Steam link on Android TV - Black screen

[Marcepan]

Unfortunately I seem to lose possibility to play on Android TV after last update - it gets black screened after connecting, I have disabled all hardware encoding but that didn't help. Android Phone works just fine. Some got similar problem?

[Packetdancer]

What Android TV are you using?

[Marcepan]

Sony Kd-55xf9005.

It's wierd that it worked until just about two weeks ago, but rolling back Steam Link version to 1.15 does not have help.

[Turist]

I have a black screen too. Twiligntt app work fine.

TV Sony bravia 4k 49XD8099 Android 7.1
PC: win 10 64bit gtx 1060 DisplayDriver 416.34

[piotrb]

The same situation with my TV. When I start the game, screen comes black and locked. It is very hard to go back to TV home screen. To do that firstly I have to stop streaming on my computer. Only sound is streamed properly.

TV: PHILIPS 55PUS6501/12, Android 7.1.2
PC: Win 10/64bit, GTX 1070, Display Driver 416.34

[Packetdancer]

Out of curiosity, have you all tried either a) turning on the HVEC option in the Steam Link settings, or b) turning off the hardware encoding on the Steam streaming side, just to see if it affects the behavior?

[piotrb]

I did everything by app side, but nothing by steam streaming side. Additionally I have installed app on nvidia shield tv and my phone nexus 6P and it works very well on these devices.

[Turist]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Packetdancer:

Out of curiosity, have you all tried either a) turning on the HVEC option in the Steam Link settings, or b) turning off the hardware encoding on the Steam streaming side, just to see if it affects the behavior?

I tried everything. Nothing helped.

[piotrb]

Changing settings on my PC didn't help.

[lj3lj3]

My Sony TV with `Don't keep activities` on in the `developer options` cause the black screen with sound playing on the background. you might try to disable it.

[Turist]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von lj3lj3:

My Sony TV with `Don't keep activities` on in the `developer options` cause the black screen with sound playing on the background. you might try to disable it.

I"ts WORK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THX BRO.

[Marcepan]

I can happily confirm, not keeping activities was the problem, now everything is working again, thanks a ton!

[Packetdancer]

Huh. That's really weird.

I'm guessing what's happening is that somehow the shell (one Activity, the menu and all) was preventing the actual Steam Link activity that it starts from getting a display properly; by turning on "Don't Keep Activities" it forces the shell to be killed when it gets stopped—thus freeing up anything it was holding on to—when launching the streaming client.

[piotrb]

Disabled option `Don't keep activities` helps but not every time in my case. Sometimes black screen appears when I start or close a game, then I don't see the game or don't see the Steam Big Picture mode. Another thing which I noticed is that selecting resolution in advanced mode doesn't applied any way to game settings, e.g. when I set resolution limit at 3840x2160 and go to game settings during streaming I can choose only the maximum resolution of my PC monitor which is 2560 x 1440, 4k is not available. One more case when my TV screen gets black is to set game resolution at 2560x1440 during streaming started with 1920x1080.

[Wenneguen]

I deactivated hardware encoding and "Don't keep activities" was already deactivated, but the issue remains, any idea? Thanks.