WMC Streaming issue with Steam Big Picture and windows 8.1

[whs001]

I am running windows 8.1 pro 64bit with media center on my main tv in house. I have a pc in the back bedroom and a steam link in the other room both can stream from the main windows 8.1 pc to each other. Streaming games seems to be fine. Both using steam on the one pc to stream from the 8.1 pc and also using steam link. My main issue is launching windows media center from big picture mode flickers on the screen. It is horrible flicker and seems to be tied not only with mouse movement but once I do finally launch a recorded tv show it continues to flicker horribly.

Games as stated do not flicker and play fine at 60fps. No lag no issues.

At first I figured it was a steam link issue but today I tested this out on a box running steam to the main 8.1 pc and it flickers too. Here is the weird part. If I ignore the icon and tell either steam link or the other pc to minimize big picture i can move the mouse around and launch wmc that way and it streams fine. Sometimes that workaround is not feasible and requires mouse and keyboard to be present. Using big picture mode would allow me to use a controller instead.

Is there a command i need to pass when launching wmc via big picture in steam?

Posting this under windows 8 mce because the pc is a windows 8.1 machine. if there is a different thread I should be using please advise. thank you