Tag: Streaming

Getting my Movies my way is the best way.

Paul

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Time to use my DVD collection

I’ve got a really big DVD collection that I want to be able to use when I want to use them.   I’ll tell you when we were at home for those two months, I should of done that then in 2020 but I didn’t think about it until now.   However that doesn’t mean it is to late to do it.  I have a plan for the my Steam Deck and this will allow me to do that.  Although gaming streaming and video streaming are two different beasts it still has some of the princples that you might not think of.   You will still need to stream through wifi or wired if you are trying to get the best quality.    My plan is to have my DVD’s available anywhere I go, so I even can play on my phone if I wanted to.   I’ve found this awesome streaming service that will do just that on the Steam Deck and any other device.   I’ve installed Plex.tv and created a server for myself.   I’ve got this old NAS (Network attached storage) that hasn’t been used very much.   I’ve been upgrading it lately for just this occasion.   I want to put all my DVD’s and Music on their to listen to or use as I wish.  You can buy a NAS for really small amount of money and add storage as you see fit.

What’s the Purpose

The Truth of the matter is, because I can and it can help with not paying for streamin services as much.  I can be more selective of which services I want to subscribe to and save money in the long run.   I can also buy cheap DVD’s and copy them onto my NAS with realtivity easy process.   The really hard part is the CopyProtection that the big names do to prevent you from do just this.   The problem is that we own these DVD’s and we have the right do what we want with them.  Also there a movies that I want to watch that aren’t either on the streaming service or would need to buy another subscription to another service.  There’s to many services and with the prices going up and I have this NAS hardly being used it should be used more.

Understanding the Basics

We’ll not going to talk about the ethics as much as you want but if you are curious how to do it, you can watch this video and learn something.   I’ll talk a little bit about the copy protection that can be hard to circumvent but can be if you really want to own your media.   The problem is that not all this works with but can be useful to understand.   The copy protection of DVD’s has been something that has plagued mankind since the dawn of the DVD.   They deserve their money for the making the movies and films.  Even TV shows should get what is owed to them but that doesn’t mean people haven’t pirated them around the world through other means.

Copy Protection Software

Here’s where it gets a little bit more interesting to some because if you are like me and have some movies in either DVD or Bluray.  You’re going to need these software to do what is necessary to get to the information you might need. I’ll say this much, use as your own risk or own use.  I will not be responsible for anything that might happen.

I’ll say this I’ve only used DVD Decrypter right now because it works with all that I needed but the others look promising and I will try them out later.  It’s up to you on which one you will want to use to decrypt those DRM heavy DVD’s or Blurays.   I think it all depends on which one will work for you and how you like to use them .  Each one has their own unique way of getting the files needed to copy the main movie file.   So it just depends on what you are looking to do.

Are you planning to do this?  What do you think it will be like when you watch movies on the Steam Deck? I plan to try it out on the steam deck and see how well Plex.tv does the only thing that is problem right now is that you need to buy the server software either monthly or lifetime to do it.  I am going to look into buying the Lifetime because I am really curious as to how well this will work outside of my house.   I also might buy a little Pi board and use that as my server because I can use less energy that way instead of using my tower to do the serving of the movies.  What’s your plans for yoru steam deck?  I’d love to hear your plans on what you want to do with yours.

Is streaming feasible on the Steam Deck or to the computer?

Paul1 Reply

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The Preface of this post

Let’s begin with that what I am about to talk about is probably not even going to work for most of you because it would require way to much money to upgrade your home networking. This however is going to be something to understand and consider in your future upgrade plans for your home networking. Nothing here right now will stop you from streaming or make it useful but it will be a chance to educate you on how you might want to proceed in the future and make the experience a little more enjoyable. You also have the options of downloading games and installing onto your steam deck but someone games won’t work with the Steam as well as streaming them. This topic will at least maybe make it more enjoyable for you and make it so you can stream and not be pulling your hair out in the process.

Bandwidth will be the issue

Depending on what your computer you are using that you want to stream to your Steam Deck, the issue will be for the time being the amount of information that is sent to the Steam Deck.   Most  games are playing at the Highest possible settings and that requires the information to be transmittable to the Steam Deck.   Something like 1440p or really good RTX graphics card will want to send all this information to the Steam Deck.   There will be movement Lag or game lag even if you had the best home network in the world.  I can’t see this being without some form of lag.   You are essentially trying to send loads of data over either wired to Wireless or Wireless to Wireless, or even Wireless to Wired connections.    Even then you have a cap of how much data can be sent to through the air or though a wired connection.

