Related
Please don't ask for Moonlight help on Nvidia's forums! It's not their responsibility to support this app. Ask on this forum, another non-Nvidia forum, by email, etc
What happened to Limelight?/Why did you change your name?
On April 21, 2015, we received a Cease and Desist letter from Limelight Networks, Inc. They also do streaming services and were concerned about confusion between this project and their company trademarks. To comply with the terms of their C&D, we've decided to rename our project to Moonlight.
Quick Links
Main website: https://moonlight-stream.org
Help: https://github.com/moonlight-stream/moonlight-docs/wiki/Setup-Guide
Discord: https://moonlight-stream.org/discord
PC GitHub project: https://github.com/moonlight-stream/moonlight-qt
iOS GitHub project: https://github.com/moonlight-stream/moonlight-ios
Android GitHub project: https://github.com/moonlight-stream/moonlight-android
Android GitHub releases page (APKs): https://github.com/moonlight-stream/moonlight-android/releases
Embedded port (for Raspberry Pi and other embedded devices): https://github.com/irtimmer/limelight-embedded
GearVR port (for GearVR devices): http://sideloadvr.com/detail.php?id=14
iOS version
The iOS port of Moonlight is now on the App Store: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/moonlight-game-streaming/id1000551566
Windows, Mac, and Linux port
PC port binaries: https://github.com/moonlight-stream/moonlight-qt/releases
PC port source: https://github.com/moonlight-stream/moonlight-qt
Moonlight for Chrome OS
Download the latest version from the Chrome Web Store.
General Streaming Latency Information
The latency of streaming is dependent on the device you're streaming to and the network you're streaming over. Different devices have different H.264 hardware decoding latency. After streaming, a toast will show up with latency numbers. It will show the total client latency and the portion of the total client latency spent waiting for the hardware decoder. Note that the total client latency does NOT include network latency, so the real latency is higher than the number you see. The total client latency is a measure of the time that the first packet in a frame is received to the time that the frame is released for rendering on screen.
Anecdotal Hardware Decoder Latency Numbers
These are some latency numbers (from memory) I've seen on my test devices as of Moonlight Android 4.0.1. I'll try to keep updating this as I test.
Tier 1 devices:
Tegra 4 - Nvidia Shield - 5 ms - 1080p60 supported
Intel Atom/Bay Trail/Moorefield - Nexus Player - 8 ms - 1080p60 supported (may need a USB OTG Ethernet adapter for consistent performance)
Razer Forge TV - 10 ms - 1080p60 supported - H.265 supported
Tegra X1 - SHIELD Android TV - 10 ms - 4K60 supported - H.265 supported in hardware but needs changes in Moonlight to work well
Tegra K1 - Nexus 9 - 15 ms - 1080p60 supported
Tegra 3 - OUYA and Nexus 7 (2012) - 17 ms - 1080p60 supported
Tier 2 devices:
Broadcom VideoCore IV - Fire TV Stick - 20 ms - 720p60/1080p30 supported
Exynos 7420 - Galaxy S6 - 20 ms - 1080p60/4K30 supported - H.265 supported
Snapdragon S4 Pro (rebranded 600) - Nexus 7 (2013) - 20 ms - 720p60/1080p30 supported
Snapdragon 801 - HTC One M8 GPE - 20 ms - 1080p60 supported
Snapdragon 800 - Nexus 5 - 20 ms - 1080p60 supported
Snapdragon 600 - Fire TV (2014) - 30 ms - 720p60/1080p30 supported
Tier 3 devices:
MediaTek devices - Fire TV (2015) - 55 ms - 1080p60 supported - H.265 supported
Adding games/apps that aren't automatically found
You can stream any almost any game or app by adding the EXE file to GFE manually (if it's not found by the automatic app scan). Open GeForce Experience, click the Preferences tab, click GameStream on the sidebar, then click the add (+) button on the right. Browse to the app or file you want to add and click OK. You can rename the app using the edit button on the right (near the add button).
Using Moonlight as a remote desktop solution
You can stream the entire Windows desktop via Moonlight. Follow step 2 from this guide
Streaming over the Internet
Install the Moonlight Internet Streaming Helper on your host gaming PC to enable streaming over the Internet. If your router supports UPnP, you won't need to make any manual changes.
If the above tool isn't able to enable Internet streaming automatically or your router doesn't support it, forward these ports manually:
TCP 47984, 47989, 48010
UDP 47998, 47999, 48000, 48010
General requirements for current APK:
SoC capable of decoding H.264 High Profile in hardware (Snapdragon, Exynos, Tegra 3 or higher, Rockchip, and more)
Android 4.1 or higher
GeForce Experience with a GTX 600/700/800/900 GPU or GTX 600M/700M/800M (GT-series not supported)
Xbox, PS3 (with SixAxis app), Moga (B/HID mode), Shield, or Ouya controller (other controllers may work too in HID mode)
Mid to high-end wireless router (preferably dual-band 802.11n or better)
Good wireless connection to your Android device
Troubleshooting tips:
1. Make sure GeForce Experience is open, up-to-date, and that you've scanned for games.
2. Make sure your device is on the same network as your computer for initial pairing.
3. Try disabling any firewall software running on your machine.
4. Try rebooting your machine. Sometimes the streaming software gets into a messed up state where it won't work normally until the machine is rebooted.
5. Make sure your Android device has a strong wireless connection (and your PC too, if it's connected wirelessly).
6. For Internet streaming, make sure to install Moonlight Internet Streaming Helper on your host gaming PC, then run the Moonlight Internet Streaming Tester that it installs to troubleshoot further.
