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My Steam Machine is a 50ft HDMI cable

blog.matthewbrunelle.com

131–140 of 220 posts

Re: My Steam Machine is a 50ft HDMI cable

#131
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried using the official steam client on my TV (running some google/android TV OS) which was hard-wired in (100 Mbps) which should be sufficient for 1080p/60 if not 4K/60 but there is some android TV bug that adds an unacceptable audio lag. Video quality was fine. ( https://steamcommunity.com/app/353380/discussions/0/62441675... ) Seems like a waste to use a steam deck for this when the TV hardware seems more than…

My TV was cheap so I didn't expect much. Steam link really struggles on it - thankfully I still have the old Steam Link hardware and it works alright. Locked to 1080p though. Refused to spend more on a TV because I feel you don't get much more processing power for an increase in price. All smart TVs I've interacted with in the last 5 years have been much slower than I would consider acceptable.

My TV was expensive and it still only has a 100Mbps adapter

Re: My Steam Machine is a 50ft HDMI cable

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you can run Moonlight or Sunshine (i forgot which is which end) even directly on some "smart" TVs lately. Second hand info though, I have a friend who swears by those but he didn't give me the details.

I run Moonlight directly on my Apple TV and it's great! Apple TV is so wildly better than any smart TV on the market that I'll always have it be the brains of any TV I own for the foreseeable future anyway.

Except Apple TV doesn’t support 120fps which is a huge bummer

Re: My Steam Machine is a 50ft HDMI cable

#133

You cannot play two different games at the same time with your 50ft hdmi cable. Can't people see any usecase for the steam machine? I understand, you are not in the market for it. I am, I have a good usecase which possibly will make the cost drop below a ps5 over the years (if you include games cost)

> You cannot play two different games at the same time with your 50ft hdmi cable ... do you spend a lot of time playing 2 different games at the same time?

I mean, if you’ve got 4 people living in the same house it’s not crazy

Re: My Steam Machine is a 50ft HDMI cable

#134
post #39

If you already have Ethernet at both ends I cannot recommend enough game streaming. With the right setup it is almost identical to having my computer plugged in physically, and I am very sensitive to input latency. I can get 4K HDR 120Hz running over gigabit Ethernet without visually sacrificing too much on bitrate, but you can squeeze more bitrate at lower fps or 1440p (obviously) if that is your preference. You can…

Out of curiosity, why not use a $10 steam link to achieve a similar effect to using a $700 gaming tablet?

Not the person you're responding to but I bought the Steam Deck to use mainly as a handheld and docking it is a bonus. The Steam Deck's controller support is the best of the other cheaper options that you could also use to stream.

Re: My Steam Machine is a 50ft HDMI cable

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run Moonlight directly on my Apple TV and it's great! Apple TV is so wildly better than any smart TV on the market that I'll always have it be the brains of any TV I own for the foreseeable future anyway.

Except Apple TV doesn’t support 120fps which is a huge bummer

It does ?

Re: My Steam Machine is a 50ft HDMI cable

#136
post #39

If you already have Ethernet at both ends I cannot recommend enough game streaming. With the right setup it is almost identical to having my computer plugged in physically, and I am very sensitive to input latency. I can get 4K HDR 120Hz running over gigabit Ethernet without visually sacrificing too much on bitrate, but you can squeeze more bitrate at lower fps or 1440p (obviously) if that is your preference. You can…

I have a gaming PC and a steam deck. My goal was to use my steam deck as a steam link (their old streaming hardware) w/ a Xbox controller Both are connected via Ethernet and actually the video quality was very very good, and input lag was completely fine. Unfortunately there were so many issues. I want a console like experience where I can just decide that i want to pick up a controller and play. With this setup I ha…

The issue in your setup is Windows^tm. (what I do) gaming machine's shell profile,

  if [[ $(tty) == "/dev/tty2" ]]; then
  ; sudo chvt 1; exit
  fi
then all you need is some event(s) to trigger changing to tty2 on the target machine. perhaps when a controller connects, or your tv changes input, or you press a button on your tv/tv box remote.

Re: My Steam Machine is a 50ft HDMI cable

#137
post #108

I don’t understand why the Steam Machine is getting so much hate. The form factor is amazing and a huge part of the value proposition. It’s slightly bigger than a box of Kleenex and you can put it next to the TV, on your desk, etc. I’m tempted to get one just to free up the floor space used by my ATX case. The graphics capability seems good enough, most people can live without 4k gaming.

+1 And we don't know yet, but I am hoping for reliability. My gaming PC is a nightmare. Sometimes it works great. Other times, I have to sacrifice a goat to get the thing to work.

Today I had to disable dual band WiFi on my windows gaming machine because PoE2 has this bug when a group of mobs surround you, network latency suddenly spikes, but only if the network card works on dual band... Sigh.

I assume many issues like that will still exist on Steam Machine, as it's kind of unrelated to what's running the buggy software.

Re: My Steam Machine is a 50ft HDMI cable

#138
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried using the official steam client on my TV (running some google/android TV OS) which was hard-wired in (100 Mbps) which should be sufficient for 1080p/60 if not 4K/60 but there is some android TV bug that adds an unacceptable audio lag. Video quality was fine. ( https://steamcommunity.com/app/353380/discussions/0/62441675... ) Seems like a waste to use a steam deck for this when the TV hardware seems more than…

My TV was cheap so I didn't expect much. Steam link really struggles on it - thankfully I still have the old Steam Link hardware and it works alright. Locked to 1080p though. Refused to spend more on a TV because I feel you don't get much more processing power for an increase in price. All smart TVs I've interacted with in the last 5 years have been much slower than I would consider acceptable.

> Refused to spend more on a TV...

While one can always try to see if their "Smart TV" can actually run a streaming client app like Moonlight with adequate performance, it's so hit-and-miss I just assume I'll have to plug in a ~$50 Android TV streaming stick via an HDMI input. I've used the 'Google Chromecast with Google TV' and 'Amazon Fire TV Stick 4k 2nd gen' and was able to sideload the open source Moonlight client app to stream 4K HDR10+ / 60fps from my server PC at 80 to 100Mbps.

It's not necessarily the CPU power, it's just that most of these TVs have wildly varying throughput from crufty driver stacks. The manufacturers don't seem to test them beyond the ability to receive ~25Mbps streams in the usual streaming apps. As long as it does that, they don't care to make it work to the rated speeds the hardware should be capable of. So maybe it has higher throughput, maybe it doesn't. And there's no guarantee what the throughput will be after the next firmware update. Since I want to do game streaming and also have UHD rips that can go up to ~100Mbps, I now just always use 'Smart TV's in dumb mode and run content from an external device.

Re: My Steam Machine is a 50ft HDMI cable

#139

I use Sunshine streaming from my home office gaming PC (4070Ti Super) via 1Gbps Ethernet to a "Google Chromecast with Google TV" streaming dongle running the Moonlight client in our dedicated home theater room. The streaming dongle is powered via a USB-C hub that has an Ethernet port and the HDMI output is plugged into a Denon AVR as an input source. The AVR outputs to a ceiling mounted laser projector with 150" scre…

I jailbroke my TV to put the sunshine client directly on it, and it works great.
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