Steam beta update adds In-Home Streaming support, sort of

Something interesting has cropped up in the latest Steam beta update: streaming capability, even if it's not quite, um, capable yet. The wily devils at the unofficial Steam Database have unearthed (after some "tinkering") an option called In-Home Streaming, which will obviously let you stream games from one PC to another or others, over a local network. Will is the operative word here - the option is there, in an unfinished form at least, but it's currently hamstrung by Steam's one-PC-at-a-time login restrictions.

As the Steam Database blog makes clear, the streaming menu won't appear without you doing some complicated fiddly stuff first, and even then you won't actually be able to use it. Still, it gives us our first first glimpse of Valve's promised streaming system, which is an essential part of their SteamOS/Big Picture/Steambox living room setup, including the sort of options we'll be able to tinker with when it goes live. The above image shows adjustable bandwith and framerate settings, for example.

The chaps at Steam Database theorise that streaming support will go live alongside the Steam Hardware beta, with the 300 beta testers/Steambox users being given an exception to login with multiple machines at once.

For more on Valve's plans surrounding SteamOS, the Steam controller and more, check out our extensive exploration of Valve's master plan , based on years of Valve interviews and announcements.

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Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.