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majoraslayer64 Jul 2, 2016 @ 10:10am

Steam Link Only Works If PC Monitor Is On

I have an nVidia GTX 950 video card connected via HDMI to a TV for a monitor. The sound signal and video both are sent through the HDMI connection.

When I start Steam Link in the living room to stream my PC, and my monitor-TV is turned off, I get no sound from the Steam Link end. Also the quality of the video signal drops, and some games completely crash. However, if I turn on my monitor-TV before starting Steam Link everything seems to work fine. Its just a huge PITA having to go turn on my monitor every time I want to use the Steam Link in the living room.

The problem seems to stem from the video card detecting the TV through the HDMI connection before it will process sound and video correctly. If I exit out of Big Picture Mode to the desktop while Steam Link is connected, my sound settings show no audio device is connected. USUALLY if I have the monitor-TV on however the sound will mute on the PC and play through the living room TV as it should (though it has failed to transfer it a few times, requiring a restart of Steam Link).

Is there any way to force this video card to ALWAYS register the TV-monitor as turned on? Its a Vizio MC150, and I've tried turning off the CEC feature on the TV itself with no luck.

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Showing 1-8 of 8 comments

majoraslayer64 Jul 5, 2016 @ 12:45am

No luck with this one either? Its starting to look like my best bet is to play the games on my PC, then when I get finished just go in the living room and tell the Steam Link all about the experience while I use it as a coaster.

messyjesse80 Jul 5, 2016 @ 9:53am

Your best solution is probably to leave the monitor turned on at the PC.

I think your graphics card doesn't see a display so it doesn't even try to drive one. So, it's not doing the encoding needed for the stream. Hence low video quality. You could try a headless HDMI adapter like this one.
https://www.amazon.com/CompuLab-fit-Headless-Display-Emulator/dp/B00FLZXGJ6

That might resolve your audio issue but I am not sure. You could try plugging in some headphones or speakers at your PC too. Now your PC will have a reason to play audio even when the monitor is off, and then Steam can mute that audio at the PC and stream it to the Link.

majoraslayer64 Jul 5, 2016 @ 12:13pm

Originally posted by messyjesse80:
Your best solution is probably to leave the monitor turned on at the PC.

I think your graphics card doesn't see a display so it doesn't even try to drive one. So, it's not doing the encoding needed for the stream. Hence low video quality. You could try a headless HDMI adapter like this one.
https://www.amazon.com/CompuLab-fit-Headless-Display-Emulator/dp/B00FLZXGJ6

That might resolve your audio issue but I am not sure. You could try plugging in some headphones or speakers at your PC too. Now your PC will have a reason to play audio even when the monitor is off, and then Steam can mute that audio at the PC and stream it to the Link.

That's actually a really good idea. It would help if the display emulator had a feed through so it could switch to the actual display when its turned on, but it is moving in the right direction. Maybe I can put some sort of HDMI switch setup on it so that when the TV turns off it automatically switches to the headless emulator.

Thanks for the advice, I'm definitely going to experiment around a bit with it.

messyjesse80 Jul 5, 2016 @ 4:04pm

Let us know if that works... I can't offer any guarantee for your situation but it seems worth a try if the extra expense doesn't bother you. Others on the forums have had success with that type of setup but I haven't done it myself.

majoraslayer64 Jul 6, 2016 @ 4:42pm

Well, I'll be honest; the extra expense DOES bother me, so I encourage everyone to find another solution if you possibly can. However, I decided to go ahead with this experiment.

The route I'm taking is to connect an HDMI splitter and the headless display emulator you suggested and try it that way. If anyone happens to be searching for a solution to this problem, the current links to what I ordered are:

HDMI Splitter:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01CCMOMM0/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Display Emulator:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00FLZXGJ6/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

An important note for anyone searching out their own hardware solutions or if those links end up dead, make sure you're careful to get a SPLITTER and not a SWITCH, since when you search HDMI splitter on Amazon several switches tend to show up as well. An HDMI switch allows multiple devices to connect to one display and will NOT work the other way around. A splitter sends the same signal from a device (in this case the PC) to multiple displays.

Its going to be 2 days before my shipment arrives and I can really comment on how well it works. I'm hoping with the display emulator on the splitter the PC will always think the monitor is on, but it won't interfere with the PC output signal for the actual display. That's a powered splitter and is supposed to output duplicate signals for two displays without signal loss, so since it does some signal interpretation of its own, if only to boost it, I'm curious if the PC will detect the splitter itself as a display. That's a long shot since I'm not sure exactly how it does what it does, but if the PC does detect the switch as a display then the display emulator may not even be necessary. Either way I'll find out more when I receive it.

Last edited by majoraslayer64; Jul 6, 2016 @ 4:48pm

majoraslayer64 Jul 9, 2016 @ 7:08pm

I connected up the splitter and display emulator, and it seems to work as expected. Nearly all games play as they should, and the nVidia card stays active with my monitor off. There are only 2 issues I've seen so far:

1) My display resolution is limited to a max of 1080p. For performance reasons I never run anything above 1920x1080 anyway, but I did have the option and my monitor is a 4k TV. This won't be an issue for me, but I would assume a possible fix for this is to get an HDMI splitter rated for 4k as well as possibly a 4k display emulator. With this setup the computer doesn't even seem to see the TV itself, so it goes by the information it gets from the splitter to determine available resolutions.

2) Sonic Generations refuses to run. I can't figure this one out. I've run the setup application and tried changing every setting, but if I start the game it immediately crashes with the message "Sonic Generations has stopped working". I've tried compatibility mode and various compatibility settings. Just to cover all bases I even tried running it with admin privileges, but still no luck. I don't understand this one at all; I set the resolution to 1920x1080, and that's the resolution it worked on prior to installing the splitter/display emulator. It doesn't make any sense.