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Steam In-Home Streaming and Steam Link thread

Iorv3th

Iorv3th

Member
sprinkles said:
I tested the Link for a few hours on Sunday. I had more problems than I thought after streaming without hiccups through IHS to a Chromebook with Chrubuntu when IHS launched some time ago.

It often seems to lose connection (TV with the Link just goes black and sound stops) for up to 30seconds. Sometimes it fixes itself, sometimes it goes back to the Start screen of the link and lets me choose my PC again. Both Link and my PC (AMD 7950 with a normal output to 2 monitors and a TV) are wired to a TP-Link Archer7. I don't know if it's the PC or the modem or the Link.
Click to expand...

Your link did a firmware update right?

Mine works flawlessy on wired connection. Tried it wireless in a room further away with a yellow signal and it still worked pretty well, but would sometimes mess up the input or the video would flicker a little.
 
W

wihio

Member
sprinkles said:
I tested the Link for a few hours on Sunday. I had more problems than I thought after streaming without hiccups through IHS to a Chromebook with Chrubuntu when IHS launched some time ago.

It often seems to lose connection (TV with the Link just goes black and sound stops) for up to 30seconds. Sometimes it fixes itself, sometimes it goes back to the Start screen of the link and lets me choose my PC again. Both Link and my PC (AMD 7950 with a normal output to 2 monitors and a TV) are wired to a TP-Link Archer7. I don't know if it's the PC or the modem or the Link.
Click to expand...

Double-check that you have hardware encoding selected on your desktop PC. For me, it was not enough to choose this option on the Steam Link. I have the same gfx card as you and it works great now that I have selected that. I had black screens a lot before I changed this.
 
S

sk3tch

Member
robotrock said:
Anyone feel like the Link streams better than their HTPC?
Click to expand...

It's definitely easier. I have a 25' HDMI cable that I was using with the box that I use Link to...it's just way cleaner to use Link versus going through the video settings and changing the primary display to the HDTV. Using ethernet, you can't tell the difference between direct HDMI and Link. It's pretty amazing.
 
A

AwesomeMeat

PossumMeat
robotrock said:
Anyone feel like the Link streams better than their HTPC?
Click to expand...

I am on a wired ethernet connection for both host and client. With that said:

I think the IQ is comparable. I'd really need to do a side by side test to tell. It seems nearly the same (which is a good thing).

In terms of the stream itself, I would say the link is absolutely more stable. With my HTPC - I would experience a drop where the audio/video would freeze for less than a second. This would happen every 10 minutes or so. This has yet to happen on the Link even after an hour+ long session.
 
T

Transistor

Banned
People liking their links? I'm thinking of getting one, and I want to know if the lack of surround sound has been a deal breaker for anyone.
 
Interfectum

Interfectum

Member
I'm using SteamLink and really liking it so far. One issue I'm having is during certain games (Rocket League and Witcher 3) the stream will drop down to 30 fps. But on other games (TF2) it stays at 60. What's effecting this?
 
A

AwesomeMeat

PossumMeat
Transistor said:
People liking their links? I'm thinking of getting one, and I want to know if the lack of surround sound has been a deal breaker for anyone.
Click to expand...

Mine is hooked to my receiver and 7.1 surround system - I've just been letting my receiver do the heaving lifting and converting the signal in to surround. Your mileage may very based on your receiver but sounds pretty good on mine.
 
W

Waveset

Member
Loving mine so far, latency seems low enough for me not to be able to detect it (wired network), just regret not ordering a Steam Controller (have now ordered one).

Can anyone recommend some good controller ready games? Stuff like Binding of Isaac (how is that not controller ready???), Bit Trip Runner, quality little indie stuff.
 
K

koji

Member
Interfectum said:
I'm using SteamLink and really liking it so far. One issue I'm having is during certain games (Rocket League and Witcher 3) the stream will drop down to 30 fps. But on other games (TF2) it stays at 60. What's effecting this?
Click to expand...