7. To check if GFE is working properly, try navigating to the following URLs on your GFE PC:
http://127.0.0.1:47989/serverinfo?uniqueid=1234
https://127.0.0.1:47984/serverinfo?uniqueid=1234
For those with latency issues, please see this post.
Device-related issues
Depending on the wireless chipset on your phone/tablet, you may have a bad streaming experience if Bluetooth is active while streaming. Unfortunately, there's nothing we can do about this. If you experience significant connection degradation with a Bluetooth controller connected, you could try connecting the controller to your PC (see the section above), a USB Ethernet adapter, or controller that connects directly to your Android device (assuming your Android device supports USB OTG)
Older Changes:
Update 12 - March 13, 2014:
Significant video quality improvements. Lower video latency. New UI that makes it easier to choose the best streaming settings. Transient messages are displayed while streaming if network or device problems are detected.
Update 11:
Tegra hardware decoding latency bug is fixed. Hardware decoding is now used by default on Tegra and Rockchip devices. Performance is vastly improved on Tegra devices (1080p60 decodes in real-time, even on Tegra 3). The parser bug causing additional artifacts and image corruption is (finally) fixed.
Update 10:
Added options to force either hardware or software decoding. Reduce audio decoding CPU usage. Fix image quality and performance regressions from update 9.
Update 9:
Reduced CPU usage of video decoding. Added options to choose target resolution (720p or 1080p) and FPS (30 or 60).
Update 8:
Added a checkbox to choose image quality vs performance (only for CPU decoding). Optimize CPU decoding further. The frame rate is now playable on the Ouya with its Tegra 3..
Update 7:
Connectivity issues should be resolved now. Update to the latest APK if you were experiencing connection failures with the last couple of releases.
Update 6:
There's now GUI feedback when connecting. The whitelist for hardware decoding (that only included Qualcomm decoders) has now been replaced with a blacklist (currently containing TI and Nvidia decoders). The Exynos decoder in Exynos 5 Octa has been confirmed to work.
Update 5:
The app will now request a new reference frame if packet loss occurs on the video stream. This means that the stream will recover from blockiness and artifacting that occur when video packets get lost. CPU decoding for non-Snapdragon devices is a bit better. Fixed back button on Shield.
Update 4:
Added multithreaded CPU H264 decoding support for non-Snapdragon devices with ffmpeg. Both landscape orientations now work. This grows the APK significantly so don't be alarmed when this download is larger than previous builds.
Tegra 4 is now very smooth in the games I've tested. Tegra 3 works significantly better than before, but still not perfect (and won't likely ever be as smooth as Snapdragon or Tegra 4).
For Qualcomm devices, a dual-core SoC (even as old as Cortex-A8 stuff) is sufficient due to the hardware decoder. For other devices, CPU decoding will now be used. These devices will need more CPU horsepower (a quad-core Tegra 3 is almost enough).
Look forward to keyboard support and a better GUI coming in the next several days.
Update 3:
Frame pacing improvements for Snapdragon and Tegra devices, although Tegra still has more latency than Snapdragon devices. If you have issues with blockiness or discoloration in the video stream, make sure that you have a good wireless connection. Moonlight doesn't currently deal with packet loss as well as the Shield streaming app.
Update 2:
PS3, Xbox, Shield, and Moga Pro controllers are working with the latest APK.
Update:
Audio is now working. Video is working pretty well on Snapdragon devices (with some lag on Tegra devices). I've attached the current APK here for those that want to test. Due to the framework we're using for video decoding, this app requires Android 4.1 or higher. This is still in alpha so expect bugs.
Original post:
Here is a demo of a WIP app that uses the same Shield streaming technology to stream to any Android device. Controller and mouse input works. Keyboard input isn't implemented yet. Video support works (minus some artifacts at rare points and minor frame pacing issues). Audio doesn't work yet (not sure what format it is).
We've had success with very low H264 decoding latency on Snapdragon S4 Pro/600 devices (like the 2013 Nexus 7 and HTC One), but the Tegra 3/4 decoder has a high latency per frame (~1 second) that makes streaming more laggy on devices like the Ouya, 2012 Nexus 7, and even the Shield itself.
The next big step to a release-ready app is audio support (and the obligatory code cleanup). I'd be happy to respond to any questions about the way the app or the GFE streaming protocol works. If there's significant interest in this, I'll try to put more time into finishing it ASAP.
Demo video (a bit old now):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VOti83qZRU
Downloads:
I'd recommend downloading the app from the Play Store. Updates are automatically applied through the Play Store when they are released. Crash reports also get to us automatically if you use the Play Store version and click the Report button if Moonlight crashes.
Google Play Link
Sometimes APKs are more convenient for sideloading and other things, so they will continue to be posted.
You can find the latest APKs on the GitHub page here: https://github.com/moonlight-stream/moonlight-android/releases
cgutman said:
Here is a demo of a WIP app that uses the same Shield streaming technology to stream to any Android device. Controller and mouse input works. Keyboard input isn't implemented yet. Video support works (minus some artifacts at rare points and minor frame pacing issues). Audio doesn't work yet (not sure what format it is).
We've had success with very low H264 decoding latency on Snapdragon S4 Pro/600 devices (like the 2013 Nexus 7 and HTC One), but the Tegra 3/4 decoder has a high latency per frame (~1 second) that makes streaming more laggy on devices like the Ouya, 2012 Nexus 7, and even the Shield itself.
The next big step to a release-ready app is audio support (and the obligatory code cleanup). I'd be happy to respond to any questions about the way the app or the GFE streaming protocol works. If there's significant interest in this, I'll try to put more time into finishing it ASAP.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VOti83qZRU
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
sounds very promising you should post this info over the nexus 7 forum HTC and Samsung forums you will get more interest there
I will be happy to try it on my note 3 if you get audio working
very interesting work however I think you might find this
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2506438
a better alternative to work on, maybe if you find a way to get splashtop THD algorithm for streaming, which is leaps and bounds ahead of nvidia's solution. A plus point of this is you can stream anything, your not restricted to just steam and big picture mode.
