Known Issues & Limitations

Streaming Issues When Game Mode Is Enabled (Tizen 9.0)

With Tizen 9.0, Samsung made changes to the Game Mode pipeline that render Ultra Low Latency unstable for WASM-based internal applications, such as Moonlight. As a result, the TV is unable to properly activate Game Mode during streaming, even when Game Mode (Ultra Low Latency) is enabled from Moonlight’s settings. Due to these platform-level changes, the Game Mode fails to engage, resulting in video freezing on the first rendered frame, black screens, corrupted output at higher resolutions, instability at higher frame rates or bitrates, video codecs failing to function correctly, choppy or desynchronized audio, and other unpredictable streaming issues. These issues are not caused by Moonlight, but are introduced by the Samsung Tizen platform.

Workaround

To help prevent the streaming issues mentioned above while still benefiting from Game Mode, you can apply the Game Mode metadata, which attempts to enable the Game Mode at the platform level. After importing the widget into Tizen Studio, open the config.xml file, switch to the Source tab, and add the following line inside the <widget> element (preferably alongside other metadata):

<tizen:metadata key="http://samsung.com/tv/metadata/use.game.mode" value="true"/>

Save the changes and proceed with installing the application on your TV by following the installation guide.

After installation, keep Game Mode disabled in Moonlight’s settings to use Low Latency, which provides reliable streaming at the cost of slightly higher latency. While Low Latency does not prioritize minimal latency like Ultra Low Latency, it is far more stable and better suited for consistent playback on Tizen 9.0 when combined with Game Mode metadata.

Tip

Disable any post-processing features on your TV such as Picture Clarity, Contrast Enhancer, and other video enhancements to further reduce latency.

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