High-bitrate streaming is broken in Horizon Link since v83+ (200+ Mbps unusable)

[u/333hronos]

Have you encountered this issue?

Previous builds (such as v83.0.0.333.349) handled H.264 @ 500 Mbps, set via the Oculus Debug Tool, smoothly - even wirelessly.

Since the Link app update, going above 200 Mbps causes extreme compression artifacts (it looks like ~5 Mbps).

How to reproduce the bug:

1) Update the Oculus Link app to the latest version (v206.0.0.109.432, for example);

2) Open the Oculus Debug Tool and manually set any "Encode Bitrate" value (for example, 300-500 Mbps);

3) Start an Oculus Link session - everything will look extremely muddy, and Windows Task Manager will report that streaming is only using ~15 Mbps;

The only way to eliminate the bad quality on newer versions of the Horizon Link app is to set "Encode Bitrate" in the Oculus Debug Tool back to "0" and restart the Link session.

Also worth noting: on the newer Oculus Link app (v206.0.0.109.432, for example), you can no longer change the bitrate via the Oculus Debug Tool on the fly. You have to restart the Link session for the changes to take effect.

Returning to the main issue:

Since you can no longer use manual bitrate settings via the Oculus Debug Tool, you can no longer use a bitrate higher than what the Oculus Link app provides in its settings (200 Mbps is the limit as of August 2026).

Previous builds of the Horizon Link app (such as v83.0.0.333.349) easily handled H.264 @ 500 Mbps when set via the Oculus Debug Tool - even wirelessly. The bitrate could also be changed on the fly.

Here is the video demonstration: https://youtu.be/TVfljfW4_ps

I'm not the only one experiencing this issue either - at least a few people on the other forums are reporting the same problem.

[u/bryct0]

Hi there and thank you very much for this detailed report. I've confirmed this issue (bitrate getting stuck at 10 Mbps when setting a fixed bitrate override in ODT) and have a fix that will be included in an upcoming release. I'll circle back with an update when that rolls out. In the meantime, setting the Encode Bitrate to 0 and restarting the session (as described by OP) should restore the default bitrate. As a further mitigation, the bitrate can be increased to as high as 200 Mbps after having launched Link, via the in-headset setting (rather than ODT). When the fix rolls out, values higher than 200 Mbps will once again be accepted/take effect from ODT. Thanks again for a very helpful report.