Really cool!
Tested on Asus TF300 its lagging a lot but i really like what you are doing!
Keep up the good job!
Some questions:
Why no pair button? I had to discover the pair url and do it by hand.
Also why the mac is not read from the android system? Had to change it before compile.
You forgotten to put the link for the code... cant post because new user
danielb7390 said:
Really cool!
Tested on Asus TF300 its lagging a lot but i really like what you are doing!
Keep up the good job!
Some questions:
Why no pair button? I had to discover the pair url and do it by hand.
Also why the mac is not read from the android system? Had to change it before compile.
You forgotten to put the link for the code... cant post because new user
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The pairing should take place on the first connection. When we get the /pair URL, it should prompt for pairing on the PC. The MAC wasn't read simply because this was some proof of concept code written in a hurry. I'll be fixing that (and other things) shortly.
There's also no UI feedback yet as to what's going on (since we've mostly been debugging it with ADB over the network). I might add some toasts for now to indicate what's going on. In general, it needs cleanup in the UI area along with some code cleanup of some of the early stuff we wrote. There's code in there for mDNS discovery (like the Shield's app uses) which does work but we lack the UI to display the results. We'll also eventually have a proper game selection UI (since we also know how the Shield's app requests game thumbnails), so games can be launched without using Big Picture.
The code link wasn't posted originally because it's a very early proof of concept, but since you asked: https://github.com/cgutman/limelight
EDIT: You were right about the pairing bug. I forgot that we checked if it was paired before attempting to connect. I've added a pairing button and fixed the hardcoded MAC address.
Nice!
"early proof of concept" that works!
I will be following the updates!
Stoped working!
Don't know what happened i cant pair...also tried the same way i did yesterday ( manually through firefox) and it doesn't accept!!!
Really don't know whats going on here!!
danielb7390 said:
Don't know what happened i cant pair...also tried the same way i did yesterday ( manually through firefox) and it doesn't accept!!!
Really don't know whats going on here!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try pairing using the button. It's possible that the MAC address that you specified manually isn't the same one that the code selects now.
Got it working
Got it working after a pc reboot... stupid windows as always!
Anyways i believe theres a problem in your connection layout i can't click the pair button until i resize "mDNSResultView" because its on top of the buttons or its something else!
Also it's supposed to be working the DNS find? No pc's come up on the list.
I get 1s lag is this normal or i have some problem on my end?
danielb7390 said:
Got it working after a pc reboot... stupid windows as always!
Anyways i believe theres a problem in your connection layout i can't click the pair button until i resize "mDNSResultView" because its on top of the buttons or its something else!
Also it's supposed to be working the DNS find? No pc's come up on the list.
I get 1s lag is this normal or i have some problem on my end?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The connection layout problem was some code that someone accidentally committed because they didn't diff what they were committing. They've been publicly shamed
The layout is fixed now so the pairing button should work again.
The H264 stream that is being fed to the decoders currently isn't 100% perfect. There are a few issues we're still trying to work out. The Snapdragon decoder seems to be the most lenient and fast. The Tegra decoder seems to be fairly lenient as well, but does have the 1 second lag which is common to both Tegra 3 and Tegra 4 devices. I'm not sure if the decoder is just too slow for real-time decoding or if we're doing something wrong, but I suspect the latter since I think Shield itself uses the hardware H264 decoder when streaming the normal way. Both of these decoders handle our H264 stream better than TI's hardware decoder and Google's software decoder which both crash immediately with "Decoder Failed -2". I'm working on fixing the H264 stream issues in the "av" branch.
If you need me to test something just say!
The stream is a standard rtsp stream or has something special?
The sound doesn't work why? Can't find the proper decoder?
danielb7390 said:
If you need me to test something just say!
The stream is a standard rtsp stream or has something special?
The sound doesn't work why? Can't find the proper decoder?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's an RTP stream but it seems to have some proprietary 56-byte header between the RTP header and the media payload. It also sends both audio and video on the same RTP stream with the same packet type, so we need to find and remove the audio to parse it separately. I'm working on getting video decoding working 100% on all devices to see if I can root out the bad data causing the software decoder to fail (which might be the audio). I had originally assumed the audio was AAC since we were looking at an H264 stream and the two formats are commonly bundled together, but it appears the audio is something else. At this point, our best guess for the audio format is Opus.
I guess you already tried to open the stream with some player? Or capture the data and try to play it with vlc for example?
Probably saying garbage but whatever!
I just bought an xperia z ultra, I would like to try this out how do I go about it.
You need a pc that meets the requirements for shield streaming
and compile the source code using android SDK.
I don't know if i cant provide a apk.
Can this thread be moved? It's not relevant to the Shield.
Audio is here with the latest code! Turns out that audio was coming in over UDP port 48000. I wrote a JNI binding for the Opus reference decoder and fed the data to the AudioTrack class.
danielb7390 said:
You need a pc that meets the requirements for shield streaming
and compile the source code using android SDK.
I don't know if i cant provide a apk.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've attached an APK that you can use for testing to this post.
nielo360 said:
I just bought an xperia z ultra, I would like to try this out how do I go about it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It should work fine with the attached APK since that phone has a Snapdragon 800 which plays nice with our H264 stream.
LVNeptune8 said:
Can this thread be moved? It's not relevant to the Shield.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sure, ideas for the new location?
Audio its working!
