Steam Link and Steam Controller now available to Pre Order

Devious · 19 Oct 2015 at 18:38

The link does look like it has potential so worth a punt at that price.

Simon Belmont · 19 Oct 2015 at 18:51

Mark A said:
I was hoping it would be good as I'm not a massive fan of the XB pad, especially for fighting games. Will hold off a while and see what becomes of it.

Fighting games use the D pad, which Xbox One fixed from the 360 days. The PS4 is utterly awful imho

Skeeter · 19 Oct 2015 at 20:05

Hmm. So my link has arrived.

I'm less than impressed with it at the moment. Rocket League stutters like mad even on Balanced settings, and theres just enough lag to make racing games unpredictable and twitchy. It might be fine with a slow paced RPG or something, but currently I'm not seeing a reason to use this over the 15m HDMI cable and wireless pad I've been using for years...

Shame.

kinger8938 · 19 Oct 2015 at 20:10

Skeeter said:
Hmm. So my link has arrived.

I'm less than impressed with it at the moment. Rocket League stutters like mad even on Balanced settings, and theres just enough lag to make racing games unpredictable and twitchy. It might be fine with a slow paced RPG or something, but currently I'm not seeing a reason to use this over the 15m HDMI cable and wireless pad I've been using for years...

Shame.

Is that over wired ethernet too?

regi · 19 Oct 2015 at 20:11

Skeeter said:
Hmm. So my link has arrived.

I'm less than impressed with it at the moment. Rocket League stutters like mad even on Balanced settings, and theres just enough lag to make racing games unpredictable and twitchy. It might be fine with a slow paced RPG or something, but currently I'm not seeing a reason to use this over the 15m HDMI cable and wireless pad I've been using for years...

Shame.

That's disappointing. Any chance it's just a network issue?

Skeeter · 19 Oct 2015 at 20:20

Wired. However I've just found out that even if you have Intel/nVidia hardware it doesn't enable Hardware Encoding by default. When the GF is done with the TV I will jump back in and try enabling it. I'll try my cheap China 360 pad wireless dongle too for those wondering if they work.

kinger8938 · 19 Oct 2015 at 20:27

Skeeter said:
Wired. However I've just found out that even if you have Intel/nVidia hardware it doesn't enable Hardware Encoding by default. When the GF is done with the TV I will jump back in and try enabling it. I'll try my cheap China 360 pad wireless dongle too for those wondering if they work.

Yea i had to enable that over normal streaming from pc to laptop, let me know how it goes!

Skeeter · 19 Oct 2015 at 21:04

I've enabled hardware Encoding and Dirt Rally plays a million times better. Almost no lag and a solid 60fps.
However, Rocket League is no different. It says 60fps but it feels like 20 at most. Like the games almost in slow motion. Theres perceptible controller lag to.

And then I exited out the game and a pop-up on the PC Steam client about using a controller has put the client over the top of my Steam Link Streaming session and its stopped responding to inputs, so I have to now go and turn the Link off to reset it.

A bit better than earlier, but still as buggy and inconsistent as my experiences with In Home Streaming previously

.

kinger8938 · 19 Oct 2015 at 21:46

Skeeter said:
I've enabled hardware Encoding and Dirt Rally plays a million times better. Almost no lag and a solid 60fps.
However, Rocket League is no different. It says 60fps but it feels like 20 at most. Like the games almost in slow motion. Theres perceptible controller lag to.

And then I exited out the game and a pop-up on the PC Steam client about using a controller has put the client over the top of my Steam Link Streaming session and its stopped responding to inputs, so I have to now go and turn the Link off to reset it.

A bit better than earlier, but still as buggy and inconsistent as my experiences with In Home Streaming previously .

I was worried that sort of thing would happen. Like even now on my pc directly to the tv via big picture mode, every now and then a pop up comes up upon exiting a game and i must fetch a mouse, plug it in, clear the pop up and continue.

coupe69 · 19 Oct 2015 at 22:21

Hmm..

I've been using Steam streaming with my laptop for a while now with no issues at all. Was considering getting a Steam link, but the talk here is putting me off a little.

Vonhelmet · 19 Oct 2015 at 22:23

Yeah, it does seem like it's worthless without hardware encoding.

Any word on the bogus 360 adapter?

vintage-x · 20 Oct 2015 at 02:19

I got my controller on Friday. Ive used it for about 2 hours tops since then (only because I've been busy)

It is strange to use. My accuracy is crap compared to using a controller but at least I have this working with mass effect which is something I could never get working with a controller.

