Mettlog

Sorry for the late reply, I was off for the weekend and could only test it yesterday. Thanks for all your answers, and even bigger thanks to you guys at Unbroken Software for lovely LauchBox and your devotion to it. Indeed BigBox streaming works when I connect a keyboard to the Nvidia Shield TV: I bought a Logitech K400 and I was probably lucky that I had no other choice in the shop because BigBox also didn't respond to the cursor keys first, but it all started working once I clicked the left mouse button. This makes me think BigBox simply loses focus when it starts. I repeated this several times and it turns out that even the gamepad works once I click the mouse. Maybe this is the only problem (and maybe you could look at it when you have the opportunity - on a PC you probably wouldn't even notice it), afterwards navigating works well and the emulators run fine with just very little additional, noticeable lag in games. Not very surprising because it's the same with the PC games I stream this way. @AutumnSounds, you're right, all these streaming solutions are a sort of "full screen capture" and usually you shouldn't even have to bother about streaming at all in LaunchBox development, except such small issues like avoiding focus loss as it appears now. What I will do within the next weeks is trying different streaming software (Moonlight, Remotr, KinoConsole) on all the hardware I can access or get from friends for testing (iPad, Amazon FireTV, several smartphones and some of these cheap, chinese Android boxes should be within reach) and let you know if this is a Nvidia-specific issue or a general one, then we might have some facts to discuss. Just because this tread devoloped a bit into a general off-topic discussion let me add my two cents to make my intentions clear: I always had a HTPC in my living room for far more than a decade (and spent a fortune on upgrades in all that time) but I got rid of it last year and I don't miss it. Usually it was either not powerful enough to do everything, or it was too noisy to have it in the living room. It was always a foul compromise, and I'm now pretty convinced that this is a thing of the past with the entire entertainment industry and technology changing so fast and so dramatically. I really like the NUCs, but it's not true that you spend just a hundred bucks because then you may have the box, but you don't have any RAM, no mass storage, no remote control, no gamepad and no Windows license yet - and how do you think the Dreamcast/PS2 emulators or Dolphin will perform on a Baytrail-"Celeron"-Atom and it's integrated graphics? The great thing about LaunchBox is that it's so flexible and can be used to emulate whatever the PC hardware can handle. For MAME, SNES and the other old staff a RaspberryPi would be good enough - and then again you would spend far too much for a solution based on an entry-level NUC. Ok, you would miss LaunchBox then... I am now moving more and more functions to a "home server" (what a big name for a normal PC) and this has just recently started making more and more sense for me. Not everything is perfect yet, but the progress is amazing. These cheap "thin clients" are a blessing: with Kodi or Plex including Live-TV recording and media access on your NAS, streamed games, streamed music and video from Netflix/Spotify etc., and lots of native apps for whatever, there's no need for "more" and you don't even have to worry when your TV's "smart" functions are no longer up to date (usually on day three after the next year's model was released). When there is enough technical progress after a few years, I will simply replace the cheap box with another one.

AutumnSounds said There are Sooooooooo many options to do this these days. Thanks, mate, that probably helps others who stumble upon this thread. Unfortunately you explain how to use a TV as a monitor and this is not what I asked. Just assume that my PC is a big, noisy beast that will never be anywhere near my living room, let alone inside of it because it also acts as a home server/private cloud/TV recorder and runs 24/7. My approach is to leave the PC where it is (2 floors below in the cellar, next to the heating where it doesn't disturb anyone), but to utilize it's power elsewhere by streaming and RDP connections. This works (surprisingly) well for many things, but so far I had not much luck with Launchbox, so I would like to know if anyone is successfully streaming LaunchBox in BigBox mode to any kind of low-noise and small sized device for the living room. I'm fine if this a a small sized PC like an Intel NUC, but I still think this is a kind of overkill because they are too expensive for what they do and just don't neccessarily fit into the concept. I'm actually looking for something "embedded". Just as a comparison: the ShieldTV brings my GTA 5 and lots of other games in FullHD, max details and 60 fps to my TV and never makes any noise although I read it had a small fan inside. I never heard it. I bought it as a "Black Friday" offer and paid a bit over 130 EUR for the entire thing including the wireless gamepad and a small remote. If you buy only the OEM/SB Windows license and a wireless Xbox360 controller for windows you pay the same, but then you don't have any computer hardware yet. Sure, I need a PC and it should be a very powerful one - but one should be enough nowadays and it doesn't have to share the room with me.