Video still has delay seems little bit better but still needs some work
The middle controller button the "xbox home" button doesn't work at least for me! Its needed to open the steam overlay.
danielb7390 said:
Audio its working!
Video still has delay seems little bit better but still needs some work
The middle controller button the "xbox home" button doesn't work at least for me! Its needed to open the steam overlay.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The xbox home button unfortunately sends key events like the Android home button which makes it problematic to intercept. Instead, I've made it so Back+Start will open the steam overlay.
The video delay issue is possibly an issue with Tegra's decoder or how we're interfacing with it. The problem with Google's software decoder and TI's hardware decoder is that the stream that we're getting is H264 high profile, while Android only requires implementing H264 baseline profile. Qualcomm's hardware decoder does high profile perfectly well. Tegra 3 and 4 also support high profile hardware decoding but they seem to decode very slowly, particularly when a large portion of the screen changes. The current plan is to look into software decoding of the H264 stream for devices that have problematic decoders, while letting the Qualcomm devices decode in hardware.
There's an updated APK attached to this post.
Where can I send you a donation?
I have an nVidia SHIELD and Nexus 7, but the only thing I don't like on the shield is the screen size so I'd LOVE to be able to play on my Nexus 7 with a 360 controller, etc so this project looks fantastic!
EDIT: Also, I'm just wondering, but how does this compare to Splashtop THD? Is it using the same NVENC and RTP methods for encoding and sending data? I am thinking about purchasing an ASUS TF701T tablet but one of the main (?) purposes would be remote streaming some games from my desktop. It's confusing that you say that Tegra chips are slower because isn't Splashtop THD (made for Tegra) extremely low latency?
Has anyone used the Limelight app? I've got my PC which is wired into a Airport Extreme and then of course the Nexus Player is connected over N my router doesn't do AC. If I do the Nvidia Utility to optimize games and then run at 720p everything runs perfect but if I up it to 1080p it lags not really bad but bad enough that it annoys you. I know it is not the PC because it can run with everything maxed out no problem. I'm assuming it is a bandwidth issue getting to the nexus player. Would it be best to maybe get a USB ethernet adapter or a AC router. I have no problem running the ethernet cable actually already have one ran for my Roku 3.
jtboyz01 said:
Has anyone used the Limelight app? I've got my PC which is wired into a Airport Extreme and then of course the Nexus Player is connected over N my router doesn't do AC. If I do the Nvidia Utility to optimize games and then run at 720p everything runs perfect but if I up it to 1080p it lags not really bad but bad enough that it annoys you. I know it is not the PC because it can run with everything maxed out no problem. I'm assuming it is a bandwidth issue getting to the nexus player. Would it be best to maybe get a USB ethernet adapter or a AC router. I have no problem running the ethernet cable actually already have one ran for my Roku 3.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
mine operates 1080p fine
the only problem I have is sometimes when I load a game directly it is black screen, so I just load it through the steam dashboard.
Streaming from the nvidia tools, the picture is not great but I believe it's due to compression and not resolution. Also there's a bit of input lag, which appears to be due to streaming and not input communication (near instant response on the broadcasting PC).
Gave it my first shot tonight.
I'm using the Nexus Player over LAN via USB OTG and a StarTech (see: cheap-ass) USB 2.0 HUB. I set connection to 1080p 60FPS, and 100MB connection. I'm using a Netgear R6250 AC router. I was able to play Steam Big Picture without any noticeable input lag. I tested several different games: BioShock Infinite (the final checkpoint to the ending), Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky (much higher than 60FPS), Final Fantasy XIII (about 1 hour of gameplay), and Brutal Legend (played about 20 minutes of gameplay, hated it). The main point is: I was taken back. I didn't expect this to work so well, and I don't regret my Nexus Player purchase anymore, even if Google were to abandon the project as it stands now (lets be real, this project needs a lot of work).
If there's anything else you'd like to know, I'd be happy to provide the information. Oh, while I'm mentioning what I played, I'm running a fairly decent rig, an i5 4670k, with 8GB Corsiar RAM, and an EVGA GeForce 660Ti. Nothing is currently overclocked.
khoooool
SoundMage said:
Gave it my first shot tonight.
I'm using the Nexus Player over LAN via USB OTG and a StarTech (see: cheap-ass) USB 2.0 HUB. I set connection to 1080p 60FPS, and 100MB connection. I'm using a Netgear R6250 AC router. I was able to play Steam Big Picture without any noticeable input lag. I tested several different games: BioShock Infinite (the final checkpoint to the ending), Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky (much higher than 60FPS), Final Fantasy XIII (about 1 hour of gameplay), and Brutal Legend (played about 20 minutes of gameplay, hated it). The main point is: I was taken back. I didn't expect this to work so well, and I don't regret my Nexus Player purchase anymore, even if Google were to abandon the project as it stands now (lets be real, this project needs a lot of work).
If there's anything else you'd like to know, I'd be happy to provide the information. Oh, while I'm mentioning what I played, I'm running a fairly decent rig, an i5 4670k, with 8GB Corsiar RAM, and an EVGA GeForce 660Ti. Nothing is currently overclocked.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What controller did you use? And was there any issue with button mapping?
SoundMage said:
Gave it my first shot tonight.
I'm using the Nexus Player over LAN via USB OTG and a StarTech (see: cheap-ass) USB 2.0 HUB. I set connection to 1080p 60FPS, and 100MB connection. I'm using a Netgear R6250 AC router. I was able to play Steam Big Picture without any noticeable input lag. I tested several different games: BioShock Infinite (the final checkpoint to the ending), Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky (much higher than 60FPS), Final Fantasy XIII (about 1 hour of gameplay), and Brutal Legend (played about 20 minutes of gameplay, hated it). The main point is: I was taken back. I didn't expect this to work so well, and I don't regret my Nexus Player purchase anymore, even if Google were to abandon the project as it stands now (lets be real, this project needs a lot of work).