I just need to test it more. I think I'm going to use this for any games that don't have controller support and use my Xbox one pad for any games that do (hopefully the wireless dongle should be released for that soon)

Its going to take a while to get used to but I'm glad it exists because I play exclusively on the TV and I have a load of games that are mouse and keyboard only (mostly RTS games)

Skeeter · 20 Oct 2015 at 05:47

Vonhelmet said:
Yeah, it does seem like it's worthless without hardware encoding.

Any word on the bogus 360 adapter?

Sorry, forgot about that. Yep, the Chinese 360 adapter works fine, just plugged it in, synced a controller and off it went.

coupe69 said:
Hmm..

I've been using Steam streaming with my laptop for a while now with no issues at all. Was considering getting a Steam link, but the talk here is putting me off a little.

I've never managed to get In Home Streaming working well before. It's always been fits and starts, random crashes, or the annoyance of something causing the big picture overlay to get a pop up or something over it.

Steam Link works, but doesn't feel much better/different than when I tried previously. If you have had success with In Home Streaming you may be fine with a Link, but for me its already just annoying and not stable enough for me to not really want to persist with it. It works, just not quite well enough, is my conclusion.

Vonhelmet · 20 Oct 2015 at 07:09

That's good to know - thanks.

uncle_rufus · 20 Oct 2015 at 07:24

Skeeter said:
Steam Link works, but doesn't feel much better/different than when I tried previously. If you have had success with In Home Streaming you may be fine with a Link, but for me its already just annoying and not stable enough for me to not really want to persist with it. It works, just not quite well enough, is my conclusion.

Hmm, that's a real shame... I have also tried streaming in various guises - to a laptop running steam on Linux plugged into a wired network connection and connected to the TV... and to a raspberry pi 2 running limelight-pi (the nvidia shield thing)...

In both cases it worked "okay" but much as you describe not quite well enough to be viable. My AV is an on-access type thing so when the checksum of a program doesn't agree with one stored in the database it pops up asking me to confirm and update to the stored sum - I think it's fairly good for security but very annoying for streaming!!! Sometimes the stream would get pretty choppy and/or fail completely... I was hoping the link would be better than that, having been optimised and designed for it

bisoner · 20 Oct 2015 at 08:09

Interesting reading all the comments and still have a pre order for this.

I've been using Streaming for a while. Host pc is an i5 and 970 so decent grunt. Client is an i3 laptop. The streaming experience used to be poor and choppy but it's now way better. I use powerline adapters and often get solid 60 fps at 1080p. If i try with the host hard wired to the router and then client connnected via ac wireless i get similar results.

I'm looking forward to seeing the direct comparison with my kit.

tracertong · 20 Oct 2015 at 08:36

After reading the above comments and this review , to say I am disappointed would be an understatement.

http://www.engadget.com/2015/10/15/valves-steam-link-review/

kinger8938 · 20 Oct 2015 at 11:59

bisoner said:
Interesting reading all the comments and still have a pre order for this.

I've been using Streaming for a while. Host pc is an i5 and 970 so decent grunt. Client is an i3 laptop. The streaming experience used to be poor and choppy but it's now way better. I use powerline adapters and often get solid 60 fps at 1080p. If i try with the host hard wired to the router and then client connnected via ac wireless i get similar results.

I'm looking forward to seeing the direct comparison with my kit.

Thats pretty much what my set up would be, though trying streaming without the link connected the same as you i didnt get solid enough results but could the aging client laptop be part of that?

kinger8938 · 20 Oct 2015 at 12:02

tracertong said:
After reading the above comments and this review , to say I am disappointed would be an understatement.

http://www.engadget.com/2015/10/15/valves-steam-link-review/

I found the review to be fair and quite positive towards the link? I never belived this would work well over wireless though, but wired sounds decent. But it has to be pretty good for me to want to use rather than just playibg at my pc. If the loss in quality is too much there is no point.

Trox · 20 Oct 2015 at 12:22

I must be in the minority as I've had no issues playing Rocket league or Ryse. Used it every night almost since receiving it on Friday.

Settings are set at beautiful, so far it just works. (I have a decent network)

I guess some games will come with windows related problems with pop-up dialogue boxes, but I'll cross that bridge when it comes hehe

So far it feels a lot better than it did using my HTPC(input lag)!