Gabe Newell: PC-to-TV Streaming Will Soon Be Standard
Gabe Newell speaketh, and he commands that the PC will take over the living room in three tiers.
After sparring on stage with director / producer J.J. Abrams on Wednesday at the DICE 2013 summit, Valve Software bossman Gabe Newell presented the Day 2 keynote entitled "A View on Next Steps". He said that PC-to-TV streaming will become standard on future TV sets and will even pave the way to cheap, high-quality PC gaming in the living room.
Newell predicted that the PC infiltration will come in three tiers. For starters, there's the "good" tier comprising of a traditional PC dedicated to in-home streaming. It would be good enough to pump streaming video to any HDTV in the house without any latency or hiccups, and should cost around $100 at first then eventually drop down to zero.
"This will just become a standard feature of every television, the latency is basically nonexistent, so we really believe it's a very low-cost pathway [to PC games in the living room] and a very high-quality path," he said, seemingly describing a PC-based high-powered TV accessory in a standalone HTPC-like form factor that can't be modified.
The next tier, AKA "better", was described as a PC crammed into a console form factor and sold at a console price. That in itself seemed to be a Steam Box reference, even adding that there won't be anything magical about the hardware and consequently making it an affordable investment for the living room. Indeed the Steam Box aka "Piston" will reportedly have a console price, but will be modular and allow users to easily upgrade the device with new components.
He hinted that this particular tier may be threatened by Apple, a fear that has spread throughout the gaming sector for years. "Apple has this huge unit advantage," he said. "Smartphones and tablets are really getting into these huge numbers and Apple has a much more natural progression into the living room with fundamentally industry-to-industry competitive advantages that I think are more threatening to the PC moving into the living room than anything that would be happening on the console side."
He also pointed out that Apple's upgrade cycle isn't quite as "lumpy" given that company releases newer models each year and offers consumers and developers a smooth progression from one iPhone model to the next rather than telling them to throw everything away and start over. Though this is clearly beneficial to both consumers and developers, it presents a serious challenge to those who work in the PC/console gaming industry.
He moved on to describe the "best" scenario which was essentially a standalone gaming desktop that user's can upgrade as usual. "PCs have always scaled really well," he added. "If a customer wants more 3D performance, they can get it. If they want more storage for video, they can get it. So the sky is the limit. If you want a $4000 living room box, I'm sure there are lots of PC vendors who are going to send that to you."
Finally he discusses the difference between in-home game streaming and cloud gaming, the latter of which he admits to being skeptical about. His full reasoning can be seen in the 35 minute presentation below.

Hes full of surprises, very keen on getting the pc experience fully incorporated into the lounge.
Although Lots of people are already doing so with htcp's or even some modifications to TV units with some little planning for bigger cases. I guess having a smaller unit like that X thing i keep seeing would help a lot for those with not a lot of room on their TV units and a bonus if this obliterates any console at an attractive price in the near future.
If it goes well for it, Steam will probably be the best experience drm free gaming platform adding to what it is already now.
Watch out consoles, gaming developers will soon realize you're not the answer to piracy anymore. Feel sorry for Steam though, if it is successful in bringing pc-console to lounge, then they might have a hacking fight on their hands.
Ps. Hoping its not too expensive upgrading the parts eligible.
Lol not only steam box, it's a next-gen console reference: They're all PCs!
Making network cable AV streaming capable as standard will also make all Wi-fi product able to send video wirelessly.
i already "stream" massive HD video files over standard network cable and have never once experienced any troubles. Wi-fi is also able to send video (translate any file type) with no problems ... except bandwidth becomfes an issue.
if you want this today all you needis a gigabit router, a quite bare-bones htpc connected to your router by standard networking cable, a second computer with the media files on it. connect this htpc to a audio DAC via USB cable... connect DAC to amplifier... To speakers... 3 foot HDMI cable from HTPC to TV. TV = htpc monitor.
share the folder from your media file containint workstation, desktop, home server etc. Then go to your minimalistic HTPC, access the shared folder, double-click the file.
rather than use windows media player which spys on you try VLC. It's free, it's not spyware, it runs waay smootherc than Windows media player... and again it doesn't fu***** spy on you.
problem solved, works fantastically.
no new inventions needed.
Seems legit to me
When was a console ever NOT a crappy PC?
while you have a point i think you missed the point .. you should watch the video .. any way sure ive been streaming videos/ music for a long time thing is the general population still sees sees computer networking and server concepts in terms of advanced knowledge only geeks know.. so until that changes its still going to be new.. and even if something is old if you have never tried it before it is new.
Just downloaded Storage Wars and Pawn Star. It gives me somethign to listen to while cooking and doing some house work.
Anything else I want to watch will be on the tablet.
i think you're right!
can you stream any kind of media file you wish to use with those though? I don't think so.
.mkv for example
FLAC high rez audio?