Steam in-home streaming

I don't know if some of you are aware, but steam has made in-home streaming available for open beta. I was wondering if anyone tried this and what your thoughts were.

All you need to do is go to steam settings and opt for beta participation. After the client update, you should get a in-home streaming option in settings, where you can control the quality/bandwidth settings of the host/client.

You will need a good host cpu for h.264 video stream encoding, and the client cpu needs to be adequate for the decoding. The client can down or upscale the resolution to the closest matching resolution on the client computer, so you do not need to fiddle with the host cpu game settings. Non-steam games/apps also work.

After some initial testing, this seems to work very well. I was able to stream from my i7 w/ 7970m laptop to a bay trail tablet, over 5ghz wifi-n, and it was smooth. The image quality was identical, I couldn't notice any difference. The lag is probably in the range of 10-30ms. However, I was testing in direct line of sight with the router.

This may not be good for a competitive online fps, but its great for everything else. I see the potential this has in taking a major hit on high end bulky gaming laptops, for people that do not do much gaming outside the house. I could build a desktop with a top end gpu for a fraction of the cost of a gaming laptop, that also performs better, and just stream to a cheap lightweight laptop. If I had to have mobile gaming, I would sacrifice performance for portability and go with something like a lenovo y510. At home, I would still stream from the desktop to take advantage of the better gpu.

 

Ive tried it out of interest. My home wifi isn't good enough but with ethernet I was pretty impressed.

 

I'm curious, I'll have to try this, as I'm currently also trying Nvidia's Gamestream option to a Shield, which, so far I wouldn't consider a solution. Thanks for the info, I didn't know it was publicly available.

 

It's just like Shield streaming. Low-latency and quite playable over wired or if you have a high-end router, otherwise not so much.

 

Well, following up after using Steam's In-Home Streaming for the past week... VERY impressed, much more so than with even Nvidia's Game Streaming. Honestly, I can't believe how well it worked, thanks again for the heads up!

I tried On-Live when it came out, but the latency was unbearable so abandoned streaming gaming for a while. Nvidia Game Streaming has potential, but it's far from reliable at least at this point. With Steam's solution, I can play any of my games at full 1080p with essentially undetectable lag... I agree with original poster, I can't even tell the difference graphically between the host device or the client.

I've been streaming from the GS60 in my signature to my Surface Pro 2 tablet for a ridiculously mobile experience anywhere around the house. The tablet will actually play most games at low settings and/or 720p itself, but figured it would be a good test device. With Steam's streaming, I've been playing all my games at 1080p Ultra/High settings on the tablet seamlessly. Works great with either the detachable keyboard or a 360 pad. I had a few sessions over 2 hours without an issue, has so far been very reliable.

Networking wise, I'm running a 5.0ghz network with the SP2 connecting using N to a Netgear R7000. I've currently got the GS60 (host) plugged in using LAN, but can't tell much difference when it's on WiFi and close to the router.

I definitely won't be ditching my gaming notebook, as I don't even bother with a desktop anymore as I just don't have any use for the excess power or space requirements, and still want a nice gaming experience when out of the house for work or travel, but it's pretty dang cool being able to play any game you want on essentially any size laptop/tablet you want when around the house. Proud of Steam for this! :thumbsup:

 

How does this work though? If you start Steam on one computer then log in to another, doesn't it log you out of the client PC? How is that handled?

 

That's actually another benefit with streaming enabled I was going to mention but figured most wouldn't care ha... I can finally have multiple PC's logged in and running Steam at the same time under my one username without having to log out of other machines! Give it a shot, you'll notice that once you enable streaming, the normal "play" button now has a "stream" option. I'm very impressed with how Valve integrated things. You can even remotely install games to the host machine from a client!

Another cool feature, games installed on either PC basically share the game library list.... ie games installed on my GS60 appear on my SP2 and vice versa, with an option to play, stream, or install on this PC.

 

If this works well with my AC wi-fi, may be even less reason to have a powerful laptop GPU. I have a decently powerful desktop, although it's aging, but as long as the laptop GPU is "good enough" for the occasional away from home gaming session, I should be set. And the 860m is more than capable. Just I can play on my Vaio Pro 11 if I wanted to. That's probably what I'll use as my test machine.

 

If you've got a good AC router, you should be in good shape... I've got an AC router for my GS60, but it's only N to my Surface Pro 2. If you use LAN to your desktop, and have a good WiFi connection to your Pro 11, I think you'll be very satisfied with the performance. I played Dark Souls 2 for a few hours while streaming to my tablet while laid back in my recliner and honestly forgot I was even streaming, it's that seamless. Online twitch instant reaction shooters might be at a disadvantage I'm sure, but I struggle to tell much difference in what I've played.

It's free to try, definitely worth a shot!

 

I have currently been streaming from my alienware 18 to my surface pro or macbook pro retina 13. I am using a wireless N for the client and ethernet for the server.

What is amazing is the battery life while streaming! I can game for hours on the client on battery, it hardly heats up and makes mobile gaming around the house so much fun.

The only downside is I am getting reduced visual quality, text seems a bit pixelated and the colours are all darker. I think this is due to my network, I am currently trying to optimise it but if I force 1080p high quality I can feel the slow downs.

Another plus is that I now have my whole steam library in OSX, no need to boot into bootcamp on the mbpr13!!

Also it is not limited to steam games, you can add you origin library to steam and play them too, BF4 and titan fall on the surface FTW

 

I tested with my ATOM D2550 system. It ran surprisingly very well. Looks closely the same as the source.
I wonder how well a true D2550 work though, since mine has a integrated NV graphics on it.

I might test it on my K1 and the newer Pentium that are basically rebadged ATOM.

 

This does sound interesting, and I was excited at first, but then I realized that the only times I'd ever use it are when I'm at a friend's house, and then the latency would probably be too high for the games I'd want to use it with. Although if it's possible to both stream games and play them on the game that is streaming them, that might work nicely for when I have friends over - just have both games running on my desktop. Might have to try that!

 

You kinda do?? If you like to troll them.

However, local coop might be possible?