
Steam In-Home Streaming - MetallicCloud
http://store.steampowered.com/streaming
======
mey
I have been using this on and off in beta. If possible I highly recommend a
wired network connection. I have been testing it on a WRT54GL and that was not
always sufficient. When my AC router is not misbehaving (ASUS RT-AC66U) I've
been able to play online FPS shooters surprisingly well. Fighting games or FPS
that are heavily twitch based won't work, but pretty much anything that can
suffer the occasional frame drop or isn't precision works well.

tl;dr You may need an N wifi router or better that is rock solid to make
things run smooth.

~~~
rb2k_
You ARE using a 9 year old router, considering that probably all other
hardware (PC, Laptop, Consoles, Phones, Tablets, ...) was replaced since then
and most cable connections can't be maxed out with that wifi speed (After
forward error correction you'll end up with about 30 mbit/s), a lot of things
might be happier if you switched that one out :)

~~~
StavrosK
Which modern router do you propose? I am currently running Tomato, it's a
great balance of ease-of-use and customizability. I'm not interested in having
to do everything on the command line on the router as well, so if a modern
router can run some great version of Tomato, it would be fantastic.

~~~
mey
Linksys recently launched the WRT1900AC as a spiritual successor (in theory)
to the WRT54G, but I'm waiting a bit to see how true that is.

~~~
alexcroox
Can anyone recommend something a little more affordable?

~~~
jaegerpicker
I've had extraordinarily good luck with the apple AirPort Extreme. Handles
wifi n traffic and is rock solid. I can regularly play twitch games over it or
stream 1080 p without issue.

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Goronmon
I've been using this more and more lately. Most recently to play Dark Souls 2
on a laptop in the living room rather than having to be sequestered upstairs
in the office.

It's pretty amazing how well it runs, with the input lag being minimal and the
quality of visuals far surpassing what the laptop could actually handle on
it's own.

~~~
evo_9
Being a pretty hardcore Dark Souls guy I have to ask - is even that minimal
lag acceptable?

I'm just thinking how many invader duels end up being super close, even a
fraction of a second here and there adds up. Plus there is already some lag
when playing online with friends and/or against an invader to begin with.

~~~
Goronmon
Best comparison I can make is that playing Dark Souls 2 on the PC over in-home
streaming is comparable to playing it on a PS3.

 _Plus there is already some lag when playing online with friends and /or
against an invader to begin with._

Any network lag you experience during multiplayer is going to far surpass any
noticeable input lag IMO.

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hughes
If you add Chrome as a non-steam game, you can stream netflix to your linux
laptop. The audio actually syncs better than it does watching in wine!

~~~
Vespasian
Can't you use pipelight([http://fds-team.de/cms/pipelight-
installation.html](http://fds-team.de/cms/pipelight-installation.html)) for
this?

I tested it with some silverlight based services available here (not netflix
though) and it worked like a charm.

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tbergeron
It's really working great, I've been using it for about the past six months
(beta) and it always went great, way better than expected. I wasted hours and
days trying to come with a similar solution and it always sucked. Glad they
came up with something actually _enjoyable_.

~~~
ratscabies
Tried it a couple of months ago, and it ran like ass. Could be due to older
hardware? Serving PC is core 2 duo 6850, and htpc it was playing on is core 2
duo 6400. Wired fast ethernet connection.

~~~
spartango
You want the serving pc to have hardware accelerated video encoding (e.g.
Intel Quick Sync), otherwise it runs terribly. Similarly, the client should
have hardware accelerated decode, but that is very common.

~~~
voltagex_
It _may_ be possible to enable Quick Sync on systems with >=Sandybridge chips
plus a dedicated graphics card, but I can't find a definitive answer.

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Omniusaspirer
To anyone running headless systems, it's worth mentioning that this works
extremely well for remote control of network systems. I've played with it a
bit so far and I'm quite impressed with the low latency/high quality.

