Remote Play - Poor Performance

[Eambo]

Hi Everyone,

My apologies if this is the wrong forum, please redirect me if necessary 🙂 I have just purchased the Sony Xperia Z2 Tablet, mainly for the newly launched remote play feature - I was hoping with the use of the DualShock 4, I could replace my PlayStation Vita.

Unfortunately I have found the performance to be...underwhelming...to put it mildly. I am sitting in the same room as my PS4, on a fairly clear wireless network that my Vita has always worked with. While using Remote Play, I often get the "Disconnection" icon, or literally the screen will freeze entirely for up to 20 seconds. It's pretty much unusable.

Can anyone suggest is this normal at this stage? If not, are there any tips you can give me for improving performance settings-wise? My wireless, as mentioned, is working okay, they're within the same room and I've tried both close to the PS4 and giving it a bit of distance, and my Vita does not show the same issues.

Thanks for any guidance you can provide! 🙂

[daijobu]

Hey man, sorry to hear about that.

I had the exact same problem before with my Vita RP (remote play), which you don't seem to suffer from. My ps4 was running on wireless back then, so I used powerline adapter to "wired" it to the router, and since RP has become possible for me (before it was simply unusable as in your case, constantly getting the disconnection sign and suffering from huge freeze, latency, and pixelation before disonnction).

But I'm still get that sign from time to time, followed by lags, and reduce picture quality. And that's when I got fed up with remote play and gave it up.

In the case of Xperia RP, unfortunately, you do NOT have the ability, unlike the Vita, to "directly connect" with the PS4. This option allows fairly good RP performance when you're very close to the PS4.

So what I would suggest you to do is

1) get your PS4 wired. Don't even think about RP without a wired console if you cannot directly connect to your PS4 like on the Vita (to be honest I'm quite surprised to hear that you're able to get good RP sessions just on wifi). If you cannot physically wire your PS4, get the powerline adapters, they are not as good but the best options avaialble. 

2) Get a better internet/router. RP performance depends 100% on your internet.

I spent literally 2/3 of a month in the beginning of my RP experience trying to improve, I've tried EVERYTHING that's been proposed online, DMZ, port forwarding, channels switching, wifi extender... you name it, NONE of them worked. So I would say don't waste time with them. The only thing you can do is DIRECTLY improve your internet connection (i.e. get a really fast internet and good router), don't bother with these indirect methods.

Hope it helps. I also had a lot of expectation for RP but was greatly disappointed. 

[Eambo]

Hey daijobu,

Thanks for the response and taking the time to explaexplair experience. Apologies in that I should have mentioned my PS4 has always been hard wired directly to the router with a cat6 Ethernet cable. You mention RP being internet reliant - is it? If I'm sitting in the same room as my router why is it using the internet and not just going through my LAN?

I have a 100Mbps down, 10Mbps up, fibre optic connection so it should suffice, but my router isn't the greatest (Virgin Media superhub 2). I would've thought it would do the job though for RP

[daijobu]

OH WHOA! your internet is WAY better than what's required to have good RP. In this case I really do not know what's causing the problem, maybe verify if your signal are being disturbed by other signals.

Yeah your PS4 gets internet through the LAN cable. But when you're remote playing with Xperia, the tablet requires good wifi signal to be able to stream your content from the PS4. When you're using the Vita you do not need to worry about that if you're directly connecting to the PS4. But you don't have that option for Xperia.

Man I seriously don't know what's causing the problem in your case, since my download speed is around 10mb and up 1mb and I can get away with ok RP once hardwired.

Definitely check out signal disturbance. Maybe try portforwarding and enabling DMZ. You can easily find these tutorials on google by search for ways to improve connect on ps4.

It's very werid that you are getting awful RP experience with that kind of internet.  

[SergioPL1]

I would suspect some communication or delay problems between tablet and wireless accesspoint. Could you borrow AP from someone and try on other unit?