Steam In-Home Streaming Review

[Damikiller37]

 

Overview & Setup

This review will be about the brand new Steam's In-Home Streaming function that is at the time of writing this review in it's Beta stage.

I have received an invite to join the Beta tests pretty much 10 min after joining the group (You can join here: LINK)

 

For those of you that have no idea on what In-Home streaming is, here is a video Linus himself has made to explain it and test it:

 

 

For my test I have used a 2 machines; one being my main gaming rig (Desktop) which is connected to the modem using an Ethernet cable

and my brothers laptop which was wirelessly connected to the modem. Here are the specs for both machines:

[spoiler=Desktop]

Motherboard: Asus Sabertooth P67 Rev. 3.0
Processor: Intel i5 2500k 3.3ghz (stock)
RAM: 2x 4gb Corsair Vengeance 1600mhz
Graphics card: Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti Crysis 2 Maximum Edition (Manufacture O.C)
HDD: Samsung HD753LJ 750gb
System: Windows 8 Pro x64
Monitor: Benq v2410 Eco 1008p LED
PSU: OCZ Fatal1ty 750w

Resolution: 1920x1080

 

[spoiler=Laptop]

Toshiba Sattelite L650-1NT

Procesor: Intel i5 M480 2.67GHz (Quad Core)

RAM: 4GB

Graphics card: AMD Radeon HD 5470

System: Windows 8 Pro x64

Resolution: 1366x768

 

The modem used was the BT Home Hub 3 and I'm on the BT Infinity 2 plan.

 

 

Games tested:

 

Borderlands 2

Basically for Borderlands 2 I have teleported to various graphical areas in the game and played around moved the camera a lot and all of the

other things just to cause my host PC do as much work as it can to see if it will affect the performance at all. As you can see in the screenshot

below everything was very stable with mostly 60 FPS with some rare drops nearing 50 FPS nothing major apart from that. The latency was a

little high and you could slightly feel it but it wasn't so bad that the game was unplayable; just an ever so slight delay.

[spoiler=Settings used:]

Vsync: Off

Framerate: Capped 72 FPS

Resolution: 1366x768

Ambient Occlusion: Off

Depth of Field: On

Anisotropic Filtering: 4x

Bullet Decals: High

Foilage Distance: Far

Texture Quality: High

Game Details: High

View Distance: Ultra High

Physx Effects: Low

FXAA: On

[spoiler=Screenshot]

 

Path of Exile

So the best way to stress test Path of Exile was to get into a graphical area much like I did with Borderlands and get into a fight. I have managed

to get the game running butter smooth until I have started messing with the resolution settings which made the game spike a lot. So I restarted

it and set the resolution back to 1366x768. Then I have saw another problem. Both my brother and my mum started using the internet (both

wireless; mum on her laptop and my brother on his Xbox 360) and that was a barrier for the laptop and as you can see in the screenshot

below the game was all over the place. So the barrier was either the wireless on the laptop or the fact that the modem isn't the best especially

for this application. As soon as I asked my mum and my brother to not use the internet for the moment everything went back to normal.

[spoiler=Settings used:]

Resolution: 1366x768

Vsync: On

Shadow Quality: High

Antialiasing Quality: High

Texture Quality: High

Texture Filtering: 4x Anisotropic Filtering

Post Processing: On

Screen Shake: On

[spoiler=Screenshot]

 

Just Cause 2: Multiplayer

Exact same situation as Path of Exile as soon as no one is using the wireless intensively I were able to get very smooth and very playable.

[spoiler=Settings used:]

Resolution: 1366x768

Motion Blur: Off

Texture Detail: High

Shadow Quality: High

Anti-Aliasing: 8x

Anisotropic Filtering: 16x

Water Detail: Very High

Object Detail: Very High

SSAO: High

Decals: On

Soft Particles: On

V-Sync: On

High Res Shadows: On

Point Light Specular: On

[spoiler=Screenshot]

 

Final Impressions

Overall I have been really satisfied with Valve and their new ideas to revolutionize and improve the way we game. Starting from Steam Machines

to this very solution I have to say that they are going in the right direction and that they are doing a very good job. Despite the fact that the

In-Home Streaming is in Beta I must say this is on hell of a solid product as it stands right now. As soon as you tweak things right everything

works near to perfectly. Only things I have realized that were limiting me were the power of both the laptop and potentially my computer.

The laptop isn't best hence why I have been streaming in 720p rather than 1080p; which doesn't mean that it was worse, it was actually

better than when i tried to stream at 1080p since the resolution wasn't making any difference and only making the image to see squished to

fit the resolution where on the other hand 720p looked spot on and I doubt anyone could tell that it was running a few pixels less than the

monitors resolution (1366x768). As I have mentioned I have tried 1080p streaming to the laptop but it was quite laggy and mostly unplayable,

but that was expected since the graphics card in particular in the laptop isn't anything too good.

