Bigscreen Beta News

Previously, Bigscreen TV channels were only possible in public TV rooms that was hosted and managed by Bigscreen. Fun, but not for everyone. Over the past 2 years, we heard lots of requests from users that they wanted to create their own rooms and watch TV channels privately, with their own friends.

Today, we launched an update that lets you watch TV channels in your own room! You can easily switch between different channels in your own room and watch TV with friends. The TV channels are free websites such as Pluto TV, Twitch, Adult Swim, and more.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Over the last 2 years, we've been building up the library. We currently have more than 100 TV channels up and running. Rick and Morty, Hells Kitchen, and a bunch of 24/7 movie channels are among the popular channels. We also host rocket launches, tech keynotes, and live streams pretty often.


We dropped this update before the Super Bowl so people can watch the Super Bowl in their own room with family and friends. This new feature works just using a Quest, no other PC or laptop is required to stream.

To watch the Super Bowl in Bigscreen, you just need to launch Bigscreen (free) on your VR headset (Meta Quest 2, or any PCVR headset like Valve Index, Windows Mixed Reality, HTC Vive) and click on the Super Bowl icon in the Bigscreen VR menu. It will immediately load the Super Bowl live stream in your own private room.

If you want to watch the Super Bowl with others, you can invite your friends into your private room, or make the room public and hang out with football fans across the country.


This update also fixes several bugs. Notably, the social videoplayer and social movie rentals now work correctly! This previously broke in December 2021 when we launched the major Streaming Update.


If you love Bigscreen, please leave a review on the Oculus Store or Steam Store! It makes a big difference!

Over the past 2 years, we poured our soul into rewriting our core technologies from scratch. Bigscreen now has massively improved screens and higher quality streaming. Here's the full patch notes, hope you enjoy it!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

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[h2]New Dedicated Streaming Servers[/h2]

Bigscreen lets you host a room and stream your Windows PC desktop screen. We're hosting new Dedicated Servers that massively improved video streaming quality with perfectly synced audio. Dedicated Servers also reduce the bandwidth requirements for room hosts. Before this update, user-hosted rooms in Bigscreen would sometimes have choppy video, with lots of blocky, low-quality video artifacts. The audio was sometimes delayed and laggy.

This update solves those issues and dramatically improves the experience for watching movies and YouTube or playing PC videogames with friends. Our new server infrastructure also allows users to host much larger rooms, now supporting up to 15 people per room.

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[h2]Remote Desktop improvements[/h2]

The new Bigscreen Remote Desktop app makes it much easier to host a room on your Quest and stream your Windows PC desktop with ultra-low latency streams and improved video & audio quality. When the Oculus Quest launched, Bigscreen had a basic Remote Desktop feature, but it was very difficult to stream and play PC videogames on your Quest. The 30fps video stream could be laggy and low quality, and audio could be out of sync.

Our new technology solves those issues! The latency when using your PC from Quest can be as low as sub-20ms, with up to 100Mbps bitrate streams. The new Remote Desktop also streams at 60fps over your LAN. It no longer feels like watching a video, it now feels like a virtual monitor in your Quest.

Remote Desktop works great in singleplayer on your Quest using your PC by yourself. But the most important aspect that sets Bigscreen Remote Desktop apart is that it also works socially! Invite your friends into a Bigscreen room on your Quest, run Bigscreen Remote Desktop on your PC. and your friends will instantly see your monitor. This lets you do anything on your PC, with your friends, like watching movies, browsing the web, or playing videogames.

You can download the new Bigscreen Remote Desktop installer from our website.

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[h2]Also...[/h2]

We implemented Spatial Audio for voice chat, greatly increasing the sense of "presence" and helping you intuitively understand who is talking in a virtual room.

We improved VR rendering performance especially for Quest 1 users. Before it was hard to hit framerate on Quest 1 with more than 8 users in a room. Now, Bigscreen can easily handle 15 users in a room even on Quest 1.

PC and Quest users can now host bigger rooms up to 15 people per room

Significant bug fixes and UI improvements.




[h2]What's next?[/h2]

The Streaming Update's infrastructure has laid a lot of groundwork for future updates in the coming weeks and months. Here's a small teaser on what's to come:

• Friend System
  
• Input streaming for Remote Desktop, including support for Bluetooth gamepads and keyboards.
  
• Built-in Youtube app that lets you browse and watch YouTube with friends
  

Bigscreen is fully cross-platform, so you can download it from the Oculus Store or Steam for free, and it supports major headsets like Oculus Quest, Valve Index, all Windows Mixed Reality headsets, and all SteamVR headsets.

If you have issues, feel free to message or ask for help in the Discord

If you like Bigscreen please leave a review on the store! It makes a huge difference and supports us 🔥

This update contains changes to improve performance:

• Fixes performance issues when moving the Bigscreen menu around.
  
  
• There have been reports of PCVR users experiencing a 3+ second mic audio delay coming from a Quest user. This update addresses that.
  

#️⃣ Version: `0.107.0.d8b22d-beta-ui-2020`

Small update to squash some bugs:

• Our latest selfie stick addition accidentally hid avatars with their personal space bubble on, but now you all should be able to take selfies with your friends and show up in your photos.
  
  
• There have been a lot of screen flickering reports on Quest headsets while viewing a host’s desktop, so we fixed that right up along with some similar issues in certain environments as well.
  
  
• Oculus PCVR desktop screens should no longer be cropped in certain environments.
  
  
• Several other fixes and improvements have been made.
  

We still have more work to do, so stay tuned! Please continue to share your feedback, #feature-requests, and email us at `[email protected]`

#️⃣ Version: `0.107.0.8cf512-beta-ui-2020`

Hey everyone,

We’ve heard your feedback about the playback controls on screen! Playback controls for the videoplayer and rentals will only appear after you have clicked the screen now.



Selfie sticks are now available on Quest headsets! Now you can capture your favorite moments in Bigscreen easily and share them with everyone. You can take out the selfie stick under Tools & Toys from your Room menu and pull the trigger on your controller to snap a quick photo. Your photos will be saved into your Quest’s internal storage, so you can share them through the Oculus sharing menu. Be sure to tag us @BigscreenVR on Twitter so we can also show them off!

If you’re not a fan of seeing any tools or toys appear in your view, remember to turn on Distraction Free Mode to hide them away from sight (selfie sticks included).

We still have more work to do, so stay tuned! Please continue to share your feedback, #feature-requests, and email us at `[email protected]`

#️⃣ Version: `0.107.0.d3deee-beta-ui-2020`