A digital distribution service owned by Valve Corporation. Originally created to distribute Valve's own games, Steam has since become the de facto standard for digital distribution of PC games.
I got my Steam Link this afternoon. I was pretty excited after hearing Vinny's comments and then seeing Dave Snider's tweet that it ran well on wireless. I'd already placed my order when I saw this post the other day, but it was also very encouraging. I thought I'd post this as kind of a 'buyer beware' for anybody that has high hopes of good wi-fi performance.
What a supreme disappointment it was to get the Link hooked up and find that the performance over wi-fi is abysmal. I understand that this is something that will likely be different for everybody, but the Link is one room over from the PC (about 10-15 feet) and showed a nice strong signal when I selected my connection. I live in a single family home and have never had any issues with wi-fi interference from neighbors or anything. I can stream video (which surely must be somewhat comparable?) to any room in the house without stuttering or buffering. It's difficult for me to imagine a more ideal arrangement for a wireless connection.
Fallout 4 runs flawlessly on my PC, but was reduced to a slide show on my television. I tried a couple of other games (Vertiginous Golf & Mercenary Kings) to see if performance improved - it did not. Another, more general issue is running any game that starts a launcher. I suppose that's more of a 'Steam big picture' problem, but it is something to consider here as well.
I'll go ahead and hook everything up with a wired connection to see if anything improves (I'm confident it will work fine that way - it has to, right?), but leaving a cat-5 cable running through the hallway will not be a long-term solution. How unfortunate.
UPDATE: I've connected the Link to the router to make that portion of the configuration a wired connection. The PC is still connected via wi-fi. Performance improved significantly - Fallout is totally playable with a few minor hitches here and there. I went back into Mercenary Kings again and I was able to do active reloads with some level of consistency. I think I'll still do most of my gaming at the PC, but for my wife (who prefers the TV), I think this will be acceptable.
It's too bad that a totally wireless setup worked so poorly, but Valve did STRONGLY recommend a wired setup. I guess I'm happy that I can get away with having only half the connection on cat-5 and still get reasonable performance.
Mine works well! I'm streaming over 5ghz wireless. My router is advertised as 300Mpbs, but my laptop shows it delivering closer to 500. Life Is Strange streams absolutely perfectly, but more action-heavy games like Fallout 4 struggle over the wireless connection. Probably going to buy a powerline adapter soon to make it smoother. Really happy with it, regardless - nice to be able to finally play my PC games on the big screen.
@baconhound: Have you tried the opposite setup? (PC wired and Steam Link on WiFi?) That is what I assume the most likely scenario would be. Curious to see if it's any different than PC on WiFi and Steam Link wired.
If I'm running wires, I'll just stick with a long HDMI and a controller. I'm curious to try this, but I don't think I'll have much luck. My PC is wired to the router and the SteamLink would be wireless in my bedroom. I don't know how those power line adapters work. Sounds like voodoo, and by the time I'm buying that plus the Link, I don't know that the experience would be what I want for the money.
@baconhound: My steam link is still on its way but I was thinking if the Wireless performance is bad I would try to use internet over powerline adapters.
@mosdl: I'd somehow forgotten that I have a set of powerline adapters, even as I puzzled over all the cables coming out of my router - I think one of them may still be plugged into a powerline adapter. I work from home and I'd needed a cable for a VPN phone, but that's no longer the case. I'll be sure to give that a try.
@notsonic: I have not tried it with the PC wired and the Link on wi-fi. That's the arrangement that would require a cable running through the house. I may give it a try to see if it's any better, and I'll be sure to post an update if I do.
If your trying to play over any kind of a network with low latency wired is always the way to go, always been that way and will continue to be so until we figure out a new way to do wireless.
If I'm running wires, I'll just stick with a long HDMI and a controller. I'm curious to try this, but I don't think I'll have much luck. My PC is wired to the router and the SteamLink would be wireless in my bedroom. I don't know how those power line adapters work. Sounds like voodoo, and by the time I'm buying that plus the Link, I don't know that the experience would be what I want for the money.
