Steam Link app on Android TV, controllers on PC?

[kamikaze4kanojo]

Hi,
I'm trying to plan a TV upgrade; somehow I missed the existence of the Steam Link app and now that I know about it I'm super excited.

For me, I don't need to cast my gaming from one end of the house to the other. Actually the TV and PC are in the same room. The main way I would use it would be for party games, with 4 or sometimes more controllers. Some of these might be bluetooth or other wireless, but others (ie my own) are the good old wired XBox sort.

My actual question is, will I have to connect the controllers to the TV to make it work? There's 4.5m between TV and couch so my wired controllers aren't going to like that. Also switching between PC and TV and changing wires/dongles/paring... annoying. I would much rather be able to connect my controllers to the PC or even a laptop near the couch. Will it work this way?

In any case, any special features/inputs I should be looking for when choosing the TV? In Australia only Sony and TCL seem to have Android (which I want for a number of reasons) so I've been looking at those.

I've heard it works a lot better if the PC is connected to the network by cat5, which mine is. Should I plan on getting cat5 to the TV as well? A bit off topic but would that be better for streaming 4K content too?

[kamikaze4kanojo]

Ok well in case anyone else has this question, I can confirm this works. I bought a Sony/android TV, and both my TV and PC are connected to my network by ethernet cable. I turned off the wireless on TV just to be sure it relies on the superior connection for everything.

The streaming is able to keep up with 4k resolution pretty well (occasional spikes, though I can't be sure if that is due to streaming or just the poor PC running games at 4K). Most interestingly, my computer monitor is NOT 4K (it is 2K), but I pick 4k resolution in the games I want to play as streamed, and as far as I can tell that is what I'm seeing on the TV.

So far I have used a wired xbox controller plugged into the PC, and it is working well. When I launch Steam Link app on the TV, it says 'no controller detected', but the option to connect to my PC appears, and I select it using my TV remote. Then the PC launches steam in Big Picture mode, which mirrors on the TV screen. At that point the controller works because it is plugged into the PC which has steam running in the foreground. I can't say if input lag is improved better than going through the TV, though my common sense tells me this way should be better.

The only downside is having to use the TV remote to navigate Steam Link app menus, but that's not something you need to do once you start the gaming session.

[MechAnimaL]

Cool I was also curiouse about this. I currently use my mobile phone with steam link and using a dongle with HDMI out I connect it to my TV and I get the video and audio on my big TV and the mobile phone handles all the controllers via bluetooth and I also have a mouse and keybaord connected via USB on the dogle.

The mobile phone only does 1080p tho and wasnt sure if a TV upgrade for Anroid TV OS would get me to 4k.

Yeah for sure your controllers will be more responsive being directly connected to the PC as connecting to the tv will just mean steamlink has to transmit your input but the added input lag would probably be prety small.

Also if you dont have a 4k screen on the PC not sure how its letting you runt he games in 4k thats prety interesting. I'd probably test your PC pluged directly into the TV and see if you gettign real 4k image or a upscaled one. Graphics cards can let you run higher resolutions than your screen supports by some trickery with antiailiasing upscaling.

eg. My 1080p monitor can be set to 4k in Nvidia and I get the desktop realestate of a 4k screen but then when I check via windows its still only running at 1080p.

If you plug it in and see a massive difference then it probably not real 4k.

Also.. if your controllers are running from PC.. why not jsut get a long HMDI cable and just use the TV as your screen and remove the streaming aspect all together?

PS - If you do ahve a wireless controller can you test if it works on the TV itself with steamlink? As mine will be on the other side of the hosue so this would be my own use case.

[kamikaze4kanojo]

Hi there, yes I have recently used a wireless controller on the TV (it has a USB dongle), and that worked. The controller was generally usable across the entire android TV interface, and functioned normally when playing games through Steam link. It is actually a new Sega Saturn controller so lacks the analogue sticks that are needed to actually use in modern games. But I was still impressed by the compatibility with the TV (my TV got me to map it to another layout, I picked Xbox 360 layout, with a few buttons skipped). And then Steam is happy with the input, probably because it is already been treated as Xbox.

I've also tried to connect a friend's PS5 controller (by bluetooth) but couldn't work it out.

What you're saying about 4k upscaling sounds likely. I'm not going to worry too much because I didn't design my PC as a 4K rig to begin with. So I guess I'll might as well change the game settings to run in 2K and let the TV handle any upscaling. My GPU has better things to do :)

I realise I could run a long cable to use desktop on TV, but I just don't find it very elegant. First of all I don't want it outputting to TV all the time, and I don't want to change cables around all the time. Steam Link automatically starts Steam in Big Picture mode, which also gives other controllers better chance of working (friends came over with PS4 controllers the other day, and we plugged them all into my powered USB 3 hub). And you only have to press Home on the TV remote when you are done, and Steam leaves big picture mode on the PC. Btw I also play games exclusively on the PC, so it's important to me that the transitions are seamless.

[MechAnimaL]

`My GPU has better things to do :)`
yeah I after I told you I thought I probably shouldn't have sent you down that rabbit hole since since your obviously happy with it lol.
Thanks for letting me know about the controllers working with usb.