Not sure if this will be any help but I had a similar problem with Diablo 3 launched with the battlenet launcher. It felt like it was also capturing my desktop on the background while the game was running and it ended up running at 30FPS. I added the diablo3.exe to the steam library and when I launch it with that it runs at 60FPS. Rocket League is native in Steam though...
 
M

Mindman

Member
How do you connect the wireless 360 controller to it? Plug the dongle into the Link, or pair the controller directly to the Link?
 
diablos991

diablos991

Can’t stump the diablos
ashecitism said:
Okay, so there's been a bug where your max bandwidth is going to be set to 30mbps no matter what. Here's a fix for that until it gets officially fixed: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/homestream/discussions/0/483367798501608669/#c483367798514203363 Reading that thread it might not work for the Link (probably because you can't edit the files on it).
Click to expand...

Whoa this is a terrible bug.
Hoping they get this patched up on the Steam Link.

A 30mbps max is ridiculous compared to today's hardware.
 
A

ashecitism

Member
Might be Nvidia related as some say (before that fix got posted) that disabling HW encoding helped. Valve dev slouken also posted early in the thread

The stream is now limited to half of your estimated bandwidth. What's your estimated bandwidth now?
Click to expand...
 
V

VillageBC

Member
Transistor said:
People liking their links? I'm thinking of getting one, and I want to know if the lack of surround sound has been a deal breaker for anyone.
Click to expand...


It hasn't been a deal breaker for me though I do hope it is something that can be updated to be included.

I like the Link and I think it shows huge potential but it comes with a big caveat in my opinion. If you don't want to tinker, want plug and play experience and general hate messing around with rough edges. It isn't ready.

However, I kind of miss the tinkering days of computers so I'm enjoying the rough edges. Stockholm syndrome. =)
 
B

B4s5C

Member
Anyone have a Powerline? adapter that they are using for a wired connection?

I'm thinking about getting a link but the wireless interference is terrible in my apartment complex to the point where even my Wii U gamepad will stutter occasionally because of the interference from others' WiFi connections. If not, I suppose I can just buy a better router I suppose.
 
V

VillageBC

Member
Storm360 said:
Has anyone tried this over power line?
Click to expand...

Yes, powerline with old houses is sketchy. The powerline adapter reports 50-70Mbp/s connection from my PC to Router. However the actual stream starts to fall apart at about 15Mbp/s when using IHS. This is consistent behaviour when streaming via Universal Media Server to my PS3 and the stream bit rate goes past 15Mbp/s.

I need to do additional testing to verify it is powerline and not the router (dd-wrt) or some other combination of factors. But previously, with the routers bridged over wireless N I had no issues running UMS bitrates into the 50-70Mbp/s.

Oh, the powerlines are TPL-406E, AV500 devices.
 
K

KneehighPark

Member
I've been testing a few different games and am still a little confused on the performance.

Games like Human Resource Machine, The Wolf Among Us, and the original Portal run at a near flawless 1080p60, as long as I turn hardware encoding off for Portal specifically.

On the other hand, some games that I should and have run at maxed settings have a much lower framerate when streaming, like Alan Wake and the Stanley Parable.

With some games running flawlessly and others not i am inclined to think its not a network issue and rather a software/hardware issue but I could be wrong. My rig has an FX-8350, R9 280x, 16 GB RAM and everything installed to an SSD. The Link and my PC are hard wired into their own separate N routers which are wirelessly bridged. The Link itself tells me that the bandwidth is always at or above 30 Mbps

Any ideas on what's going on?
 
E

evilchicken

Member
I got an email from Valve talking about the issues on Mac and providing compensation. Sure enough, I had the last few Valve games I didn't own in my account when I signed in.

Steam Hardware Team said:
We greatly appreciate your early pre-purchase of the first Steam hardware units.

Unfortunately, there are some temporary software issues that prevent the hardware from functioning with Macs. We expect these problems to be resolved as we update firmware and drivers over the next few weeks.