If there's anything else you'd like to know, I'd be happy to provide the information. Oh, while I'm mentioning what I played, I'm running a fairly decent rig, an i5 4670k, with 8GB Corsiar RAM, and an EVGA GeForce 660Ti. Nothing is currently overclocked.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmm sounds like it must be a bandwidth issue for me since the Nexus Player is using wireless N and the host is wired. Time to buy a adapter and get a wired connection. Just for curiosity can you try using your AC wireless and see the performance please.
jtboyz01 said:
Hmm sounds like it must be a bandwidth issue for me since the Nexus Player is using wireless N and the host is wired. Time to buy a adapter and get a wired connection. Just for curiosity can you try using your AC wireless and see the performance please.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would think in the case of streaming, it would always be better to try to go LAN. I know it's certainly possible to not use WiFi, as I also own an Nvidia Shield Tablet and I play remotely every day (Wifi N,) but certainly preferable to be hard-wired in whenever possible. The Nexus Player automatically switches to LAN when it's connected and settings become available once plugged in. A shame so many things are needed to make that happen though.
I would like to play Grim Fandango Remastered on NP, is it possible via Limelight?
http://grimremastered.com/
Already run an Asus AC68u router (before owning the NP) so I've been playing limelight over ac WiFi. I also have a gtx660ti in my gaming computer. Extremely impressed by nvidia and the folks at limelight who REd the game stream protocol. Truly great experience for me, but I'm not an fps multiplayer fanatic. I just like playing campaign, adventure, hack n slash games on the big screen. My input lag and decode lag was 9ms. I honestly don't know if that's good or bad but it's the numbers I remember from playing Arkham Origins last night. I don't notice any performance hit with that lag. Everything feels real time to me, but I'm probably not very sensitive to that like some real avid gamers may be. Never tried Lan
Everything in my stream library has worked so far. I use the dual shock controller with the sixaxis apk (sideloaded). That screws up the remote but I use my tv remote through HDMI cec anyway, along with the ds3 controller I don't miss the standard controller. The sixaxis apk has a nifty trick that has helped me a few times. In preferences you can toggle "mouse" support with any button. I choose the PS-power button on the ds3. I can't recall which but one of my stream games just sits there asking me to press start, and I can toggle the mouse mode to press it. Most games that ask that (even without game pad support) usually go straight to the game as if limelight is helping you along by providing the start click or something
No problems with Limelght stremaing on mine.. 1080p/60fps, over ac wifi using an AC68u router. I've tested it with about a dozen games at this point, most only briefly.
Latency reported varied from 6 to 10ms, with the median probably falling about 9ms. Feel wise, it was barely perceptible, and didn't have any effect on gameplay in any games tested. I did not test with any shooters, other than Defiance, which is toward the slow end anyway as shooters go. I probably ran about 1hr of Guild Wars 2 through it without any problems - no disconnecting, crashing ,or other wonkyness. Once or twice I'd notice compression artifacts but they would clear up in under about 1/4th of a second.
On the gamepad side of things, I played Assassin's Creed: Black Flag a bit, using a 360 wireless gamepad and the MS usb receiver for it. Here's an interesting tidbit - the game popped into gamepad mode, even though there wasn't a gamepad hooked up to the PC itself.
The gamepad mappings were correct/all buttons worked the same within the game as they do when the gamepad is hooked directly to the PC. I'm not 100% sure that's an out of the box thing though, because I have been messing with the keymap file for the 360 controller to get it's d-pad working in general. I'll have to do a little more testing in that respect when I get a chance.
Overall the experience was great though, and really opens up some interesting possibilities.
I wish my Limelight would work but i think its a problem with my PC and Nvidia Experience sins i cant even get the program to open on my PC, just errors every time i try top open Nvidia Experience, and i tried to connect to my PC from the app and i got prompted with a box to enter the pin and managed to start a game from steam but it didnt work so good, the game started but suddenly i lost the ability to stear and the app kicked me and it takes 10 tried to get it to start just to play 1 minute...
So i tried Splashtop THD and Splashtop 2 but those where unuseable sins the screen was all green and flickery so i have to settle with Kainy HD that works fairly good...
DarkShadowSwE said:
I wish my Limelight would work but i think its a problem with my PC and Nvidia Experience sins i cant even get the program to open on my PC, just errors every time i try top open Nvidia Experience, and i tried to connect to my PC from the app and i got prompted with a box to enter the pin and managed to start a game from steam but it didnt work so good, the game started but suddenly i lost the ability to stear and the app kicked me and it takes 10 tried to get it to start just to play 1 minute...
So i tried Splashtop THD and Splashtop 2 but those where unuseable sins the screen was all green and flickery so i have to settle with Kainy HD that works fairly good...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Which nvidia GPU are you running?
I remember hearing about something similar called kino console but I've never tried it
darker_slayer said:
Which nvidia GPU are you running?
I remember hearing about something similar called kino console but I've never tried it
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Click to collapse
well damn, that worked a lot better, might even pay the ~10$ sins it worked way better than my ~20$+ Splashtop THD.
i got a 970 GTX so should be no problem, but my Nvidia Experience wont even start and seems just buggy as hell, so Kino was a good alternative, low latency and smooth gameplay with the default remote.
Too bad. My 660 does great with limelight. Did you enable gamestream and tell it where to scan your game libraries?
It can also work well just staying inside steam, but on your steam-server you need to go to big picture mode and enable hardware accelerated encoding. HW decoding was enabled by default I believe, but encoding was not. Without it steam IHS will suck through steam and consequently through limelight
darker_slayer said:
Too bad. My 660 does great with limelight. Did you enable gamestream and tell it where to scan your game libraries?
