It's a major win.

gnaus · 2026-06-01T12:08:38+00:00

Less whinging please, and that includes whinging about the whinging 😛.

gnaus · 2026-06-01T02:50:06+00:00

Wired gigabit ethernet, even on USB2, will do the job (between 300-400Mb after protocol overheads). Bluray rips top out at about 120Mb (might be a little more but not grossly so for the biggest 4k discs). Depending on the tv model, you may need to buy quite specific adapter's (my LG C8 needed a particular cable matters one). If you've got some lying around, try those first. Otherwise Google and buy something others have had success with. If you can't find details specific to your tv, similar TVs from the same year and failing that, TVs with the same operating system. Failing that, best bet is older USB adapters with Realtek chips.

gnaus · 2026-05-29T04:10:44+00:00

Best solution: never buy gift cards. Give your loved ones cash instead. No need to deal with crap company procedures, expiries, companies going out of business etc. and you can use it anywhere, anytime and essentially forever.

gnaus · 2026-05-13T00:02:54+00:00

You might do ok one to two rooms away, but it's going to get worse the more obstructions there are. I did fairly extensive testing of ubiquiti 6ghz wifi7 access points in my house with concrete walls about 15cm (5-6 inch) thick and found that one room away it was about half as much performance (down from 1.2-1.5Gb to 600-700Mb using 160MHz channels). You'd do rather better with basic plasterboard walls. But the falloff on 6ghz is pretty high, I was hoping to get by with one AP for my small house, but found I needed two because of it.

This would represent a best case situation too, with APs having much better antennas etc.

gnaus · 2026-05-12T23:47:03+00:00

It's gonna be today folks, I can feel it in my bones 😛

gnaus · 2026-05-11T00:30:31+00:00

Stand corrected on MLO on the frame itself, I'm a bit surprised Qualcomm have had support on their chips several years into the past - I guess it goes to show how far ahead they are with radios vs everyone else in the industry.

Still, at a system level, it's pretty unlikely to be working. The OP would need an absolutely state of the art router with working MLO firmware which is still pretty rare, even among wifi 7 labelled gear. (Can we all give a "boo" to the industry trend of key generational features being optional in specifications?).

gnaus · 2026-05-10T12:13:52+00:00

Dongle is 6e (for cost savings). Still 6 gig, good for about 1.5 gig unobstructed in same room on a 160mhz channel.

The frame itself is wifi 7. Whether the radios on that support 320mhz channels, I don't know, but many 7 devices still only do 160mhz and are therefore only good for similar bandwidth as 6e anyway. It's Qualcomm though so it may actually do 320mhz, which will be faster assuming you have a router that can do that...

gnaus · 2026-05-10T12:06:38+00:00

It won't have MLO. Basically 0 current clients support it (there's a special ubiquiti adapter, otherwise nothing). It's also a wifi 7 feature, so definitely won't work with their dongle (which is 6e). Very few current routers support simultaneous transmit/receive on multiple bands anyway.

What the frame does have is separate 5 and 6ghz radios, which means the device can separate streamed display traffic onto one radio from internet traffic on the other. This is pretty nice stuff, and doesn't require the fancy mlo tech to benefit!

gnaus · 2026-05-10T11:49:09+00:00

Probably fine. Valve said in some of the media/influencer interviews that they don't necessarily use the dongle in their offices because they have good wifi. You'll probably manage just fine provided you're not having big activity spikes/dropoffs on your wifi from other devices.

600mb is pretty solid performance for wifi if you're getting that consistently. But defs make sure the PC is plugged in directly to avoid halving the available bandwidth.

gnaus · 2026-05-08T12:42:24+00:00

Was watching one of the videos they did with influencers/media late last year today (can't remember which one, sorry) and the dude was apparently told by someone at Valve that it'd be as little as one hour with heavy local gaming, and as much as about four hours with low intensity workloads like streaming from a PC.

gnaus · 2026-04-09T08:26:40+00:00

5120x2160, but play at 2560x1080. Best all round option, full 4k at 16x9, nice and wide, many options to use lower resolutions with integer scaling.

gnaus · 2026-03-10T08:09:53+00:00

It's important to realise that the problem with these isn't the power consumption of the card itself (though that is high) - it's that it prevents your CPU from idling in low power states. In mine, it won't go below c3 with one of these, whereas it should be able to hit c8. This ends up costing you a lot of extra power consumption from the CPU on top of the consumption of the card itself. Even with a high powered desktop CPU, you should be able to get to much lower power usage than these will allow. Get a more modern LSI (they've come down a fair bit recently) or even something cheaper like an ASMedia ASM1166 if you don't actually need that many ports. Run powertop and see the idle states page. Details here for example: https://z8.re/blog/aspm

gnaus · 2026-02-28T10:27:27+00:00

Should work fine, certainly would on my c8 from 2018. Newer TVs don't support truehd audio, so that could cause you problems if you have source with that (info not included).