Wired VS Wireless

Let’s Now talk about the speed caps and how much you will most likely get with each one of them.   According the LifeWire, You will get these types of speed:

I tend to think this is somewhat accurate because I can’t see this not being any faster than this in most cases. You have objects in the way to get to the wireless whether it being a Door, a Wall, or even other objects. That will tend to slow the connection down because of errors and bandwidth.  Even then even if you had gotten a 802.11ax wireless router the Steam Deck right now could only do the 802.11ac so that would mean it could only do 200 mbps(Milibytes Per Second) even at the best of times.

Now let’s talk about Wired options.   You can buy  dock that will connect to your wired network but the Steam Deck Dock will only do 1 Gbps which is way faster than you could wireles.   You would need  to do several things to get a faster connection.   One buy a Switch or Router that is 2.5Gbps capable, and upgrade your wired connections to a Cat 7 or 8.  You’d also need a 2.5Gb Ethernet connection to the Steam Deck by using a USB-C to 2.5gb Ethernet connection.  You can also use this to download games faster if you have a already have installed a big enough HDD or maybe you expanded your MicroSD card selections.  I have not yet to found a dock that will support 2.5gbps that will work with the Steam Deck but I am not sure if they even make them just yet.  It would be nice but I doubt anyone but maybe Steam Deck will incorporate that into their next versions of the DOCK.  You will also need to make sure you Desktop system that you want to stream from or two is capabile of thw 2.5gb also on a wired network.  You will need to check with the company that you bought your system from or check the motherboards website to see if it has a 2.5gbs ethernet connection.  Most gaming systems or motherboards will already havea 2.5gbs connection but some don’t.  So you might need to buy a 2.4gb ethernet connection dongle for the laptop or desktop in question.

Game performance tweaks

Finally with all that  being said, the last way to not have so much game lag while streaming is drop your resolution of the game and make the game run with less graphics.  Turn off DLSS and other options in the game, also if it says it is running best possible graphics, drop it down to mid way or lower and that will allow the information tobe transmitted faster to your streaming device such as the Steam Deck.  Even with this, it might still be a little slugish and slow to respond.  So the best approach, I have come up with is to download the games onto the Steam Deck and try to play them on the steam without streaming them.  I’ve found that most games work rather well playing from the Steam Deck than to try to stream them.   The only one so far I haven’t had a chance to try to figure out is Micrisoft Flight Simulator 2020.  I am hopeful they will release a patch for that so that I can play that on my Steam Deck.  Although, I have begun to try to figure out a way to get it to run on the steam deck like it does on the Linux machines I’ve used in the past.  Hopefully I will come up with a Hack to do that.

What’s your thoughts on Streaming Vs Downloading?  Do you have any problems streaming or have you had similar issues?  What games seem to run smoothly while streaming or did you have any games that will work well streaming?  I’d like to hear your results also.

How to install Steam Games faster than ever on the Steam Deck!

Paul


The Steam Deck Rocks

I first got this today but I have so many games on Steam, You’d think it would take very long.   The problem is that you probably don’t know this little tip to help you get your steam games onto the steam deck quicker.   I am going to talk about a few ways you could increase your download speed on the Steam Deck.   This won’t be a hard lesson for some but it will be an eye opening lesson for others.    The real question is how I did it and how can you make downloading your games much faster and easier.   The simple truth is I used a USB-C Dongle From Amazon to do that.   Most of the time downloading from WIFI can be fast but it can also be slow due to the limits of bandwidth on the WIFI network.  You can download way faster on wired than you can on wireless.   That will always be the case.

Disconnect from WIFI

This is something else I found out is that if you didn’t disconnect from the WIFI in the steam settings it would still be slow to download while connected to the dongle.   After disconnecting from the WIFI my speed downloads jumped up and I could get those really big games installed in half the time.  This is one of those little tips no one told you about with the Steam Deck.  To disconnect from WIFI when you are using a USB-C Dongle or a USB-C DOCK. A USB-C Dock is just a bigger and bulker version of the dongle because you can plug in keyboards and mice into and use it like a computer. This is definitely something I will be trying later on. I am quite curious to see if I can plug in a joystick or use a Bluetooth joystick to play games from my television set in the living room.