 

I have also had a slight problem with the audio being really quiet. I had the audio maxed on both systems and in the game I were playing and

it was really silent coming from the speakers. Nonetheless it was perfectly in sync with the game and had no interference whatsoever. I think I

could make the streaming much better if I had a better modem that potentially would have the ability to manage the connections and traffic

better reducing the spiking when many devices are in uses during the stream.  Also if both systems were wired it would probably solve

the problem too. Then lastly if both systems were more powerful it would probably be flawless.

 

Excluding the games mentioned above I have also tried Saints Row IV and The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing; both ran really good

and without any major frame drops.

 

Lastly I do hope that this technology will get worked upon and become even better. I would love to see in a couple of years an ability to stream

a game from Steam onto a tablet or maybe a phone using the Steam app. It's also nice to see Steam join the streaming train along with Nvidia

since I see this as the future of gaming and potential end of consoles as we know them; much like Linus has said many times.

[TheProfosist]

I got a invite to the beta I should set it up. Thing is my htpc os plenty powerful for the most part because we already played a few game from the couch ebery now and then.

[X1XNobleX1X]

Just a quick question. When using Steam home streaming does it use your download or upload to stream games?

I'm assuming upload.

[LinusTech]

I'll cover this on WAN show today, but in-home streaming doesn't use your internet connection at all. Just your home network.

[Vitalius]

Just a quick question. When using Steam home streaming does it use your download or upload to stream games?

I'm assuming upload.

N.... No.

It doesn't use your internet connection. At all.

[Damikiller37]

I'll cover this on WAN show today, but in-home streaming doesn't use your internet connection at all. Just your home network.

I know but I thought I'll include just in case someone asks  

[Raboo]

Great review

[theking]

awesome review, that includes your review to Linus

[Murdoch]

Just a quick question. When using Steam home streaming does it use your download or upload to stream games?

I'm assuming upload.

 

The game is run on your main PC, at the same time it also encodes a x264 video copy of the game, which is streamed across your home network to a secondary device.

 

All that is being sent across your home network is a video stream and obviously the input from mouse / keyboard / controller. 

 

The main PC does most of the work, all you have to make sure, is that your secondary PC can playback whichever resolution of x264 video you choose. And that your home network has sufficient bandwidth to support the amount of data being sent in that video file.

 

EDIT: oh and nice review OP

 

I forgot to sign up for the group, so I have yet to be added to the beta. Interested to see that you've got it working ok with a BT homehub 3, which is the same router I'm using. It's WiFi speeds kinda suck, so I'm impressed that you can get a reasonable streaming experience to laptops etc, without requiring too much bandwidth.

[X1XNobleX1X]

The game is run on your main PC, at the same time it also encodes a x264 video copy of the game, which is streamed across your home network to a secondary device.

All that is being sent across your home network is a video stream and obviously the input from mouse / keyboard / controller.

The main PC does most of the work, all you have to make sure, is that your secondary PC can playback whichever resolution of x264 video you choose. And that your home network has sufficient bandwidth to support the amount of data being sent in that video file.

Thanks for the explanation.

The reason my computer was probably due to the fact that I was using an old laptop.

It was saying "slow encode" which is probably caused by having an old CPU.

[Damikiller37]

Thanks for the explanation.

The reason my computer was probably due to the fact that I was using an old laptop.

It was saying "slow encode" which is probably caused by having an old CPU.

I had that when I tried to in-home stream on my netbook it couldn't even do 480p

[Imabigmac]

I had that when I tried to in-home stream on my netbook it couldn't even do 480p

were you using a 5Ghz band? How far were from the router. When ever I stream I get like 30fps with drops.

[Damikiller37]

were you using a 5Ghz band? How far were from the router. When ever I stream I get like 30fps with drops.

The modem that I use doesn't have the 5GHz band and I were an a floor above the modem which would be about 10-15m away from where the laptop was. As mentioned above the desktop PC was wired to the modem. We also don't seem to get much interference within the house. I get full bars anywhere in my house

[TheProfosist]

The game is run on your main PC, at the same time it also encodes a x264 video copy of the game, which is streamed across your home network to a secondary device.

 

All that is being sent across your home network is a video stream and obviously the input from mouse / keyboard / controller. 

 

The main PC does most of the work, all you have to make sure, is that your secondary PC can playback whichever resolution of x264 video you choose. And that your home network has sufficient bandwidth to support the amount of data being sent in that video file.