Brad, thanks for reacting so quickly. Maybe it's me who is missing something. You say that streaming LaunchBox to a small device is possible - so maybe my strategy is wrong and I would need to get a hint where to start reading. If possible I would like to avoid having another full-featured PC in the living room, the Windows license alone costs more than a Steam Link for example. A small box with no other input device but a gamepad would be ideal. What I'm trying is to use Nvidia GameStream to stream BigBox from my PC to a Nvidia ShieldTV (in house) and it doesn't work because once started, BigBox doesn't react to the Shield gamecontroller at all, and it doesn't respond to a wireless Xbox 360 controller (for Windows, using the USB receiver) either. The desktop version of LaunchBox works somehow, but desktop apps are not meant to be controlled with a game controller on a TV in general and I'm sure you're fully aware of this because you must have developed BigBox for a good reason. A friend owns a Steam Link, and didn't have much luck either (he also had controller issues and other problems). My point was that the user experience with BigBox on the two widely available streaming solutions is not exactly flawless, but has great potential. That may not require programming changes in LaunchBox, but then it does require instructions. Maybe it could be covered in one of the weekly YouTube How-Tos? I completely agree that a RasPi and similar devices are not powerful enough, but there are some projects (RecalBoxOS, RetroPie) trying to create a combined launcher for many classic consoles, not completely unlike what LaunchBox does on a PC. And of course LaunchBox does it so much better, not only because a PC is simply the better device for emulators. And so I don't see any need to port LaunchBox to any other hardware or O/S (except MacOS maybe) - as long as there's a comfortable and stable streaming solution from an existing, powerfull Windows PC elsewhere in the house. So if you say "streaming your LaunchBox to a small device like this is already very possible and people do it all the time", then please tell me how it can be done.

Guys, it's so frustrating. It could be the dream-come-true for hordes of long-time gamers, the all-in-one solution we had been praying for over the last 30 years. So tempting. So close. So promising. But it just doesn't work although it should. I'm talking about LaunchBox in BigBox mode, streamed to a tiny, noiseless box under the big screen in the living room. 50000+ titles from the last four decades, from Pong and Pac Man through 3 dozen historical platforms up to the latest AAA titles. Running on a big fat noisy PC with enough horsepower, but far away from where living takes place. No more hiding my favourite hobby in the dark and dusty home office under the roof or in the cellar; just clean, plain, family-friendly fun from the couch on the huge TV screen or on a small tablet, beautifully presented and controlled by nothing but a set of wireless gamepads. Let's be honest, many of us had been giving their right arms for this, at least when we had no kids to grow up and feed. We've been waiting for it. Patiently, but desperately. And now it's here. Nearly. If there weren't these many small issues that pile up to a complete show stopper. Both Nvidia (ShieldTV) and Valve (Steam Link) made a lot of progress recently, no problem to play the 2016 gaming charts this way. But no chance to run LaunchBox and play the arcade version of Asteroids or show my kids the titles that wasted my time so unforgettably on the NES when I was at their age. Or to have another round of Diddy Kong Racing with them after the real N64 said farewell with a puff of smoke some years ago. It looks like I could, and BigBox even starts, but then rejects any input from the controller. Game Over - before it even started. Dear LaunchBox devs, I know you're extremely busy with the games database and all that. But looking at the frequent forum threads here, the popularity of (far inferior) all-in-one retro gaming projects on the RaspberryPi, and the development that content streaming has made over the last few years, don't you agree that it would be worth concentrating a bit more on a streaming optimized LauchBox in BigBox mode? Isn't that what all these things must have been made for, the natural next evolution milestone and big landmark in gaming history? With LaunchBox as the project that made it all possible first? Pleeeeeaase Devs, give this a higher priority than before. Put it on your to-do list as one of the next important steps in LaunchBox development. We're so really, really damn close, but it urgently needs fine tuning to really make it happen. If a Nvidia ShieldTV is all you need, let's raise some donations in the forum and buy one for you. All current and future streaming solutions would benefit from the knowledge you could gain. Everything seems to shout "Do it now!" and the world is ready for it. Please give it this last bit of full attention it both requires and deserves. Your biggest fan Stan