Streaming Games

If you plan on streaming games to another part of the house with your Steam Deck, you’ll want to also plug it in and make sure that you have enough bandwidth to stream games from your computer to the Steam Deck.   I think this one will also apply for the Logitech G Cloud Gaming Handheld also, if you plan to stream with the Logitech gaming handheld it will work a lot better if you can get a hard connection with that like you can with the Steam Deck.  

Download speeds

The only draw back I can see right now is the download speeds are limited to how fast the NVME or the SD card you are using can be written to.  So that may be a draw back from some people who got the slow SD cards that are barely able to keep up.   The best kind I can suggest are the SD cards that are designed for quick read and writes the ones that are in the 160MB/s are probably you best bet but you can use the 100MB/s read and write speeds if you like.  It will still be fast enough to play games on and will make your gaming experience better no matter which one you uses.

These are just a few things I’ve noticed once I got my Steam deck.   I will talk more about it in the coming weeks but I thought this would help other install their games or stream their games faster.   What else do you want to know about the Steam Deck, why not comment below and let me know what you interested in knowing or finding out?

 

How to fix the common streaming problems on any smart device

Paul

Streaming services

If you have had problems with buffering or even being able to watch a show without it pausing or skipping.    You could be watching Netflix, Hulu, CBS, or even HBO Max and the video just seems to stop or skip.  This is a very common problem and I’ll be showing you how to fix the issue that is a simple fix.  It doesn’t matter how much you move the router or maybe if you go from room to room and still have that occasional annoying issue with your video that isn’t be able to be played.

Video Devices

This could just of started or it could be a continuing problem.  You’re probably like most people just fed up with this or wanting to be able watch a movie or show without it stopping.   If you are like me and have a Chromecast, firestick, Roku, or even a smart TV, then this will probably help solve a lot of the issues especially since you might be in an apartment complex with a lot of other people who might have WIFI.  This technique is what I will first check when I start to have problems like this because you never really know if someone recently got WIFI somewhere close to where you are living.

Wi-Fi Signals

If you setup your own Wi-Fi this shouldn’t be much problem if not, you’ll need to know how to access the Wi-Fi signals in your router.   Usually you type in either 192.168.1.1 or something like that.  If you don’t know, I suggest checking the the Default router IP addresses and see if you can find out how to login to your router.  When you finally do, You’ll want to check to see if you can change the WIFI channels to another channel but what channel should you use?  That’s a great question because someone else might be using the channel you are wanting to use.   I have a few great apps that I download on my android phone but should be able to be found on iPhone and even windows phones or tablets.

Wifi Analyzer
  • Wifi Analyzer —  Great little tool to see what other WIFI signals are being use and will tell me which channels I should use on my router to get better performances.  If there are to many on a channel than that will cause collisions on that channel and could cause problems with your Wi-Fi signal.
  • Wifi Analyzer Classic — is just like WIFI Analyzer but has some great features that the newer one doesn’t and might even work better on new android devices.   After Oreo, you have to give the WIFI Analyzer permissions to use the WIFI and do what it needs.
  • NETGEAR Wi-Fi Analytics —  Great little tool for those who might have a Netgear router and would like to know how well there router is doing and it will suggest how to get the best signal from your router.  You can do speed test and other things from this little app.  It even has it’s own little Analyzer to see which channels or frequency might help.

Upgrading Firmware

This is another trick that might help solve most if not all of the common problems is by updating the firmware of the device you are trying to stream to.  Each device will be different but here are few devices help resources for the most common devices:

  • Roku — Doing this manually will help ensure that you will get the latest firmware for your device.
  • Chromecast  — Usually when Chromecast boots up it will update the firmware but it might not do it all the time.  You can force it to update when you want it to.
  • Firestick  —  I’ve never done this but here it is for this device also.

If you have a smart tv, you should check the manufacturers documentation to find out how to update your tv’s firmware to the latest version.  Usually it’s a simple process of going to settings and finding the update software or firmware setting on your select tv.   You will most likely find the information you need by going to the manufacturers website to find out how to do it all and to see if there is any problems you should be aware of.

These are what I usually check first before I try even more complex things because these are what usually cause most of the streaming issues or problems on any device in the home.   I am sure there are more ways to do it but these are just my recommendations on how to at least try to get the best streaming experience on your mobile or streaming device.