alt Hacker NewsMy Steam Machine Is a 50ft HDMI Cable
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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 networking. In the future i might upgrade to faster networking to get down the latency but its not really needed as long as i dont stream in 4k (my computer doesnt really do 4k that well anyway). The computer(s) have nvidia and amd gpus, both work just as fine.
One of the better tech investments I’ve made is in a 20 metre Thunderbolt cable from Corning. It’s surprisingly useful- if you have a monitor that takes TB input then your computer can be stored in a small closet next to your router/switch, where you can’t hear it. Alternatively if you just need a quick 10Gb Ethernet link between two computers with USB4 or TB3/4 that it would be complicated to have next to each other, you can use it for that as well.
I really hope Corning eventually make a TB5 cable.
Used to use moonlight/sunshine to stream to my steamdeck hooked to my TV, but switched over to just using a long HDMI cable and a wireless controller. Have everything hooked up with Home Assistant, so when I start the PC in a specific automation, it will automatically switch output to the TV and start steam in big picture (steamdeck) mode. Works fairly well. Using a normal distro (Fedora), so no dual boot shenanigans. If something goes wrong, either get out of the couch (duh!) or remote with moonlight :-)
I have a 20m fibre optic cable, these things are great. Thinner than a standard cable. They are unidirectional, but mine has a dedicated copper line for CEC. 4k 120hz is no problem.
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?
I have a setup where I use a HDMI-over-Ethernet extender [0] to play games in my living room from my homeoffice desk setup in the bedroom. Funnily, the computer and TV are just 1m apart, but separated by a wall and I didn't want to drill (it is a rental). Luckily it is new construction, and all rooms have CAT7 ethernet outlets (most rooms even have two). I use a female-to-female ethernet coupling in central fusebox to bridge those cables together (they need to be directly connected, switching is not possible). So the signal travels around 30-40m over ethernet even though the devices are literally back-to-back against a wall.
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 have my LLM/gaming PC tucked in a rack in my basement:
- 100ft DisplayPort + USB cables going to my home office's monitor - 100ft HDMI cable going to the TV on the wall in my home office - 30ft HDMI + USB cables going to my receiver in the upstairs gaming/tv room
Works great. I can control/game from any of the three screens, and I also have Moonlight to sometimes control the PC remotely either in the house (bedroom) or externally via Tailscale.
I have an old Steam Link lying around, but I never have a use for it anymore, so while I can understand that there is an audience for Steam Machine, if you are capable, and have a dedicated gaming machine, a couple of long active/fiber HDMI+USB cables is all you really need.
50ft fibre optic HDMI cable, for those of you throwing an exception based on time domain reflection, and line level settling periods.
Speaking of Steam and controllers - is anyone else annoyed by piss poor compatibility of PC games with Steam onscreen keyboard. I can count on one hand games with seamless integration, where it popups after moving to input field. The manual Steam/XBox + "X" shortcut always shows the keyboard, but games like to ignore submitted value. My favorite example is Dark Souls character creation screen, it is the only place in the entire game you can and need to enter text, and it is faster to walk the 50ft and back, than to get it working.
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)
sunshine + moonlight + wakeonlan is quite good if you actually set up the black magic that is wol
Mine is moving my Razer laptop from my office to next to my TV and picking up my controller which is slightly annoying but at least I can play games at a good FPS which the Steam Machine cannot do
My gaming PC motherboard recently sh*t the bed. It was over 10 years old and I’ve beaten that thing up quite a bit. It’s Zen 1, so new MOBO basically means like 70% new PC. Before the price was announced I figured I’d look into a Steam Machine because I also want a well-supported Linux box for coding. I already have a PS5 Pro - which turned out to actually be a decent investment because the price has been increased multiple times since I bought it. When I saw the price of the Steam Machine I just *sigh*’d. Reviews are saying the Steam Machine barely stacks up against a base PS5. Excuse me, WHAT!?
Was considering just getting a MacBook Neo to tide me over until I can build a proper PC and they just jacked up the prices. I’ll probably still end up getting one but I just gotta wait a bit longer.
I’m currently surviving on a 2012 iMac my mother in law asked me to get the files off of for her and she gave me the computer itself. Installed Ubuntu on it and it’s…fine…but it doesn’t even have an SSD so it can be rough at times.
It’s ridiculous. I’m a software engineer, and I can’t even afford mid-level technology anymore (not American so I don’t have the ridiculous salary like some).
Thankfully my M1 Max Mac Studio from a few years ago is still going strong and my employer pays for that anyway. It’s also for work only. Though I suspect not gonna happy when either 1) I need an upgrade for local LLM developement for the AI projects coming down the pipe or 2) he sees the API bill because he can’t be arsed to make an upfront investment.
Something has to give.
Does anyone have a proper (and not overly expensive) solution for also moving input devices somewhere else? My main device is not in the same room as my TV.
An old steam link still works for me
Now just make the cable a few miles long and call it Nvidia GeForce NOW?
I did a USB extension and fiber optic DisplayPort to game on my old rooftop deck. It was very nice.
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.
I wish my OG physical Steam Link supported 4k. It was the best thing ever for the price.
Yep, there are better ways of (mis-)spending a $1.5K.
Maybe it's possible to order an aesthetically-looking cube sculpture even. Or make one with Legos.
I just use Steam Streaming. If that doesn't work because they fucked it up again, Parsec. MBP as a terminal, smol ITX T1 running Windows as host.
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These setups suck for following reasons:
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.
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.