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Comment by w1ntermute | Hacker News Reader

There's an excellent post on The Verge forums called "Forget the PS4 and the Xbox 720, build your own Steambox on the cheap"[0]. It will be very exciting to see if a significant number of gamers (many of whom are already familiar with building their own PCs) take the initiative to go down this road.

A nice auxiliary advantage of building a Steambox is that you can use it as a full-featured HTPC as well, since it runs a desktop OS.

0: http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/30/3706718/forget-the-ps4-an...

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Anything that tries to disrupt, or at least compete on the same level with the Xbox and Playstation, is a good thing, and that includes OUYA as well.

Would it be legal for someone to manufacture and sell 3rd party Steamboxes, if Valve has no immediate plans to do so?

It seems like somebody like Alienware, or even just somebody on Kickstarter, could put together something impressive at a XBox720/PS4 pricepoint.

You might want to talk to valve before using the word "Steam" in the name of your product...

Otherwise I can't see an impediment. Maybe Valve could even have a 'designed for Steam' certification program or something.

Well, obviously all PCs are Steamboxes, technically speaking. However, if it's a streamlined box that plugs right into a television and boots right to steam, I could maybe see them putting up a stink, even if the branding was sufficiently ambiguous.

The MistBox ;)

I don't know, though. To be honest, I'm kind of shocked no one has tried this yet. It seems like such an obvious winner, even if there is a slight chance you would go to court with Valve.

I was thinking the other way around - that they might be perfectly encouraging of selling such a device, just that using 'Steam' (their TM) in the name or advertising without permission might get you in trouble.

I think it's a great idea!

The killer feature would be to sell the computer with a preloaded Steam account that already has the orange box plus portal 2 and the L4D games.

Now that's a Steambox.

I did literally just this last week, with an ITX motherboard, a 65W APU (Trinity), and a case to match. I'm quite pleased with the results, and with Big Picture mode (given it *was still Beta)

Would you consider blogging about this? I'd like to do something similar next year.

I wouldn't mind writing about it, but I don't exactly have a blog. What is a good medium for a one-shot post like that?

Ironically, Medium: http://medium.com.

Otherwise, Tumblr or a gist powered by http://gist.io.

Well guys, here's a first pass:

http://gist.io/4199804

Is this something I should be submitting to HN directly?

Also, let me know if there's any particular pieces of information you want expanded/shared. I haven't yet had an opportunity for photos or video of use this evening.

(updated with photos and some brief, not-so-HD cams)

Please do submit it; this is a great write-up. :)

Well folks, I don't think we'll be seeing it on the front page. Perhaps I need to work on my titling.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4872751

Hopefully those who were interested have already had a chance to read it, by now.

Great write up :)

Google Plus is usually good enough for this kind of stuff

make a quick tumblr and post it there

gist.io

The post I linked in my OP has a full build guide, if that's what you're looking for.

I'd be interested in hearing about that too. I just ordered parts to build my parents a computer, I'm using it as an excuse to try out a Trinity APU. If I like it I'll look into building an ITX size for myself.

As you may not have seen my further updates, I wrote a short bit:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4872751

it's not beta anymore.

I've done this ages ago. The big TV in the living room was always hooked up to a console and a PC. It was always a good combination.

Now the PC part is getting even easier to use. Great.

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