Yep! And Steam Link is fine, but Moonlight/Apollo gives you more options and, in my experience, better quality.
So for example I can tell Moonlight to have Apollo send 1440p to the Steam Deck, so that after chroma subsampling I still end up with an entirely unique pixel for each on the Deck. That alone makes things look more crisp. I can also have Apollo set up such that my PC uses Moonlight as the only display when I’m using it.
(There are far more options I haven’t really dug into.)
I haven’t noticed any, but maybe? Very fine details can get combined, so it’s possible. But I’ve been playing Diablo 4 that way recently and haven’t complained.
In 4:2:2 subsampling (or lower), information is lost. It’s not much information, but if I’m streaming 1280x800 or 1280x720, each pixel is partial defined by the ones around it.
If I stream 2560x1440, when reduced to 1280x720 each pixel is the combination of those 4 subsampled pixels. Meaning each individual pixel is independent from its neighbors.
It doesn’t sound like it should mean much, and maybe I’m wrong entirely about the reason for the lower detail when streaming 1280x800, but the difference was apparent to me (at least when I tested it with Cyberpunk 2077). I could very well be wrong, I’m not an expert. There could be other causes. But either way streaming at 1440p looks better on the 1280x800 screen than streaming 1280x800. (Except with 1440p the aspect ratio means small black bars at top and bottom).
Now that I think about it, I might be able to turn off the subsampling in the stream. Might be a good way to test it if I can.
Steam also has a built-in streaming feature that doesn’t require any additional software.
Yep! And Steam Link is fine, but Moonlight/Apollo gives you more options and, in my experience, better quality.
So for example I can tell Moonlight to have Apollo send 1440p to the Steam Deck, so that after chroma subsampling I still end up with an entirely unique pixel for each on the Deck. That alone makes things look more crisp. I can also have Apollo set up such that my PC uses Moonlight as the only display when I’m using it.
(There are far more options I haven’t really dug into.)
Does that cause problems with rendering small text?
I haven’t noticed any, but maybe? Very fine details can get combined, so it’s possible. But I’ve been playing Diablo 4 that way recently and haven’t complained.
Cool info, but I’m not sure about this part. Do you mean downsampling instead? Because chroma subsampling doesn’t make sense in this context.
In 4:2:2 subsampling (or lower), information is lost. It’s not much information, but if I’m streaming 1280x800 or 1280x720, each pixel is partial defined by the ones around it.
If I stream 2560x1440, when reduced to 1280x720 each pixel is the combination of those 4 subsampled pixels. Meaning each individual pixel is independent from its neighbors.
It doesn’t sound like it should mean much, and maybe I’m wrong entirely about the reason for the lower detail when streaming 1280x800, but the difference was apparent to me (at least when I tested it with Cyberpunk 2077). I could very well be wrong, I’m not an expert. There could be other causes. But either way streaming at 1440p looks better on the 1280x800 screen than streaming 1280x800. (Except with 1440p the aspect ratio means small black bars at top and bottom).
Now that I think about it, I might be able to turn off the subsampling in the stream. Might be a good way to test it if I can.
I am more into the encoding side, not streaming, but a 1440p source on a 800p screen will always look better than a 800p source.
Thank you for letting me know I’m not crazy! 😅