Steam streaming works perfect, but.....

RumbleBee · 6 Sep 2014 at 23:51

Managed to hook up my HTPC (2006 intel PC ) with £30 GPU.

Works pretty much perfect. Quite supirsed it works so well. Streaming at 720p with no noticable lag over LAN. However is there a way for another user to sit at the main PC and load up word or Firefox without it effecting the streaming.

Upon trying this when I minimize the screen, the stream minimizes too.

It's really good that it works so well, but just a shame that it kind of disables the main PC. I was hoping to play some Walking Dead in the living room and shuffle the wife off to the lounge a few evenings this week

I guess it's understable if it can't be achieved, but thought it worth asking.

Edit.
Sorry another question if anyone can advise.

If I'm streaming at 720P/1080p am I best setting that resolution in the game options to achieve a better framerate, or shell I just let steam do it's thing in downing the resolution from 1440p to 720p/1080p. I assume I'm best streaming like for like, as it gives the PC less work to do at the source.

DaleTheWhale · 7 Sep 2014 at 00:16

Steam streaming is more of a low latency RDP (Remote Desktop) rather than streaming the running program/service.

The frame rate will be the same as it normally will be on the host computer, changing it won't affect the stream.

ScoobyDoo · 7 Sep 2014 at 00:24

I'm streaming to a £25 raspberry pi and it's working great, 1080p rising dead 3 on my 47inch TV in the living room looks great.
Don't think you can use the Pc thats doing the streaming for anything else at the same time as it's basically streaming whats being ran on the main pc.

Regards resolution I find it best setting my pi to Stream at 1080p, you need it set as high as your streaming pc to get the quality. It's the donor pc that's doing the processing power to display the resolution on your TV.
I'm impressed that my pi can do 1080

Phantom Shadow · 7 Sep 2014 at 00:41

ScoobyDoo said:
Don't think you can use the Pc thats doing the streaming for anything else at the same time as it's basically streaming whats being ran on the main pc.

Even other ethernet I found the tiny bit of lag introduced in inputs to be annoying. Though it was entertaining when someone finds the computer upstairs running the game, sits down and starts trying to control it as well. Becomes a difficult form of co-op lol.

I'm impressed that my pi can do 1080

Things like hardware decoding of 1080 is where the pi excels

Witcher1979 · 7 Sep 2014 at 01:11

Come on people lets not be silly, once the main PC is streaming to your devices it will not be good for anything else.

RumbleBee · 7 Sep 2014 at 01:15

Excellent thanks for the replies.

Dirk Diggler · 7 Sep 2014 at 06:39

If I had a host PC with a GTX780 Ti SLI setup and the donor had a GTX660, would the fps be that of the SLI setup? Also, if I had a game controller plugged in to donor PC would that work?

ScoobyDoo · 7 Sep 2014 at 08:36

String said:
If I had a host PC with a GTX780 Ti SLI setup and the donor had a GTX660, would the fps be that of the SLI setup? Also, if I had a game controller plugged in to donor PC would that work?

The frame rate will be the same as the host pc so it will use the sli setup, the donor pc is just used to display the stab it doesn't effect the frame rate.

You can have the controller plugged into either the host or the donor. Ive got my xbox controller plugged into my host pc as the range reaches the living room no problem, if the range was a problem then I could just plug it into the pi

Timber · 7 Sep 2014 at 11:15

ScoobyDoo said:
I'm streaming to a £25 raspberry pi and it's working great, 1080p rising dead 3 on my 47inch TV in the living room looks great.
Don't think you can use the Pc thats doing the streaming for anything else at the same time as it's basically streaming whats being ran on the main pc.

Regards resolution I find it best setting my pi to Stream at 1080p, you need it set as high as your streaming pc to get the quality. It's the donor pc that's doing the processing power to display the resolution on your TV.
I'm impressed that my pi can do 1080

I didn't know you could do this. A quick Google search suggests Limelight-Pi. Is this what you are using?

ScoobyDoo · 7 Sep 2014 at 12:20

Timber said:
I didn't know you could do this. A quick Google search suggests Limelight-Pi. Is this what you are using?

Yes running limelight-pi. Compiled it myself, really easy to do, you can use the already compiled jar from the git-hub but i had sound issues, compiling myself fixed everything.
Runs really smooth, you get the odd sound hiccup now and then but in the main its great.

Timber · 7 Sep 2014 at 13:13

ScoobyDoo said:
Yes running limelight-pi. Compiled it myself, really easy to do, you can use the already compiled jar from the git-hub but i had sound issues, compiling myself fixed everything.
Runs really smooth, you get the odd sound hiccup now and then but in the main its great.

Thank you for reply. Sorry last question does it work with 360 or other controllers yet?

This is something I'll try and test or keep and eye on until it's more developed. At the moment my Pi is doing a great job running RasPlex but this might be useful at some point.

ScoobyDoo · 7 Sep 2014 at 16:19

It works with the 360 controller fine, wired and wireless, ps3 controllers work as do most pc ones.
Its getting pretty refined now, played dead rising 3 streamed to the pi today and worked like a charm. Good job I've got 3 pi's, media centre, home automation and limelight

Dirk Diggler · 7 Sep 2014 at 16:21

ScoobyDoo said:
It works with the 360 controller fine, wired and wireless, ps3 controllers work as do most pc ones.
Its getting pretty refined now, played dead rising 3 streamed to the pi today and worked like a charm. Good job I've got 3 pi's, media centre, home automation and limelight

I would have thought it would struggle with the encoding. Steam have a setting to apply to have the target machine do the encoding, do they not?

Timber · 7 Sep 2014 at 16:34

ScoobyDoo said:
It works with the 360 controller fine, wired and wireless, ps3 controllers work as do most pc ones.
Its getting pretty refined now, played dead rising 3 streamed to the pi today and worked like a charm. Good job I've got 3 pi's, media centre, home automation and limelight

Thank you for the response again. Sounds like I do need to check this out then. Working with a MS wireless 360 dongle would be great.