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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Can we have a Switch Lite playable on the TV ?

sethnintendo said:

Does the dock convert the signal from Switch to TV or is it basically a HDMI out? I don't see why they couldn't just have a HDMI port (with converter inside the handheld) that you can plug into the TV. 

The dock is not just an HDMI put, as it changes the entire functionality of the Switch itself.  Everything is in the Switch itself however, and the dock just uses low voltage signaling to trigger the "switch" from handheld performance to docked performance.  This is why third party docks require you to use the same chip from an official dock, as a sinple HDMI out would just project handheld performance to the TV.

With that in mind, it should be nothing less than a firmware update and Nintendo to make a smaller dock sold separately to allow for portable play.  However there is really no major demand for this unless someone buys the cheaper LITE, and decides later they are willing to buy a dock.  Otherwise buying an actualy Switch, which is superior in EVERY WAY with the new revision wouod still be the best possible option.

In short, there almost zero reason that the Switch LITE should be dockable.  It is just a smaller cheaper version for kids or those who will only play on the go and want to save 100 bucks.



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Chrkeller said:
-Newcloud- said:

I'd still recommend the standard Switch over the Lite every time 

Agreed.  I also don't get the point of the Lite.  Not worth the savings.

While I won't get the Lite, I know why it exists. 3DS is exiting the fray, so it's the new option for kids that want to play newer software. $100 Off and you can still play Switch games would be quite appealing to families I think. Instead of dishing out $600 for 2 Switches for the kids, it's now $400, and a game for each is still under $600. Imho...it's for kids and money talks. Again, while I think it's a bad choice compared to the OG model, I see these things flying off shelves.

If you're an adult and getting the Switch Lite, I mean no harm. 

Last edited by Ljink96 - on 04 August 2019

shikamaru317 said:
I don't see why Nintendo couldn't sell a wireless tv dongle. Plug it into an HDMI port on your TV, then transmit gameplay from Switch Mini to your tv wirelessly. Would be some lag, but not alot if it used 802.11 AC or faster wi-fi for it.

The base model switch needs to do a lot more work when you drop it into the dock, it needs to push almost 4 times as many pixels when you jump from 720p>1080p and you can hear and feel what that does to the unit, do you ever notice how often the Switch in dock has the fans on far more than when it is in handheld mode? the dock is even designed with the slots at the back to vent and direct the airflow in through the bottom of the Switch and out the top, you can also tell how much more work the machine does if you go from docked to handheld play, if it's been in the dock playing for about 20 mins when you take it out the entire system is hot to the touch and that is with the max amount of cooling it could get, so yeah... it wouldn't be comfortable to hold and it would need to run a hell of a lot louder in your hand.

There is one other killing point to this as well, the idea wouldn't be really practical as a handheld device doing it, you would almost certainly need to have the AC cable jacked into the machine. Think about it... if you wanted it to be fully wireless the machine is limited to only having its battery for power, the system never runs at TV output frequency while running on battery, because it wouldn't even last an hour, you ask the gpu to do 4x the work and it's not just taking 4x the power because you now can't rely on the passive cooling anymore so you're running more power for the fans as well as now handling video through the wifi adapter so you've got your wifi portion of the switch running non stop just to display on the TV, would maul the battery.

Oh yeah... that's another issue, you create an adhoc network from device to TV with the Switch's wifi adapter to the TV dongle and good luck playing any online games like Fortnite which is probably what the majority of Switches are being used for. But yeah... there are a number of reasons why Nintendo don't do the thing you suggest here. Pick whichever you want.



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Radek said:
Can't wait to see how Witcher 3 plays on the Switch.

Me neither, but we won't have to wait much longer; Nintendo will be showing it at Gamescom in just 16-18 days. ;)

-Newcloud- said:
curl-6 said:

Hence why it's $200 and the standard Switch is $300.

I'd still recommend the standard Switch over the Lite every time 

Chrkeller said:
-Newcloud- said:

I'd still recommend the standard Switch over the Lite every time 

Agreed.  I also don't get the point of the Lite.  Not worth the savings.

