Right, I’m guessing the answer is steamlink, but the question is:
my pc is in our dining room, but sometimes I prefer relaxing in the living room, hence my earlier question about a gaming pc. However, is there an easy way to use the pc on my tv in our living room?
Steamlink is an app on some smart tv's now too, you could try that before buying the actual link.
so when my pc is running upstairs and i logon to the laptop downstairs and use the same steam account, it uses the network and lets me play games installed on the main rig on the lappy (game not installed), and lappy is hdmi'd to to the tv, so i can play on the tv. it is a gaming laptop, but civ and stuff like that would run on most
also can you still get the steam boxy thingy, i have one of those also, but have only used it once
Quote from: sulky_uk;444197so when my pc is running upstairs and i logon to the laptop downstairs and use the same steam account, it uses the network and lets me play games installed on the main rig on the lappy (game not installed), and lappy is hdmi'd to to the tv, so i can play on the tv. it is a gaming laptop, but civ and stuff like that would run on most
They're not running on the laptop. They're running on the PC and being streamed via the network to the laptop that is essentially just playing a video at that stage. Steam Link does exactly the same thing. You could run them on a potato if it had some way to output video and a network device, the heavy lifting is all done on the 'main PC'.
Personally I have never liked either solution, they add bucket loads of input lag and make games feel pretty naff, IMO. Stadia and the like are similar, but of course they stream the game from someone else's computer, further complicating the chain!
I resort to using the laptop as is in the lounge when I want to game there... which works ok for older or easier to run titles (my laptop is old and my TV has many pixels!), and occasionally I have even lugged the PC into the lounge for when I want some eye candy...
Not to say don't try what sulks has suggested, you absolutely should - you may find them perfectly enjoyable ways to game. Just my 2 cents. Stadia, as mentioned, may be another option... but as you may have guessed I am not the right person to talk about that with, it isn't my cup of tea. :D
nVidia shield is another option which can both stream from your main PC and do what Stadia does to use a cloud rig to run a game and stream it to you. It has a hardware option as well to plug into the TV like Steam Link.
I personally use a steam link box in the lounge for 2 reasons: 1) Hardware suport, you can add keyboard, mouse, controllers, joysticks, headphones (bluetooth included now) by setting the up and connecting them to the steam link. 2) It's meant for making LAN streaming as lag free as possible and is a dedicated device for the job, unlike an app on a TV which may be out of date or the TV lacks cpu power. That's said the Steam link is no longer sold.
So with a keyboard and mouse, plus to controllers you get almost everything covered with steam link. Just use 5GHz wifi or a cable to network anything involved in this be it TV or the streaming box option.