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- Hacker News
- > It turns out that a _very_ long HDMI cable, a Steam Controller 2 and Bazzite on a second drive was all I needed to get a comfortable couch gaming experience.
Yes, it does turn out that if you already _have_ a capable gaming PC, you can use that instead of buying a Steam Machine. Who would have thunk it.
It feels like people don’t understand what the value prop of the Steam Machine is, maybe because they’re mixing it up with existing functionality and previous hardware attempts for ”streaming” games. That’s obviously not what this hardware is about.
by hnarn - > Unfortunately, HDMI 2.1 does not work with AMD graphics on Linux due to shenanigans from the HDMI Forum.
IIRC, recently, AMD got permission to implement HDMI 2.1 in their foss driver, so soon this shouldn't be an issue.
by smetannik - "50ft" are 15 meters.by the_gipsy
- "HDMI" is proprietary worse DPby NooneAtAll3
- 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...
- 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 :-)by sintax
- 50ft fibre optic HDMI cable, for those of you throwing an exception based on time domain reflection, and line level settling periods.by rolph
- Right, yes, of course... the, um... domain reflections and... line settling levels. It's like you read my mind, thanks for addressing those.by cfiggers
- 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.
by scotchmi_st - You didnt need the corning one, though, that's an electrically isolated cable, maybe thunderbolt can't go far unless it is media translated to optical, but I am unsure.by picofarad
- Interesting idea! I'm currently using Parsec to connect to a computer in a closet (due to noise/heat). It's low latency, sure, but a direct Thunderbolt connection would be lower!by StilesCrisis
- 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?
by weltensturm - What I've heard, for some reason, you can get CEC and working when you use a displayport -> hdmi adapter with the right chipset inside. So theoretically, get the right adapter, plug it on the side of the computer and you might actually get CEC signal decoded as a new kernel device.by Tajnymag
- Valve's CEC stuff for the Steam Box is open source: https://github.com/OpenGamingCollective/linux-cec
Someone on HN posted a more official link recently but I can't find it right now.
by c-hendricks - In case you hadn't seen the signal path's teardown of an optical HDMI cable, here it is. These really are marvelous devices for the cost.by willis936
- I bought the same adapter and use it with Bazzite, which has a `toggle-cec-sleep` you can run that just set it up. Now when I press a button on my keyboard, the PC starts up and the TV turns on. It's magical.
https://docs.bazzite.gg/Installing_and_Managing_Software/Baz...
by chhs - I use Sunshine streaming from my home office gaming PC (4070Ti Super) via 1Gbps Ethernet to a "Google Chromecast with Google TV" streaming dongle running the Moonlight client in our dedicated home theater room. The streaming dongle is powered via a USB-C hub that has an Ethernet port and the HDMI output is plugged into a Denon AVR as an input source.
The AVR outputs to a ceiling mounted laser projector with 150" screen. We run games at 4K HDR10 / 60 fps with no latency I can detect. The key is avoiding wifi and testing actual point to point throughput (I run a local instance of OpenSpeedTest). The streaming stick gets around 320 Mbps which is more than fast enough (it's capped by the Android TV CPU and poorly optimized driver stack).
by mrandish - What projector are you using if you don’t mind me asking? Been in the market for one.by Lermatroid
- I jailbroke my TV to put the sunshine client directly on it, and it works great.by secabeen
- 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.by tskulbru
- cool, I didn't know Apple TV could be a Sunshine/Moonlight client!by jordanf
- I'm doing the same and it works great. The apple tv is an amazing little box for all of these things.by christkv
- I use similar setup (CachyOS, Apple TV, Moonlight/Sunshine), but I play on a projector instead of a TV, which results in slightly higher latency. With that in mind, I connect gamepad via Bluetooth to my PC rather than to the Apple TV to minimize input latency; all single-player games are fully playable without any noticeable lag.by dmpanch
- I have a very similar setup. On Ubuntu (wayland only) I had to build sunshine for support. There is also always the bootstrapping issue for logging in when locked. Yes, I can physically log in, but I'd like something a little easier. Remote desktop is actually quite a bit of a headache and locked down in annoying ways by gnome.by willis936
- I don’t understand why the Steam Machine is getting so much hate. The form factor is amazing and a huge part of the value proposition. It’s slightly bigger than a box of Kleenex and you can put it next to the TV, on your desk, etc. I’m tempted to get one just to free up the floor space used by my ATX case. The graphics capability seems good enough, most people can live without 4k gaming.by abbefaria27
- I wish I could buy the Steam Machine. I just can't afford it. The high price is probably why people "hate" it.by reddalo
- +1
And we don't know yet, but I am hoping for reliability. My gaming PC is a nightmare. Sometimes it works great. Other times, I have to sacrifice a goat to get the thing to work.
by ozten - I don’t understand who the target is. I can afford one but I’ve already got a PS5 Pro and it just works. I’ve got a threadripper+blackwell running Linux too, but it gets 2/3 the framerate of when I boot it to windows for games. When I had more time and less money, I would have built a gaming PC that would be better and cheaper than the steam offering. So the market isn’t me.
Who is it? Who wants a gaming machine connected to their TV? Every PS5 and Nintendo owner. Are they the target market? Why would a PS5 owner spend $1100 on a machine that places games worse if at all? So I can FPS with a mouse? DRM doesn’t work. So I can play RTS? No I’m sitting at my desk over my keyboard.
Who wants a Linux PC connected to their TV that doesn’t already have a Linux PC connected to their TV? Who wants a smaller, less customizable box? That you can’t swap out the graphics card when they inevitably become a lot cheaper? Who wants a last gen AMD GPU and not be able to swap it out for a 5080 once things are cheaper again and the 6060 comes around?
Who is this for? I’m not hating on it. It’s not for me and I don’t know who it IS for.
- The Steam Machine is a victim of RAM prices exploding. It's price is fair considering the price of its parts but also causes it to be in a price segment where I am not sure who it is for.
People that can afford a Steam Machine at the current price point are likely to already have stronger hardware.
A Mac Mini a similarly sized with like half the price with dramatically better CPU. Or if you could get a PS5 pro, still for cheaper with vastly superior gaming performance.
Valve could have started with a premium model for the hardcore fans that are less price sensitive and released a budget version later when maybe the RAM apocalypse has ebbed.
Still hope it sells, the form factor is amazing.
by cardanome - I don't think the majority of ppl are giving it hate tbh - I think it's just a HN thing. everyone I know that is into gaming is excited about it. I would chalk it up to consumer misunderstanding around the pricing, but I actually think most consumers that are interested in buying a steam HW product are fully in the know why there's a chip shortage. I am in the group that is waiting for the price to drop, but I am excited to get mine!by drudolph914