I feel like what must have happened is someone recently looked at the specifications of the steam controller and went "WHOA! we have bluetooth on here! we gotta activate it!"

schmidtbag:

Not really, you have to try pretty hard to make Bluetooth a security threat to you. You should really only be afraid of being vulnerable if all of the following are true: * You use 0000 or 1234 for your PIN * You set your device to be always visible * You deliberately have all your personal files shared and accessible via Bluetooth * You use high-power mode, which can extend your range beyond 10 meters But really, in the unlikely event someone hacks into the datastream of my gamepad, why should I care? They can't get any useful data out of it, so worst case scenario, they add a few unwanted inputs here and there and I lose the game. It'd be so subtle that I'd likely just blame the problem on signal interference. The only time Bluetooth's security is questionable is when using it for phone calls or keyboards. Pay extra for what? Bluetooth is dirt cheap, and free to use. As for quality, that depends entirely on both the receiver and transmitter. To my understanding, most devices can go up to 320Kbps, which is plenty good enough (and to my understanding, higher than XM). Some devices can go even higher, if they have the compatible codecs and protocols. If you're transmitting both mic and mono speaker, the quality is always atrocious. My Android phone's stereo Bluetooth audio is total garbage - sounds close to 64Kbps. But my old "dumbphone" can stream Bluetooth audio with hardly any discernible quality loss in my car's stereo. The point is: not all BT audio devices are equal.

i take your point. especially on Android, where the usually trusty VLC player doesn't play well with other apps. had been meaning to finally go foobar2000, did and it's great. but bluetooth still sucks completely unless you use an elaborate mpd bitstream setup...and even then suffers from all of the problems associated with broadcast anything. and to me "sucks" equals anything below 800kbps