Granted, it's not for you or me, but we're not the target audience. The Lite is meant to replace the 3DS as a cheap entry-level device for consumers who are on a budget or don't care about TV play. It's largely for the Japanese market and the 40 million plus 3DS owners who have yet to upgrade.



Ganoncrotch said:

The base model switch needs to do a lot more work when you drop it into the dock, it needs to push almost 4 times as many pixels when you jump from 720p>1080p and you can hear and feel what that does to the unit, do you ever notice how often the Switch in dock has the fans on far more than when it is in handheld mode?

720P is 921,600 pixels.
1080P is 2,073,600 pixels.

That is an increase of 2.25x. Significantly less than 4x.

The reason for the fan kicking in, isn't so much the resolution or load... Because there are tons of games with dynamic resolution scaling which uses 100% of the available hardware whilst undocked.

It all comes down to clockspeed/voltages... Docked the Switch can enter higher power states to drive home higher visual settings, thus the fan is going to kick in far more frequently to dissipate the waste heat from those higher power states.
The improved resolution is just a byproduct of having the extra thermal/clock/power headroom from being in docked mode that developers can take advantage of.

curl-6 said:

Granted, it's not for you or me, but we're not the target audience. The Lite is meant to replace the 3DS as a cheap entry-level device for consumers who are on a budget or don't care about TV play. It's largely for the Japanese market and the 40 million plus 3DS owners who have yet to upgrade.

This. It's a low-cost entry that will be extremely palatable to mums and dads buying for their kids Birthday/Christmas... I.E. A large portion of the 3DS market.
If the device doesn't offer the features you want... Then it's clearly not the device for you.



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KBG29 said:
I don't know for sure, but I don't believe the Switch Lite will have the necissary cooling to be able to put games out in Docked Mode. This would lead to games being put out at as low as 240 - 360p. That kind of resolution is within reason on a 5.5" display, but it is just not going to cut it on a 55" 4K screen. I simply don't think that it reached a minimum level of Quality that Nintendo was willing to put their name on.

Uh, what? The only Switch game I'm aware of that outputs below 360p is Ark, and that's cos it's a complete an utter technical abortion that never should've seen release. You're massively lowballing Switch's portable performance here.



Depends on Nintendo release a mini dock for it.
A mini dock is demanded even for regular switch.

It would have trails for changing joycon, cos lite owners cannot charge joycons otherwise.
They could sell it with a joycon pair and a joycon grip.

Well, you'd have the full switch experience by spending like the same price.
The difference is basically :
Undocked mode is more portable than regular switch.
Docked mode would present less resolution than regular switch dock mode.



Pemalite said:
Ganoncrotch said:

The base model switch needs to do a lot more work when you drop it into the dock, it needs to push almost 4 times as many pixels when you jump from 720p>1080p and you can hear and feel what that does to the unit, do you ever notice how often the Switch in dock has the fans on far more than when it is in handheld mode?

720P is 921,600 pixels.
1080P is 2,073,600 pixels.

That is an increase of 2.25x. Significantly less than 4x.

The reason for the fan kicking in, isn't so much the resolution or load... Because there are tons of games with dynamic resolution scaling which uses 100% of the available hardware whilst undocked.

It all comes down to clockspeed/voltages... Docked the Switch can enter higher power states to drive home higher visual settings, thus the fan is going to kick in far more frequently to dissipate the waste heat from those higher power states.
The improved resolution is just a byproduct of having the extra thermal/clock/power headroom from being in docked mode that developers can take advantage of.

curl-6 said:

Granted, it's not for you or me, but we're not the target audience. The Lite is meant to replace the 3DS as a cheap entry-level device for consumers who are on a budget or don't care about TV play. It's largely for the Japanese market and the 40 million plus 3DS owners who have yet to upgrade.

This. It's a low-cost entry that will be extremely palatable to mums and dads buying for their kids Birthday/Christmas... I.E. A large portion of the 3DS market.
If the device doesn't offer the features you want... Then it's clearly not the device for you.