The Steam Link currently doesn't stream from Macs. An upcoming update will add full support for streaming audio, video, and controller input.

The Steam Controller doesn't currently support gamepad emulation on Macs. If you opt into the Steam Beta client, keyboard/mouse emulation will be functional. We expect gamepad emulation to become functional within a few weeks.

We want to apologize for the delays in providing full functionality for the Mac platform. We're doing everything we can to resolve the issues. For the latest fixes and functionality, we recommend that you opt in to the Steam client beta.

We've added the Valve Complete Pack to your Steam account as a gift from Valve. This will give you all of Valve's games (past, present and future) free of charge. You can still choose to refund your Steam Controller and/or Steam Link (refund instructions below), but the Valve games are yours to keep.

Steam Hardware Team
Click to expand...
 
888

888

Member
Ok, got my hands on a link today. I am pretty impressed. I will give impressions on the 5 games I played. Also grabbed some performance stats.

First I will breakdown my system and network.

Main PC:

Custom Built Rig
Intel Core i5 4670K
H100i Water Cooler
MSI Z97 G45 Gaming Motherboard
16GB Memory
Crucial 512GB SSD
Nvidia GTX 970

Network:

Netgear Nighthawk Router
24 Port HP Pro-curve Gigabit Switch

The main PC is hard wired into the Pro-curve. Steam link is Wireless with 802.11 AC.

Link is hooked up to a 70 Inch Vizio with all motion enhancement off and Game mode on. Using a PS4 controller over bluetooth.

Test Games:

Mad Max - Ran perfect with no noticeable lag or artifacting.
Castle Crashers - Ran perfect with no noticeable lag or artifacting.
Mortal Kombat - This looked perfect but I noticed a little input lag, not enough to complain about but I wouldn't go online to play against someone else.
Rocket Knight - Ran perfect with no noticeable lag or artifacting.
Ultra Street Fighter 4 - This ran ALOT better than MK. Played thru most of run through with Ken. Didn't notice any input lag.

Performance Stats pulled off of the USF4 run. Again this is over 802.11AC Wifi.

Streaming Latency: 1ms Input
13ms Display
Ping Time: 4ms
Incoming Bitrate: 13,000 Avg
Bandwidth: 94MB (Made some changes now up to 150. My router is seeing 540mbps connection between the link and itself)
Packet Loss: 0


The Link will be dependent on peoples networks. I figured it would run fine based on streaming to my Surface Pro 3. I am pretty impressed with it.
 
G

GearDraxon

Member
I didn't get an email about the free "Valve Complete No Really Like Forever" pack, until I tried using my Mac Steam client at the same time as my Link. Showed up about a day later. Apparently I never actually owned Half-Life? Who knew!
 
D

deleted

Member
ashecitism said:
Okay, so there's been a bug where your max bandwidth is going to be set to 30mbps no matter what. Here's a fix for that until it gets officially fixed: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/homestream/discussions/0/483367798501608669/#c483367798514203363 Reading that thread it might not work for the Link (probably because you can't edit the files on it).
Click to expand...

That explains that!

I can't maintain 1080p/60FPS on the Link except on the performance mode, but the mbps maxes out at 30 no matter what which made no sense to me. I'll try without hardware acc later and see how it goes then.
 
888

888

Member
So after streaming at at 150mbps with spikes up to 200. It capped at 30.

I did some playing around and I used SF4 as an test game. I hit the home button and then selected steam in home streaming. From there I modified the streaming settings while the game was running. I disabled hardware acceleration under Host settings and renabled. Bandwidth is fixed but if you look at the encoder for the host it shows the software one, if you quit the game and start it again it shows the hardware encoder with the proper bandwidth. It seems to carry over until the host is rebooted.

I have verified this a few times. It does seem to fix it for me every time I reboot the host machine.
 
