🚀 go-pugleaf

Ok just to write about the Steam Link also.
The Steam link basically is a small box which does one thing it is a 
client to the Steam Inhome streaming and it does what it does, however 
with several problems.

First of all its stability is good however Steam Inhome Streamings 
stability I would rate it as beta. The problem simply is the way it 
encodes the streams.

You have two options
a) Software encoding which is stable but prepare to add lag and a drop 
of 10fps minimum to your game.

b) Hardware encoding and here I can only speak for the NVidia side. 
Hardware encoding uses whatever method it finds which is from the 
NVidia/Intel side

Quicksync if it cannot turn on the graphics card encoding
NvIFR as default method of graphics card encoding
and NvFBC as fallback if that one is turned on.

And thats where the problems start:
Quicksync probably is the slowest of the hardware encoding methods but 
still faster than software only. Not sure how to turn that on if an 
NVidia card is present. I really have to check that out.

However if you turn on hardware encoding, you most likely have NvIFR as 
default (you cannot choose the method from Steam although theoretically 
it is possible that you can switch encodings, I found some batch scripts 
in the Steam forums)

And NvIFR is unstable as hell, some games work some don´t it is a hit 
and miss situation. If it works then it works well, and you get a 
minimal fps hit with decent results (also depending on your graphics 
card, I have an NVidia 970). But sometimes a game plays well for 10 
minutes then Steam crashes. So my recommendation stay the hell away from 
NvIFR.

Now NvFBC which is also used by Shadow Play. You only get that encoding 
method if you either turn on Shadow play or load a script from one of 
the steam discussion forums which basically executes some nvidia command 
line tools.
However in my case the situation with NvFBC once I resolved the problems 
with it were good.
First my desktop crashed once I turned it on. It turned out to be a 
driver bug. I had set my local desktop display to 4k resolution. 
Apparently the NVidia driver has problems with that in conjunction with 
Shadow Play. Once I have found that out and lowered my desktop 
resolution things started to work pretty well. I literally could throw 
every game against the steam link and it worked, and it worked really 
well, in my case as good if not better than NvIFR but with less problems.

As for AMD cards, I cannot say anything to the hardware encoding 
situation there. What really puzzles me is that Steam neither allows a 
per game config, nor does it allow to choose the hardware encoding type 
in their software. According to a dev post in the Steam forums, they 
think that the method choosing should be as automatic as possible, and 
the end user should not be pestered with it. But they are working on the 
problems. In my opinion this is braindead, given the literally dozends 
of config option the steam controller has, 2-3 config options on the 
encoding side would not have hurt (given all the support forum postings 
regarding this issue)

This brings me back to the Steam link. Given the multiple reports on the 
net, apparently you need a Cable based Ethernet connection, although its 
port is only 100MBit/sec, if you cannot do that and you are on Wifi only 
then forget it. If you have powerline, good luck, Powerline is generally 
a hit and miss thingy. The best bet probably would be, if you are in 
Europe and cannot get Ethernet Cables to your TV. Ethernet over Coax, 
which is powerline based and gives abouzt 200mbit raw speed half duplex. 
I have had such a setup until recently, but could not test the Steam 
Link with it anymore. The NVidia shield had problems with it, but a 
notebook with Steam Inhome Streaming worked flawlessly.

Also regarding the controller, I really can only recommend the Steam 
controller with this thing. first of all because it works seamlessly and 
you open a ton of games for couch gaming which otherwise do not work. 
Apparently the Xbox 360 controller and PS4 controllers also are supposed 
to work (with some problems regarding the wireless xbox 360 controller 
which are ironed out atm)

Is it better than a Steam box. Depends on your configuration. Given that 
you mostly can play aa and b titles on the Steam box natively and have 
to stream the AAA games anyway, I am not sure if I would recommend a 
Steambox over this. If you have a cabled ethernet solution then I would 
rather save my money on the Steambox and go for this little box, if not 
and you really want pc gaming on your TV I probably would rather go for 
a windows based machine and would run steam on that one.
I personally see the Steambox as safety net for Valve just in case 
Microsoft takes entirely over the Windows app store market and closes 
Windows for alternative app stores.