Steam In-Home Streaming
store.steampowered.com
store.steampowered.com
tl;dr You may need an N wifi router or better that is rock solid to make things run smooth.
I used to run OpenWRT beforehand, but even after lots of configuring, I basically just ended up at a place that this system gives me out of the box. If I really wanted to, I could enable telnet and install the cyanogenmod-like "Freetz" OS on the machine [1]
"Members of the OpenWrt team have been in contact with Linksys for a while, discussing collaboration on device support in OpenWrt. There had been no technical collaboration on device support until Belkin engineers posted a few incomplete patches in early April. These patches are currently being cleaned up, as they do not meet our quality standards.
The most important part that is still missing is a usable driver for the Marvell 802.11ac wireless chipset. Belkin is working on fixing this, but they have not given us an estimation on when such a driver will be provided.
The default firmware for this device seems to be using a proprietary driver provided by Marvell, which uses non-standard APIs for configuration. We don't know if Marvell will open source this driver, or will work on an alternative Linux driver. We believe that both approaches require a considerable amount of effort and time."
Bought my N450 router right when AC was first coming out, it has been great.
If you can't get WiFi to perform, don't be surprised, but it isn't impossible.
Just remember to turn off your bluetooth stuff, my connection was terrible at first and I'm pretty sure shutting down my active bluetooth connections are what fixed it. (Alas, if only my client was 5GHz)
P.S. My rendering machine is always wired through powerline, so my setup does have an advantage in that the rendering machine isn't competing for wireless bandwidth with the client!
It's pretty amazing how well it runs, with the input lag being minimal and the quality of visuals far surpassing what the laptop could actually handle on it's own.
I'm just thinking how many invader duels end up being super close, even a fraction of a second here and there adds up. Plus there is already some lag when playing online with friends and/or against an invader to begin with.
Plus there is already some lag when playing online with friends and/or against an invader to begin with.
Any network lag you experience during multiplayer is going to far surpass any noticeable input lag IMO.
I tested it with some silverlight based services available here (not netflix though) and it worked like a charm.
Could I add XCode to Steam on a Mac and then stream that on my main Desktop?
I know I can hook up my MacBook to an external keyboard and monitors but I have a very... integrated setup for my main Windows Desktop and hooking up my MacBook with those monitors, keyboard would be quite a hassle.
This way, I could keep it on my couch table and still be able to work on XCode on my big Desktop monitor.
I'm getting 30FPS @ 720p on the TV streaming a number of games (Civ V, Stick of Truth); I also tried a number of non-Steam games which worked great as well.
Requirements seem very, very modest.
On my TV I use a 65W A10 in a mini ITX case with a 90W PSU. It has on-chip graphics, HD7660, and it handles streaming at 1080p without getting warm (my network on the other hand...)
I've also used my laptop, an A6 with HD8250 on-chip graphics. It does 720p with no problem (don't know about 1080p, 720p is the native res)
I expect you can go even lower, but if you are building an HTPC the cost difference between an A6 and an A4 is pretty small.
Edit: if you wanted to go tight budget, you might even be able to use one of these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113...
Edit2: Apparently it does use hardware encode/decode. I think the most recent 2-3 generations of chips from both vendors all have that, but don't quote me.
It seems like you would need an HTPC anyway to load up steam and send the video from that 2nd computer to your TV. The whole process seems pointlessly convoluted.
I'd rather have wireless hdmi or even a really long hdmi cable from my good computer to wherever the tv is.
It also means the rendering rig can still have normal monitors to be used as a normal computer if you choose.
Lastly, even my $400 laptop can now play Skyrim at max settings, so I can play on the porch if I like.
As your other reply mentions, as far as competing remote rendering protocols, there aren't really any others good for games.
Btw, just tested it on my MacBook Pro, its awesome to start some CPU/GPU intensive game and play it without fan noise and heat :) Also interesting thing - you can add nonsteam games (battlefield, guild wars, heck even applications - WinSCP etc) and stream them ! This is awesome !
SteamOS http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamOS/ and http://store.steampowered.com/steamos/ will allow for building your own box and they've got third parties working on a "broad range" of hardware options that will come pre-installed with the OS.