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Issues with docked mode in Android 11 (lemmy.world)

submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I've used switchroot in the past on Android 10. I recently got a new SD card, formatted and partitioned it and installed Android 11. Almost everything is working great, aside from docked mode. When I go into advanced system settings, it shows my TV as 1080p, 60Hz. It's clearly running at 720p though. I'm running the official Switch dock into a Yamaha RX-V581 home theater receiver into a Sharp Aquos 1080p TV. If I look at signal info in the Yamaha receiver, it says it's receiving 1080p. If I use the system menu to manually switch the TV resolution to 720p, one of two things happen. Most commonly, I'll get a black screen. Sometimes, I get a zoomed in view in the upper left corner that looks like it's trying to display 1080p on a 720p screen. My primary use case for switchroot is to run Steam Link or Parsec to stream games from my PC. When I was running Android 10, I had a similar issue to what I describe above, but I was able to find a workaround. The issue would happen if I launched Steam Link in handheld mode, then docked the console. The app would be "stuck" running in 720p and even disconnecting and reconnecting to my PC would give the same results. If I undocked the console, force closed Steam Link, then re-docked the console, then relaunched Steam Link, it would be in 1080p. This workaround doesn't seem to work anymore in Android 11. Is there something I'm doing wrong here? Is my home theater receiver or the switch dock being problematic? Should I go back to Android 10? I like the idea of just using the switch for all my portable gaming, using Parsec on the go and Steam Link locally, but it's starting to seem like I might want to save up for a Steam Deck.

EDIT: After some research I found that this was indeed a problem with Android 11, and rolling back to Android 10 "solved" my problem. Docking / undocking works seamlessly and the docked resolution is truly 1080p. I'm not sure if this counts as solving the problem, but it works for me. I'll update further if something turns up that allows this to work properly in Android 11.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Yeah I tried Android on the switch and wasn't enjoying how much tinkering it seemed I needed to do.

From an AV troubleshoot standpoint I'd say hook it up directly to the TV and see if that helps. If so, we can probably find another way to route audio back to the AVR.

I've also been scrimping and saving for a steam deck

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

For what it's worth, my issue ended up being related to Android 11. I rolled back to Android 10 and am now getting much better performance. Docked mode also works properly. The decoder chip on the Switch seems to work really well at 720p, playing games on Steam Link or Parsec in handheld mode has virtually no latency. In docked mode, the Switch now properly outputs 1080p, but it adds a bit of latency, I'd guess around 30ms. Running the same software on my Galaxy S22, it gets much better results. This is likely due to the fact that the Tegra is an old chip and decoding 1080p is a bit slower than 720p. Still, it's definitely playable at 1080p, just not quite as good as I'd like.

I have a physical Steam Link device (the one that Valve used to sell) and it gets just about the same amount of latency as the Switch at 1080p, maybe a tiny bit less. Steam Link is generally not quite as good as Parsec in the latency department, but when it comes to ease of use it's much better. The fact that my more modern devices get better performance at 1080p, combined with the stats that Parsec provides indicate that this is an issue on the decoding end on the Switch. Still, it's incredible that I can connect with Parsec from any internet connection anywhere and play games on my PC. Overall it works really well, especially considering this is a game console that I bought in 2017.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Yeah that's a good point and I love my hacked switch!

Have you tried any of the moonlight or similar stuff on the homebrew channel? Dunno if that would work better or not, but was curious about it myself.

I felt that my switch just ran too dang warm on Android 10.

Even after replacing the fan.

Good times that it's working good for you!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

You know, I never really thought about it as I wasn't running Android 11 very long, but it was running cooler. It doesn't run so hot in Android 10 that I'm worried about damage, but it's noticeably warmer at idle. I tried moonlight back when I had a 1080ti in my gaming rig, but nowadays I'm running a Radeon 6800 xt, so no moonlight for me. I tried AMD link earlier, but as expected it's not very good. Performance wise, Parsec has been the best so far. However, I have to log in on my desktop and launch big picture mode to really be able to do anything, as it connects to the desktop and trying to do anything with the touch screen is miserable. The main benefit of steam link is that it launches straight into big picture mode, and Steam knows that you are streaming, so when you disconnect it closes it. Both Parsec and Steam Link perform much better in handheld mode than docked mode. I get less than half the latency. With Steam Link running in docked mode with diagnostics enabled, I get the occasional "slow display" message and the decoding latency spikes up, so that kinda confirms my theory that the switch hardware is struggling to decode the 1080p video. I guess for now I'll be sticking to my usual strategy, which involves a mix of using my physical Steam Link on the TV, Switch in handheld mode when I feel like not being in front of the TV, and just my plain old laptop with a controller or keyboard / mouse connected otherwise. Or, you know, physically playing at my gaming rig.