F

FreakinSyco

Member
ashecitism said:
Okay, so there's been a bug where your max bandwidth is going to be set to 30mbps no matter what. Here's a fix for that until it gets officially fixed: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/homestream/discussions/0/483367798501608669/#c483367798514203363 Reading that thread it might not work for the Link (probably because you can't edit the files on it).
Click to expand...

I couldn't for the life of me figure out why my wired gigabit connection reported 30Mbps bandwidth no matter what.

I really feel like my image quality isn't as high as it should be. Hopefully this gets fixed for the link.
 
D

deleted

Member
Damage Inc said:
So after streaming at at 150mbps with spikes up to 200. It capped at 30.

I did some playing around and I used SF4 as an test game. I hit the home button and then selected steam in home streaming. From there I modified the streaming settings while the game was running. I disabled hardware acceleration under Host settings and renabled. Bandwidth is fixed but if you look at the encoder for the host it shows the software one, if you quit the game and start it again it shows the hardware encoder with the proper bandwidth. It seems to carry over until the host is rebooted.

I have verified this a few times. It does seem to fix it for me every time I reboot the host machine.
Click to expand...

Did you test this with the Link, or with some other Hardware?
And were you able to stream 1080p/60 without problems?
 
888

888

Member
xyla said:
Did you test this with the Link, or with some other Hardware?
And were you able to stream 1080p/60 without problems?
Click to expand...

Yes with the Link. I am streaming 1080p/60 with no issues at all.

Refer to my post up above where I give a breakdown of my setup.
 
diablos991

diablos991

Can’t stump the diablos
Damage Inc said:
Ok, got my hands on a link today. I am pretty impressed. I will give impressions on the 5 games I played. Also grabbed some performance stats.

First I will breakdown my system and network.

Main PC:

Custom Built Rig
Intel Core i5 4670K
H100i Water Cooler
MSI Z97 G45 Gaming Motherboard
16GB Memory
Crucial 512GB SSD
Nvidia GTX 970

Network:

Netgear Nighthawk Router
24 Port HP Pro-curve Gigabit Switch

The main PC is hard wired into the Pro-curve. Steam link is Wireless with 802.11 AC.

Link is hooked up to a 70 Inch Vizio with all motion enhancement off and Game mode on. Using a PS4 controller over bluetooth.

Test Games:

Mad Max - Ran perfect with no noticeable lag or artifacting.
Castle Crashers - Ran perfect with no noticeable lag or artifacting.
Mortal Kombat - This looked perfect but I noticed a little input lag, not enough to complain about but I wouldn't go online to play against someone else.
Rocket Knight - Ran perfect with no noticeable lag or artifacting.
Ultra Street Fighter 4 - This ran ALOT better than MK. Played thru most of run through with Ken. Didn't notice any input lag.

Performance Stats pulled off of the USF4 run. Again this is over 802.11AC Wifi.

Streaming Latency: 1ms Input
13ms Display
Ping Time: 4ms
Incoming Bitrate: 13,000 Avg
Bandwidth: 94MB (Made some changes now up to 150. My router is seeing 540mbps connection between the link and itself)
Packet Loss: 0


The Link will be dependent on peoples networks. I figured it would run fine based on streaming to my Surface Pro 3. I am pretty impressed with it.
Click to expand...

This is great news for me as my setup is similar. Have you been able to try a wired connection to the Link to see if that improves things?
 
888

888

Member
diablos991 said:
This is great news for me as my setup is similar. Have you been able to try a wired connection to the Link to see if that improves things?
Click to expand...

No need to be honest. Most of the time my 802.11AC wireless is faster than a wired connection. I have been watching the latency like a hawk and I am not seeing any unsual spikes or issues.

Audio and Video is so good my wife can't tell the difference. I am unusually picky about quality and this is holding up to my standards.

I think the big thing is the host being gig wired to the switch.

Plus I can't get a wire to it where it is located. I used to run powerline adapters but one day they stopped getting more than 15mbps through them. They were always pretty spotty when you needed a solid connection anyways.
 