It can also work well just staying inside steam, but on your steam-server you need to go to big picture mode and enable hardware accelerated encoding. HW decoding was enabled by default I believe, but encoding was not. Without it steam IHS will suck through steam and consequently through limelight
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ah, yes, the streaming was enabled and last time i used it i managed to laung borderlands but it soon stoped working and i allways have connection issues and gets disconnected soon after i connect.
the hardware encoding was not tho..., gonna give it one more go with it enabled when my kid goes to bed tonight, cheers again,
darker_slayer said:
Too bad. My 660 does great with limelight. Did you enable gamestream and tell it where to scan your game libraries?
It can also work well just staying inside steam, but on your steam-server you need to go to big picture mode and enable hardware accelerated encoding. HW decoding was enabled by default I believe, but encoding was not. Without it steam IHS will suck through steam and consequently through limelight
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I never knew this was an option . i shall be testing this too thanks
might explain why sometimes i a SLOW ENCODE message on the bottom left , im not using limelight however i have another pc i was just curious about limelight so took a gander in here , glad i did!
I got my Shield tv console delivered yesterday, (late as possible damn ups) and love it so far, haven't had enough time to play more, but after work today I will. I have an asus rtac68w, which according to nvidia is a held ready router, but I need to know what and how to set up my router to optimally perform for my shield tv and streaming.
Any help people?
The Shield is like any tablet or smartphone. There is nothing "special" to set up in the router for it
It's just highly recommended to use a wired connection for the Shield but have wifi configured too because they're known bugs with current firmware when the network isn't wifi. So sometimes you need to switch to wifi to do some stuff then back to wired for optimal performance. They'll fix this later I guess.
ps: go there : https://forums.geforce.com/default/board/159/ instead of XDA, you'll find official NVidia reps. XDA is ignoring the Shield Android TV so let's us leave.
Basically, to set it up best; Connect it to ethernet that goes straight into the router. That said, You want to make sure it connects to your 5GHz network, that your 5GHz network does not have legacy support enabled (AC only if possible with no N or A support). WMM and BeamForming is helpful sometimes. Those are the basics.
So, whatever you would do to optimize your WiFi for GameStream or GRID on the Shield Tablet or Shield Portable, you could do the same things here, plus the option of straight gigabit ethernet.
I hadn't heard of the issues with the Wired ethernet personally, hopefully they fix that pretty quickly. It may be specific to certain environments or other issues. Also, I know that the controllers use WiFi-Direct (rather than BT), however anything with that causing part of the networking fails would be pure speculation on my part.
I haven't had any issues with Ethernet
ryocoon said:
Also, I know that the controllers use WiFi-Direct (rather than BT), however anything with that causing part of the networking fails would be pure speculation on my part.
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Actually it's the wired connection that 'might' mess with the initial controler pairing:
from a NVidia rep:
https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/836884/?comment=4546797
If you are unable to pair your SHIELD Wireless Controller during initial setup and your SHIELD Android TV is connected to your network over ethernet, try temporarily disconnecting your ethernet cable to go into WiFi mode and check if pairing issue is fixed.
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I haven't had problems either hardworking the console or using the Shield Tablet in console mode and using a Micro USB ethernet connector to hardwire the tablet. I must say that I get less lag streaming games in 4K from my PC using the console vs the tablet. I just wish I could sideload Amazon Prime Instant Video and M-Go so I could stream whatever 4K video content they offer besides only Netflix and YouTube video in 4K. No studdering, no buffering, just good quality 4K video from this thing. I must say, this console could have a major impact over how games could be delivered in the future. No latency at all except 1st person shooters being streamed via Grid. This is the best device I've bought in a long time.
I had some issues with DHCP when first setting up my unit on a wired connection. It kept disconnecting from the internet even when showing a connection. I set up my IP manually and updated to 1.2 and have had no issues since...it is super fast but may still setup wifi as you said just incase.
Rolldog said:
I haven't had problems either hardworking the console or using the Shield Tablet in console mode and using a Micro USB ethernet connector to hardwire the tablet. I must say that I get less lag streaming games in 4K from my PC using the console vs the tablet. I just wish I could sideload Amazon Prime Instant Video and M-Go so I could stream whatever 4K video content they offer besides only Netflix and YouTube video in 4K. No studdering, no buffering, just good quality 4K video from this thing. I must say, this console could have a major impact over how games could be delivered in the future. No latency at all except 1st person shooters being streamed via Grid. This is the best device I've bought in a long time.
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What happens when you side load Amazon video and M-Go? I was able to side load a bunch of apps (including M-go but didn't run it yet) from my rooted samsung Note 2014 by backing up my apps with Titanium to the micro sd. I then moved the micro sd to the Shield TV and used ES File Explorer to auto open some of the zips that contained the APK and installed from there. From my memory, since I'm not at home to check what else I side loaded, I have the following working so far:
Chrome Browser
Dolphin Browser
Dropbox
Google Drive
Popcorn
Showbox
Helium
Facebook
Hulu Plus
Photo Circle
Speedtest
Ppsspp
And jut tested m-go
I'll add that when I first set up the Pro yesterday on a wired connection, it had all sorts of problems -- including not being able to download the update. Had to go wireless to get the update, but by that point it was acting so strange I did a full factory reset right after. (1.0 seemed quite buggy, but 1.2 feels fantastic so far. HUGE strides!). Haven't had problems since.
kgersen said:
The Shield is like any tablet or smartphone. There is nothing "special" to set up in the router for it
It's just highly recommended to use a wired connection for the Shield but have wifi configured too because they're known bugs with current firmware when the network isn't wifi. So sometimes you need to switch to wifi to do some stuff then back to wired for optimal performance. They'll fix this later I guess.
ps: go there : https://forums.geforce.com/default/board/159/ instead of XDA, you'll find official NVidia reps. XDA is ignoring the Shield Android TV so let's us leave.
