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[CrashPrime]

Really hoping to get into this beta soon. I have an nVidia shield that has pretty much turned into a PC Streaming dedicated console, but I think this would perfectly with a AMD Phenom II HTPC setup I have already completely eliminating the need for the shield.

 

[ashecitism]

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/homestream/announcements/detail/1389661418572091644

Over the coming weeks we'll be running a series of experiments to tune our streaming systems.

For each experiment we'll post a thread in the discussions where we describe what we're trying and the feedback we'd like. We'll also accept a batch of new beta testers for each one.

Here is experiment #1: Framerate locking results?
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/homestream/discussions/0/540732888826029525/

Thanks for helping!

Experiment #1: Framerate locking results?
With latest update dated Feb 4, we'd like to get information on how framerate lock affects your experience.

Please post the answers to the following questions, comparing the framerate settings Automatic, 60 FPS, 30 FPS:

1. What is the hardware on the computer running the game, including CPU, GPU and network?
2. What is the hardware on the computer you're streaming to, including CPU, GPU and network?
3. Which setting feels "best" to you for each game you tried?
4. When you set framerate to 30 or 60 FPS, were the games you tried able to maintain the desired framerate?
5. When the games couldn't maintain framerate, was it because of the game, encoding, decoding or network? (You can tell by looking at the stats graph - below the blue line is encoding, between the blue lines is network and above the blue line is decoding)
6. When the framerate was erratic, did the game still play smoothly?
7. When the framerate was erratic, did you still get good response, low input latency?

Thanks!

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/homestream/discussions/0/540732888826029525/

 

[cyberheater]

I've tried a few games. I'm very impressed. Even when my macbook pro is wireless and my gaming PC is wired, the performance is pretty good. Getting around 30fps on most games.

This is great.

 

[Hasney]

So assume everyone is having trouble streaming Borderlands 2?

Played race the sun (twitch runner) and it's crazy smooth. Still deciding if I want to test it via my mac which is hooked to the TV.

Can I stream games inside BPM?

Yeah, I pretty much use BPM exclusively.

 

[graywolf323]

okay for the life of me I can't get this working between my macbook pro and gaming pc

when I first tried they could see each other but weren't connected, I restarted both and now they can't even see each other :-/

 

[Birbo]

okay for the life of me I can't get this working between my macbook pro and gaming pc

when I first tried they could see each other but weren't connected, I restarted both and now they can't even see each other :-/

Did you accept the beta on both machines? That was my hang up.

 

[TheHollowNight]

I got into the beta! Pretty surprised actually, since I never get lucky on these things. Going to try it out this weekend!

Edit: Holy shit I just realised the possiblities, I think I need to invest in a surface tablet, & stream my library to that...oh my

 

[1cmanny1]

I really need a portable device with a great screen, otherwise there isn't much point. Still great to play Tomb Raider on my decade old computer though.

 

[graywolf323]

Did you accept the beta on both machines? That was my hang up.

yeah both Steam clients are in the beta update

 

[Goli]

yeah both Steam clients are in the beta update

I have the same issue, more or less.

 

[Hasney]

If your machines can't see each other, put both PC in the DMZ on your router to see if it's a port issue and make sure Dropbox isn't running on either machine.

 

[dsk1210]

So what's the cheapest tablet/laptop with a high quality screen that would be ideal for this then?

Been using my friends laptop that I am repairing for him, but the screen has terrible blacks.

 

[cyberheater]

So what's the cheapest tablet/laptop with a high quality screen that would be ideal for this then?

Been using my friends laptop that I am repairing for him, but the screen has terrible blacks.

Cheap but with a good screen. Good luck with that.

I'm streaming to my macbook pro and I really notice if I look at the TV (where my gaming PC is hooked up to) that the image quality is off.

I'm hoping that there will be a IOS/Android client at some point. The screens on some of those are pretty good.

 

[Javaman]

Would this work with a netbook or do you need some oomf to decode the stream. I've got a Dell duo.

Intel atom 1.5 GHz. Not sure the gfx card.

 

[cyberheater]

Would this work with a netbook or do you need some oomf to decode the stream. I've got a Dell duo.

Intel atom 1.5 GHz. Not sure the gfx card.

I don't think you need a lot of power for decoding. I've heard of other netbook folks using it without issue.

Why don't you try it.

 

[ThreeBeta]

Played with it a bit, here are my impressions:
Game tested: Bioshock Infinite
Game Settings: 1920*1080, ultra everything
Host PC: i5 3470, Radeon 7850HD 2GB, 16gb ram, Wifi N connection.
Client PC: AMD dual core 2.4ghz, Radeon 5450, Ethernet connection.
Steam settings: auto (1720*1080 weird)

Impressions: 15 fps average. kinda disappointing, not sure if the client pc is weak or the wifi connection is causing the low fps.