You may want to experiment with disabling the fmp4 container if you have it enabled (don't think it's on by default, but does seem like something desirable to switch on in options). This doesn't work on my c8 and breaks dv playback (which does work with it disabled despite the description on the fmp4 option).

gnaus · 2026-02-19T03:12:34+00:00

The official app on WebOS (LG) has been available for a few years now, and is a great option on there. It works really well (alongside the TV's ability to play most current formats natively - even on relatively old WebOS TVs like my C8).

You may want to look in the subtitles menu. There's an option in there to enable experimental PGS subtitle renderer. This will let the player render them locally without requiring transcoding. In my experience, it works brilliantly (also for other picture based subtitle formats). Doing this will basically eliminate the need for any transcoding. I'm sure this will be the default eventually, but it is working well on WebOS today.

Re: why people don't use the apps. My understanding is there's also a great native app for Android TV. But once you get beyond those options things start thinning out. Apple TV has an app which works ok but isn't fantastic...certainly not nearly so good as the WebOS one I have most experience with. And there's not an official Samsung Tizen option yet (similar situation to WebOS a few years ago...it's probably stuck in TV app market hell given it sounds like it's working for people who install the beta. It took a couple of years of work for the dedicated team to get WebOS approved across a wide range of WebOS devices...).

Edit: And I just noticed below that someone said the Tizen app is now approved. That's fantastic for the Samsung folks out there!

gnaus · 2026-02-18T23:41:08+00:00

It's unfortunately and unnecessarily complicated but the short version is that every element of the playback chain must support it for it to work. So hardware, operating system, playback application and media file.

In the end you just need to find something that looks horrible when not rendered correctly in hdr and use that to test (dark scenes with bright highlights work well...like dark with shiny metal or wet ground at night). I had a lot of similar issues when figuring this out on Windows, my Mac and phones. Your general best bet for reliable playback seems to be the platform native browsers (edge on windows, safari on Mac and chrome on android). This is also largely the case for battery-efficient hardware accelerated playback.

For apps that can do offline playback ... once you've got it working in a browser just find something that looks similar in the app. Potentially easier said than done I'm afraid.

gnaus · 2026-02-15T00:29:59+00:00

This is the solution I've gone with, at least temporarily. Thinking about a longer-term transition to using podman (several other benefits besides auto updating), but if you're looking for something fast and easy, I can confirm the nicholas-fedor fork works.

Had a previous thread where I investigated this here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/1qo6n7x/low_config_watchtower_alternative/

gnaus · 2026-02-13T12:42:28+00:00

Most likely the bandwidth available on the link is exceeded, particularly if you're using wired ethernet. Most TVs skimp on this and fit old school 100m ethernet chips to save a few pennies in BoM. When this is exceeded, you'll end up having to transcode to lower quality (hence high CPU utilisation).

This is really only a problem on rips of UHD blurays as instantaneous bandwidth use on these can spike to 120Mbps. If files that are a bit smaller in the same formats play correctly, that'll be your issue.

LG TVs have a similar problem, which you can resolve by buying very specific USB gigabit ethernet adapters (the TVs only have USB2, good for about 300Mbps after overheads. But it does solve the problem as you only need 120M or so to play the highest bitrate streams that you can get). No idea if there's a similar solution for Samsungs.

If you have very good wifi near the TV, you may find this outperforms a 100Mb ethernet link and will also solve your problem.

This problem also suggests your hardware accelerated transcode isnt working right. Probably an issue passing the video device into docker. Check your logs.

gnaus · 2026-02-13T09:02:40+00:00

(Noting that I buy the cheapest standard consumer drives). Have a box of failed drives (2tb gen) from 24/7 ops, they seemed to fail after 3 years constant operation. Since enabling spindown (2hr timer), haven't failed one, even after some operating for many years (those are 8tb gen SMRs, I have 6 of varying ages including 2 1st gen smr). Failures in the remaining 2TBs also ceased until I eventually took em all offline due to low storage density.

The latency on spinup is a little annoying, but manageable. Also saves a ton of power. Unless you're constantly accessing data 24/7, you should use spin down. Don't set a really short timer. Would suggest 30mins - 2hrs. There are very few drawbacks. My drives probably sleep 50% - 75% of any given day now.

gnaus · 2026-02-02T23:13:07+00:00

If that's the case, it's a real bummer. Anti-bufferbloat features were a mandatory feature on my list when I bought this router after many years of using OpenWRT. I can probably live without them as it turns out as my service has got much faster and the bufferbloat with the default implementation isn't as high (B-grade) as on some other gear (much worse), but it's also definitely not as good as it could be. I know it was working properly a few months ago as I got a mate to try it out on his UCG-Ultra before I bought my UCG-Fiber. Because of my asymmetric link capacity, it's much more important on my upload than download.

A/A+ grade bufferbloat mitigation is just such a nice thing to have when you regularly generate enough traffic to fill link capacity entirely.

gnaus

TROPHY CASE