Steam Link + Controller

[Kyyla]

Does anyone have experience with these? Steam reviews are mixed. My gaming PC is upstairs and the telly is downstairs. Sometimes it would be nice to play from the couch. This house has a fast ethernet network so bandwidth would not be an issue.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Steam Link's SoC is limited to H264 1080p60 50Mb/s using the L4.1 High Profile. Sensitivity to input latency will be something more subjective as it depends a lot on each person, but the image quality will be very different from having a "client" PC capable of receiving and decoding video at higher resolutions and bitrates, especially if you end up getting a 4K TV down the line.

 

[Kyyla]

Ok well these don't cost too much so I'm gonna try it out.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

How about pulling a HDMI and USB cable from your pc upstairs to the living room?

 

[Kyyla]

Yeah I could drill a hole in the floor

 

[Malo]

How about pulling a HDMI and USB cable from your pc upstairs to the living room?

That's a terrible idea. What is this 1990?

One good thing about the steam link controller is full 5.1 support so you can output surround sound.

 

[BRiT]

Especially when you could pull a cat6 cable and run hdmi and usb over ethernet...

 

[iroboto]

Especially when you could pull a cat6 cable and run hdmi and usb over ethernet...

does this have a lot of limitations? like cable lengths etc, no switch pass through etc?

 

[Davros]

about 100ft for hdmi, 150ft for usb you will need 3 cat6 cables (afaik) and I'm not sure if there is a combined device that does hdmi and usb
https://www.monoprice.com/Product?c...tm_medium=11051853&utm_term=Skimlinks-2617611

https://www.monoprice.com/Product?c...tm_medium=11051853&utm_term=Skimlinks-2617611

 

[Malo]

Ethernet is very handy for running various types of data over. For video the commercial implementations, they do recommend shielded Ethernet though.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

That's a terrible idea. What is this 1990?

One good thing about the steam link controller is full 5.1 support so you can output surround sound.

And lowering IQ and introducing additional input lag is a good idea?

Most houses have cable ducts (that the right word?) so it's not like pulling a cable is particularly difficult.

 

[Malo]

Most houses have cable ducts (that the right word?) so it's not like pulling a cable is particularly difficult.

Pulling cables with ends on them can definitely be a huge issue in most houses. Ducts and holes are designed for thin wires. Makes it a lot easier attaching only the cat6.

I guess if you're going through 1 wall and it's convenient, then it might be a good idea. But won't you also have to deal with swapping cables? How good are switch boxes for HDMI + USB, adding in the cost as well?

My Steam streaming to my HTPC is pretty good for latency, and the steam link is even better. Would it be as good as hard wired to the actual PC? Of course not. But it's a very convenient and effective method of playing PC games in another room on a big TV. You're generally not going to be playing twitch shooters in that setup anyway where the latency would matter.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

Most videocards have multiple HDMI outputs these days, right?

My thinking was that if you pull a usb cable along with the hdmi cable you can plug in a bluethooth connector and use a xbox one controller to switch hdmi output. I live in a one room apartment but I do the same thing. My pc is hooked up to my tv using a hdmi cable and when I'm sitting on the couch and want to play games I pick up the controller and hit a button combo to switch from monitor output to tv output.

 

[Malo]

I pick up the controller and hit a button combo to switch from monitor output to tv output.

That's pretty cool.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

The software I use is called controller companion. Definitely worth the 2 or 3 bucks they charge for it.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/367670/Controller_Companion/