Game tested: Batman Arkham Origins
Not working, stuck at level loading screen.

I haven't read the entire thread, so I don't know if this experience is common (low fps) or my setup is not good enough.

 

[Dr Dogg]

Man my broadband connection at home is rubbish. Tried connecting to my PC from work via VPN and while it connects, 40ms+ ping is not a great experience to say the least. Great that these things work though. If you got a great setup that covers a lot of bases Streaming is like a second coming already. On-Live but not shit.

 

[ashecitism]

I hope people are reading the OP. I haven't been updating it just for myself...

Would this work with a netbook or do you need some oomf to decode the stream. I've got a Dell duo.

Intel atom 1.5 GHz. Not sure the gfx card.

depending on what kind of performance you want, a capable CPU might be a good option

watch this vid to get an idea. LinusTechTips: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIL71Q6eJ2Y

Played with it a bit, here are my impressions:
Game tested: Bioshock Infinite
Game Settings: 1920*1080, ultra everything
Host PC: i5 3470, Radeon 7850HD 2GB, 16gb ram, Wifi N connection.
Client PC: AMD dual core 2.4ghz, Radeon 5450, Ethernet connection.
Steam settings: auto (1720*1080 weird)

Impressions: 15 fps average. kinda disappointing, not sure if the client pc is weak or the wifi connection is causing the low fps.

Game tested: Batman Arkham Origins
Not working, stuck at level loading screen.

I haven't read the entire thread, so I don't know if this experience is common (low fps) or my setup is not good enough.

It varies for people. Some are having a great experience, some not so much.

 

[Javaman]

I don't think you need a lot of power for decoding. I've heard of other netbook folks using it without issue.

Why don't you try it.

No beta invite yet. My brother got in and he hardly ever plays games P

 

[Shambles]

Streaming worked well from a 3570K + GTX 670 to a wired 3570K + 7870.
Did not work streaming from the GTX 670 to a wireless Q6600 + 7750. Got no video but sound came through fine. The latency graph would fail to reset on each from so instead of lines moving across the screen it was just a big smear. No one else seems to be having this issue. All machines are running Windows 8 and all drivers are up to date. :S

Yesterdays update seemed to fix it. I didn't have any resolution pre-set other than the fact that my broadcasting computer sits at 1920x1200 and my TV is one of those old 1366x768 things. I'm not sure if that was the issue but the streaming is back up to it's normal beta state. The latency graph displays properly, I can run all the games I could between the two hard lined machines. Some games still crash on boot but that sounds normal to what's going on with other people.

Are we supposed to be opted into the Steam beta client? None of my machines are but the in home streaming is working fine.

 

[Maybesew]

Had some rough streaming sessions last night, and eventually gave up on the experiment. Loaded up Witcher 2, and ran into the bug where the save game never fully loads. I force quit the game on the client, walked into the room that it was streaming from and it had loaded fine. Not sure what happened there.

Decided to finish up episode 2 of the wolf among us, but when the game loaded my save game wasn't available. Not sure what caused that since I thought it was 1) cloud save, and 2) streaming so it should have had the local save. I am wondering if Steam uses some logic to play a game locally if its installed rather than streaming it.

So then I just decided to play something I hadn't touched in forever, half-life 2. started the game from scratch and it was playable. Navigated from the train station and escaped out, but when I got to the first "loading" screen after jumping out the window, the game never finished loading. I walked back into the room with my PC and the game had loaded no problem.

so I gave up on streaming for the night.

 

[cyberheater]

No beta invite yet. My brother got in and he hardly ever plays games P

Quite a few folks got it and they didn't even have a second machine to stream to. They are just taking up slots of folks who want to participate and have the equipment.

Have you joined the beta thread on Steam?

 

[TC McQueen]

Tried to get streaming to work and nothing would start. Kept getting time out errors, even on a 5Ghz network and the same settings as I used yesterday.

 

[zephervack]

I have a weird occurrence where Just Cause 2 will stream at 60fps, but once it drops to 30fps it never goes back to 60fps unless I pause the game, when I unpause the game I get 60fps again for a few minutes but goes back to 30fps after.

It feels like bliss when its running at 60fps, anyone has a clue why this is hapenning?

 

[KHlover]

Hahaha, reading this thread makes me feel bad. Some people who'd actually use it can't get in while I got an invite...but am 500km away from my PC for the next month...

