My Steam Machine Is a 50ft HDMI Cable(blog.matthewbrunelle.com) |
My Steam Machine Is a 50ft HDMI Cable(blog.matthewbrunelle.com) |
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.
I actually have an interesting setup to play Civ 4 with the family (best civ game, change my mind): the games are running on virtual machines on a headless servers and we play on iPads using the native touch controls. It's really nice user experience and I was surprised it worked so well on such an old game.
HDMI-to-Ethernet extender cost around 50€, but is limited to 1080p@30, 720p@60 or 1080p@60 in "low quality mode" (macOS lingo) - which is enough for me. Low quality mode is still good enough for games. As you just read, my computer is a Macbook Pro so it is not AAA games anyway. I think there are now extenders that can do 1080p@60 on regular HDMI quality.
[0]: https://www.amazon.de/OREI-Anschl%C3%BCsse-Splitter-Extender...
I really hope Corning eventually make a TB5 cable.
I also have a Pulse Eight CEC adapter in the chain, but I had to swap its included HDMI cable for full bandwidth.
Since I've switched to Linux I haven't had a chance to set up the software side for CEC though, does anyone happen to have recommendations?
https://docs.bazzite.gg/Installing_and_Managing_Software/Baz...
1. Can't wake up your PC with controller. Workarounds with custom scripts and WoL are ridiculous. They also don't solve having to log in afterwards and starting a game.
2. Because of missing HDMI-CEC, you have to switch to PC output manually on TV
3. Same issue in opposite side. PC stupidly uses TV output even if TV is off. If you want to use the PC without TV, you gotta disable TV output. What's that, you can't see display menu so you can do this? Yeah because that menu showed up on your TV that is off, since it's set as primary display, which is needed for games to launch on that screen.
For first issue, you gotta walk to your PC to turn it on, login and launch game. For 2) and 3), it's easiest to plug in cable in TV when you need to and plug it out when you are done.
I don't know why there isn't a consumer product yet solving this without hassle.
For example, some monitors crash if you read any value from the monitor, so you can only blindly send brightness or volume levels. Some internally use 255 instead of 100. Some have crappy flash and you will wear it out by sending values constantly. Etc, etc.
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.
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)
I can state from experience that drilling a hole through a wall, installing brush plates on both sides to make it look neater, and passing display and input cables through, works pretty well and costs very little. I was using wireless input devices, but still had input cables through the wall with the other end of the wireless link plugged into them, as the range limits of the devices' radios was problematical otherwise.
If you sometimes need to use the machine in its own location as well, then you need a screen there with the pair set to mirror the same output and a local set of input devices, sharing/switching audio output might be a touch more faffy.
Less practical if the device and screen are not near enough to the joining wall, or are in rooms that don't share a wall, of course.
More interesting is a USB setup at this distance. I picked Ethernet - USB 2.0 converter and a simple USB hub with external PSU in the living room, $30. This enables BT, xbox360 dongles, keyboards. I didn't go with USB 3 as its expensive and unnecessary.
EDIT: It's easier to find under 'usb extender over ethernet', and I double check mine ATEN UEC260 costs closer to ~100$ now, way more expensive compared to what it used to be. It requires a dedicated CAT5 cable, it cannot go through any networking devices.
The first cable I bought was 150ft! Too long! Really hard to coil.
I've been on sunshine/moonlight mostly these days (updating to Apollo/artemis is in progress), but I do sometimes wire my desktop to my patio with this cable & wireless input devices these days. That spot is pretty sun exposed so it needs a real sweet spot, where-as the streaming just works anywhere & is easy, but sometimes it's nice enjoying the flawless low latency.
Maybe it's possible to order an aesthetically-looking cube sculpture even. Or make one with Legos.
FTFY. VGA uses analog signals, HDMI uses only digital signals.
The only problem with the Steam Machine is the price tbh, and that's mainly Valve having a really bad luck with timing once again.
Having a custom-made "Steam Machine" for the past 3 years thanks to ChimeraOS, it really changed the way I play for the better. I can play on my couch with my son and wife, and it made my wife (who wasn't really into gaming) buy a Steam Deck and enjoy my 500+ library instantly.