 

EDIT: oh and nice review OP

 

I forgot to sign up for the group, so I have yet to be added to the beta. Interested to see that you've got it working ok with a BT homehub 3, which is the same router I'm using. It's WiFi speeds kinda suck, so I'm impressed that you can get a reasonable streaming experience to laptops etc, without requiring too much bandwidth.

Would like to note its H.264 not x264. H.264 is a codec and x264 is a open source H.264 encoder.

[Murdoch]

Would like to note its H.264 not x264. H.264 is a codec and x264 is a open source H.264 encoder.

 

Yeah but they use x264 to encode the video. Which is the reason I called it x264 video.

[TheProfosist]

To anyone else that has this I think the games that can be stream to the PC should have their own list and not be in the installed list. I know its only a minor gripe but I initially thought some 40 games got installed on my computer locally.

Yeah but they use x264 to encode the video. Which is the reason I called it x264 video.

They do?, Interesting as its one of the best H.264 software encoders and the only open source one thats worth anything. I wonder what x264 is getting out of it. Either way its still not x264 video as that would be saying x264 video is different from H.264 which it isnt.

[Murdoch]

They do?, Interesting as its one of the best H.264 software encoders and the only open source one thats worth anything. I wonder what x264 is getting out of it. Either way its still not x264 video as that would be saying x264 video is different from H.264 which it isnt.

 

As far as I'm aware they do, from what I've read on the community website. But they also said they were looking into hardware accelerated encoding, so that might change and perhaps take advantage of on-board H.264 encoders.

 

And, haha I get what you're saying. I do quite a lot of BD encodes, and have gotten into the habit of labelling anything encoded with x264 as such. But really it's such a common encoder, it's become almost like a synonym.

[TheProfosist]

As far as I'm aware they do, from what I've read on the community website. But they also said they were looking into hardware accelerated encoding, so that might change and perhaps take advantage of on-board H.264 encoders.

 

And, haha I get what you're saying. I do quite a lot of BD encodes, and have gotten into the habit of labelling anything encoded with x264 as such. But really it's such a common encoder, it's become almost like a synonym.

That would be cool I wouldnt mind having access to the nvidia hardware encoder in kepler my self

Your likely talking about scene encodes which have some stupid weird naming system that they all use. I im glad they have one unlike the anime community but most of the stuff they do and what not is either not as correct as it could be or just plain outdated most of the time. I think the reason why its labeled x264 as that was indeed the encoder used and this naming likely goes back to the DivX/Xvid era of MPEG4 encoded avi files.

[Osiris199]

Tried In-home streaming also. To my own laptop which wasnt too bad. very playable. Then I thought I'l try to stream to my dad's 10 year old PC. Didn't get playable games at all. FYI: that PC has an AMD Athlon 64 3200+ CPU, about 2 Gb of DDR2 and a passive cooled HD 3650. Networking through a PCI 10/100 connection. The lag spikes were through the roof on lowest streaming settings. Every 5 seconds the screen would freeze for almost a minute the whole time. Was hoping to give my sisters a better way to play games when im not at home, but unfortunatly...

[Nallown]

I used in-home streaming on a vm running in fullscreen on a 2nd monitor so essentially its a 2nd desktop and I had the game running on my main monitor in real time.

The vm was running debian (could of installed windows but meh wanted to try it with linux #B-Unique) with only 16mb vram dedicated and 512mb ram. It was perfectly fine other then the latency which I was expecting of course since its a vm.

Surprisingly the latency wasn't actually that bad, It was only around 600ms and considering the vm latency being around 200ms so it was essentially pretty much a 400ms delay.

In terms of detail it didn't lose to much but it is noticeable but since my main monitor is IPS and my 2nd monitor is tn of course I couldn't really accurately compare it.

 

Still cool though and its in dev so you can't expect it to be perfect yet

[FellTheSky]

lets say you have a very powerful cpu. Can you install something like softxpand, run the stream on one workstation, while im using another? all from the same pc?

[TheProfosist]

lets say you have a very powerful cpu. Can you install something like softxpand, run the stream on one workstation, while im using another? all from the same pc?

So what like run steam in a VM on the host computer so that you can still use it and the person can be playing on the client PC?

[Nallown]

lets say you have a very powerful cpu. Can you install something like softxpand, run the stream on one workstation, while im using another? all from the same pc?

It depends on how much vram you will dedicate to the vm. This is actually a pretty dandy idea and will give it a shot though.

Will dedicate 2gb vram to the vm and 2gb ram also 50gb hdd space. I will need to reinstall the games on the vm but its worth a shot

[FellTheSky]

So what like run steam in a VM on the host computer so that you can still use it and the person can be playing on the client PC?

Exactly that. 

[TheProfosist]

Exactly that.

That would be up to how well the VM plays a game wouldnt it?