~~~
rblatz
So I can add Visual Studio to my steam library, and potentially develop in it
from my mac? This is huge, I can now run my PC at home headless since I only
used it for games/visual studio.

~~~
yaeger
I would be interested in the other way around, as well.

Could I add XCode to Steam on a Mac and then stream that on my main Desktop?

I know I can hook up my MacBook to an external keyboard and monitors but I
have a very... integrated setup for my main Windows Desktop and hooking up my
MacBook with those monitors, keyboard would be quite a hassle.

This way, I could keep it on my couch table and still be able to work on XCode
on my big Desktop monitor.

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smacktoward
So if I want to stream Steam games to my TV, what sort of client hardware do I
need on the TV end? Is there an inexpensive box I can buy and use for this
purpose? The support articles are kind of vague on what the system
requirements for clients are...

~~~
wonderyak
I just got up and running with a temporary HTPC that is attached to my second
TV. Its a crappy Nettop with an Atom and 1x PCI-e ION2.

I'm getting 30FPS @ 720p on the TV streaming a number of games (Civ V, Stick
of Truth); I also tried a number of non-Steam games which worked great as
well.

Requirements seem very, very modest.

~~~
sliverstorm
It seems like basically the machine needs to be able to push the equivalent
video resolution (presumably software codec; In-Home Streaming probably
doesn't leverage hardware MPEG decoders) and that's about it.

On my TV I use a 65W A10 in a mini ITX case with a 90W PSU. It has on-chip
graphics, HD7660, and it handles streaming at 1080p without getting warm (my
network on the other hand...)

I've also used my laptop, an A6 with HD8250 on-chip graphics. It does 720p
with no problem (don't know about 1080p, 720p is the native res)

I expect you can go even lower, but if you are building an HTPC the cost
difference between an A6 and an A4 is pretty small.

Edit: if you wanted to go tight budget, you might even be able to use one of
these:
[http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113...](http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113366)

Edit2: Apparently it does use hardware encode/decode. I think the most recent
2-3 generations of chips from both vendors all have that, but don't quote me.

~~~
wonderyak
FWIW - on my meager Atom/ION setup I had to turn HW Decoding off in order for
it to work properly.

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izzydata
"With good hardware and a fast home network, you’ll forget the game is running
remotely." But with bad or moderate hardware you'll experience wonderful 5000
ms latency and have a horrible time.

It seems like you would need an HTPC anyway to load up steam and send the
video from that 2nd computer to your TV. The whole process seems pointlessly
convoluted.

I'd rather have wireless hdmi or even a really long hdmi cable from my good
computer to wherever the tv is.

~~~
RobotCaleb
I have wireless HDMI at work. It's not even close to low enough latency to
play games on.

~~~
izzydata
Ah, I wasn't even aware that was a real thing. I guess there goes that idea.

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matt_morgan
I tried to do this with VNC a long time ago, so I could play Wizardry 8 on a
laptop in the backyard. My wifi couldn't reach to the shady spot of the yard.

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turshija
Whoa, I will have to try this with Raspberry Pi - "How to make 35$ SteamBox".

Btw, just tested it on my MacBook Pro, its awesome to start some CPU/GPU
intensive game and play it without fan noise and heat :) Also interesting
thing - you can add nonsteam games (battlefield, guild wars, heck even
applications - WinSCP etc) and stream them ! This is awesome !

~~~
arg01
I've seen some of the discussion related to SteamOS and the Raspberry Pi.
Looks like SteamOS has no ARM support, so that is likely to be a hurdle.
Something similar is Limelight which streams your computer to a PI including
keyboard and mouse support, but is only compatible with a Nvidia 600 or 700
card.

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ps4fanboy
I wish there was a stream only hardware box we could get that I can plug into
my TV. Maybe they could port the stream receiver to Android?

~~~
CodeMunky
Not sure if your comment is tongue in cheek, but if not, or for others that do
actually have the same thought there are options.

SteamOS
[http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamOS/](http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamOS/)
and
[http://store.steampowered.com/steamos/](http://store.steampowered.com/steamos/)
will allow for building your own box and they've got third parties working on
a "broad range" of hardware options that will come pre-installed with the OS.

~~~
yaeger
True, but on order to be _really_ useful, an ARM option would be needed. Just
think, a 30 dollar RaspberryPi with a bluetooth dongle popped in the back of
your TV and you will be able to play any of your Windows games.

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rasz_pl
What is under the hood? Turbo/*VNC? custom mpeg2 encoder? mpeg4 would be too
much for low latency fullhd stuff I guess.

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shurcooL
iOS client app would be great.

