You Can Stream Xbox One To Windows 10 In Very High Quality

While many hailed the ability to stream Xbox One games to Windows 10 PCs, it was not without its limitations. The feature offered different levels of quality, from low to high. Being very picky eaters, gamers naturally wanted more, along the lines of the same quality as the Xbox One output itself. While the Xbox PC app didn't allow that, it seems there is a way to actually force it to stream in "very high quality". Of course, it affects your network, but for some, it might be well worth the sacrifice.

It's not that difficult to perform the process, though it's definitely more involved than simply flicking a switch. The steps go as thus:

1. Go to C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Packages\ (presuming Windows 10 is installed in the C: drive)

2. Look for the folder beginning with "Microsoft.XboxApp"

3. Open the file "userconsoledata" in Notepad (or your favorite text editor)

4. Look for the line containing 'IsInternalPreview' and set it from false to true

From then on, the Xbox app will show an option for "very high quality" streaming. Here's a sample for comparison:

According to Eurogamer there was no discernible impact on performance other than the increase in bandwidth use. The latter is not surprising considering you are forcing full 1080p images to be sent over the network. According to their tests, very high quality taxes the network to an average of 18 mbps.

That said, that might not be the biggest problem with Xbox streaming anyway. Reports indicate that the frame rate quality and consistency is its biggest flaw, with 60fps games crawling down to 40fps when streamed and 30fps going down even worse. There is definitely room for improvement and hopefully that will come soon.

VIA: Eurogamer