The powerline adapters used to be completely useless and I avoided them for the most part but the last few times I had to mess with them I was impressed with how much better they have gotten, but that was always just to do basic surfing I have no idea how they would work with something that intense, I am curious how well it actually would work. But I think you hit the nail on the head after all that cost a completely different setup with no potential latency is just a better option.
If your trying to play over any kind of a network with low latency wired is always the way to go, always been that way and will continue to be so until we figure out a new way to do wireless.
If I'm running wires, I'll just stick with a long HDMI and a controller. I'm curious to try this, but I don't think I'll have much luck. My PC is wired to the router and the SteamLink would be wireless in my bedroom. I don't know how those power line adapters work. Sounds like voodoo, and by the time I'm buying that plus the Link, I don't know that the experience would be what I want for the money.
The powerline adapters used to be completely useless and I avoided them for the most part but the last few times I had to mess with them I was impressed with how much better they have gotten, but that was always just to do basic surfing I have no idea how they would work with something that intense, I am curious how well it actually would work. But I think you hit the nail on the head after all that cost a completely different setup with no potential latency is just a better option.
I think the bandwidth with Powerline is fine for streaming, its latency that probably affects it more.
@barrock: DISCLAIMER : I'm not actually using a Steam Link but a barebones PC running Steam OS. I'd like to think that's what a Steam Link is.
Things are running pretty great for me but I did notice some issues with Witcher 3. The compression artifacts you often find in streaming videos are very noticeable in that game. Especially when horse-riding around a forest. You can change some settings here and there to fix the issue but it adds significant input lag.
I have an older HP PC (a Core 2 Quad with 4gb DDR2 ram) hooked up to my TV over HDMI for streaming things that aren't on Roku (and easily VPNing my way around MLB blackout restrictions SHHH). My gaming PC is upstairs, hardwired using power line adapters, and the steam in-home streaming works pretty well at getting games from the beefy gaming PC upstairs to the like 2007 HP hooked up to my TV in the living room... most of the time. It is wired from end to end and still hitches up badly sometimes when playing games like Fallout 4.
My question is, I guess, do you think the steam link would work any better than my old PC at doing this stuff? At the very least it would be more energy efficient. I think some of the stuttering could just be because I'm using such an old PC to stream to, but I'm not entirely sure because sometimes it works flawlessly.
I managed to get a Link and a controller from Gamestop on their launch day and have only tried Fallout 4 on it. I'm also using Powerline adapters to connect to it since the wiring at the place I'm renting from is all sorts of messed up to do networking. Originally tried using wireless 5Ghz but that was just not an enjoyable experience.
Some days it works great, others not so much. It's been hit or miss. Last night I ran into an issue where after about 2 hours of playing Fallout the stream suddenly decreased the resolution to what I'm guessing was 240p and nothing was readable (playing on a 50" 1080p TV). I could make out the shapes but the hacking and reading inventory stuff wasn't possible. First time it happened and it was after doing a new update on the device, so I'm hoping it's just a temporary bug.
I need to try some other games with it, but Fallout 4 has basically consumed all my gaming time at the moment. I've been really impressed with Microsoft's Xbox to PC streaming so I'm hoping they're able to get PC to Xbox streaming working to do a comparison.
I got my steam link some weeks ago, my pc is wired to my modem, which is wired to my router. The link is wireless to the router a couple rooms away, maybe 20-30 feet. I haven't had problems with what ive tried: Zombi, fallout 4, wacky wheels, life is strange, few others I can't remember. They all look good and the steam link shows bandwidth at max(30mbps) and latency at 2-4ms. I have an ASUS rt-ac68p and using 5ghz. I think there are just alot of variables and if you get one you can try wireless but be prepared for needing wired since it goes both ways from everything I've read.
Here's one more update for anybody that's still interested in this. I connected my PC to the router via powerline adapters and turned off the wi-fi. The Steam Link is still wired directly to the router. My wife and I both noticed further improvement in the performance. We saw one or two minor hitches over the course of about an hour of Fallout 4 gameplay.
Lesson learned: if something strongly recommends a wired connection, take the "wi-fi works fine!" comments with a grain of salt. Overall, I'm happy with the Steam Link. It does exactly what it's supposed to do once I gave it the connection/bandwidth that it needed.
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