Can i use steam link "outside" of steam? And if not WHY not?

[Brunftzeit]

Hi.

All i can read about the steam link is that it can stream the steam content. But whats the point of that?

I have 2 PC. Both with good hardware but thats too expensive in the long run. So i want to stream ALL of the content of my primary PC to my TV so i can surf, chat, watch videos, play games or can work in my living room.

As i read the first time from steam link i thought by myself thats the piece of hardware i need.

But after reading some sites they all say it will only stream steam content. So its useless. :(

I dont understand why this cool hardware should have such a restriction. Any idea or any suggestion?

[Air]

It will likely use something very similar to Steam In-Home Streaming.
Although, it's hard to tell what exactly you can do software-side with it at this point.

[ProfessorKaos64]

Useless? Gaming at 1080p / 60 FPS for FPS in a small form factor, and you're complaining that it doesn't do you laundry? Also it's widely known you can add non-steam programs to your Steam client on the other PC and use them (although it is not ideal). As Air said above, we don't fully know how it will act, but i'd imagine it is similar to whatever use cases we have now with one PC streaming content to the other.

[Brunftzeit]

Yeah its useless (for me and maybe some others) if i need a second PC to do the rest of the work i want to stream.

I have all the equipment for the living room. I have a logitech K360, a Razer Ouroboros and a wireless headset. But i want to swtich from 2 PC to one with streaming... or with very long HDMI and USB cable if i cant have a good streaming box. Because the hardware to play Star Citizen and other new games for 2 PC is too expensive and my wife will kill me.... ;)

[Tank Squirrel]

Originally posted by Brunftzeit:

Hi.

All i can read about the steam link is that it can stream the steam content. But whats the point of that?

I have 2 PC. Both with good hardware but thats too expensive in the long run. So i want to stream ALL of the content of my primary PC to my TV so i can surf, chat, watch videos, play games or can work in my living room.

As i read the first time from steam link i thought by myself thats the piece of hardware i need.

But after reading some sites they all say it will only stream steam content. So its useless. :(

I dont understand why this cool hardware should have such a restriction. Any idea or any suggestion?

i doubt a company who makes such a device would want it to be used with Origin or its competitors. call me silly, but really----

[XÆЯO_Vince]

Steam Link will let you stream anything if you how how to add non-Steam streaming shortcuts:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2893733/pressing-valves-buttons-hands-on-with-the-steam-link-and-steam-controller.html

"One last interesting thing I learned: Despite early reports that this was a “Steam streaming machine,” I confirmed with Valve that you can in fact stream anything from your PC, including just your pure desktop environment (or a browser running Netflix, Spotify, whatever)."

You can also stream Uplay and Orgin games with IHS by adding the clients as non-Steam games. The trick with this is to have the clients first start when you initiate the stream, not to let it already be running in the background.

Steam streaming is a very powerful and can be used for interesting things:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=400726535
My hope is that Steam Link is also a hackable low-power x86 SteamOS unit. Phoronix states that it's a SteamOS/Linux powered device. If it is, we can turn the Steam Link into a tiny, low-end Steam Machine to play some games locally by connecting a large flash drive or external HDD with a seperate Steam Library on it. If it's powered by something like an Atom or E1 processor, it should be able to handle some basic platformer indie games, along with most FOSS games from the Debian repository, console emulators up to the Nintendo 64, and maybe even older 3D games like Quake 3,

[ProfessorKaos64]

Xaero, very nice with the PS4 demo. On-point with everything too. I'm beginning to make guides for some of this stuff, hopefully in due time it is a nice resource for folks.

[XÆЯO_Vince]

Originally posted by ProfessorKaos64:

Xaero, very nice with the PS4 demo. On-point with everything too. I'm beginning to make guides for some of this stuff, hopefully in due time it is a nice resource for folks.

There are some guides popping up on the "S.T.eamosD.esktop" group. I just posted one of my guides on there just now:

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/STDexperience/discussions/3/617330406653067864/

[Brunftzeit]

Thanks Xaero for this answer. Very helpful. So i will wait for this and will not lay cables through my house. ;)

[8BitCerberus]

Originally posted by Air:

It will likely use something very similar to Steam In-Home Streaming.

It's not "likely" it's exactly IHS. And with IHS you can add non-Steam games and other software to your Steam library and stream it just fine.

A quick work around for the OP is to just add Notepad as a non-Steam game, stream it full-screen, then tab out of it and you're on the desktop ready to go.

Originally posted by Xaero:

My hope is that Steam Link is also a hackable low-power x86 SteamOS unit.

Mine too. When they announced this thing my mind immediately went to an Atom based device that I could hook an external drive to, and run some emulators and lower-spec games locally. It never even crossed my mind that they might have ported SteamOS to ARM just for the purpose of streaming.

I suppose it's still possible they have, but the hoops they'd have to jump through to do it, AND the fact that no-one outside of Valve has seen it and could actually do some beta testing for them because ARM bugs are going to be different from the x86 bugs we've been testing/helping fix for SteamOS thusfar. It would just be far easier to drop an Atom in the Steam Link, the thing doesn't have battery power to worry about, so there's really no reason NOT to go Atom and save the hassle of developing and maintaining x86 and ARM SteamOS builds.

[XÆЯO_Vince]

Originally posted by DarkWolf777:

Mine too. When they announced this thing my mind immediately went to an Atom based device that I could hook an external drive to, and run some emulators and lower-spec games locally. It never even crossed my mind that they might have ported SteamOS to ARM just for the purpose of streaming.

I suppose it's still possible they have, but the hoops they'd have to jump through to do it, AND the fact that no-one outside of Valve has seen it and could actually do some beta testing for them because ARM bugs are going to be different from the x86 bugs we've been testing/helping fix for SteamOS thusfar. It would just be far easier to drop an Atom in the Steam Link, the thing doesn't have battery power to worry about, so there's really no reason NOT to go Atom and save the hassle of developing and maintaining x86 and ARM SteamOS builds.

Exactly. The real heart to streaming is the "streaming_client" program. I suppose that it could be a standalone program outside of Steam, however it doesn't seem to work without the Steam client first passing an authentication hash value; So that would imply that the Steam client is also running on the Link to launch the stream. Furthermore, there has to be a menu interface to configure the controller and connect to a wireless access point--they cannot assume everyone has push-button WPS routers or even wants to use that feature. If there is a menu interface, there should be a way to change the VT to the Debian shell and gain full access to the Link. If there is a way, we'll find it. Lets hope the Steam Link is indeed a SteamOS device and Valve permits us to use it anyway we like.