In-House Streaming vs. 1 PC with two I/O Points

[mikegray]

[tbh, I don't even know which section of the forums this question should go in, but I'll start here.]

 

We're moving house next week. My main rig - used for work and play - is a decently specced gaming PC. (See signature. This fall I'm planning to upgrade the 2x 290x to 1x Vega or Volta). It's connected to two different I/O stations in my office (single person station, used 85% of the time) and the living room (movies, netflix and sofa-gaming with Epson 1080 projector with separate sound, keyboard, mouse).

 

Currently, this works pretty well since the living room is right next to my office. When I moved in, I even got the renter to make a through-hole between the two rooms so that I could run all the necessary cables - USB, HDMI, Toslink (for an older 5.1 receiver) and power (to avoid ground hum).

 

In our new house, we'll have a separate media room (YES!!) - but it will be one floor up from the office (ugh). I plan to install the projector, the sound system and a second set of peripherals up there - but I'm not sure how to connect them.

 

Things I DO have:

- Ethernet cable (cat. 6, I believe) linking the office and the media room.

 

Things I don't have:

- Money to build a second, full-on gaming rig just for upstairs.

- Means of "hardwiring" HDMI and UBS between the two rooms.

 

Option 1: Install a separate, inexpensive desktop in the media room. That would be be fine for movies and netflix; but I'd have to use in-house streaming from my main PC for games. 

 

- Positives: Less fiddly! 

- Negatives: (Probably) more expensive - have to build (and maintain) a whole new PC!

- Open questions: (1) I've never used in-house streaming - how does it compare to the "real thing" over a gigabit connection? (2) I know Steam has i-h-s - but what about Origin and GOG?

 

Option 2:  Use an HDMI and USB over CAT6 extender - i.e., stay with single PC + two I/O station solution.

- Positives: Performance ought to be better. (But how much?)

- Negatives: Fiddly. Video quality degradation? (Probably no upgrade path to 4k in the future?) Good quality might be expensive!

 

What would you guys do?

 

[KenjiUmino]

7 minutes ago, mikegray said:

(1) I've never used in-house streaming - how does it compare to the "real thing" over a gigabit connection? (2) I know Steam has i-h-s - but what about Origin and GOG?

1 -> slightly decreased picture quality and slightly increased input lag.

 

it's not really an issue in most games. unless competitive esports fps is your main thing

 

2 -> you can add non-steam games to show up in your library and steam will treat them like family (with steam overlay 'n' stuff)

 

there could be potential issues with the overlay and streaming on non-steam games but i didn't experience any problems so far.

 

i can stream minecraft and even emulators to the living room and play it with my steam controller 

[Rohime]

4 minutes ago, KenjiUmino said:

1 -> slightly decreased picture quality and slightly increased input lag.

 

it's not really an issue in most games. unless competitive esports fps is your main thing

 

2 -> you can add non-steam games to show up in your library and steam will treat them like family (with steam overlay 'n' stuff)

 

there could be potential issues with the overlay and streaming on non-steam games but i didn't experience any problems so far.

 

i can stream minecraft and even emulators to the living room and play it with my steam controller 

 

Nvidia Graphics card?

 

Get Nvidia Shield *PRO* device and just go full on stream, cabled at 1Gpbs.

[KenjiUmino]

Just now, Rohime said:

Nvidia Graphics card?

 

Get Nvidia Shield *PRO* device and just go full on stream, cabled at 1Gpbs.

yes i have a nvidia card but is there any difference between nvidia streaming and steam streaming ? any benefits ?

[mikegray]

20 minutes ago, KenjiUmino said:

1 -> slightly decreased picture quality and slightly increased input lag.

 

it's not really an issue in most games. unless competitive esports fps is your main thing  

Oh yeah, I should have mentioned that: competitive FPS stuff is TOTALLY NOT my thing. (Good thing too. I'm the world's most incompetent  shooter/hacker/gamer.) But I do like big, beautiful RPGs - say, Witcher, modded Skyrim, etc. So I probably won't notice latency issues - but I'm obsessive about picture quality, and if I don't get my 60 fps, I get cranky.

[mikegray]

14 minutes ago, Rohime said:

 

Nvidia Graphics card?

 

Get Nvidia Shield *PRO* device and just go full on stream, cabled at 1Gpbs.

Urgh. 

 

I've been an ATI/AMD man for 15 years now, and I hate to drop them just when they're finally getting their company turned around. But if Nvidia PC + Shield would be the perfect solution, I'd be sorely tempted to start an affair with Jensen Huang. (Sorry Lisa T. It wasn't you; it was me.)

 

(That just got me wondering:  Do they have freesync/g-sync projectors??)

[KenjiUmino]

7 minutes ago, mikegray said:

Urgh. 

 

I've been an ATI/AMD man for 15 years now, and I hate to drop them just when they're finally getting their company turned around. But if Nvidia PC + Shield would be the perfect solution, I'd be sorely tempted to start an affair with Jensen Huang. (Sorry Lisa T. It wasn't you; it was me.)

 

(That just got me wondering:  Do they have freesync/g-sync projectors??)

i guess the recommendation to get shield hardware was to cut costs on streaming clients but then again, even a compute stick can do in home streaming and office work just fine. anything that has a x86 cpu made during the last decade + hardware h264 decoder can serve as a streaming client of some sort

 

i have an atom 330 + gt 610 in my bedroom and even that thing can do in home streaming. 

 

about freesync projectors - not sure if it's a thing but i guess you won't benefit from it on a streaming client anyways