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The only problem I have with the GeForce forum is there is no way to be notified if you get a reply from anyone. Is there any work around for this?
lartomar2002 said:
The only problem I have with the GeForce forum is there is no way to be notified if you get a reply from anyone. Is there any work around for this?
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not that I know of. The NVidia forum software is very old and bad, everyone agree on that.
I use Feedly and a RSS subscription to monitor the GeForce forum, it's a bit easier.
I have Amazon Prime Video sideloaded, and it works great. Unfortunately, I think a different version utilizes UHD video because I haven't been able to find any 4K content. Netflix and YouTube have some 4K content, and I've been able to stream some games in 4K, but until the UHD content providers start releasing their content to more devices instead of them signing exclusivity contracts (Samsung) to help them offset the royalties on the H.265 content, which is quadruple what H.264 was, I think most people will be limited on 4K content. Sucks.....
Hi. This is one of those things that must be so simple, but a Google search just comes up with pages and pages of totally unrelated nonsense. Hoping you guys can help me.
All I want to do is be able to mirror my Nvidia Shield TV to my smartphone screen. Not the phone to the NVidia Shield. Like a PS Remote Play but for the NvS TV. My room is within remote and gamepad range so an on screen pad is not necessary. Any help greatly appreciated.
Thanks
(P.S if anyone knows of any Kodi addons with 4k content...that would be awesome! - there were 2 but they have been discontinued)
Any luck or good leads?
"Allcast reciever"?
What app or apps are you suppose trying to get to your phone?
I've been looking into doing the same thing but to a note 4. I think I found a few ways that seems like they would work for media streaming if your Shield had root access or unrestricted app installation options. Things like allcast reciever and other casting options. They all seemed to have too much latency for gaming if that is what you were wanting to do.
I'm not sure if a chromecast can output audio and video using the HDMI port but that might work if it can do that?
The other issue with pulling this off os that I think the solution needs to be some sort of universal screen and audio mirroring, like googlecast, that doesn't care about what app it is mirroring. Otherwise you'll have to rely on the app that is on the shield being capable of casting, and the Nvidia Hub isn't as far as I know.
I search for terms like: Android to android screen mirroring, android remote display, android remote access, etc....nothing so far.
My most promising hope for doing something like this now are:
1. Making my phone somehow act as or emulate a display, TV, Monitor in a way that can utilize the output from the HDMI port of a SHIELD device. This would bypass all the various issues and complications with specific application capabilities and restrictions, though it is just a idea about how to work around the app issues, I have no idea if this would even be possible. I also don't know if anything that is coming out the HDMI port has any sort of HDCP protection. I would assume that some things would but I would also assume that most of those specific things are the kinds of things. I would just be casting via media players anyway.
2. I have a really REALLY fast LAN network, and I know I am able to remotely access my PC in various ways that are low latency and high performance as far as display and audio are concerned. So, assuming the latency could be kept low enough I have thought about working on getting what I want to access on an Nvidia shield device to my PC running Windows 10, then I can just access that from my phone.
I don't know if you're familiar with that saying about engineering which basically says: "It's not a question of what you want to do but how much you can pay to do it." I say that because there seem to be a couple of fairly good high end Headset based displays out there. One is called the "gylph" or something like that and I have looked fairly thoroughly into one or two others that seemed to be high quality and have reliable reviews and testing available to find online. Some didn't seem available for another year or two, and even then you are going to be dropping $500 to $1,000 for them.
3. Using something like Tridef 3d and a head mounted VR headset based display. I was able to get that working pretty well without too much effort from my PC. The Tri-def software creates a side by side view of the application that you tell it to from your PC. So I can basically get a display output from just about anything on my PC and use it with just about anything they can recieve display output from my PC or remotely view my computers display with low latency. I haven't looked too much to see if something similar to this software is available that can run on a shield device. I would assume they are powerful enough even if you had to scale things down just a little bit.
The kind of set up that could send from your SHIELD, to your PC, to your Head Mounted Display or VR headset could be have some interesting advantages if the overall network latency was low enough. Having the rendering of the initial source on one device and the side by side display conversion on another could have a lot advantages. I own a Samsung gear VR innovator edition headset that I can use with my note 4, but if I want to use it for more than 20 minutes I need to pre-cool my phone in the freezer and to get any significant amount of time I think I would need to develop fairly high performance cooling system. That obviously isn't very easy to do when you need it to interface with a phone you use daily and also be small and light enough to attach to something you're wearing on your face. The point is that doing anything more than receiving and audio and video stream on your phone is going to be very resource intensive for it to handle. Even maxing out the gigabit Wi-Fi on my land for my phone makes it really warm and consumes the battery at a very high rate.
Whatever you do if it is helpful I have connected a pluggable USB 2.0 to Gigabit LAN adapter to the shield portable and it more than doubled the network performance. I'm not sure what the actual LAN performance is on the SHIELD
TV but even if you didn't need to increase it you might be able to reduce latency by by separating the total network load between the internal Gigabit Ethernet port and a separate USB 2.0 or 3.0 lan adapter. I don't know enough about androids capabilities to use more than one network adapter simultaneously four separate purposes to know if that is possible.
Well, congratulations if you've made it this far into my post. I have obviously been exploring this kind of thing for a while but there is a lot potential out there and a lot things that I don't know about or understand thoroughly enough. It's nice to know I'm not completely alone in this specific ambition. Hopefully we can gather a few more people and make some progress with this thread!
