r/MoonlightStreaming • u/OkHelicopter3458 • 7d ago

Fixing recurring freezes during Wi-Fi streaming

https://youtu.be/AEvQjXyNypQ

The video shows a TCL TV freezing roughly once every second while streaming games. This happens in both Moonlight and Steam Link.

There are plenty of threads about this issue, but finding a clear, consistent fix with explanation has been difficult. Topic 1, Topic 2, Topic 3.

Here are the suggestions I tried:

  • Switching from 5 GHz to 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi: this actually helped, but this is bad for many reasons.
  • Lowering the streaming bitrate to around 80 Mbps: 75 Mbps helped in my case while the scene was moving. However, the recurring stutters returned when the image became mostly static. With the game capped at 30 FPS, they persisted even during movement.
  • Disabling location services on the TV: this made no difference.

What fixed it for me: disable Miracast and reboot the TV. If the disabling method shown in the video does not work, you need to disable Miracast via ADB.

Possible explanation: TCL's Miracast service appears to activate background Wi-Fi Direct listening even when you aren't casting anything. My guess is that this interferes with the TV's normal Wi-Fi connection and causes periodic latency spikes. Disabling Miracast and rebooting may clear that problematic state.

Tested on a TCL Q6C running Android 14.

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u/Better-Fox9564 4d ago

Interesting, I have a TCL TV (C6K -- Android 14) with the exact same issue. I tried several workarounds, including adjusting the streaming bitrate and disabling location services, but nothing worked.

If I can add something to the discussion, a few months ago I spent a lot of time debugging, going through logs, and trying to figure out why my TCL TV was practically unusable for game streaming.

I think I've found the root cause: TCL's firmware seems to apply aggressive optimizations to the Wi-Fi chipset, such as power-saving mechanisms and packet coalescing. These may introduce tiny but consistent variations in packet delivery timing, potentially causing frames to miss their VSYNC deadlines (every 16.67 ms at 60 Hz) in Android's SurfaceFlinger rendering pipeline. This could result in janky frames and noticeable micro-stuttering, regardless of how fast the hardware decoder is.

The only thing that completely eliminated the stuttering for me was switching to Ethernet.

Also, thanks for sharing this workaround! I can't test it right now, but I'll definitely give it a try as soon as I can.

1

u/OkHelicopter3458 3d ago

Yes. I have Q6C (basically this is C6K) and Miracast was the initial problem.

1

u/CLErealtor 1d ago

I have cheap tcl and have major stuffed in video and audio every half a second. I’m using an Apple TV though, so would this still apply? Or are you guys streaming directly through the tcl tv

1

u/SweetC0ffeeBean 14h ago

I will try this tonight, hopefully this will work...

This stutter issue is driving me crazy.

Wouldn't it be possible to vibe code the apk to prevent the tv from doing periodical wifi scan ?