Gaming on the PC is fun but it can be tiring spending long hours in front of it. Gaming laptops are a great idea and we highly recommend considering one if you’re someone who needs to travel a lot, and need to carry your work (and play) station along. However, if you’re someone who wants to play PC games in the comfort of your bed or couch, there is a very robust and freely available option present. It’s made by Valve, the folks behind Half-Life, and they now run Steam, the world’s largest online game store and distribution system. Enter, Steam In-Home Streaming, a feature that lets you stream games from one device to another. You can now run games across systems even if all of them don’t have high-end gaming hardware on-board. You can stream from a gaming PC to a basic laptop, or from a gaming laptop to a mobile device, or a gaming laptop to another laptop or any such combination. Here is how you go about setting it up.
How does it work?
You run Steam on your primary gaming PC or laptop. Next, you run the Steam software on it and it stream your display, your games over the home network to the device of your choice. This device could be a very basic Android phone or tablet, an Android OS TVs, another laptop, or a PC. It’s that simple. The device that you play the game on does not need to have a high-end graphics card or processor. Pretty much any device can play most HD videos will do just fine. The PC or laptop from where you usually play and now will stream, needs to be reasonably powerful though and have all the games you want, installed.
What do you need?
If you haven’t got a gaming laptop, you can consider some models here or visit a Reliance Digital store. This should be a good starting point. You also need a decent router to make sure that the stream is stable so you don’t notice any lag or delay. If you’re sitting in the same room as the streamer gaming laptop (or PC) and the router, you could manage to stream this on an 802.11n (300Mbps) router, but we would recommend a faster 802.11ac (750Mbps and above) router for optimum performance. If you have wired connections at home setup, those could be better options too.
A good network makes things a lot simpler. If you have a home setup, where network connectivity isn’t the strongest, you are likely to face stuttering. You might have to tone down the streaming quality settings for good performance. Also consider a better router for this purpose.
Oh, and this setup requires no internet connectivity for streaming, just to login to Steam and authenticate your devices. Steam in-home streaming only works on the same network, so don’t expect to stream games from a different city or location. Also, make sure your Windows screen isn’t logged out or locked. You cannot have others using that device at the same time.
Next, you need to choose a device you want to stream to. Most phones today will do just fine, although if you have a tablet around, the larger screen makes it a lot more fun. A basic or old laptop might work too.
How do you setup Steam In-Home Streaming?
This is the easy bit. First, make sure all devices are connected to your home router. Install Steam on the gaming PC or laptop, create a free account if you haven’t, or login using an existing ID. You need to use this account to login on the other device (the one you will stream to). If it’s an Android device, a phone or tablet, search and download Steam Link (BETA) from the Google Play Store. Pretty much everything will be configured by itself. You might be asked to choose a controller type. When you start the app, it should detect Steam streaming devices on your network and let you stream games from your gaming laptop or PC.
Testing out your Steam In-Home Streaming setup
Go the remote device on which you want to stream games to. If this is your phone or tablet, open the Steam Link (BETA) app and click on Start Playing. You’ll be taken to the Steam Big Picture mode which is a basic interface that lets you choose a game to stream. Try out some games on this. If you’re using a secondary PC or laptop, open Steam and go to the Library. You should see an option to Stream games in place of the Play button. This will let you play those games remotely.
Tweaking your streaming setup further
If you’re facing average performance in the form of stuttering or delay, there are ways to tweak things. Most of the defaults work pretty well in most cases. Some of the settings and tweaks are available on the server end. Go to that device (your gaming PC or laptop), right-click on the Steam icon and click on Settings. Choose Home Streaming and then on Advanced Host Options. Here you can enable features such as ‘Enable Hardware Encoding’ and ‘Prioritize network traffic’ to reduce latency and lag between the two devices. You can also choose presets to prioritize performance over quality. You can also limit the resolution of the screen to try and reduce the load on your gaming PC or laptop. The less processing and less network bandwidth needed, the smoother and faster the game is likely to run.
How do you make the gaming experience more intuitive?
One of the easiest ways to make this streaming gaming performance more fun, is by adding a gaming controller to the mix. If you’re on a phone or a tablet, there are third-party controllers that act as a stand for your device and connect using Bluetooth. They also have a wide range of physical controls so you don’t need to use the touchscreen on your device. This makes playing PC titles on your device way more immersive.
Hopefully, this tutorial is of some help and this solution opens up a lot of possibilities for you. If you prefer just gaming on a laptop, or a gaming console, you can either head down to a Reliance Digital store near you to check out the offerings there, or browse through our product catalogue online where you can even buy a model that suites your needs.