D

deleted

Member
It seems that Rocket League has some problems.
I managed to get my mbps 'unlocked' to a stable 125 mbps thanks to Damage Inc and have been able to stream and play games like MGSV at a stable 60 FPS in beautiful mode.

Rocket League however doesn't work very well. It hovers at around 40-50 FPS in either beautiful and balanced. Only on performance am I able to get 60 FPS out of it. Since the game itself isn't too demanding, I guess that this is a streaming specific problem. Pretty interesting to be honest since this is one of the two games that were given away with the hardware.
 
888

888

Member
xyla said:
It seems that Rocket League has some problems.
I managed to get my mbps 'unlocked' to a stable 125 mbps thanks to Damage Inc and have been able to stream and play games like MGSV at a stable 60 FPS in beautiful mode.

Rocket League however doesn't work very well. It hovers at around 40-50 FPS in either beautiful and balanced. Only on performance am I able to get 60 FPS out of it. Since the game itself isn't too demanding, I guess that this is a streaming specific problem. Pretty interesting to be honest since this is one of the two games that were given away with the hardware.
Click to expand...

I wiped my machine last night and took it out of preview builds to just regular Win 10 Pro. Now I am seeing weird issues. Rolled back my Nvidia drivers because I was one behind when I tested last night. Games are still running fine but I am seeing some oddities while watching the performance numbers. Working it all out now.
 
Interfectum

Interfectum

Member
xyla said:
It seems that Rocket League has some problems.
I managed to get my mbps 'unlocked' to a stable 125 mbps thanks to Damage Inc and have been able to stream and play games like MGSV at a stable 60 FPS in beautiful mode.

Rocket League however doesn't work very well. It hovers at around 40-50 FPS in either beautiful and balanced. Only on performance am I able to get 60 FPS out of it. Since the game itself isn't too demanding, I guess that this is a streaming specific problem. Pretty interesting to be honest since this is one of the two games that were given away with the hardware.
Click to expand...

Yeah I'm having issues with RL too. No idea what's causing it.
 
A

atomic moth

Member
Does anyone know if I can lower the resolution on the link to 640x480 (480i)?

Does it automatically upscale if the host computer is running that resolution?

I was looking at maybe getting an HDMI to VGA converter and plugging it into some multi-sync arcade cabinets I have, but I don't want to chance it if the link will blow up the setup.
 
D

deleted

Member
Damage Inc said:
I wiped my machine last night and took it out of preview builds to just regular Win 10 Pro. Now I am seeing weird issues. Rolled back my Nvidia drivers because I was one behind when I tested last night. Games are still running fine but I am seeing some oddities while watching the performance numbers. Working it all out now.
Click to expand...

Did Rocket League run with solid 60 FPS before you changed the system and the driver?

Interfectum said:
Yeah I'm having issues with RL too. No idea what's causing it.
Click to expand...

I hope they fix it though, atm it's a hassle to navigate between the modes depending on the game and beautiful is noticeably nicer looking than performance, so there is that too..
 
888

888

Member
xyla said:
Did Rocket League run with solid 60 FPS before you changed the system and the driver?



I hope they fix it though, atm it's a hassle to navigate between the modes depending on the game and beautiful is noticeably nicer looking than performance, so there is that too..
Click to expand...

I did Rocket KNIGHT :) ill try rocket league here in a minute.

I think I figured out the issue. Shadow play was on. After turning it off things are better now. Still can't get mbps over 90 now. Last night was better. I'll try again after local network isn't being hit by the family. I have the link as the only 5ghz device on that band so there really shouldn't be much issue there. If anything it could have been something with Windows Insider preview that was installed before. It's not bad by any means just seeing a little bit more compression Vs last night where I barely noticed any.

Edit: got it running better. Disabled shadow play for sure was an issue. Still only seeing 73mbps which I read only shows half of the effective bandwidth per a steam employee on a steam discussion. The other thing is looking at my router the actual connection speed between the link and the router is over 500mbps so the throttling is being done by steam I think.
 
