CastTime

CastTime is the hours your players' video runs on. Getting six cameras from six houses into one show is the part of BobbleheadStreams that costs real money to run, and CastTime is how that's measured.

Everything else — the app, your scenes, running a game on your own — doesn't touch it.

The one number to watch#

Open the CastTime tab and you'll see a session figure that looks alarming. A four-person table burns roughly five hours of CastTime per hour of play.

That's honest, and it's the wrong number to judge it by. It counts everybody at once. Per person it's close to one CastTime hour per hour, which is the figure that actually tells you anything.

The tab shows both, side by side with your table, deliberately — a dial that hid the total would be a lie you'd discover at the end of the month.

What burns hours#

That last row is the one that costs people hours for nothing, and it's covered below.

There's a floor — a minimum every connected person costs just by being in the room. Turning video quality down saves real hours, but it can't go below the floor. The tab shows you what the floor is, so you know when you've stopped gaining anything by fiddling.

The habit that wastes the most#

Stop CastTime when you finish. Not when you close the app — when you finish playing.

The room costs by the clock while it's open, whether or not anybody is in it and whether or not a game is happening. A room left open overnight bills overnight.

BobbleHub will warn you if the room has been open with nobody in it, but it will never stop your session on its own — somebody setting up their table for twenty minutes before anyone arrives is doing something completely ordinary, and an app that hung up on them would be worse than one that costs a few minutes.

Starting and stopping#

Start CastTime opens your room. You'll find it on both Cast Invites and the CastTime tab; it's the same action either way, and it asks you to confirm.

Stop CastTime closes the room and disconnects everybody. It asks first, because it ends the session for every person in it — that's not a button to brush past.

When you run out#

If your balance reaches zero, the session stops. That's enforced by the app itself rather than left to a website check, so it happens cleanly rather than as a surprise on a bill.

Your players can rejoin through the same invite link once you have hours again.

Hours that expire#

Some hours have an expiry date. The CastTime tab lists what you're holding and warns you when a batch is expiring soon, so you can plan a session rather than find out afterwards.

What hours cost, how they're issued, what a plan includes and when they expire are set on your account, not in the app. BobbleHub reads your balance and your rates from your account and shows you what it's told — it never estimates. If the portal hasn't sent the rates, the tab says so rather than inventing a number.

Troubleshooting#

Start CastTime is greyed out#

Three things disable it: a session is already running, panic is engaged, or BobbleHub doesn't have your invite code yet. Hover the button and it tells you which.

My balance looks wrong#

The app and your account reconcile with each other, so a figure can be briefly behind after a session. If it's still wrong after that, it's an account question rather than an app one.

The tab says it can't show my burn rate#

Your rates come from your account. If they haven't arrived, BobbleHub shows nothing rather than a guess — a made-up rate is a number you could check and find false.

It billed me for a session that crashed#

BobbleHub bills to the last moment it could actually see the room, not to the moment you noticed. A crash ends the session at the last confirmed point rather than running on.

Everyone has their camera off — why is it still costing?#

A seat in the room costs at the floor even with no video. If somebody isn't playing, have them leave the room rather than turn their camera off.