Streaming at 120Hz

[Big Tree]

My monitor is only 60Hz, so everything on my gaming computer is set for that rate. However, the computer in my living room will be connected to a 120Hz television. It's a Sony Bravia II.

Has Valve made any announcements about or if this is possible? Is it the software on my TV that does it for Blu-Rays? do TV's even accept 120Hz in?

[CatatonicGinger [xNMT]]

Interesting question. So far, I've not heard anything referencing frame rates (other than that you can turn them down to reduce bandwidth).

I cant think of anything hardware-wise that would prevent you from streaming at 120 Hz, provided you have the bandwidth and encode/decode performance to handle it. Whether Valve allows it in software is an open question.

That said, this presumes that your TV is capable of receiving a 120 Hz input and that your target computer is capable of putting one out. I can't answer that one for you without more information (exact video card, and exact TV model - Bravia II is too general).

[Balderick]

Using the schematic drawing found in the recent announcements would mean using your living room computer connected to Bravia TV as decoder when In Home Streaming from gaming computer.

Would the Big Picture drivers for display take care of refresh rate?

You could install Steam client to living room PC then connect it to Bravia TV and start Big Picture mode in Steam. This should give a working answer to your question relative to your setup and would save you waiting on the beta invite before trying.

[Shovel Knight]

my 240hz un60es800 would like to get details about this as well

[blackout24]

TVs never take 120 Hz input, they just double the frames and put a black frame between them to increase contrast. 120 Hz input would not make any sense for a TV, since TV broadcast is 25-30 FPS, same with Blu Rays etc.

[Makeroflostsouls]

TV's all take a 60hz input and convert it to 120/240/480 or 600.. If you plug a pc up to it, it will not let you send it a true 120+hz signal.. So your fine on that.. Most TV's work with 24hz, 30hz and 60hz..

[Razioer]

Well, even on gigabit wired, they say that its a 10ms delay per frame, meaning 60fps is 600ms input delay... 120fps (to take advantage of 120hz) would be up yo 1200ms delay... and thats alot, like over a full second alot!

That said, some 3D capable TVs are overclockable to 120hz using either duallink-dvi, or hdmi 1.4a... so if you are just looking for that extra smoothness, try googling hdtv overclocking and connecting you tv directly ;)

Also most modern led monitors can overclock to 75hz, so go google that and enjoy :D

[󠀡 󠀡󠀡󠀡 󠀡󠀡󠀡]

I think if you want to use 120hz you should look into HDMI over ethernet, it is a much better solution than Valves streaming tech.

[G-Man]

Originally posted by Makeroflostsouls:

TV's all take a 60hz input and convert it to 120/240/480 or 600.. If you plug a pc up to it, it will not let you send it a true 120+hz signal.. So your fine on that.. Most TV's work with 24hz, 30hz and 60hz..

True 120hz+ is needed for 3D. Turn on 3D Vision for your GPU and all of a sudden 120hz is accessible.

[ReBoot]

FYI: streaming in 120Hz might be troublesome because the network latency is between your renderer and your screen.

[coruun]

@Razioer: I think you misunderstood the thing. It should be 10ms delay instead of 10ms delay *per frame*.

Latency does not interfere with 120Hz... Don't mix bandwidth and latency.

[ReBoot]

Originally posted by coruun:

Latency does not interfere with 120Hz

It does. With 120Hz, every frame has half the time to be rendered than in 60Hz.

[worthLESS]

From what I have seen (there are some guys online who gained access to the streaming options/menu (you can google it if you want) and the options for framerate were 30 and 60 fps. So unless that was an older version of the streaming program then it probably won't do 120fps.

[coruun]

@ReBoot: You are right, if you want to see the frame, before the next one is rendered. IMO, this is very unlikely as the combination of rendering the game, compressing the frames and limitations in bandwidth would KILL the framerate.

Did you ever try to play a game via X-forwarding

[ReBoot]

Originally posted by coruun:

@ReBoot: You are right, if you want to see the frame, before the next one is rendered. IMO, this is very unlikely as the combination of rendering the game, compressing the frames and limitations in bandwidth would KILL the framerate.

Did you ever try to play a game via X-forwarding :D:

I assume you mean the Unix X server. Nope, I've never used that as I am a Windows player But I've been using RDP alot. Except not for games as I usually use RDP over the internet and playing this way isn't even worth trying.

Also, the problem with the network is not only the framerate, but the latency. You could like totally have a high frame rate but with several frames of lag.

[G-Man]

I think you're both confused. There's three different latencies you are speaking of here. One is the latency between each frame, the other is the latency caused by those frames travelling up the wire/over the air to your screen. The latter always stays the same in absolute time, but obviously doubles in frames when the framerate doubles. the third is the conversion latency. It most definitely isn't 10ms, as the Nvidia Sheild handheld can stream 4K comfortably and 1080p requires 1/4 the bandwidth at the same FPS. That makes 120hz at 1080 still 1/2 the badwidth needed for 4K resolution, but assuming that the Shield did 30FPS, as it was a press event and they would rather cut corners to make incredible things seem possible, it would still use relatively the same bandwidth.

@ReBoot
The thing is, that at 120fps you never see the frame you're actually controlling becasue there is 8.34ms of latency between each fram. Factor in an input lag of at least 2ms, framebuffer lag of 4 and display lag of around 8ms minimum and you struggle to see a response to what you're actually inputting on the very next frame even when you're at 60fps.

Add streaming and you're going to be sitting at a few frames behind input, but that's normal for many games at 30fps. The only thing that will be thrown into question is if the game feels any snappier at 120hz. It probably won't and the reduced frame lag (ms between frames) is offset by the increased compression.