Steam In-Home Streaming

georgeh

I got notified yesterday that I was accepted into the Steam In-Home Streaming beta, which is weird because I don't remember applying for it, but whatever. I tried it out last night and wanted to share my thoughts. This is something I'm getting excited for since my gaming PC is tucked away from everything else in the house, and it would let me play games from the couch while hanging out with the family.

I'll list some detailed tech specs below but the short version is beefy gaming PC streaming to underpowered HTPC over 802.11n. After getting the HTPC connected to Steam I started off with Rogue Legacy. Immediately I ran into an issue - I had a 360 controller hooked up to my gaming PC and so all the control prompts showed those. I have no idea how to play Rogue Legacy with a keyboard, so I hooked up a 360 controller and started playing. It was playable, but a little laggy. I didn't get too far into it before I had to hop out so I don't have much more to say about that.

After I got back I tried out Skyrim. It just didn't work. To be more specific it got to the smokey loading screen and then just kept showing tips without actually displaying the game. I then ran upstairs to my PC and found that it had been idling in-game, but Steam Streaming was still streaming the loading screen. Proof that it's still a beta. The same thing happened when I tried Batman: Arkham City, loading screen on the HDTV but actual game on the HTPC.

But there is good news. I tried Batman: Arkham Origins figuring the loading-screen thing was fixed in newer games (different versions of DX?) and after a much-longer-than-normal loading process I was able to get the game running. It was a little laggy (hard to counter enemies with knives) but playable. I spent an hour or so playing and while it wasn't nearly as nice as playing on my computer it was do-able. I have high-hopes that it will improve as the beta goes on and I improve some of my gear.

So here are the tech specs I promised:
Gaming PC is GTX 770, Intel i5-3570k @ 3.4GHz, 16 GB RAM (overkill, I know) connected to 802.11n (which I'm going to be trying to replace with powerline networking this weekend)
HTPC is an Acer Revo, AMD E-450 @1.65GHz with on-board Radeon HD 6320, 4 GB RAM. The thing can do 1080p video but can't do 720p Netflix (thanks Silverlight!)
Steam was estimating network bandwidth at 17-18MB/s (pretty sure it was Byte and not bit)

The beta lets you show a lot of tech specs in an overlay. I was getting 10-30 fps and when the FPS was low it was usually due to decoding delays (e.g. slow HTPC). Steam determined that my poor HTPC was best off if we rendered @ 1066x600, so it rendered the game at 1080p on my gaming PC and then streamed at 600p resolution.

Final thoughts: I would be happy playing Skyrim on the couch at 30fps but I'll go to my PC to play BF4 with a mouse/keyboard and no input lag. I really hope that they continue to improve this, which I believe they will to add some value to Steam Machines.

Final final thought: I'm new to the community so I hope this is the kind of discussion you guys are looking for. If not, constructive feedback is welcome.

Tushon

Great write up. I wonder if wired connection would make it better or if the issue lies in the streaming processing rather than any bandwidth issue.

GHoosdum

I enjoyed your post and thorough detail. I have a feeling you'll fit in quite well at Icrontic @georgeh

PirateNinja

Very interesting, thanks for sharing. I wonder if they are intercepting DirectX frames from the gpu's memory and streaming those. That was the fastest way to do screen capture that I recall. I also wonder what sort of compression they are putting on the frames before shooting them through your network.
Anyway your post makes me want to try this! Maybe I'll see if I can apply for their beta as well.

georgeh

I think I got access to the beta because I joined the group Steam Family Sharing, which is how you apply to the Family Sharing beta. I wound up with access to that yesterday as well, so they are probably the same beta group. It took about 3 weeks before I got access, not sure if that's normal or not.

midga

Sweet, thanks for the writeup! I'm gonna have to go join that group now; I really want to try the Family Sharing. The streaming is less of a deal as I already do all my gaming from a recliner in front of a tv already.

Mods: Please promote his post.

trooster89

Wow. I read about the family control options for accounts but this is pretty cool. I've used splashtop everyonce and a while to stream, but this seems even better (once it gets working fully).

Gotta love valve. Between big picture, steam os, and family sharing being its gonna be one smooth roll out for steam box. Assuming I didn't just jinx it...and that boxes can roll.

BlackHawk

If this gets optimized for nettops like the kind people use as HTCP's, I could really see this really taking off. $100-150 for an old computer and you can be streaming "HD" games from your desktop to your living room TV. I like the idea and would probably use the hell out of it.

Thrax

This is how Valve enables the inexpensive Steamboxes, and answers why people would bother with SteamOS if they already have a gaming PC. Just wait and see.

trooster89

Link to the steam group

midga

Anyone notice the recent changes to the downloads section? Very slick.

-edit-

Joined. Thanks for the link

Winfrey

By far that has been my biggest quality of life improvement with the beta client. Being able to throttle my downloads and having more control over it in general is really nice when you are sharing an internet connection with 4 other people.

ErrorNullTurnip

Winfrey said:

Being able to throttle my downloads and having more control over it in general is really nice.../blockquote>

TIL they finally DID add throttling! Awesome!

georgeh

As a followup I fixed the network bandwidth and spent a little more time streaming games. It looks like bandwidth was the main problem, Spelunky played great. It's not Super Meat Boy but you can feel the timing and it was pretty responsive. According to the on-screen debug, I was getting 70-100ms of latency round-trip including the time to encode and decode the video stream. It also said it was using about 8% of the estimated 45 Mbit connection, if you're looking to estimate bandwidth.

However, it's still buggy with launching games. I tried Batman: Arkham Origins again and this time it didn't take any input from my HTPC. I also ran into the "loading screen not going away" issue again, which means a trip to my PC to reset it.

So it's not ready for prime-time but I'm going to be spending a lot more time gaming on the couch now.

Tushon

I got my invite to this today. I guess that means I need to cobble together a computer that can do it in my living room.

ardichoke

I got one as well... guess I need to get my butt in gear and get SteamOS on my old Shuttle box...

BobbyDigi

Got one too. No idea if it would even be useful to me.

trooster89

Me too (four?)

Sonorous

I got into this as well. I played FFXIV (non steam version added to my library) for about 8 hours yesterday. I am using hard wired gigabit and would estimate my latency with input (IE hitting the jump button in game) at about 2-3 milliseconds. I had to use my wireless controller on the gaming PC, not the PC being streamed to. I couldn't get the controller to show up in the config for FFXIV on the stream side of things. It didn't crash once and I have to say I'm rather impressed initially with how well it works.