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My Steam Machine is a 50ft HDMI cable

blog.matthewbrunelle.com

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Re: My Steam Machine is a 50ft HDMI cable

#31

Post by ThatMedicIsASpy »

onfromsofa wrote: post #21
Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #16

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 also can't turn it on from your couch. There's a potential meme image demanding to be made. One shows the steam machine user playing a game with resume feature in just 2 panels. One sitting down and pressing the controller, the next playing. The other half of the comic has 10+ panels. One sitting down. One facepalming. One standing up and turning on the pc elsewhere, one sitting down, one opening steam link one s…

My PC runs proxmox (multiple gpus) and a remote in homeassistant triggers a shutdown and start command for the streaming VM (bazzite booting into gamescope). Instead of picking jellyfin on the firetv stick I select moonlight.

Wake on Lan is also a thing.

-> I have a steam machine since 2023.

Re: My Steam Machine is a 50ft HDMI cable

#32

Post by fragmede »

swiftcoder wrote: post #29
fragmede wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ADHD and cutscenes means a laptop game and a console game so you're never ever waiting. Must be nice to have a brain that doesn't need that.

I mean, I also have a smartphone to play games in quick 5 minute breaks Are console loading times really still that shit? I haven't found PC loading times to be much of an issue since fast SSDs came around

More like there's a waiting lobby for multiplayer games, e.g. Fortnite.

Re: My Steam Machine is a 50ft HDMI cable

#33

Post by Leonard_of_Q »

fragmede wrote: post #24
swiftcoder wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

ADHD and cutscenes means a laptop game and a console game so you're never ever waiting. Must be nice to have a brain that doesn't need that.

Train your brain to not "need" it. Brains are malleable whether someone diagnosed and labeled them or not. Concentrate on something else during those cut scenes, read a book, study the clock or thermometer or cat or leaves on the trees. Imagine a scenario where the power fails and you can't play games. Anything which doesn't enslave you to technology.

Re: My Steam Machine is a 50ft HDMI cable

#34

Post by joe_mamba »

onfromsofa wrote: post #23
weird-eye-issue wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you looked at what sort of FPS it gets on the games you want to play? Overall it's performance is... Quite poor even on the lowest settings for lots of games

If the benchmark has the words "RT" on it, like a lot did, you can safely throw them in the trash. That's people benchmarking the device in the same spirit as people who thought the Steam Deck and the Switch 1 could do 4K. Worthless.

>If the benchmark has the words "RT" on it, like a lot did, you can safely throw them in the trash

More like you can throw the console in the trash if you can't run current day games on it well, when those games mandate RT.

A lot of AAA games have started mandating RT since 2025, like Doom the dark ages for example, and the number of games doing that will only increase moving forward as devs just take the easy way with Unreal Engine, instead of optimizing for performance with baked in lighting like it's 1999. So the already mediocre performance of the console will only get worse and worse over the years in the upcoming games.

I like Valve, but there's no need to larp for Valve and run defense for them when they make mistakes, like with the steam box.

Re: My Steam Machine is a 50ft HDMI cable

#35

Post by theandrewbailey »

torginus wrote: post #17
NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"HDMI" is proprietary worse DP

Yet HDMI is more widespread and both cables and equipment tends to be cheaper, which is surprising considering a USB-C to HDMI dongle needs actual hardware, while its basically just passthrough for an USB-C to DP. It's also quite nice that HDMI keeps basically all the logic and signaling the same as VGA (blank periods, EDID etc.), so actually making use of the signal is much easier.

> It's also quite nice that HDMI keeps basically all the logic and signaling the same as DVI

FTFY. VGA uses analog signals, HDMI uses only digital signals.

Re: My Steam Machine is a 50ft HDMI cable

#36

Post by servo_sausage »

onfromsofa wrote: post #21
Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #16

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 also can't turn it on from your couch. There's a potential meme image demanding to be made. One shows the steam machine user playing a game with resume feature in just 2 panels. One sitting down and pressing the controller, the next playing. The other half of the comic has 10+ panels. One sitting down. One facepalming. One standing up and turning on the pc elsewhere, one sitting down, one opening steam link one s…

All very achievable, I have a setup with a wireless keyboard to the htpc, and a script that wakes up my desktop with wake on lan, ssh's in and starts sunshine if I start moonlight.

Booting the htpc can be a pain; personally my best solution has been wake on lan via phone. I've also used universal remotes before cec was reliable, and I had to control the screen separately.

Re: My Steam Machine is a 50ft HDMI cable

#37

Post by calgoo »

mentos wrote: post #10

Now just make the cable a few miles long and call it Nvidia GeForce NOW?

A few miles? My closes server is in Paris, and im in Barcelona. I get a minimum of 30 to 40 ms of lag, fine for slow games, but if you are playing something multiplayer and there is another 40 -> 100 ms lag on the server connection things quickly go downhill.

Re: My Steam Machine is a 50ft HDMI cable

#38

Post by christkv »

tskulbru wrote: post #19

Ive been using Moonlight on my Apple TV, with a 8bitdo controller connected to the Apple TV. My gaming computer is running bazzite and runs Sunshine as streaming server and it handles basically any game. I did use Steam Remote Control earlier but i found it quite unstable and slow compared to Sunshine which basically just works out of the box. Ive beaten Silk song and Elden ring on the setup. Its just wired 1gb netwo…

I'm doing the same and it works great. The apple tv is an amazing little box for all of these things.

Re: My Steam Machine is a 50ft HDMI cable

#39

Post by bbrks »

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 also tune these settings per-game with the setup I have which is quite useful.

Hardware wise, I'm using a Steam Deck as the streaming client in a docked setup (ala Nintendo Switch). It seems to handle everything I can throw at it, and it has the bonus of being able to run simpler games without streaming anything.

I have a third-party (UGREEN) dock providing power, USB and gigabit Ethernet, display (though unfortunately no HDMI-CEC to turn the TV on automatically (I worked around this using a janky automation script)). The official dock has HDMI-CEC but costs ~2x as much with less IO. I'll deal with my jank script.

For software, I'm running MoonDeck for game streaming via Sunshine on my gaming PC. The Steam Remote Play streaming is good, but not quite _as_ good, sadly.

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