Original Steam Link Hardware - poor video quality over wired Internet
Hello!
I bought a Steam Link hardware device on local market because my TV doesn’t have the Steam Link app.
Previously, I used to stream to it with the Apollo + Moonlight setup, but I kept experiencing stutters, which really bothered me.
With the Steam Link, I barely notice any stuttering - it’s connected via an original HDMI cable, and in the settings, I set the maximum bitrate to 100 Mbps (though through the Steam interface; the link itself shows only up to 30 Mbps).
At this setting, the picture quality is very poor, and it’s not about the 1080p resolution. If there’s fog in the game, the image becomes heavily pixelated, and colors are distorted - for example, yellow appears dirtier.
When I stream from Apollo to Moonlight on my TV, the picture looks great, and when I stream to the Steam Deck at 40 Mbps, the picture also looks excellent. And the Steam Deck uses Wi-Fi, while the Steam Link hardware connected via cable.
What could be the issue? My guess is that the Steam Link hardware doesn’t support fine-quality codecs. For instance, it won’t let me enable the NVENC codec - the toggle is grayed out, whereas on the Steam Deck, it works fine. I think that might be the problem.
I couldn’t find much info about the Steam Link hardware.
What do you think?