 

[Vigilant Gambit]

I have a weird occurrence where Just Cause 2 will stream at 60fps, but once it drops to 30fps it never goes back to 60fps unless I pause the game, when I unpause the game I get 60fps again for a few minutes but goes back to 30fps after.

It feels like bliss when its running at 60fps, anyone has a clue why this is hapenning?

You have your framerate limit set to automatic. Switch it to 60 fps.

 

[zephervack]

You have your framerate limit set to automatic. Switch it to 60 fps.

Ohhh thanks, cant wait to try it

 

[Herne]

Oh my god you guys, this is so fricking awesome. Just had a go at a few games there, loaded up Napoleon - Total War and watched a replay, had a quick go at Payday 2 and a jaunt around the Kerbol system in Kerbal Space Program. To be able to play pc games on my desktop's high graphic settings on our 50" tv without moving a single thing... am currently adding a shitload of games to a new category in Steam to try them out

 

[cyberheater]

I must admit I'm really impressed with the quality. I thought it would look more like a low bit rate you tube vid. It doesn't. It looks crisp and sharp. It's witchcraft.

 

[Herne]

I must admit I'm really impressed with the quality. I thought it would look more like a low bit rate you tube vid. It doesn't. It looks crisp and sharp. It's witchcraft.

Yeah, likewise. I guess it's just as well that I just recently upgraded our home network to gigabit, heh.

 

[ashecitism]

Everyone who has joined the Steam In-Home Streaming group as of right now has been granted access to the streaming beta. If you haven't gotten your e-mail, go ahead and see if it works for you.

To try out the streaming beta, start Steam and go to Account settings and change Beta Participation to "Steam Beta Update", then go to the Steam menu and click "Check for Steam Client Updates". Once you've done this go to the Help menu and verify that "About Steam" shows that it was built on Feb 4 or newer.

Do this for all your computers, and then log in with the same account into each computer you want to stream games between. If you have any issues, check out the In-Home Streaming settings for a link to the support article and additional ways to tune your experience.

Additional information and some known issues are here:
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=3629-RIAV-1617

We will invite new people in subsequent beta waves.

Enjoy!

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/homestream#announcements/detail/1389661418666804869

 

[jimmypop]

I was excited to see this invite today. I'm a big Shield user (couch gaming and so forth), so I'm hoping for similar streaming performance from my PC to my MacBook Air. I'm hoping to be able to stream to my Air, at least.

 

[Vigilant Gambit]

I was excited to see this invite today. I'm a big Shield user (couch gaming and so forth), so I'm hoping for similar streaming performance from my PC to my MacBook Air. I'm hoping to be able to stream to my Air, at least.

Can confirm streaming to an Air works fine. How well that works depends heavily on the game, though.

 

[CrashPrime]

Everyone who has joined the Steam In-Home Streaming group as of right now has been granted access to the streaming beta. If you haven't gotten your e-mail, go ahead and see if it works for you.

To try out the streaming beta, start Steam and go to Account settings and change Beta Participation to "Steam Beta Update", then go to the Steam menu and click "Check for Steam Client Updates". Once you've done this go to the Help menu and verify that "About Steam" shows that it was built on Feb 4 or newer.

Do this for all your computers, and then log in with the same account into each computer you want to stream games between. If you have any issues, check out the In-Home Streaming settings for a link to the support article and additional ways to tune your experience.

Additional information and some known issues are here:
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_...3629-RIAV-1617

We will invite new people in subsequent beta waves.

Enjoy!
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/homestream#announcements/detail/1389661418666804869

So glad I joined the group earlier today!! Going to try this out on my Surface Pro right now. I have a feeling my nVidia Shield might show up on the B/S/T thread later today.

 

[mattiewheels]

I tried streaming Gunpoint to my old Mac Mini, and it was basically unplayable, even after lowering the stream res. The mouse cursor was laggy enough to make me stop, and the game itself was just as sluggish. Is my bottleneck the Mac Mini, the Belkin G router...or just the nature of the beast?

 

[Adam Blue]

Streamed to a laptop, Lost Planet 3 looked great, but had horrible FPS. Tried wired and wireless with same result.

I was able to stream a non-Steam game, Star Craft 2. Same thing, looked great but low FPS.

My gaming hardware is a i7 950, 14GB, and 7970.

 

[Bob Dobalina]

Gonna give this a try later, how powerful does the host PC need to be?

 

[Jibbajabbawockky]

YES!

