Valve's new Error 17 fix needs both your PC and your Steam Frame on beta builds
Valve's latest fixes for the Steam Frame streaming fault it calls "Error 17" ask owners to update both ends, and both updates are opt-in betas. SteamOS 0.4.3 tells Frame owners that "on the PC, you must also opt into SteamVR 2.18.2 or later to reduce 'Error 17' connection issues", and SteamVR 2.18.2 tells them that Frame users "should also opt into SteamOS 0.4.3 or higher" for the same reason.
SteamVR 2.18.2 is on the beta branch, and the PC half of the Error 17 fix is in it. Image: Valve
The two notes went out a minute apart on October 1, at 18:22 and 18:23 UTC, each one linking to the other, and each says the build it points at is on a beta branch.
Valve has patched Error 17 three times in three days
The code first appears in SteamOS 0.4.2 for Steam Frame on September 29, which lists "improved connection reliability while streaming (including 'protocol error 17')" alongside better audio reliability and user proximity detection. Both October 1 releases carry "further VR streaming reliability improvements, including additional fixes for 'Error 17'", which is Valve's third pass at it in three days.
Valve called it "protocol error 17" on September 29 and "Error 17" in both October 1 notes. What the code is, what triggers it and when it counts as gone are set out in no Valve document, and the wording in every note is additional fixes and reduce rather than fixed.
Both halves of the fix are opt-in
SteamOS 0.4.3 reaches the Frame through Settings > System > System Update Channel, and Valve says the release "includes new features that are still being tested". SteamVR 2.18.2 sits on the SteamVR beta branch, which any Steam account can opt into from the title's properties.
Owners on either default channel get neither half. SteamOS 0.4.3 ships SteamVR 2.18.2 inside the headset image, so a Frame on the beta channel has the headset side of the handshake whether or not the PC has caught up. SteamOS 0.4.2 carried SteamVR 2.18.1 in the same place, so a Frame that stopped there two days earlier is still carrying 2.18.1 in the headset.
The PC-side opt-in brings more than the streaming work. SteamVR 2.18.2 also stops the dashboard recentering itself unnecessarily for some owners, fixes the throttling behaviour selection in per-application video settings, repairs controller bindings that would not load in Google Earth VR and Thumper, and starts exposing Steam Frame eye openness to apps over OSC.
What this asks of a Steam Frame owner
Two beta opt-ins to reduce an error code with no published definition is a lot to ask, and Valve's Frame betas have been moving fast: 0.4.1, 0.4.2 and 0.4.3 all landed inside six days. The first of them, which also improved the Frame's proximity detection and fixed its streaming keyboard, went out on September 26.
If the pair of betas does not help, Valve's own note points owners at the SteamVR Bug Report forum and says replies to the announcement itself are not tracked for bug reporting. Valve has not said Error 17 is finished, and it has published no way to tell whether a failed stream was that error or something else. What it has said, twice in two notes a minute apart, is that updating one end is not enough.