V

VillageBC

Member
Did some additional testing on my powerline. The utility it comes with grossly over rates the speed it is connected at to the tune of 50% or more. It claimed a 50-70Mbps connection between the powerline adapters. ipref3 test would max at 35Mbps but not consistantly and generally float at 15Mbps-25Mbps. Occasionally dropping even lower than that. I have done a bunch of work moving items off the circuit/behind power bars to clean up the signal to even get it to that point.

I have some network re-engineering to do... BOO!

One thing I noticed streaming Bioshock Infinite. I was getting slow network (expected) but also slow encode and slow capture errors. Which other older games I tried were not giving. It was rendering 1080p, my monitors resolution but stream is only 720p which is my TV currently. I lowered the game rendering resolution to 720p and that did fix the slow encode/capture error. This is streaming from an i7-930, 12gb Ram and 7870.
 
888

888

Member
I did some hardline connections with the link. At one point it shot up to 160mbps. Overall I think the link is bugged as far as bandwidth rating works. I think incoming bit rate is more important. I can't get it back over 100 with AC now. I don't think it is my host because I am streaming to the surface just fine.

Bitrates:
Link- 802.11 ac is seeing 14000k avg
Link- Hardwire 20000k avg
My surface pro 3 over 2.4ghz is seeing 30000k avg and is seeing bandwidth changes easier. Currently getting 168 on it.
Surface Pro 3 over 5ghz N is getting 200mbps and 30000k bit rates.

Link is struggling to perform tonight whereas last night I was over 150 with it.

I think the link has some kinks that need to be worked out. Or they cheaped out on the WiFi on the link. I wouldn't say I even noticed much of a difference Hardwire Vs AC short of the performance numbers being slightly higher.
 
D

deleted

Member
Damage Inc said:
I did Rocket KNIGHT :) ill try rocket league here in a minute.

I think I figured out the issue. Shadow play was on. After turning it off things are better now. Still can't get mbps over 90 now. Last night was better. I'll try again after local network isn't being hit by the family. I have the link as the only 5ghz device on that band so there really shouldn't be much issue there. If anything it could have been something with Windows Insider preview that was installed before. It's not bad by any means just seeing a little bit more compression Vs last night where I barely noticed any.

Edit: got it running better. Disabled shadow play for sure was an issue. Still only seeing 73mbps which I read only shows half of the effective bandwidth per a steam employee on a steam discussion. The other thing is looking at my router the actual connection speed between the link and the router is over 500mbps so the throttling is being done by steam I think.
Click to expand...

Ohhh, Rocket Knight! I didn't realize anyone actually bought that one :p

Have you tried Rocket League by now? It's the only game for me that does start, but doesn't run nearly as well as it should. They either don't start at all or run fine.
 
888

888

Member
xyla said:
Ohhh, Rocket Knight! I didn't realize anyone actually bought that one :p

Have you tried Rocket League by now? It's the only game for me that does start, but doesn't run nearly as well as it should. They either don't start at all or run fine.
Click to expand...

Yeah I did buy it. Loved the old one :)

Yes I tried rocket league. It runs fine but has the most compression out of them all. I am going to try that fix using the USB drive to increase the bit rate on the link. I know the WiFi in the link is connecting faster than my surface to the router but it is giving lower bit rates and speeds. Got to be something with the link. I know valve is still tweaking but I'm impatient.

Just tried the USB fix. Not working properly. Will mess with it later.

USB fix is applying but nothing different is happening.
 
D

deleted

Member
What quality setting are you streaming at? And what's this USB fix you are talking about? Searched the last few pages, but I don't seem to find something...
 
D

deleted

Member
Oh, nice, I didn't realize someone figured out a way to use the fix on the Link too. I'll have to try that out over the next few days.
 
Gumbie

Gumbie

Member
I'm hearing from a friend who has the xbox one wireless receiver that it's not recognized by the link. Really hoping Valve gets that added before the official November 10th launch.
 
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