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Comment by ajcp | Hacker News Reader

Unless it’s a dumb TV you can just install the Steam app on your TV and avoid Sunshine and the Pi all together.

Well, yes, it is a dumb TV - that still seems normal to me. I don't like computers in most of my things. I like them where I can see them.

That's fair, and honestly is my preference as well.

On top of that, the Steam App is a bit janky, so much so that I just hauled my gaming rig out, plugged it directly into the TV, set Steam to launch at start-up in Big Picture Mode and bam, good to go.

Can't wait for the Steam Machine though...

That assumes your tv is Android as well, since Roku and Tizen won't have access to that.

Also the way Steam encodes the stream is reportedly lower quality than Sunshine. This has been a thing for years.

Are you locked into steam then? Or can you use it to stream other games, e.g. stuff bought on GOG?

Steam can stream any game, but non-Steam games do need to be set up on the computer to launch through Steam to work properly.

Except we literally just had stories about ... LG, was it? ... spying on everything - and the obvious way for that to happen is to plug your TV into the internet.

Correct, it was LG — though I see no reason to assume that other smart-TV manufacturers aren't doing similar things. Perhaps not quite as egregiously as LG, where the TV's microphone was picking up conversations in the room even when the TV appeared to be off (but was actually in standby mode). But I would assume that if a smart TV from any brand is connected to the net, it's transmitting data home about what you watch, what ads you sat through vs fast-forwarded, and so on.

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