Valve open-source the Steam Machine e-ink screen so you can make your own

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• Hacker News
• "Valve will not be making and providing their own e-ink display for the Steam Machine"

  Too bad. The picture in the articles looks awesome. Like a device from some alternate reality. Neither retro nor the standard flat-panel LCD.

  I don't want to mod a pre-build $1,049 device. I want it to be good our of the box and I'd rather pay more to get more. (If it was a $3K top-of-midrange machine, I would buy it in a second.)

  by romaniv
• You're not modding a pre-built $1049 device. The faceplates are removable and swappable with no disassembly needed, and this fancy one connects via bluetooth and is powered via a battery. Entirely non-invasive.
  by jdiff
• Clickbait, I want to make an actual eInk display myself. Not just buy one from Adafruit.
  by Fokamul
• It would have justified the price had they included this in the base model - this is the next best thing I suppose. Valve is really coming out as the good guy here in the video game industry and we should really support and applaud all that they're doing to hold the line for consumers and fans.
  by ray_v
• Yes but saying "it would have justified the price if they had included extra expensive things" is the same as saying "it should be cheaper". Sure, but stuff costs.
  by stavros
• Given computer part prices recently because of new datacenters, I think the price is already justified, as they don't want to sell it at a loss
  by voidUpdate
• Care to fix this ungrammatical headline? :)
  by shomp
• It’s a cultural difference you’re unaware of, not an error.
  by gilrain
• It's grammatical. I put a hyphen in 'open-source' in case that helps.
  by dang
• I think this site is from the UK where companies are plural (they are made of people after all). Is there some other grammatical issue you have... it is kind of meandering, but that's taste more than grammar.

  What would you suggest instead?

  by toast0
• Valve mi familia
  by julionc
• Whyv does a game console need a slow e-ink display?
  by neves
• It's like asking why a car needs a red color ;-)
  by arendtio
• Status Monitor

  I remember a few years ago when many custom PC cases had 5.25"-bay displays to control their fans / show temperatures. Some rackmount server appliances also make use of them

  by preisschild
• It's not for gaming, it's for making the faceplate digitally customizable. I love it!
  by doawoo
• Is the Steam Machine a decently priced desktop compared to the "generic" ones?
  by rbanffy
• Compared to buying from parts? No.

  Compared to an average prebuilt? You can probably find large tower PCs at a lower price, but they'll likely have a low quality motherboard or power supply.

  Compared to an average prebuilt that ships with Linux? Absolutely

  by weberer
• For a small gaming box it is a good price.

  If you don’t care that much about size, HDMI-CEC or SteamOS there are faster alternatives for the price.

  by artisinal
• Wildly depends where you live.

  For the same price I can get a prebuilt desktop PC with double the performance (Ryzen 7 5700 + RTX 5060 Ti)

  Even if you go mini ITX you can get a better PC with 50% more performance (Ryzen 7 5600x + RTX 5060) https://pcpartpicker.com/forums/topic/498435-diy-45l-steam-m...

  by haunter
• You can't build a machine which is as powerful, small, quiet, and cheap, nor can you take for granted that a machine you build can have a controller that can wake it from sleep, or which has HDMI-CEC (both are possible, but take extra work or hardware). You can rather easily build a machine with multiple of those attributes, but you'll have to pick ones to sacrifice in the name of the others.
  by delecti
• Gamers Nexus did a very in depth review of the Steam Machine [1], which includes a comparison to a build yourself similar machine.

  The result is that for about 70 dollars less you can put together a somewhat more powerful PC than the Steam Machine, but not for that form factor, it would still be bigger.

  IMO, the Steam Machine is not a bad purchase if you are in the market for that type of product.

  [1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=66QzlDewigE

  by oAlbe
• the part selection is appropriate for the current steam machine pricing, but i wonder if having this resource can help someone salvage eink displays from old kindles to achieve the same result.
  by rldjbpin
• e-ink is becoming the new hotness lately. There may soon be a time when you will look at every poster or menu on a wall and wonder if it is paper or an actual e-ink screen that will soon change to some other image. Airports, highway signs, etc.
  by deadbabe
• And of course it will be used for advertising, creating massive externalities for barely any income for the land owner, but they won't care because its others that pay
  by iso1631
• Is it even useful as a faceplate? An active display would be way more accurate at displaying hardware stats when the machine loses power (it'll shut down).
  by orbital-decay
• That's an interesting case of a display being off actually indicating something ("loss of power") which can't be replicated with a bistable screen.

  On the other hand, you probably don't want that glow of an active screen all the time. Status LEDs are annoying enough.

  by cubefox
• I would love to see an analysis of how valve's openness and goodwill affects their bottom line. Intuitively it should be a net positive for them, but there gotta be upfront costs, otherwise everyone would be doing it too.
  by tra3
• They have a money printer that gives them nearly unlimited flexibility. Being a private company means Gabe can do long-term investments without concern.

  Steam has been an incredibly good steward of its position, but I fear for the day when capitalism finally sinks its claws into the platform.

  by 3eb7988a1663
• Valve is one of the most efficient (revenue/staff) corporations there is. Far more so than most tech companies even. If that's how you measure goodwill then it seems like it works.
  by dismalaf
• They have an infinite money glitch in Steam, it hardly matters for them even if it makes a loss as long as it propagates the ecosystem.
  by moffkalast