When you say higher visual settings in docked mode... what titles do that? 90% of games that I've played or games which have been reviewed in depth by digital foundry the difference between docked and handheld is resolution with almost always the same LoD, textures and shadows between the two versions, the key difference which always comes into play (except for Dragon Quest Builders 1) is that the resolution changes, I think DQB is one of the few titles which is 720p in both modes but in docked it aims for 60 whereas handheld it aims for 30. It's far easier for devs to just rely on the upped resolution of the dock to allow the game to get rid of the rough edges which would look awful on a big screen at those really low res's that handheld can dip to at times.

Right on the pixel thing, it's been a while since I wrote out those exact figures (think it would be back when there was people suggesting that the X1 running games at 720p was neck and neck with ps4 running the same game in 1080p) still though, 2.25x the pixel count is no small feat for a gpu to be asked of, like I said ... it wouldn't be ideal to hold the system while it's doing that.



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Ganoncrotch said:

When you say higher visual settings in docked mode... what titles do that? 90% of games that I've played or games which have been reviewed in depth by digital foundry the difference between docked and handheld is resolution with almost always the same LoD, textures and shadows between the two versions, the key difference which always comes into play (except for Dragon Quest Builders 1) is that the resolution changes, I think DQB is one of the few titles which is 720p in both modes but in docked it aims for 60 whereas handheld it aims for 30. It's far easier for devs to just rely on the upped resolution of the dock to allow the game to get rid of the rough edges which would look awful on a big screen at those really low res's that handheld can dip to at times.

Right on the pixel thing, it's been a while since I wrote out those exact figures (think it would be back when there was people suggesting that the X1 running games at 720p was neck and neck with ps4 running the same game in 1080p) still though, 2.25x the pixel count is no small feat for a gpu to be asked of, like I said ... it wouldn't be ideal to hold the system while it's doing that.

Resolution is a visual setting.

You are right, the 2.25x pixel count is no small feat, especially when the only real boost is generally just clockrates of a component or two.
In saying that... Games that don't hit native resolution in handheld mode generally don't hit native resolution in docked mode either.




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Pemalite said:
Ganoncrotch said:

When you say higher visual settings in docked mode... what titles do that? 90% of games that I've played or games which have been reviewed in depth by digital foundry the difference between docked and handheld is resolution with almost always the same LoD, textures and shadows between the two versions, the key difference which always comes into play (except for Dragon Quest Builders 1) is that the resolution changes, I think DQB is one of the few titles which is 720p in both modes but in docked it aims for 60 whereas handheld it aims for 30. It's far easier for devs to just rely on the upped resolution of the dock to allow the game to get rid of the rough edges which would look awful on a big screen at those really low res's that handheld can dip to at times.

Right on the pixel thing, it's been a while since I wrote out those exact figures (think it would be back when there was people suggesting that the X1 running games at 720p was neck and neck with ps4 running the same game in 1080p) still though, 2.25x the pixel count is no small feat for a gpu to be asked of, like I said ... it wouldn't be ideal to hold the system while it's doing that.

Resolution is a visual setting.

You are right, the 2.25x pixel count is no small feat, especially when the only real boost is generally just clockrates of a component or two.
In saying that... Games that don't hit native resolution in handheld mode generally don't hit native resolution in docked mode either.


In the post I quoted you mentioned that docked mode increases the visual settings then go on to say that the increase in resolution is just a byproduct of the increased clock speeds used in increasing those visual settings.

The post 100% reads like you are suggesting they increase things like LOD's, textures, shadows, lighting..... and then resolution increases as well due to the power increase. Otherwise you have a paragraph about how the resolution increases.... and then the resolution increases as a byproduct of that, quite confusing.

Yeah of course they don't make the jump from 540p>1080p but normally if a game is using a dynamic scale on something like Doom, the times when it touches down to 360/480p in handheld mode are reduced a lot and those games float closer to 720p/640p in docked mode, it is normally an increase in resolution in the same jump. One thing about all the titles on Switch which make aggressive use of the dynamic resolution though makes me very hopeful that a pro model of the console will make a lot more of those games look very nice a lot more of the time, I can't wait to see Doom on a handheld with enough power to maintain the highest resolutions the Switch can muster and lock at 30fps would be a great improvement to the game which is on the system now just by bringing in some extra hardware overhead.



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