Now, I can play CS2 in my office, my son can play Astroneer in the living room and my wife The Witcher 3 next to him. The Steam ecosystem is simply amazing, it's a real shame Valve had to launch their machine during a worldwide component crisis.
It's not just the price, it's more like the hardware that is dated on arrival(weaker than a 2020 PS5) and customers are expected to use for 6+ years into the future when more and more new games are demanding RT.
Is not a problem for Nintendo to ship dated HW, sine one it's cheap, and two, since developers will walk through fire to optimize games for the Switch but that's because they're Nintendo and they ship tens of millions of Switches while Steam Boxes will not sell in such numbers to warrant this level of extra developer effort.
Good if you're only intro playing older games or are willing to stomach a lot of upscaling and low graphics setting or must have a just-works linux PC, but given the price and performance this isn't gonna be a mass appeal product.
>and that's mainly Valve having a really bad luck with timing once again.
You know the saying "you make your own luck? Or the saying "luck is opportunity meets preparation"?
So, no, it's not bad luck, it's that the problem with Valve is they just take forever to launch a product. Which is fine for stuff like Steam or games that you can keep delaying and delaying until you get it just right exactly the way you want it, but HW has a limited shelf life where it's most valuable and once you lock in a BOM, you're on the clock to get it out the door and need to haul ass. See the titanic efforts Microsoft put into launching Xbox and Xbox 360 on schedule, it was a rootless bloodbath, as all consumer HW is, but if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
So there's no bad luck here, just bad preparation on their part. Valve could have easily launched this earlier if they just spent less time trying to engineer everything from scratch with custom parts just to fit the HW inside a cube as small as possible just to flex their HW design skills, and instead just focus on quickly getting the HW in another boring VCR box into consumers hands ASAP the way MS did it with the first Xbox.
The whole point of the Steam Box is the Steam ecosystem centered around just-works Linux emulation of windows games, not the box being an engineering and design marvel, so speeding so much time on perfecting the form for a first gen product, was pointless endeavour that cost them the product launch.
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 staring at the screen waiting for the pc boot, one facepalming, one going to the pc to launch steam, one sitting down, one waiting to connect to steam big mode, one waiting for the game to launch because no resume feature.
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.
Wake on Lan is also a thing.
-> I have a steam machine since 2023.
... do you spend a lot of time playing 2 different games at the same time?
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
Also this thing is literally designed for running on TVs and everybody uses their TV at 4K resolution...
More like you can throw the console in the trash if you can't run current day games on it well.
A lot of AAA games have started mandating RT since 2025, like Doom the dark ages, 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 newest games.
I like Valve but there's no need to larp for Valve and run defense for them, when they shipped a product with dated HW, this is just the reality is whether you like it or not.
Xbox 360 was rushed with gpu problems
I would say they got it all right with the Xbox one. Then the series came out and is a good example of what valve is doing with the steam machine. AAA Games will be optimized for the steam machine (and consequently for the coming shortage in memory components) with power players in custom rigs getting the full 8k, hdr 4.0, DLSS 6.5 etc
No, it wasn't a GPU problem, it was semiconductor manufacturing and package assembly and soldering issue, that a lot of the electronics of that era suffered, from the early PS3(YLOD), to early Wii, to Macbooks and gaming laptops.
They all ran very hot back then in that 90nm era and since the industry switched to ROHS solder around 2005-2006 but the fabs hadn't yet mastered a realizable assembly process with the new solder, so early device it would lead to CPUs and GPUs desoldering off their ball grid array from the heat and the weak solder, until these kinks were ironed out over the years via 65nm die shrinks to lower power usage and better packaging and soldering techniques had evolved.
So this isn't an issue Valve could have faced as they weren't using brand new innovative HW using new manufacturing techniques, but older components that were already tried and tested. They were just too slow and lazy and prioritized form over function.
> AAA Games will be optimized for the steam machine
I fully doubt it. It's a niche product that won't sell well and game devs are stingy in the current industry market plagued with mass layoffs for cost cutting.
And the proof is in the pudding when you see how badly some AAA games run even on top end PC HW. Studios just don't put in any optimisation effort anymore and just ship Unreal Engine defaults.