...wow
Wow that is an indepth reply. Thanks!
I can tell you've put a lot of thought into this. You obviously have a better chance of pulling it off than I do! (I did read it all lol)
I'm basically wanting to be able to mirror the screen like the PS4 remote play. Not just specific apps.
The only reason I know it's possible is that the Playstation 4 handles it remarkably well. No noticable lag as long as you have a good wifi router. Those guys at Sony must be using some kind of black magic. Unfortunately, I'm not gonna be the one who figures this out. I'm in no way a software or network engineer....I am an electrical engineering student though.
Anyway it's also good for me to hear that I'm not alone here. I wouldn't be surprised if Nvidia were working on this right now or at some point in the near future. And I sold the 6P and bought a Note 5 by the way. Wasn't a fan of the 6P at all.
Anyone get this to work or find another solution?
Thanks
just bought 50 inch 4k lcd tv, brand is tcl
it plays anything i tried so far (with exception of dts audio, but this is easy to convert with avidemux)
the thing is - smart tv functions is pure [email protected]
around 1 minute to start, 10 seconds to open youtube, and 30 seconds of buffering
what is most annoying is just 360-480p video with no settings to change that
so i need to buy some android box that will:
play all 1080p media smoothly
play 1080p youtube videos
run skype with external camera
allow me to run some games etc.
there is plenty of solutions but shield seems to combine decent specs, good design and reasonable price
can anyone confirm that it will work ok with external webcam (both video and microphone?)
PLEASE DELETE THIS POST... I believe the OP was complaining about the functionality in his TV.. Not the Shield
I have no issues whatsoever playing any 1080p videos from the net or from my home network.
I'm guessing you are running wireless and / or have a slow internet connection. Try putting a 1080p video on a usb stick or memory card and playing it from there.
I'm running wired gigabit and have a 100Mbs Internet speed and this box really shines, even with 1080p Game streaming through their service.
my only issues with the Shield TV are:
* It only comes with a North America-spec power adapter, with a proprietary device-side connector. I think you can change the power pins, but it only comes with an american one in the box (not really an issue if you live in north america)
* The controller is a bit rubbish
It's very fast, and it plays all the media I throw at it through Plex, although with some of the high bitrate stuff, it complains about low connection over wireless - it doesn't seem to connect via 802.11ac all the time.
The games are just your standard Android fare. Games & apps can be installed from the Play Store website if they don't show up on the built-in one. Be aware though; some of them say that they work on AndroidTV but don't actually do any such thing.
I love mine, I got it to replace an old acer revo which was running openelec.
The apps I use the most are Kodi (all in one media streaming app), Retroarch (an app which allows you to play various emulators), Youtube, Twitch, iPlayer, and Gamestream. I havent tried the subscription based game stream option that Nvidia offer as I have the majority of the games which they offer. I do use the option which allows me to stream games from my pc. This runs superbly at 1080p over homeplugs.
The device is very quiet and very fast. I also like having a headphone socket on the remote and joypad.
I would like to see some more UK based media apps on the store (4OD, 5 on demand, Sky), my Xbox One is better for this. Kodi does have addons to get around the lack of this.
The google play store does seem a bit limited for android tv at the moment.
I did have to root mine to enable me to write to the sdcard (for Retroarch).
I would highly recommend one if you want to use Kodi or Emulators.
DrSeahorse said:
I would highly recommend one if you want to use [...] Emulators.
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I agree with this. In fact, I now remember this was my major reason for buying it. It emulates pretty much anything up to and including the Sega Dreamcast, but once again.. it has a pretty rubbish controller. However, it does support the XBox 360 pad if you have the wireless adapter for it, so that's an improvement, and I'm pretty sure it'll natively support any controller that Linux does - so all your USB adapters for your NES or PSX or whatever controller will work.
Gotta throw my opinion in since I've only had it for about 2 weeks now...
Its fast, and I must much better interface than what i was expecting. I bought it for primarily playing PC games from my computer and it does so without any problems at all. It even will pass through full surround sound from the games (which I was NOT expecting).
I also use KODI more than anything and it works great. I do have some sound sync issues here and there and it can be annoying to remedy. But, if you put the time in and use KODI's audio delay correctly you can fix it. (the Wiki will say to use the Shield's built in HDMI-Audio Sync feature, but it doesn't have an overlay for when you are setting the delay. So you basically have to base it entirely off the bouncing ball which doesn't help at all when you are trying to sync voices to the actors mouths. Plus, I found that 0ms works great for all audio syncing through shield (netflix, youtube, etc) and the KODI sync lets me sync JUST KODI.
I only paid $150 for mine since I got in on the controller bundle and they never sent me the controller so I got the $50 refunded. I still would recommend it at $200 though. Once the MM update comes out it will be much better for customizing the start screen.
DO IT is my short answer.
As a media player, about the only thing it lacks is Amazon Prime, though there is a workaround and rumors of official support later. I've been able to play high bitrate rips, Hi10p video, a 1440p VHS 10-bit rip, and everything else with no issues over 802.11ac. It's by far the best player I've seen for SlingTV, also.
Anything that doesn't work natively, you can just cast it to the Shield TV and you're in business (HBO Go, specifically, because Comcast is stupid).
Games work well enough as long as they have controller support. Most of the higher-end and big developer games do. There's Nvidia game stream you can test for 3 months, but I don't have any use for it, honestly. I think you can also stream games from a PC with an nVidia GPU, but I have AMD.
Basically they've built the best video player on the market, hands down. The next best thing is a full-blown HTPC, but the price and lack of a simplified UI (IMO) puts the Shield on top, again.