videostorm

Agree, sometimes exclusives are nice. If they ever come out with a decent new Halo I will turn on my Xbox to play it through. Trouble with exclusives is that every platform has a couple good ones, so no clear winners. IMO PC gaming has the most (and best) exclusives. I used to play consoles almost exclusively till about 3 years ago. Then VR happened, and I was forced to buy a gaming PC for that. It really opened my eyes to how far behind the consoles are in nearly every aspect. Sharing your games with your family is even better on the PC (Steam libraries). With a single game purchase, every family member can have their own profile, achievement, saves, etc... https://store.steampowered.com/promotion/familysharing

GameStream is specifically designed by nVidia for gaming and is easily the best network solution technology can offer. I have measured it and the full latency introduced averages 30ms on an unimpaired 1 gbps home network, which is pretty close to the theoretical limit using a standard networking. Your TV itself contributes more to the overall latency. That is actually an important point, because you need to make sure you plug the Shield into the TV port labelled "game" or use the TV menu to put the port into "game" mode. Now if you are using wifi and plug into the "movie" mode port of your TV, your experience will be much different... If you are seeing noticeable lag something is wrong. Stadia is going to be slower since it has to deal with the internet ping time as well. However, with a good (internet) connection it can still be awesome. That said, your gaming PC with a proper gaming monitor has overall latency of less than 10ms. Really can't beat that, and in some games that can give you a slight edge. I totally agree here. Even consoles directly connected to TVs are in the 20-80ms range depending on the TV. Thus I find the ideal solution is have your PC centric gaming system, with the Shields in other rooms for distributed gaming. Only buy your games once (at at discounted PC prices), and play them anywhere. Basically the same thing as your solution using the HDMI switch from the PC output + the USB routing, but using more a flexible network.

Well, technically you could attach all the consoles to a HDMI switch and then a HDMI input card on your gaming PC. Then use GameStream to distribute that to your Shields. But.... you would have to use each consoles gamepads for that console, which is a LOT of gamepads in your game all with potential range issues. Really a mess of gear to deal with. Or.... you could just buy the PC versions of the games they really play (wait for a Steam sale for big discounts) and use the easier method I described 90% of the time. The consoles can still be fetched for local plug in if they need to play an exclusive game.

Correct, all the gaming is local to each Shield (either locally installed game, streamed from the cloud, or streamed from your PC). In C4, all are just Watch menu items regardless of the method. The "centralized" source is either the Cloud or your gaming PC (which is in your VR room of course). Stadia is using the new (upcoming) Shield as a flagship device. However, I have supposedly reliable intel that it will also be ported to the 2017 hardware.

The Shield controllers are BlueTooth, and it supports any other bluetooth ones also. Range isn't an issue because the Shield is right there at each TV. I actually use my old Xbox 360 controllers (I have a lot of them) with the wireless=>USB adapter attached to the Shield. Works great with GameStream.

Started another thread on using the Shield for distributed gaming, adding a link to it here:

Definitely, the Shield in awesome in Control4! Plus it makes a great distributed gaming system

Scenario: Your client wants the ability to play games throughout their house How this was done in 2008: Hook up their Xbox360 to the input of their component matrix, and the gamepads travel around the house to different TVs (Xbox 360 wireless pads had great range ) What about today? Things have definitely changed.... Console game system themselves have lost much of their appeal. Not much innovation for a long time. Personally I am an avid gamer, and I haven't turned any of my consoles in several years. Console games in general have shifted from local multiplayer (playing with your friends / family on the couch), to single local player online games. I didn't even bother buying extra controllers for the Xbox one because none of their games support it anymore. New Cloud based gaming is becoming popular. Many the best games are now targeting these platforms instead of consoles. Virtual Reality is the best gaming experience, hands down! PC Gaming has always been the choice for serious gamers, but now it is probably has the best options even for casual gaming. Mobile gaming (tablets / phones) is actually now one of the best ways for local multiplayer So what do you do? Obviously if your client just wants a console distributed, you can still do that. However, it means you can't use network distribution so you miss out on those benefits. But maybe the ideal gaming system ISN'T a distributed console? Did you know that nVidia makes dedicated game streaming technology that gives you the best of modern gaming? You probably know that Video Storm loves using nVidia Shields as part of our NetPlay Video distribution system. You probably don't know that those same Shields make a killer game distribution system (with or without NetPlay). We have some more details here http://www.video-storm.com/netplay_gaming.asp Or you can just ask here. Shields + a gaming PC have been my system of choice for quite awhile now.

The NetPlay driver is compatible with OS3. If you are also using IRUSB, you do have to update that driver (using the latest on our site) for OS3. The issue described above could be a fan problem given it is 4 yrs old. The symptom would be it works a while after reboot / power cycle but then overheats and stops encoding.

Android TV => Google Play TV setting (Shield, Sony TV, etc) Plain Android => Google Play setting (most phones, tablets, cheap streaming boxes, etc) Fire OS => Amazon setting (all Amazon devices) It just affects the app launch urls. Developers sometimes have to publish different app names to different app stores.

Thanks for the log. Looks like the property for Netflix had an issue. Fixed now in driver version 3.4 on our website.

The button bindings and the universal mini apps both use the same code launch table, so they should behave the same. Did you try changing the red button property, click set, then change back to Netflix and click set?

You can now use SplashTiles Cloud without a credit card. Just signup for the FREE account tier. Dealers can also receive the Pro account tier for free (does need a credit card though)

Our newest online service, SplashTiles Pro, is now available for FREE for Control4 dealers! We also have a new ad supported free version for everyone else. SplashTiles can add that special visual pizzazz to your installs. * Google Photo slideshows automatically synced to the latest pictures from your phone * Tiled or popup PIP display of IP cameras * Weather maps & forecasts, Traffic, news, stocks, local events * Google tasks and Calenders * Eye candy in general * On every TV in your home * FULLY integrated in Control4 (watch menu, programming, etc)! Demos and videos: https://splash-tiles.com/ SplashTiles now gives you two signup options: 1. SplashTiles Pro, which is a low cost subscription service. 2. SplashTiles Free, which is all the same features as Pro and completely free (but you will see ads across the top). SplashTiles Pro always comes with a free 14 day trial. For Control4 dealers, just email sales@video-storm.com during your free trial to receive an additional $20 service credit (good for 10 additional weeks free). Better yet, whenever your customers signup for SplashTiles (using your referral links), you automatically receive additional credit. Refer several customers a year and your Pro service is always free. Sign up here: https://splash-tiles.com/store/checkout.php The SplashTiles driver (for Control4) is a Mini-driver that acts as a source for your Fire Stick, nVideo Shield, or Android TV (controlled via our IRUSB driver). All of your custom defined "screens" show up as sources in your Watch menu, just like Netflix or YouTube. They can also be programmatically triggered for PIP or full screen display.

There are two conditions that can cause an issue. The Fire stick soft reboots (can sometimes happen when fire firmware updates, or if you do this in the settings menu) IRUSB app auto updates (we RARELY update the app for this reason, but we did do this once a few weeks ago) If one of these occurs, you can manually start the app OR hard power cycle the fire stick & irusb and wait 5 minutes for it to auto launch (from hard boot). BTW, the C4 OS3 update causes a problem with app launching that REQUIRES you to update your Control4 IRUSB driver (if you update to OS3). Just download the new one from our web site and update driver.