Very recently, GitHub user ‘LazyDevYo‘ released a program called “PSVitaDock” that allows you to stream your PSVita’s screen to your PC with one click. While this software is very easy to use and has a nice look, it has one glaring problem which is the presence of a watermark in the form of a green/purple line and some text. Due to this, I decided to write a tutorial on how to stream your PSVita’s screen to your PC with minimal effort without the watermark!
How does it work? What do I need in advance?
Streaming your PSVita’s screen to your PC works with Xerpi’s UDCD_UVC plugin which turns your PSVita into a USB streaming device.
This solution provides low latency screen streaming through a USB connection that lets you play your favourite games on a much bigger screen. Speaking from personal experience, I can say it works very well as I played through large portions of Persona 4 Golden via streaming and I never encountered any issues.
Moving on to the tutorial section of this article, let’s discuss what you need:
- A PSVita device running FW 3.60, 3.65, 3.67 or 3.68
- Your device also needs to be hacked with HENkaku/h-encore before following this tutorial. To hack your PSVita, you can follow the excellent tutorials found here
- A computer running Windows XP or newer with a USB 2.0 port (virtually any computer from the past 10-15 years)
- You can stream your PSVita’s screen to Linux or macOS but in this tutorial, Windows-only software will be used
- 15-20 minutes of your time and minimal knowledge on how to use a computer
- If you want audio, you need a 3.5mm jack to jack adapter which you connect from your PSVita’s headphone jack to your computer’s Mic-in or Line-In
- Those wanting to use a DualShock 3/4 controller with their Vita also need TheFlow’s MiniVitaTV.
- The two points above won’t be discussed in this tutorial and at the end of it, you’ll only get video streaming to your PC
The Tutorial Itself:
Part 1 deals with installing Xerpi’s UDCD_UVC plugin on your PSVita:
- Head over to this link and click on the download link (found under the heading “Precompiled download“)
- Download the SKPRX file and copy it to your PSVita’s plugin directory (it is either ur0:/tai or ux0:/tai depending on how your system is set up)
- Copying can be done either via USB or FTP (I use WinSCP for FTP transfers)
- Open your taiHEN config.txt and add the plugin you download in the *KERNEL section as demonstrated in the screenshot
- Reboot your PSVita and connect it to your computer via USB if it’s not already connected. Your computer should recognise it as imaging device or something similar depending on your OS
In this tutorial, I’ll be using PotPlayer as it’s very simple to use and I had pretty good results with it on the 3 computers I used it on. However, you may also use OBS Studio, KMPlayer or mplayer. Part 2 deals with the PC side:
- Go to PotPlayer’s website and grab the 32-bit or 64-bit download (you probably have a 64-bit OS but if you use an older computer, you need the 32-bit version which also works perfectly for this purpose)
- Install the software through the setup file you just downloaded on your PC and you can optionally install the extra codecs it prompts you to install (I always installed these extra codecs as drive space isn’t an issue)
- Open PotPlayer and navigate to “PotPlayer (top left menu) -> Open -> Open Webcam/Other Device” or press Ctrl+J
- Congratulations, you have successfully streamed your PSVita’s screen to your PC!
Conclusion
Now, you can say that your PSVita has been sort of turned into a Nintendo Switch as you can start your games on the small screen and continue them on the big screen.
Going back to the software mentioned in the introductory paragraph, I sincerely hope that the watermark is removed in the near future as the software simplifies the process of streaming your Vita to a PC even further.
If you’d like to help out with that, check out its Reddit thread as a license costs €180 or perhaps you can suggest a free streaming solution for PSVitaDock to use!