I am so psyched to try this out later today. This is really the one thing with all of the new Steam initiatives that I've been most excited about. Being able to just stream from my main gaming PC upstairs down to a smaller laptop/PC downstairs hooked up to my TV sounds great.

 

[jimmypop]

Can confirm streaming to an Air works fine. How well that works depends heavily on the game, though.

I was able to stream from my desktop to my 2013 Air (11") running OS X without issue with some games. Over wifi (5GHz), the performance doesn't match the performance of my Shield. Wired, and the situation improved. However, some games which run on the Shield won't run with home streaming; a message about requiring intervention to complete the install comes up.

I'll be happy if I can stream some non-Steam games (Diablo 3, for instance) for which Shield doesn't do control mapping.

 

[bigfunkychiken]

Getting 15 fps streaming any game to a laptop with an A6-3400M via a WRT150N... though the router doesn't appear to be the problem; "slow decode" does. The log says that software decoding is being used; I thought hardware decoding was available?

 

[Jibbajabbawockky]

Been messing around with this today and even if the quality isn't great at times, its just damn cool that this works at all. Being able to play Metro Last Light or Rome 2 from my laptop or hook my laptop to my TV is awesome.

 

[Javaman]

Quite a few folks got it and they didn't even have a second machine to stream to. They are just taking up slots of folks who want to participate and have the equipment.

Have you joined the beta thread on Steam?

Man, I so wish I had seen your post before the latest group got in. I joined the group a couple of hours ago. No biggie though, It's more of a novelty for me until I get another computer. This would be a chromecast killer app if they could support it.

 

[mattiewheels]

I never got a reply...is the choppy/stuttery performance because of my old Mac Mini, or because of the cheap G router?

 

[Ysiadmihi]

I'm really impressed with this so far. Streaming MGR to my laptop at 60fps and it's completely playable with whatever amount of input lag it has.

 

[Goldenhen]

I never got a reply...is the choppy/stuttery performance because of my old Mac Mini, or because of the cheap G router?

You need 5Ghz N/AC wireless and forget about 2.4Ghz B/G/N. Honestly it would be better if you take a screenshot with status information (Press F6) and post it here so we can fully understand what is going on.

 

[antti-la]

Can't get it working properly here.

Connected via RJ45 ethernet.

Server
i7 3770k
GTX680
16GB DDR3

HTPC
AMD A-350 fusion Radeon HD 6310
8gb
SSD

No matter what settings I choose from the menu i get choppy 15-20fps.

 

[GhostTrick]

This seems to be pretty much CPU intensive. Host is a Core 2 Duo E8400 CPU with HD4870 and Client is Intel Atom Quad Core tablet.
I tried MGR and it ran at like 10 to 20fps. Tried La-Mulana and it ran at 60FPS.
Always getting "slow encoding".

 

[Hasney]

This seems to be pretty much CPU intensive. Host is a Core 2 Duo E8400 CPU with HD4870 and Client is Intel Atom Quad Core tablet.
I tried MGR and it ran at like 10 to 20fps. Tried La-Mulana and it ran at 60FPS.
Always getting "slow encoding".

Pretty much. If you have an NVidia 600 series or above though, hardware encoding might help.

Default behaviour right now tried to thread on unused cores, so even a slower quad core would do better than a fast dual core.

Can't get it working properly here.

Connected via RJ45 ethernet.

Server
i7 3770k
GTX680
16GB DDR3

HTPC
AMD A-350 fusion Radeon HD 6310
8gb
SSD

No matter what settings I choose from the menu i get choppy 15-20fps.

Think the client machine is too weak. My laptop is an AMD A4-5000 with Radeon 8330 and I have to make sure my processes are clean from CPU intensive backgroud tasks before proceeding.

 

[monlo]

after the several beta updates in the last two weeks, I tested this again

Jazzpunk: streams excellently, but no controller support
Dark Souls: streams at 0fps (could not even get to the title screen), but *has* controller support (I was able to confirm that the game didn't shut down properly with the controller)

When it works (like with Jazzpunk), it works well. I just need that damn controller support. Can't do mouse and keyboard on the couch

 

[ashecitism]

Yes, desktop capture is intentionally slow right now, so we can see the difference in performance when we accidentally stay in desktop streaming mode. This will be changed in a future update.

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/homestream/discussions/0/630802978907558546/#c540732889127725362

Yes, if the network and client can't keep up with the host, then the host will throttle back to a level that's acceptable.

The automatic throttling is pretty conservative right now, so if you want to override it, try going into the In-Home Streaming settings and lock the framerate to 60 and see how that works for you.

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/homestream/discussions/0/540732889202778512/#c540732889215733612