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Steam (reverse?) in-home game streaming over unRAID. Worth the trouble? (lemm.ee)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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My setup: I have a PC (Linux) that I also use for gaming, but I want to connect it to a TV that's in a different room. Now, I know I could just get something like a Shield TV or Apple TV and use Moonlight and be done, but I'd have to buy that.

Since I also have a server that's basically right next to the TV, I was thinking I might be able to (a) stream steam games from my PC to my server (and then connect to the TV) and (b) send the input signals of my peripherals to my PC. I have two controllers, a Bluetooth one and one with a USB dongle. It would be nice to connect both, but that's really not a priority for a start.

Asking here because I'm new to unRAID and was hoping someone has experience with game streaming and can tell me if this would work and is worth it, or whether I should just buy a dedicated device for this. In the second case, do you have recommendations?

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago

New idea:

Use my steam deck.
It just works (???)
Profit

I'd probably have to get a docking station so I don't have to use wi-fi. Will try it when I get home.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago

If I were to do this I would buy a usb pci board and a super cheap GPU to throw in the unRAID box. Then create a virtual machine to use both the USB PCI board and cheap GPU. Install your favorite Linux distro (or Windows if you want) and setup moonlight.

The thing is that I wouldn't do this. I have a shield tv and it works great with moonlight and the setup is cleaner. Any cheap Android tv dongle should be able to run moonlight so you don't actually need a shield tv.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It might be possible but unreliable. Your best bet is to have unRAID host a VM with a VM that has either the full steam client running on it or the appimage for the steam link app. Passthrough a GPU to it (you need to do that) and passthrough eventual peripherals to it. Connect the TV to the GPU output.

For a hardware solution, I suggest finding a cheap-ish Android tv box that has an Ethernet port, and then simply installing the steam link app from the play store. You will then be able to connect your controllers to it directly, using Bluetooth or wired. It might be tempting to go to Amazon but honestly AliExpress is 60% cheaper and the same (garbage) quality. Try to find a one that says it can do 4k, that usually means it's capable of outputting 1080p.

All of this is completely disregarding the fact that you will likely have issues with game streaming when your host is on Linux. Try it out first with the steam link app on your phone.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago

Thanks, I'll probably try to play around with using a VM a bit (maybe SteamOS since that's a thing that exists?).

Buy yeah, in the end getting some kind of android tv is probably the best, and in regards to input delay maybe also not the cheapest one. Also: Moonlight benchmark spreadsheet